How To Automate the Process of Onboarding Clients from Sales Page to Welcome Message

If you are a coach, consultant, healer or intuitive offering courses, workshops, and programs–and you don’t have an expensive “all-in-one” solution to take your client from sales page to welcome message, it is possible to assemble this workflow with the right pieces.

I will use my own recently created offering, the WOW Page™, as an example.

To give you context for this process, the WOW Page™ is a one-page seedling of a WordPress website and includes all the essentials a service-based entrepreneur needs to get a new offering off the ground. It is also the quickest and most affordable website solution I offer.

I wanted the process of signing up for a WOW Page™ to be easy and enable the client to get started on gathering their thoughts and materials immediately so that we could have a turnaround of as little as a week. So I automated the onboarding process using the components below (with specific apps/platforms that I used in parentheses):

A sales page built on my WordPress website

A form builder plugin in my website (Formcraft)

A payment gateway (PayPal)

An email marketing platform (Mailchimp with automation enabled; automation adds $10 to your monthly Mailchimp plan)

An appointment scheduling app (Acuity; I use the $10/month plan so that I can integrate PayPal and allow my clients to choose an appointment time based on their time zone)

A web automation app (Zapier; to integrate PayPal with Zapier, you will need their $20/month plan)

Google Docs

When a client clicks “Buy Now” on my Wow Page™ sales page, they are directed to a brief questionnaire that I created with a form builder on my website.

I programmed the submit button at the bottom of the questionnaire with PayPal button code that I generated from within my PayPal account (you will only have this option if you have a PayPal business account), so upon submitting the questionnaire, the client will be directed straight to a PayPal checkout.

Shortly after the client pays, they will receive a welcome message automatically generated by my Mailchimp account. But since PayPal and Mailchimp don’t talk to each other on their own, I use Zapier to bridge the gap between the two.

Zapier helps me tell Mailchimp to add a subscriber to a list when certain conditions are met in a PayPal transaction.

I created a three-step “zap” that includes 1. A trigger, which in this case is a successful PayPal sale, 2. A filter to limit the action of the zap to only WOW Page™ transactions, and 3. An action, which is to add the name and email associated with the PayPal transaction to a list I have created specifically for WOW Page™ clients. (Please note: Although I am describing this process using Mailchimp, you can also set up this zap with other email marketing platforms, such as Aweber or ConvertKit.)

Obviously I don’t want every successful sale to trigger an addition to my WOW Page™ Mailchimp list, so I use a filter to tell Mailchimp to only add the information from transactions containing the word “WOW.”

I then set up the information that Mailchimp should put in the list, which is the name and email associated with the PayPal account of the client.

In Mailchimp, I have already set up an automated email whose trigger is addition of a new contact into the WOW Page™ list. It will immediately send out my email when the contact is added.

In this email are three key things:

1. The direct scheduling link from my Acuity account so that clients can go ahead and schedule their WOW Page™ Planning Session.

2. The link to the Google doc where I have created a content generation template to help them think about the copy they want to use on their WOW Page™.

3. A link to join Trello where we will co-manage the project.

So I have now taken the client from the Buy Now button to the welcome message that includes all the information they need to get started with their WOW Page™, and I only had to set this up once. My direct involvement with the client begins with the WOW Page™ Planning Session, which, of course, cannot be automated. ?

Aside from freeing up time and energy on my end, this automated process gives the client instant positive feedback on their purchase. Although I cannot provide the finished product right then and there, I can make sure that my clients do get a little piece of it right after they pay so that they get excited about the rest of the process.

There are many ways to accomplish this result, and seemingly limitless opportunities for automation using apps like Zapier. I have just dipped my toe into the automation pool, so I look forward to discovering many more ways I can streamline my workflow where automation is appropriate.

Please feel free to share your favorite automation workflows below in the comments. I would love to know what works for you!

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