Our life is what you might call "organized chaos"— and sometimes without the organized part. My wife is a nurse, we have two wild and wonderful kids, and I run three businesses plus REI Field Guide, a blog for real estate investors. For some reason that didn't seem like enough of a challenge, so I just signed up for my first ultra-marathon.
With everything we have going on, there are two keys we use to keep it all running smoothly: organization and automation.
Our real estate company, New Horizon Home Buyers, is less than a year old and we are constantly learning and growing. One of the things we learned early on was the importance of a CRM (Customer Relationship Management system) to keep track of our motivated seller leads, cash buyers list, etc. A CRM helps you organize all your contacts in one place so nothing falls through the cracks. There are a ton of CRMs out there to choose from, but we use Podio. It's easy to use and it's free.
Like many other real estate professionals, we use InvestorCarrot for our website. At first, we were manually inputting our leads from our website into our Podio CRM. It was time-consuming and inefficient. That's when we discovered it was possible to use Zapier to automate that process. Now, whenever someone fills out a form on our website, all the information is automatically transferred into Podio. It only takes a few minutes to set up but saves us hours of tedious work. Below, you will find step-by-step instructions to set up this automation.
If you use a different form or lead generation platform, you can still use this Zap. The Webhooks event will work for any form that sends out responses using a webhook. Or, if your form app is on the Zapier platform, you can choose that app as your trigger. Search for your form platform in the Zapier App Directory.
Getting started
Before we go through the steps, you'll need to have an account set up with Podio—or whatever app you use to generate leads. Here's a video tutorial on how to set up Podio as a real estate CRM.
Also, if you haven't opened a Zapier account yet, you'll need to do that. You will need a paid Zapier account to be able to set up this Zap—the word for an automated connection you make with Zapier.
Once you've set up your Zapier account, go to My Apps and select Add Connection. Search for Podio. You'll use your login information to connect Podio to your Zapier account.
For each app you connect, Zapier will ask for a general set of permissions which allows you to be flexible with your Zaps. The only actions Zapier takes on your app accounts are those a given Zap needs to accomplish what you've set up.
You can also connect your accounts as you set up your Zap. You'll be prompted to connect accounts when needed as you go through the set-up process.
Setting up the trigger step
Log into your Zapier account and click the Make A Zap button in the upper left. Or, click this link to be taken straight to the page where you can begin to set up your Zap.
Set up your trigger. The trigger is the action that initiates the automation. We want our trigger to be when someone completes a form on our Investor Carrot Website. Because InvestorCarrot does not have an integration on the Zapier platform, we'll use Webhooks by Zapier to connect these platforms.
Learn more about webhooks and how to use them with Zapier.
For your trigger, select Webhooks by Zapier in the App Event Section.
Select Catch Hook for your Trigger Event
Click Continue to move on to the next step.
Next, copy the Custom Webhook URL. Then navigate to the form in your Investor Carrot editor. Under the form, click settings, then select Zapier. Click Add New, type in the name of your Zap, and copy the Custom Webhook URL into the corresponding blank. Click Save Zapier Feed.
Click Test Trigger. If everything is set up correctly, you'll see a confirmation the Trigger is working. Click Continue.
Now, we are going to create the action that happens after the trigger. Choose Podio as the app and Create Item as the action event.
Click Continue. Choose the Podio account that you set up previously. If you have not yet connected a Podio account to Zapier, you will be prompted to do so.
Next, choose the organization, workspace, and application you want to send the leads to in your Podio CRM.
Now, match up your Podio fields to each of the fields from the form that you want to be sent to Podio. The example below shows how to match up the seller name in Podio to the seller name in the Carrot Form. Do this for each desired field.
Click Continue and select Test Action. If everything is done correctly, it will say "Test Was Successful" and you're ready to begin using your Zap.
Automate and dominate with your new Zapier skills
If you've made it this far, congratulations! Automation can seem daunting, but when you break it down step by step, it's really not that complicated.
The 30 minutes or less it takes to set up this Zap will save you many hours of tedious work in the future. You can also repeat this same Zap for all kinds of different forms on your InvestorCarrot website: Motivated seller leads, cash buyers, and more—track them all in your Podio CRM and let Zapier help save you time.
