Hi, I’m Corey. Are you an idealistic marketer, like me?

That is—do you plan your marketing campaigns by pretending technical limitations aren’t a thing and just map out the ideal experience you want for your prospects from first impression to final conversion? Like this:

If your whiteboard looks this optimistic, read on. We’ll nerd out together.

After us idealistic marketers are done dreaming about our perfect campaign structure from start to finish, the harsh reality sets in: technical limitations are definitely a thing. When the time comes to figure out how to actually do something a little crazy, like augment lead data or enrich it with extra data pulled from ‘the internet’, things get much trickier. But if you’re dedicated to the campaign you mapped out, you really want to make it happen.

Often, you’ll ask a developer for help and hear, “Sure it’s possible. I’ll just need two weeks to code it up. Log a request and we’ll prioritize it against all the other requests for my genius.”

We both know you’re not logging that request, because it’s not getting prioritized.

Eventually, you run a campaign that looks exactly like what you’ve done before, or what everyone else is doing, because it’s relatively easy for us—lowly marketers—to pull off by ourselves.

It’s infuriating.

Can’t we Execute More Sophisticated Marketing?

Is it too much to ask that we can create whatever the hell we dream up, so we can push the industry forward? To deliver the experience we think could make a difference to our prospects—one they might even enjoy?

Not if we need to rely on devs to help build our lead management or the integrations component of our campaigns for us, unfortunately.

However, I’ve found that more and more often I don’t need to have these futile conversations with developers. Modern martech has brought us tools to help, and the tool that comes up most often for me is Zapier.

Your Marketing on Zapier

Have you ever punched above your weight at work and solved a problem that that you’re totally unqualified to solve? It. feels. so. satisfying. You feel way smarter than you actually are.

I got that feeling when I used Zapier with Unbounce for the first time. I still get that feeling today. If you dream big enough, and can connect the right tools together, you can pull off campaign workflows that feel almost impossible.

Most recently, I tried to execute the campaign in the whiteboard photo above (the one above the Dragonball Z meme). The campaign—called Conversion Quest—challenges PPC marketers working in agencies to double the conversion rate of one of their client’s landing pages in 30 days.

When planning this campaign, I wanted to have a prospect fill out the form on a landing page with the current date (when they were “starting their quest”), and their current conversion rate. From there, they’d receive an email confirming their personalized quest goal and deadline by which they’d ideally complete the challenge (The email was to automatically pull in someone’s target conversion rate and their custom due date a month out).

Of course, when I’d planned this flow, there was no technical way to magically include a doubled conversion rate and custom due date directly in each prospect’s followup message. That is until my colleague reminded me of Zapier Formatter, which allows you to manipulate your lead data before it goes into your marketing automation platform (or CRM, or Email Marketing Service, or wherever other tool you can think of). Just 30 minutes later (and without approaching our dev team), I had augmented data going into our marketing automation platform.

Now Conversion Quest runs with custom info in the followup, all thanks to a quick Zap (a preconfigured integration template connecting two or more apps).

Here’s an example of the message I send in that campaign:

Now, are you going to need to use Zapier so you can build Conversion Quest?

No (that’s my great idea)… But my bet is you’ve got amazing campaign ideas for which Zaps could help you create a consistent (better!) experience for your leads, and help you stop relying on developers. As a bonus, Unbounce now has Integrations Powered by Zapier available right in the builder, so you can do this super quickly, without ever leaving Unbounce.

Let’s dig into the versatility for a second.

Leveling up your marketing (without a line of code)

You could use Unbounce’s Integrations Powered by Zapier if…

In this case, you’re a marketing agency that needs to build high-converting lead gen landing pages, overlays or sticky bars that connect to anything and everything your clients use, which could include:

• Hatchbuck
• Base
• Follow Up Boss
• Agile CRM
• Pipedrive
• Salesforce
• HubSpot CRM
• Capsule CRM
• PipelineDeals

A few quick Zaps can connect your lead data to all of the above.

If you’re using a tool that requires you to use rigid forms or landing pages, but you’d rather have custom landing pages that look great, convert like crazy and give you more control over the experience, you’d simply Zap together your landing page builder with tools/platforms like:

• GoToWebinar
• Marketo
• Salesforce
• Pardot
• MailChimp

With Integrations Powered by Zapier, if you collect a lead in Unbounce, Zapier can enrich the lead’s profile with extra data (using, for example, the lead scoring Zap) en route to wherever you’re storing your leads.

For this, you can try sending notifications via the following Zaps:

• SMS integration
• Slack
• Twitter
• LinkedIn

Joe Savich from Altos gave this a try in Unbounce, and had high praise for this email parser Zap:

“It’s pretty nice. The integration powered by Zapier was super easy to setup…I was able to create a lead notification with a condition that, depending on which custom field was chosen, would send that lead to the appropriate sales team. My client thinks I am a magician! I could see this being used a lot going forward.”

Overall, of all the feature releases in my 4 ½ years at Unbounce, Integrations Powered by Zapier is my all time favourite. Zaps from right inside our builder empower marketers to do things you shouldn’t be able to do, without developers. And they make you feel really smart.

If you’re committed to driving our industry forward with some next-level marketing (that may look impossible at first glance), I’d urge you to try zapping some connections together and getting creative. You might surprise yourself, or better yet your boss or clients.

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