Zapier Recipe: Email inactive users

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The Pendo Platform-Zapier integration is currently in beta and early access is controlled by an invitation link. Detailed instructions on setting up the integration and the invitation link are in the Zapier Integration Overview article.

This recipe is intended to walk through the steps of using Pendo and Zapier to email visitors when they haven’t logged in for a determined period of time.

Configure Pendo

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Create a visitor report

To get started, hop into Pendo and navigate to the Visitors section. If you’ve already created visitor reports, your screen will show a list of reports. Click Create Visitor Report.

Give your report a name. Something like Zapier - Inactive Users should work.

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Then click on the segment dropdown to reveal the option to create a new segment.

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Create a segment

Now you’ll create your segment to define who is considered an inactive user.

Name your segment. We named ours Inactive Users.

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Next you’ll add the following rule: Visitor Last Visit - Not Within Last - 28 - Days

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This tells Pendo to include a visitor in the report if it’s been at least 28 days since the last time they logged in.

Click Create Segment to save the segment.

Set your Date Range to Last 30 Days

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The last item that needs attention is the report columns. Any columns you include here will be available in Zapier. By default, the visitorID will always be included. If your visitorIDs are in the form of an email, you’re good to go. If not, make sure you add a column that represents the visitor’s email address.

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When you’re done, click Create Report.

Configure Zapier

Set up trigger

Log into your Zapier account and then click Make a Zap.

For the trigger step, search and select Pendo.

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Next you’ll be asked to select a Pendo trigger. Right now, Pendo only supports one trigger so it should automatically select the default trigger. If it doesn’t auto-select, click Visitor in Report and then click Save + Continue.

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Here is where you’ll select the Report ID you want to associate with this zap. You’ll be looking for the report ID with the associated name Zapier - Inactive Users (or whatever you decided to name your report).

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To finish up your trigger, you need to test it by fetching a visitor that falls into the report.

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Note: In order for this step to work, there needs be at least one visitor on the Pendo report. If you don’t have any visitors eligible for the report, you will be unable to test the zap.

Once Zapier is able to find a visitor, you’ll be able to move onto the action step. In this example, it’s an email.

Action Overview

In Zapier, the action step determines what will happen when a visitor is marked as inactive.

For this example, we’ll walk through triggering an email directly to the visitor. If you don’t want to do that, you could try one of these ideas instead:

  • Email your sales/customer success team to notify them that a visitor has become inactive
  • Send Slack notification to your sales/customer success team notifying them of the inactivity
  • Send the marketing team a notification to send the inactive user a t-shirt (we don’t really think this one is realistic unless you have an endless supply of t-shirts at your disposal… but by all means, brownie points for trying)

There are a couple things to consider before building this part of the zap:

  • Email provider: Does you use a certain email provider for your company email? We use Gmail here at Pendo so we would use Gmail as our action app.
  • Scale: using a solution like Gmail might work short term, but long term you might want to consider integrating Pendo with an email marketing type product (Mailchimp, SendGrid, Mailgun, etc.)

This example will use the native emailing app built into Zapier, but feel free to adjust for the mail client of your choosing.

Set up action

Search and select Email by Zapier.

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There is only one supported action for this and it Send Outbound Email. Go ahead and click Save + Continue.

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Now you’re at the point where you can build out the email template:

Build Email Template

To (required)

This is the address where you want the email to go.

You can add the dynamic field that represents the visitor’s email address by clicking the small + icon on the righthand side of the form input, then locating and selecting the field that corresponds to the visitor’s email address.

It should look like this when the dynamic Pendo field is added correctly:

inactiveusers-emailto.png
Warning: While you’re testing the format of the email, it’s best to input your own email address in the "to:" field. That way, when you test the email, the test will go to you and not to the actual recipient. Just remember to change it back when you’re ready to push it live. 

Subject (required)

This is where you can input a subject for the email you’re sending.

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Body (Html or Plain)

What should the email say?

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That’s all you need to have a functional email. Go ahead and test it to make sure your formatting looks good before flipping it live. If it doesn’t look right the first time around, go back to the template step and make your adjustments. Then simply follow the testing process again in order to generate another test email.

Remember, if you targeted the email to your own email address, don’t forget to change it back after you’re done testing.

When you’re happy with it, toggle the switch and turn it live!

Tip: Do you use a CRM? Most CRMs include the ability to bcc a specific mailing address and it will automatically add the activity to the associated contact (if one exists). You might consider bcc’ing that address so that it shows as activity anytime the zap runs. 

Errors and Recommendations

If you are encountering issues with the integration, see Zapier integration with Pendo.

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