Bloomerang is now connected to Zapier and Zapier connects to 5,000+ other apps. The combination of Bloomerang and Zapier offers an all-in-one integration platform for automating your day to day workflows. Zapier can also support Bloomerang to Bloomerang automations that streamline operational tasks for your organization, saving time and resources.

The goal of today’s webinar is to show how you can leverage Zapier to automate membership management within Bloomerang. Zapier can support your operational processes efforts by reducing the time spent performing data entry and ensure consistency across member coding in Bloomerang.

During this webinar, we will:

• Introduce Bloomerang + Zapier, how they work together, and why Zapier integrations are a key feature of your Bloomerang system and fundraising strategy
• Explore and demonstrate how you can use the Bloomerang Zapier app to…
  • Set up a standard flow to update membership status and expiration date following creation of a new membership transaction in Bloomerang
  • Showcase how the standard flow can be enhanced to account for different membership levels/tiers
  • Demonstrate how Bloomerang scheduled reports and a parsing tool can be used to manage lapsed members as well
• Discuss how you can get started using Bloomerang and Zapier

 

 
Webinar transcript (not including Q&A):
Good afternoon, and welcome to Bloomerang Academy! Thank you for joining us. My name is Margie Worrell, and I am the Curriculum Manager at Bloomerang. You might recognize me from attending Bloomerang Academy classes or listening to our release and help videos.

Today, we’re exploring Bloomerang + Zapier: Automating Membership Management.

[SLIDE]

I’d like to introduce our presenter today, Jessie Gilchrist. Jessie is a Zapier Certified Expert and Bloomerang Integrations Consultant at Sidekick Solutions. Sidekick Solutions is a Bloomerang Partner, specializing in system automations for Bloomerang. Sidekick Solutions has been a Bloomerang user since 2013 and most recently was part of the Bloomerang team that launched the Bloomerang Zapier app.

We’re excited to have Jessie here today to share her expertise and explore Bloomerang integrations.

Thank you. Hello everyone! It’s great to be here.

[SLIDE]

The goal of today’s webinar is to show how you can leverage Zapier to automate membership management within Bloomerang. Zapier can support your operational processes efforts by reducing the time spent performing data entry and ensure consistency across member coding in Bloomerang.

Our webinar today will…

• Introduce Bloomerang + Zapier, how they work together, and why Zapier integrations are a key feature of your Bloomerang system and fundraising strategy
• Explore and demonstrate how you can use the Bloomerang Zapier app to…
  • Set up a standard flow to update membership status and expiration date following creation of a new membership transaction in Bloomerang
  • Showcase how the standard flow can be enhanced to account for different membership levels/tiers
  • Demonstrate how Bloomerang scheduled reports and a parsing tool can be used to manage lapsed members as well
• Discuss how you can get started using Bloomerang and Zapier

We have demos throughout the webinar to show you how to set up these automations for your organization and are happy to answer questions.

Please submit all questions through the Q&A.

[SLIDE]

It is common for organizations of all sizes to use many types of software and we believe that automated integrations are essential to your donor database. Integrations can help connect these systems, creating a tech stack that supports your organization and its strategic goals.

This is where Zapier comes in. As some of you may not be familiar with Zapier, we will start with a high-level overview of what Zapier is and why we believe it is a key feature of your Bloomerang system and membership and fundraising efforts.

[SLIDE]

Zapier is automation software that enables additional Bloomerang integration and fundraising opportunities. It’s a middleware that sits in between Bloomerang and other apps you use, helping them “talk” to each other.

Bloomerang’s Zapier app extends the power of your database by enabling integrations with over 5,000 other apps in Zapier’s directory. And, Zapier was designed for anyone to build an integration. You don’t need to be a developer or know code to build an automation.

The flexibility of the Zapier platform enables custom integrations. You aren’t limited to one-size fits all workflows, mapping, or formatting. You can build integrations that are perfect for your organization and your workflows.

[SLIDE]

Integrations are a key feature of your Bloomerang database and can take your fundraising efforts to the next level. Data should flow in and out of your Bloomerang database, connecting to other best in class tools your organization uses. By keeping Bloomerang as the central hub of your tech stack, you will create a global record of Constituent engagement with your organization and centralize reporting.

Additionally, as we’ll showcase today, Zapier can also be leveraged to create Bloomerang-to-Bloomerang automations in support of operational processes for your organization.

[SLIDE]

First, we want to do a quick poll to see how many are using Zapier and using it with Bloomerang.

[SLIDE]

Now, we want to start by demonstrating how to set up a standard flow to manage Member Status and Expiration Date in Bloomerang following a membership payment.

[SLIDE]

The standard flow for membership will update a Member Status field to Active and Membership Expiration to 365 days from the date of the transaction.

The flow in Zapier will trigger when a New Transaction Payment is created in Bloomerang. The trigger will run for Donations, Recurring Donation Payments, and Pledge Payments. If the Campaign is Membership, the flow will calculate the expiration date and then update the Member Status and Expiration fields on the constituent’s profile in Bloomerang.

We understand that you may have a membership program that is administered differently. The use cases we are covering today are based on a basic membership program that is common across many organizations. If you want to discuss what an automated solution would look like for your organization, if your membership program is different, please reach out to our team and we can discuss it further.

[DEMO: 4 SLIDES]

The first step to this automation is setting up the custom fields in Bloomerang. Let’s hop into Bloomerang and take a look at the fields I’ve set up already.

• After logging into Bloomerang click Settings.
• Then go to Constituents.
• Create a category named Membership Information, or something similar.
• For Member Status, we created a Pick One field with values for Active and Lapsed.
• For Member Expiration we created a Freeform field with a data type of Date.
• You’ll see that we also set up another Pick One field called Membership Level. We’ll cover this use case later in the webinar. This field has values for Bronze, Silver, and Gold membership levels.

Now that we have our custom fields set up, we can set up our Zap.

• Click on the +Create Zap button in the upper left.
• The workflow starts with a New Transaction Payment in Bloomerang, so that’s our trigger. We are going to select Bloomerang as our app and New Transaction Payment as our trigger event. The trigger prompts the integration to run when a Donation, Recurring Donation Payment, or Pledge Payment are created (i.e., revenue transactions in Bloomerang).
• Next step is to test our trigger and generate sample data. This will return up to 3 recently created transactions. These are samples only and will not run through the integration because they were created before the integration is turned on. Zap triggers run in real time only.
• Once we have sample data, we want to add a filter step to only continue the Zap if the Campaign is “Membership”. If you designate a transaction as being a membership payment in the Fund or Appeal code on the transaction in Bloomerang, you could use that field for the filter instead. Additionally, the value I am using is “Membership”, but this should match the value you use in Bloomerang exactly (e.g., 2022 Membership, Member Dues, etc.).
• After we’ve set up our filter, we’ll add our first action to calculate the member’s expiration date, which will be 365 days from the date of the transaction.
  • We’ll select the Format utility in Zapier and the Date/Time Action Event.
  • For the Transform, we’ll select Add/Subtract Time.
  • In our input, we will map the Transaction Date from the New Transaction Payment trigger.
  • For the Expression we will enter “+365 days”.
  • Select YYYY-MM-DD as the To Format and From Format.
  • Now we’ll click Test & Run to confirm this action is configured appropriately. This will return an output we’ll use in our Update Constituent action.
• Next, we’ll add out action to update the membership custom fields on the constituent in Bloomerang.
  • We’ll select Bloomerang as the app and Update Constituent as our action event.
  • In the Constituent field, select Custom mapping and map the Constituent ID from the New Transaction Payment trigger.
  • Then, in the Member Status field, click and select “Active”.
  • In the Member Expiration Date field, select Custom mapping and map the output from the Format utility in Zapier.
• Now we’ll click Test & Run to confirm this action is configured appropriately before turning our Zap on.

[SLIDE]

Now, we’d like to demonstrate how you can take this standard flow and use it to also indicate which membership level/tier the member is in.

The solution we are going to demonstrate will use filters, as we did in the standard flow, but we’d like to highlight that Zapier’s Paths functionality could potentially be used (based on the number of membership levels you have) to collapse the solution into a single Zap.

Checkout the Zapier 201 webinar in Bloomerang’s academy for more context on Filters vs. Paths in Zapier.

[SLIDE]

When we talk about creating Zaps for membership when there are different levels/tiers, this often means we have one Zap per level/tier. For this demo, we are going to pretend that our organization has three membership levels:

• Bronze: $100-$499.99
• Silver: $500-$999.99
• Gold: $1,000+

The automation in Zapier for each level is nearly identical to the standard flow we just showcased. We are going to demonstrate how we’d take the standard flow and tweak it for each level.

[DEMO: 2 SLIDES]

Let’s hop back into Zapier and open the standard flow we configured in the last demo. We are going to start by updating the Zap to reflect the Bronze level.

• The first update we need to make is add some additional criteria to our filter.
  • Once we open our Filter, we will click the +And button to add another criterion.
  • Map the Amount field from the New Transaction Payment trigger.
  • Select (Number) Greater Than as the logic operator and enter 99.99 in the far right.
  • Then, click the +And button again to add another criterion.
  • We’ll map the Amount field from the New Transaction Payment trigger a second time.
  • This time, select (Number) Less Than as the logic operator and enter 500.
• Next, we’ll go to the Update Constituent action.
  • In the Membership Level custom field, select the Bronze value.
• All other elements of the Zap will remain the exact same.

Then, in Zapier, we can duplicate/copy this Zap for the other two membership levels, making similar updates to ensure the Filter criteria reflect our amount ranges and the Update Constituent action codes the correct Membership Level value.

[SLIDE]

The prior automations were focused on how to ensure we are appropriately coding active members. We want to now shift our focus and demonstrate an automation that can be used to follow-up and attempt to recaptured members who have expired.

It is important to note as we go into this flow that it is more advanced than the standard flow and the flows for membership levels. This use case will use additional automation tools to reach out to lapsed members. Remember that this webinar is being recorded and you can rewatch it at your own pace.

[SLIDE]

If you’ve attended any of the other Bloomerang + Zapier webinars, you’re likely familiar with the Bloomerang Zapier app. However, the Bloomerang Zapier app isn’t the only way to trigger automations. Using scheduled reports in Bloomerang and a parsing tool to process the report, you can open up additional opportunities for automation, saving your organization time and energy.

The use case we are going to demo is how to trigger an automated email or email series in Mailchimp when a member becomes lapsed, or following a grace period (ex: 30 days after expiration date).

The Bloomerang Zapier app does not include a trigger that would allow us to run an automation when a member’s expiration date is reached. This is where scheduled reports become a part of the solution as we can configure a report based on the Expiration Date being yesterday, or perhaps 30-days ago, if your membership program has a grace period before considering a member lapsed.

When triggering an automation from a Bloomerang scheduled report, the report needs to pass through an intermediary tool, called a parser, before a workflow can be triggered in Zapier.

A parsing tool’s primary job is to extract information contained in an email or attachment in a way that can be used for further steps in an automation.

For example, if you forwarded an email to a parsing tool, rules could be set up to extract the email sender’s name and email address, the date the email was sent, and the body of the email.

For the purposes of this webinar, a parsing tool is used to extract each row in a scheduled report as a separate record to trigger an automation. Without a parsing tool, there is no way for Zapier to pull apart separate records in the report or appropriately identify the different fields (i.e., columns) in the report for each record.

It is important to note before we move forward that parsing tools are not included in your Bloomerang or Zapier subscription. A parser is a separate integration tool with its own subscription. Throughout the remainder of this webinar, we’ll be demonstrating a use case with mailparser.io, a popular parsing tool. We’ve found mailparser.io to be user friendly, reliable, and competitive when it comes to pricing.

[DEMO: 10 SLIDES]

The first thing we need to do is set up our parsing inbox.

• After logging into my mailparser.io account, I’m going to click “Create Inbox”. I’m going to name this inbox: Report: Lapsed Members.
• Mailparser is going to provide an email address for the parsing inbox. I want to copy this email address as I’ll need it when setting up my scheduled report.

Next, we need to set up our scheduled report in Bloomerang.

• After logging into Bloomerang, I’ll go to the Reports page and build a new constituent report from scratch.
• I’m going to name this report: Lapsed Members Yesterday.
• We’re going to add a filter to limit the report to constituents with a Member Status of “Active” and a Member Expiration Date of Yesterday.
  • It’s important to note that you could set up your report filters to only include members once it is 30 (or more) days since the Expiration Date to provide a grace period.
• Now, I need to modify the columns returned in my report to ensure all the data I need is included. The columns we want are Account Number, Name, our membership custom fields (Member Status, Member Expiration, Member Level), and the Primary Email Address.
• We recommend noting the columns included as your reports and their order as the parsed report will only provide numerical column references starting with “0” (i.e., 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.).
• I’m going to click “Save And” and select Schedule Report. This is where I’ll set my Frequency to Daily and set the time to 3:00 a.m. so it will update my members overnight.
• Then, enter the email address for my mailparser.io inbox to the Recipients field. I’ll set my subject to “Report: Lapsed Members Yesterday”. Also, I’m going to check the box to not deliver the report if it is empty. This will save on usage in mailparser.io and Zapier.

Now, if you were doing this at your own organization, you’d need to wait overnight for the first scheduled report to deliver to your mailparser.io inbox or have the report sent once to the inbox before setting up your parsing rules. We already have one set up, so we’ll pop in and show the parsing rules you’ll want to set up when your first report delivers to mailparser.

• Open the parsing inbox and go to Parsing Rules.
• Click “Create Parsing Rule” and select Attachment.
• In the Parse Attachments dropdown, select File Content (Table Cells) and set Filter by Type to XLSX. Bloomerang scheduled reports are delivered as XLSX files.
• Then, click Add Cell Filter, then Remove & Select, and Remove Rows. We want to remove the first row of the scheduled report from the parsing as it is the column headers. If we don’t remove this row, every time the report is delivered to the parsing inbox the row of column headers will trigger the automation. This is unnecessary and removing this row will prevent errors and unnecessary task usage in Zapier.
• We’ll name our rule: Bloomerang Report. Once we save this rule, now we can set up our automation in Zapier.

Once our parsing inbox is all set-up, we’ll hop into Zapier to set up our automation to update the Member Status to Lapsed for each constituent in the report that is sent to mailparser.io and parsed.

• Select Make a Zap.
• The workflow starts when the scheduled report is parsed by mailparser.io, so that is our trigger. Select mailparser.io as the app and New Email Parsed as the action event.
  • We’ll select the mailparser.io inbox we set up to parse the scheduled report.
  • Then, let’s test our trigger to generate sample data. This will return rows recently parsed from the scheduled report sent to this mailparser inbox. These are samples only and will not run through the integration because they were created before the integration is turned on. As a reminder, Zap triggers run in real time.
• Next, we need to add/update the subscriber in Mailchimp. This is paramount as the subscriber needs to exist in Mailchimp before we can create a custom event that will trigger an automation/journey in Mailchimp.
  • We’ll select our Audience, map the constituent’s primary email to the subscriber email field, and set the Update Existing option to “Yes”. If desired, we could also map data to merge fields, like the Account Name in Bloomerang or other constituent-level coding
• Next, we will add our Mailchimp action to Create a Custom Event for the lapsed member.
  • We’ll select our audience and map the constituent’s email address to the subscriber email field.
  • We will customize our event name to “Lapsed_Member” and set our properties, which is data within the event to provide additional context. We are going to set up properties for…
    • Expiration
    • Level
• Now, we are done editing and can turn on the Zap.

Now, let’s hop over to Mailchimp and walk through how you’d set up the Customer Journey for an email series that is triggered by the Lapsed_Member custom event.

• We’ll log into Mailchimp and go to the All Journeys page under Automations.
• Click Create Journey.
• We’ll call our automation Lapsed Member Recapture Series.
• Then, we need to choose a starting point for automation. This is the criteria that will pull a subscriber into this automation. We are going to select the API & Integrations category and then choose the Zapier Custom Event starting point.
• Next, we need to enter what custom event type will trigger this automation. We’ll enter “Lapsed_Member”, exactly as we have the custom event labeled in our Zap.
• Once we set up our starting point, building the automation works similarly to building a Zap in Zapier. The starting point serves as our trigger and we can add actions, such as delays or emails, in an automated workflow.
• For example, let’s say we want to send a three email series, with the first email sent 1 day after the member lapsed is set up and each subsequent email 1 week after.
  • We’ll click the “+” to add a delay of 1 day after the custom event is created in Mailchimp before sending the first email.
  • Then, we will click the “+” to add an action to send an email.
  • Add another delay, this time for 1 week, before adding another email. Then, repeat this again for the 3rd delay and 3rd email.
• Once you’ve set up your actions, you can go into each Email and customize the email settings. For example, you may want to edit the From Name and Email Address, Subject, and set the Schedule for sending these emails. The Schedule feature can be helpful if you want to ensure an email is not sent early in the morning or late at night.
• Then, select a template to begin building your email content. You can copy a previous email campaign as a template, or use one of Mailchimp’s templates.
• When drafting your email content, you can pull in the data from the properties we set up on the custom event that is triggering the automations (ex: expiration date and level). You will need to manually create the merge tags to pull in the properties from the custom event. These should be formatted as *|EVENT:{{PROPERTY NAME}}|*. You will need to capitalize the property name and replace any spaces with an underscore (ex: expiration > EXPIRATION).
• Once you finalize all of your email content, you can turn your Customer Journey on and begin sending the email series to lapsed members.

[SLIDE]

We were asked recently about a use case that we felt was relevant to today’s session. It was not part of the original agenda, but may apply if you use an external membership app/tool.

Some organizations prefer to use a membership tool outside of Bloomerang to manage and administer its membership program. Depending on the app that is used, there is the potential for Zapier automation and the robustness of that sync may vary from app to app.

The question we were asked was, “If we have a membership ID generated in an external tool, can we add that to the constituent in Bloomerang?”

The answer is yes!

[SLIDE]

In its most basic form, the automation will trigger when a new member is created in the external tool and the membership ID is generated.

Then, the automation will need to Find or Create a Constituent. If the automation does not match to an existing constituent a new one will be created and the Member ID from the external app can be mapped to a custom field on the constituent in Bloomerang. If matched to an existing account, you’ll need to tack on an Update Constituent action to then add the Member ID to the custom field on the existing constituent’s profile.

[SLIDE]

Getting started with Bloomerang automations is easy.

[SLIDE]

The first step in getting started is signing up for a Zapier account, if you don’t have one already.

All Zapier accounts begin with a 14-day free trial of the Professional tier functionality. Following the free trial, your plan is converted to a Free plan until you choose to upgrade. Most organizations will need to upgrade to the Starter plan, at a minimum in order to build multi-step Zaps.

It is also important to remember that Zapier provides a 15% discount to nonprofits. If you sign up for a paid plan, make sure to apply for the discount.

[SLIDE]

After signing up for Zapier, connect your Bloomerang database. After logging in:

• Click My Apps on the left menu.
• Click Add Connection.
• Search for and select Bloomerang
• Grant access using your Bloomerang login credentials.

[SLIDE]

If you prefer to build your automations DIY or want to learn more about Zapier, there are plenty of resources available.

• Search available apps in Zapier’s marketplace
• Look at Bloomerang Zap templates
• Review Zapier resources on getting started with building Zaps
• Begin building!

[SLIDE]

Thank you for attending today. We are going to launch a poll. If you’d like to work with a consultant to set up an integration or explore your use case and tech stack, please let us know.

[SLIDE]

Now, we’d like to open it up for questions.