9 Zapier + Calendly Workflows to Boost Your Sales

In sales, speed is one of the most precious values. The sooner you can set an appointment, the higher the chance of sealing the deal. With Calendly, your prospects can set that appointment right on the spot. And with a Calendly and Zapier integration, your salespeople can automate a significant part of their work.

This allows your team to save massive amounts of time. That time can then be spent on working with even more prospects or improving your processes. 

In this article, we’ll look at how you can use Calendly and Zapier to automate key parts of your sales process. But first, let’s look at what exactly Calendly is. 

What Is Calendly?

Calendly is one of the most popular meeting scheduling platforms. It allows your prospects and customers to schedule meetings in a few clicks. 

All you have to do is define the time when you’re available for a meeting or call and send a link to your prospect. You can also embed the calendar right on your website. 

Thanks to that, you can say goodbye to the tedious back-and-forth email communication. Not to mention the impact it has on the speed of your scheduling process.

Speed and simplicity are the two main reasons why Calendly is used by over 10 million users. 

What’s more, Calendly offers native integrations with most business calendars. Thanks to that, it can update your availability whenever someone schedules a meeting. 

But, Calendars are not the only native integrations that Calendly has to offer. Those include tools such as Zoom, Zoho, Twilio, Todoist, Slack, Salesforce, and Pardot.  It can even integrate with Stripe, and PayPal, automating payment collection.

In fact, if you were to check their website, they list around available integrations. Keep in mind, however, that fewer than half of them are so-called native integrations.

The majority of them, while listed in the integrations list, are only available with the use of Zapier. 

Moreover, in most cases, Zapier allows you to achieve a lot more with the app than the native integration. Not to mention that it gives you access to 1000s of apps (or tens of thousands, if you count in webhook connections). 

With that in mind, it’s easy to see why the Calendly and Zapier integration can easily become a crucial part of your sales and marketing processes. 

In this article, we’ll discuss 9 ideas as to how you can leverage Zapier and Calendly automation.

But, before we look at the sample workflows, let’s look at the available Zapier triggers and actions.

Calendly Zapier Triggers and Actions

To connect Calendly to your Zapier account, you’ll need to use your unique API key. Compared to most tools, you won’t find your API key in account settings. Instead, you’ve got to head over to the Calendly Zapier integration page inside Calendly settings:

Once you connect the account, you’ll quickly see that the Calendly and Zapier integration on its own is quite poor. 

When you choose it as a trigger, you can only select one of two events:

• Invitee Canceled. This triggers whenever someone cancels their meeting with you.
• Invitee Created – this triggers whenever someone schedules a meeting with you. 

Hopefully, you’ll be mostly using the latter much more often than the former. In our examples, the majority of automation examples are triggered by invitee creation. 

Interestingly, there are no actions that you could create with Calendly. This means there’s no way for Zapier to interact with Calendly outside of letting the app trigger a Zap:

But that shouldn’t be a problem considering how powerful Calendly workflows can be. So, without further ado, let’s jump right into the examples. 

1. Collect Information and Route them to a Calendar (or Not)

Here’s an unusual Zapier and Calendly workflow. The reason is simple – it doesn’t always involve the use of the latter. This will depend on whether your audience qualifies for the meeting or not:

Please note that Calendly allows you to ask pre-qualifying questions. But, that doesn’t mean you must use their solution to do that. There are plenty of other ways to qualify your leads – and qualifying questions are just one of them.

By using an external tool to qualify the leads, you get more freedom of what to do if they don’t qualify. 

For example, you could build a workflow in which you send them another offer. Or you could invite them to a different meeting if they don’t qualify for their current choice. 

Plus, a manual Zapier setup gives you full control over whether you add (or update) their data in your CRM. 

Of course, in this guide to Zapier and Calendly integration, we assume that your leads qualify for your event. 

That’s why all the following examples are triggered by either a new or canceled Calendly event.

2. Move All Lead Data to Your Central Data Hub

Whenever someone schedules a meeting, save their data for future communication. The first idea that comes to mind? Add them to an autoresponder. But, there’s one more thing that’s worth doing.

Instead of sending the data to each tool from Calendly, it’s better to send it to a central data hub first. In our case, we use Airtable.

That way, we can have a central database where we can easily manage all our leads and customers. We then use different columns to trigger individual workflows or watch where the leads are in the sales funnel. It also allows us to easily track the leads and see whether they got processed by the sales team. 

The beauty of Calendly is that you can add qualifying questions to your events. This allows you to collect all the questions that you need your audience to fill in when setting them up inside Airtable.

Keep in mind though, that there’s an even better way to qualify your leads – as discussed in section #1. 

And, don’t forget that you don’t have to stick to Airtable either – however, we thoroughly recommend it. 

If you’re just starting out, Google Sheets could be a viable alternative. But, considering the wealth of automation offered by Airtable, it’s best to use it right from the beginning. 

3. Assign the Lead to the Right Salesperson (And Notify Them)

Next, you want to assign the lead to the right person for further processing. Depending on the size of your team, you may have different people to whom you assign the leads. 

In this case, you can automate that assignment. The easiest way to do that is to use tags that pre-qualified leads get. 

Of course, if you have a small team, and there’s no difference as to who gets the lead, you can just send a Slack notification. 

But, even if there’s no pre-qualification, there are other ways to assign the leads. For example, you can do that based on the number of leads in salespeople’s pipelines.  

4. Mark the Meeting in Your CRM and Score Them

This is something that we’ve briefly discussed in #1. 

Not all invitees to your calls or meetings will be people who you’ve never communicated with. 

Some may even be your customers (if you’re upselling a consultation call) or long-time subscribers who’ve just signed up for a webinar. That’s also a part of a sales process and doesn’t have to involve salespeople. 

But, it can involve automation! 

No matter what the lead situation is, and which CRM you’re using, you can use Zapier to improve your lead management. How?

Whenever someone signs up for one of your events, set Zapier to check if the lead already exists in your CRM. 

If they don’t, you can set Zapier to add them. Although, if you’re using a centralized data hub, you may still want to have the lead added there first. 

For example, Zapier’s Airtable automation allows you to perform that check whenever you’re trying to update a record:

Similarly, if they don’t exist in your CRM or a newsletter, you may always try to add them to the latter. 

That way, you can stay in touch with them, keep warming them up, and, after some time, might turn them into customers. 

And, If they already are in your CRM, tag them (and score) accordingly.

You can then use that tag to send them a drip campaign – which is what we discuss in #5. 

5. Start Strengthening the Relationship with a Drip Campaign

So, imagine that the lead has already signed up for a meeting. What can you do to ensure they’ll be even more interested in what you have to offer during the consultation/sales call or webinar? 

First, you want to make sure that you save their email data to your CRM and add them to a newsletter (if they agree to it). That way, you can stay in touch with them long-term even once the Drip campaign ends. 

Then, you want to add them to that email drip campaign:

The above workflow may seem complicated. But, once it’s up and running, it’ll help you get more out of each incoming lead.

And here are some examples of the drip campaigns that you could use:

• An email campaign helping your leads prepare for the meeting. Tell them what data or details they need to have at hand and why.
• An email campaign discussing the benefits or use cases of the products that you have to offer. Such a campaign can significantly increase the chance of conversion during the meeting. 
• An email campaign upselling them another offer. This step is risky and usually works well only if it’s a campaign directed at existing customers. 

 Another benefit to staying in touch with your prospects is that it increases the chance they don’t forget about the meeting. Plus, if they have to cancel or reschedule, they’ll actually do it, helping you avoid no-shows. 

Not to mention that every cancellation is an opportunity to try and save them with another drip campaign. Which is something that we discuss in #9. 

6. Help Your Lead Prepare for the Meeting with a Video Marketing Campaign

This is very similar to the above point. However, it’s important to point out that you don’t have to rely on old-school text email campaigns. Instead, it might be a good idea to substitute traditional email with video. Why?

First, 78% of marketers believe that video helped increase their sales. And there are many reasons for that:

• Videos are great at explaining your product or service
• They help you establish a relationship with your prospects.
• Because your prospect can see your face and hear your voice, they get to trust you more.
• They’re also more likely to do the things you’re asking them to do. So, if you ask them to prepare for your call, there’s a higher chance that they’ll actually follow through. 

How do you incorporate a video into your meetings? 

The easiest way to do that is to incorporate a sales video software such as Vidyard:

Then, use Zapier to connect Calendly with Vidyard (and your CRM) to communicate with your audience in an even more personal way. 

And, of course, watch your sales funnel’s conversion go up!

7. Ensure Your Leads Don’t Miss the Meeting with SMS Reminders

One of the biggest problems with online calls is that the no-show rate is much higher than that of face-to-face meetings. 

And while most scheduling tools send automated email reminders, those often get ignored (or missed). That’s where text can save the day. Why?

Data shows that consumers are 350% more likely to reply to a marketing text message than a marketing email. After all, most check their emails on mobile anyway. 

Not to mention that a text message is just easier for people to open and respond to. And, with Zapier, sending text message reminders is as easy as 1-2-3. Here’s what a sample workflow could look like:

Of course, you still want to incorporate drip campaigns into your sales funnel. Text is not a good tool for long marketing campaigns or building a relationship. The messages are just too short (and would be too annoying).  

But, it’s the best way to remind your customers about the meeting, or ask them to confirm their presence. 

8. Let Your Team Know About Canceled Calendly Meetings

In the next two sections, we discuss the opposite situation of someone signing up – an event cancellation. Whenever someone cancels a Calendly meeting, you want to inform your team about it. That way, they can adjust their schedules. 

Thankfully with a Calendly Zapier integration, you can trigger an automated workflow. Here’s what a sample setup could look like:

Once the Zap gets triggered, you want to check if the person already has someone from your sales team assigned. 

This will depend on the type of the meeting/call. If they do, you want to remove them from the respective salesperson’s pipeline. That way, they can get another person assigned during that time (or plan other things in advance). 

You also want to update or remove them from your CRM. This will depend on the type of event that they canceled, and their current position in the sales funnel. 

And (what’s not indicated in the above workflow), don’t forget to update your central data hub (if it’s different from your CRM). 

9. Send a Post-Cancellation Campaign to Save the Lead

Lastly, you can use a Zapier and Calendly integration to try and save the lead that canceled the meeting. The best way to do this is to send a post-cancellation campaign that will try to:

• Encourage them to reschedule instead of canceling.
• Try to soft-sell them the idea of the meeting once again.
• Ask them to share the reason why they canceled the meeting. 

Here’s what a sample Zap could look like: 

Naturally, you could still incorporate Twilio’s text messaging here or update your CRM. In fact, the tools that you use in your workflows don’t matter as much as what you do with them.

What matters is whether you’re able to connect them in a way that automates your work and saves you time. And, of course, you want your Calendly and Zapier sales automation to help you close more deals!

Put Zapier and Calendly Into Action!

Connecting Calendly to your Zapier account gives your team a significant advantage. 

It allows you to automate a big part of scheduling and preparing meetings and calls. It also helps you qualify and communicate with your audience. This allows your team to focus on what you pay them for – closing deals. 

And while the presented workflows may sound complicated, you don’t have to try and build them yourself 

Instead, you can hire a Zapier expert to do the setup for you. 

That way, you can focus on things that matter to you, and get a Zapier setup that works!