How to set up notifications using Zapier

If you'd like to get a notification anytime a new contact is added to your list, you can set it up with Zapier. Depending on the type of notification you want to receive (an email, a Slack message etc.), you'd need to choose a different app to integrate with. Here's a guide on how to create an email notification.

1. Navigate to your Zapier Dashboard where you'll see a screen prompting you to describe what you're trying to achieve. You can write something like "send me an email when someone subscribes to my EmailOctopus list".

After clicking "Generate", you should see a pre-made Zap that you can customise. Click "Try it" to continue.

If you prefer, you can also get to this point from here – just click "Connect these apps".

2. You'll arrive at the screen where you can set up the trigger (in this case EmailOctopus) and action (Email by Zapier). Since the first step (App & event) is already set to "EmailOctopus" and "New contact added", you can go ahead and skip to the second step: Account. Click on "Choose" if you already have your EmailOctopus account connected to Zapier, or "Connect a new account", if it's your first Zap. 

If it's your first time connecting to Zapier, you'll need to paste your EmailOctopus API key. You can find it here when you're signed in. 

3. Choose the trigger – an EmailOctopus list that will prompt a notification whenever a new contact is added to it.

4. Now you can test your trigger. For the test to work, you'll need to have at least one contact on your list. If you don't have any – you can add one now. Once you've clicked "Test trigger", the contact on your list should be pulled into Zapier and you can confirm that you want to proceed.

5. Now you'll need to set up your action – the App & event are already pre-populated as "Email by Zapier" and "Send Outbound Email", so you can click "Continue" and proceed to choosing the specifics of your action.

6. Fill out the required details: your email address (where you'll be receiving the email notifications), the subject line and the body of the email. You can even include specific data on your subscribers, such as their email address, name or other custom fields and tags. Click "Continue" once you're done.

7. As the last step, test the connection by sending an email. To do it, simply click "Test step" and check your mailbox for an incoming email.

8. If you've received an email, it means the Zap is working, and you can now hit "Publish" to switch it on. And that's it – you'll start receiving email notifications whenever a new contact gets added to your EmailOctopus list.