Zapier Webhook integration

As you might have guessed, it all starts in the bCast platform. Once you logged in, go to “Engagement” on the top left corner and then click on “Email lists.” It will open up your lists, and you need to select the one that you want to send into your email marketing platform by clicking on its title/name. On the next page, look for the field called “Zapier webhook URL,” which is the last one on the page - it should be blank (unless you’ve tested this feature before).

Keep the bCast tab open on this page as you will come back to it and add the Zapier URL in a couple of minutes.

Now, head over to Zapier and log in; here is where the magic happens. After login, click on “Make a zap” on the top left corner.

The integration is based on a webhook, so the next step is to search for “webhook” and select “Webhooks by Zapier.”

Out of the three options that show up, select “Catch Hook.”

Next, Zapier will give you the possibility to customize your request, but there's no need to do that. You can simply click "Copy" at the end of the field called "Custom Webhook URL," and then select “Continue."

Now you can test your webhook, but it won’t work as you haven’t sent anything to it yet. If you click on “Test trigger,” you will see an error message, which is perfectly fine.

Let’s fix that error before moving forward. Keep the tab open as you'll be coming back to it in a minute.

If you clicked copy on the step above, you should have an URL in your clipboard, so go back to bCast (hopefully, you haven’t closed the tab) and paste that in the “Zapier webhook URL” field. Click on “Send test to Zapier,” wait for the confirmation, and then you can go back to Zapier to catch the message.

Coming back to Zapier, let’s click on “Test trigger” to see that magic happening.

Boom, there it is - you caught the message sent from bCast. Let’s use it to set up the rest of the zap. Click “Continue” to move to the second part, where we set up the email marketing platform receiving the information.

Search for your email marketing platform and then click on its icon. We are using EmailOctopus, so this is what we’re looking for.

Select the “Add Subscriber” event from the list.

Now you have to log in to your platform (we have to log in to EmailOctopus) to give Zapier access to make the necessary changes. Once you click on “Sign in to …” you will see a pop-up that has different content based on the platform you selected.

In our situation, after logging in, it asks for the API key, which you can get from the highlighted link.

The link takes us to the page with the API key, where you’ll have to click on “Copy to clipboard.”

Going back to the pop-up, paste the API key and click on “Yes, Continue,” which will close the pop-up and show the Zapier page.

Zapier now has the necessary access to your account; let’s click on “Continue” to go to the next step.

Based on the complexity of the integration between Zapier and your email marketing platform, you will see a different number of fields in this step. We have only three, which makes things easier for us. If you have too many, complete the required fields (it says in red text above each area, on the right, if it’s required or not) and come back to the other ones at a later date.

First, we had the “List” field, where we selected the email list created for the podcast. You should choose the list where you want to gather all your subscribers.

The second field was the email address, which is where we have to tell Zapier to grab the data caught by the webhook. To do this, click on the field and then on the test email address listed below the “Catch Hook” title.

The last field was “Status,” where you select the status of the user you are just adding to your list, which in this case is “Subscribed,” as you’re taking this action precisely because the user had subscribed.

It looks like this is pretty much it. To double-check that everything works, click on “Test & Review” and see what happens.

If everything works correctly, you should see a green bar with a success message telling you that the subscriber was sent to the email marketing platform. Next, you can follow the flow and click on the blue button, “Retest & Continue.”

Retesting will return an error message that is perfectly normal as you already sent the subscriber to the list, you don’t have a new one. So go ahead and click on “Skip test” to get to the end.

Once we’re back to this screen, you can either go with “Done editing” and exit the Zap editor or turn on the Zap. If you’re doing tests on a live environment, with real lists in bCast and the email marketing platform, we recommend you go with the first option to make sure you don’t send any wrong emails to your subscribers.

Clicking on “Done Editing” will bring you to this screen. You have the option to turn the Zap on (the same as above), go “Back to setup” if you want to edit the actions, change the name of the zap on the top left corner, or go back.

Going back will bring you to the “Zaps” tab where you can see the newly created Zap that is not yet ON. You can come back anytime to this screen to turn it ON and start receiving subscribers on the email list.

And now a quick confirmation of the bCast steps:

  1. Login into bCast
  2. Click “Engagement” in the top left and then “Email lists”
  3. Click on the title of the email list
  4. Fill in the field “Zapier webhook URL” (this needs to be extracted from Zapier, see next steps). At the end, the value in the field should be similar to this: https://hooks.zapier.com/hooks/catch/559329/o85oxp1/

And the Zapier steps:

  1. Login into Zapier
  2. Click on “Make a zap”
  3. Search for “webhook” in the search. Select it. 
  4. Select “Catch hook”. 
  5. Click “Continue” and then click “Continue” again. You should see a message like this “Send a request to this webhook URL: https://hooks.zapier.com/hooks/catch/7220380/o8wpjgc then test your trigger.”
  6. Grab the URL and go back to bCast and paste it in the “Zapier webhook URL” field.
  7. Click on “Send test to Zapier” in bCast. Confirmation will appear in Zapier. Click “Continue”.
  8. This is how we send information to Zapier, we still need to do the second part of the zap, which is sending the subscriber to our email marketing campaign.
  9. Scroll down to the second part of the zap, and click on it or “edit”
  10. Search for your email marketing application in the search, EmailOctopus in our case. Select it.
  11. Select “Add Subscriber”. Click “Continue”.
  12. You will be required to sign in into the email marketing platform you selected above. Click “Sign in to...”
  13. A pop-up will appear where you will have to add your logins. Add them and click login.
  14. You have to give Zapier access to edit your email list. Click “Allow”. Pop-up will close.
  15. You’re back in Zapier, but the second step is not completed yet. Click “Continue”.
  16. Based on the email marketing platform you selected, there will be multiple fields listed here (I can add a print screen from Mailchimp). You need to tell Zapier where to send the information - in what list, if they upgrade or not an existing contact, etc. In the field “subscriber email” you need to select your hook from the dropdown menu so Zapier grabs the email from the info sent by bCast. Once you mapped all the fields, click “Continue”.
  17. Zapier will ask you for a test, click on “Test & Review” to have confirmation.
  18. Click on “Done editing”. 
  19. You will see a message saying “Your Zap Is Ready!”. You can turn it on now, as it will not do anything until you start sending information from bCast. If everything is live on bCast side and you’re not sure of the implementation, you can leave this off for now by clicking “Back to setup” and come back at a later date to turn it on.

Happy bCasting!

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