It's 2016, and Brittani, a Black professional with entrepreneurial goals, was trying to figure out how to navigate her career. Despite searching, she couldn't find online content she could relate to. The media was filled with daily news and gossip instead of innovative, actionable content for Black professionals.
Brittani realized she wasn't alone—other members of her community were struggling to find content that was written by them, for them. To fill this gap, Brittani created Mogul Millennial, a media-tech platform that empowers and educates Black entrepreneurs and professionals.
"A few short years after launching, Mogul Millennial provides a growing community of over 18,000+ Black business leaders with smart insights, actionable content, and analyses on all things Black in business and corporate," Brittani shares.
But with all that growth came growing pains. Brittani knew they needed to find ways to automate the busy work to continue to scale.
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The challenge: Communicating effectively with writers
In the early days, Brittani struggled to communicate effectively with her writers and audience. As the only full-time member of her company, it was impossible to keep up with all the emails that needed to go out daily.
Every couple of weeks, Brittani sends her writers a company update that includes an Airtable form to submit their article ideas. Before using Zapier, once a writer filled out the form, Brittani had to email acceptances or denials to each writer's pitch individually—it was repetitive and time-consuming work.
The solution: Sending automatic responses and updates for article pitches
When a writer fills out Brittani's pitch form, it populates an Airtable base where Brittani can see all the pitch details—and label the pitch as either "approve" or "rejected." Instead of manually emailing each writer that sends in an article pitch, Brittani created a multi-step Zap that does it for her.
When Brittani updates the pitch status in her Airtable base, she uses a path step to send the writer a personalized email from her Gmail account that differs based on the pitch status.
Paths by Zapier is a built-in tool that lets you automate your repetitive decision-making. With a path step, you can use one Zap to do different tasks based on the conditions you set. For example, if A happens in your trigger app, do X. But if B happens, then do Y. Paths are a great way to use fewer tasks and create more powerful automated workflows.
Want to try automating emails when a record gets updated in Airtable? Use this Zap template as a starting point:
Send emails via Gmail for updated Airtable records
The challenge: Making sure new newsletter subscribers get the right content
In addition to the email follow-up, Brittani needed to make sure new Mogul Millennial subscribers were added to the correct email marketing lists. Manually entering new subscribers from Landingi pages into Drip campaigns took hours.
And as Mogul Millennial grew, it became even harder to keep up with new subscribers and their newsletter preferences. But this critical work was essential to make sure subscribers were getting the right content.
The solution: Automatically adding tags to new subscribers
Now Brittani uses a Zap that automatically sends Mogul Millennial subscribers to the right marketing campaigns. When subscribers sign up for the Mogul Millennial newsletter through a Landingi page, they automatically get added to specific Drip campaigns based on the content preferences they share. Now subscribers get the right content at the right time.
Use this Zap template to create a similar workflow:
Want to learn more about how you can automate your email communications? Read our blog post 4 ways to automate your email marketing for better communication.
The result: More time to focus on content and community
Zapier is an essential tool for Brittani—it allows her to streamline communication internally to her writers and externally to her newsletter subscribers.
Zapier has saved me a lot of time and has allowed me to focus on other areas of my startup. Because I don't have a huge team to delegate tasks to, Zapier makes our content flow and user engagement seamless and less of a headache.
Having data entered automatically allowed Mogul Millennial to scale. Brittani no longer had to spend hours transferring information from one platform to another every week.
"Being able to use Zapier to transfer leads to my email marketing tool has made my life as a solo founder so much easier and has helped me grow my subscriber base," shares Brittani.
Thanks to automation, Brittani spends more time talking to clients, creating smart content for her community, and working on strategic partnerships.
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