Hi folks! Happy Wednesday 
I’m hoping to kickstart a discussion around Zapier, one the Patreon apps we currently offer.
Do you use it? What zaps are you currently utilizing? Have you ever heard of this before? What would you like it to do that it doesn’t currently?
I don’t use it, but I hoping to see what other creators do with it!
I signed up for a premier Zapier account specifically for the Patreon + Mailchimp integration. I really, really wanted to use it so that new patrons would get a tier-specific email welcoming them to my community, then removing patrons from Mailchimp once they delete their pledge.
Sadly, the Patreon integration doesn’t work. Instead of sending me patron-specific info, it keeps sending dummy content. Really, really frustrating. Between me and my tech team, we can’t figure out how to make the integration work. In fact, I think it’s broken.
If anyone else has gotten that integration to work, do let me know what you did differently. There is an Zapier integration to move new patrons into a spreadsheet on Google Drive, but then we’d have to manually dump the data into Mailchimp. That totally defeats the purpose of using Zapier since my team and I want everything to be done automatically with no human input.
Thank you so much for the feedback, @lrhall, we’re looking to hear the good and the bad about the integration and this is very helpful. I’m passing this on to the team that works on this integration.
Thanks so much! If the team needs my help in testing, I’m available. I really want the Zapier + Patreon integration to work.
I use the Zapier integration to permanently record all new pledges, edited pledges, and deleted pledges in a Google Sheet, as described in this excellent help document:
I have used it with Patreon in the past, but unless you pay for the upgrade, it really limits the amount of zaps you make. Since I also use Zapier with other apps sometimes, I don’t really use it for Patreon anymore – but I’m open to it. I’m also nervous something will misfire though (some confusion or bug always pops up), so I now prefer to do all my Patreon stuff manually (except Discord adds).
Yeah. I liked Zap because it was very quick when it didn’t glitch but the limitation made me stop using it because my social media alone goes over the limit. I’ve since switched over to IFTTT since it’s free/unlimited, it just sometimes takes a little longer to do the actions, but since i use it mostly for social media cross posting in my discord server and some other stuff, it just works out much better for me in the end. I do most of my Patreon stuff by hand otherwise.
(Though i’m liking what @dataschool is using zap for. That’s really handy since the notifications on patreon or the emails aren’t always accurate or show everything. I’m tempted to make this connection myself just so i don’t have to do mounts of searching to figure out wtf is going on with my patron notifications.)
Yeah, I used to use that Google Sheet integration, but it was a long time ago and this looks better somehow! It’d be even better if it integrated with Airtable though (since that’s for databases and a more powerful tracking tool).
I use IFTTT as well but didn’t know it had Patreon stuff on it(?)
I also haven’t checked in with IFTTT since joining Discord, and it’s good to know you use that! Any Discord integrations you particularly like?
It doesn’t have patreon stuff that I’m aware of (unless someone has figured out how since the last time i had to make a recipie.) But it has a lot of stuff that I use in conjunction with patreon stuff. Like my discord has patrons in it and I use ifttt
to cross post my social media like Twitter and YouTube to discord so that patrons really only have to look at two places for content.
Thanks for the thread!
I use Zapier to capture new, changed, and deleted patrons into a spreadsheet. I wish I could use the more advanced paid features but unfortunately $20/month is pretty steep. If I did, I would be using it to change the actual lines on my patronage spreadsheet, instead of dumping to a new sheet and having me manually update later.
One complaint I have is that I have NO idea what the difference is between “Delete Pledge” and “Delete Membership Pledge” (and other similar things, like Updated Member vs Updated Pledge). It’s not really explained in the little blurbs. I have no idea if that’s something on your end or not.
I can’t think of any extra functionality I’d like to pull at the moment, but I’ll think on it!
I use the free version.
It has a lot of limitations for that version, but the cost of going advanced is too much for me at this point for what they are offering.
So, for now, I don’t rely too much on it, but I’d probably have more use for that info if the price was more affordable.
I have Zapier set up to add new Patreons to a mailing list. I wish there was a way to add all existing patreon to it too, but I haven’t found a way to I ended up doing that manually.
An update!
I’ve upgraded to the “Starter” level on Zapier and oh my god, it’s a game changer. It really really beefs up your functionality. I am now able to search/replace on my spreadsheet without using a billion different services, but even more than that, I can use Zapier’s “formatter” to change all the info into the format I want. I was getting really annoyed about how the currency was formatted, so I changed it into a number and trunc’ed the .00 off it. Now it formats correctly.
Other thing I’m excited about? I automated a tweet greeting to new patrons, and I can now randomly pull from a list for each sentence. So, for example, I have a randomized greeting (Hey, Hi, Eyyy, Yo,) and then their first name; and then “I hope you enjoy” (randomized benefit of campaign), and then a randomized praise (“You’re a ROCKSTAR!”, “You’ve made my day!” etc).
Of course the first person it went live on had “The” as their first name. But uhhhh … that’s fine, lol.
Either way, I am currently using my mother’s account to do this, but I would hands down drop the dosh on this if I wasn’t. It has made things so much easier on me, and I’m looking forward to combing through my options to do more.
Will keep you updated as I find more things!
Ah, one other thing:
I would love to have Patreon Actions, not just Triggers. I’d like to be able to message a new patron, specifically; but being able to post as well would be super helpful.
yes! this is excellent insight, thank you @tamberlane
Our team recently did a live workshop on Zapier, if folks are looking for an introduction to it: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/9pfgr8ht
There are also other livestreams focusing on our integrations with Reddit, Wordpress, and Discord available at: http://patreonworkshops.com
This is very helpful, @tamberlane. Keep us posted on your experiences!
Delete pledge is for the APIv1 I believe. The Delete membership pledge uses APIv2.