Background
Many lead sources come with the ability to send lead information through email. With Zapier's Email Parser you'll be able to transform those emails into leads in our system!
In short, Zapier can take those many lead source emails and separate individual parts such as name and phone number out before sending that information along to us.
Step 1 | Setup Your Email Parser
Zapier has great documentation already on how to do this! Before going to Zapier there are a few important things to know.
Have you tried a direct integration?
If possible, it is better to use a direct Zapier trigger such as Facebook Leads, or Wix Automations because these give you direct access to the fields rather than having to parse them out.
You can find the list of those we see the most often in our Zapier Integration Space homepage
What if my lead emails have inconsistent data?
Zapier's email parsing works best when the lead information is presented in the same fashion in every email. If some emails omit a field, such as leaving out the lead's phone when they do not submit it, then you could try these below strategies to keep your lead information as accurate as possible.
- Work with your source provider to see if those omitted fields can be consistently sent even if your lead doesn't submit anything for them
- Choose to only map those fields that are consistent
- Use Zapier's 'Edit extra template' functionality to try to make the email parsing smarter by mapping more and more emails
- Know you can always clean up a lead's fields within the app if the values are still a little wonky at times.
| Link to Zapier's Email Parser Guide |
Example Case Study
You get an email from your source, TheBestForms, that looks like the following...
In Zapier Parser's UI you 'Create Mailbox'
It will direct you to send an email to a 'robot.zapier.com' email. This is the email you should configure in your lead source provider to receive emails, or if you are email forwarding this is the email to forward leads to.
⚠️ You may be able to send multiple lead forms to one Mailbox, however you will have to be sure their email contents are similar. EG, they all contain name, phone, email in the same format and order.
Once you have a lead or test email in Zapier you can begin picking out those important lead details.
Below is what the earlier lead email would look like in Zapier.
Select each lead by dragging your cursor over the detail text. Give each one a name, this is the name it will show as in the second step, the Zapier Action, later.
ℹ️ Select only the text that makes up the lead detail and not the surrounding spacing or repeated text (eg, 'View lead')
Now you're ready for step 2! **
ℹ️ **As stated above, if your email is not consistent you will run into lead details pulling too much or too little information back. The strategies to help fix this are stated above.
Step 2 | Choose your Zapier Mailbox as a Trigger
Create a new Zapier Parser Zap and choose your configured mailbox as the source.
Step 3 | Integrate with an Action
Choose an action, such as Create a Lead action and follow it's guide over in our Zapier Integration Space