No matter the online course you're teaching (from music classes to personal training), there are a lot of moving parts that go beyond the lessons themselves. Most of those areas need to be addressed with a business mindset. After all, you need to market your course, register and enroll new students, onboard them via email, keep track of your sales—the list goes on and on.
That's why automation is key to streamlining that whole process. Using automated workflows—what we call Zaps—you can automate the manual tasks involved with scaling your teaching or coaching business, like enrolling new students, adding them to your newsletter, and more. Here's how
You'll need a Zapier account to use the workflows in this piece. If you don't have an account yet, it's free to get started.
Table of contents
To get started with a Zap template—what we call our pre-made workflows—just click on the button. It only takes a few minutes to set up. You can read more about setting up Zaps here.
Get notified for new enrollments
It's easy to lose track of who signs up for your course—especially if you've got multiple on the go. Instead of trying to map a sales invoice to a specific person every few days, you can use these Zaps to instantly get notified via Slack or SMS the moment someone pays for a course.
That way, you can enhance communication with your team or reach out to new students instantly without manual work.
Notify Slack channel of new Teachable enrollments with channel messages
Teachable + Slack
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Stay in the loop with new student enrollments on your Teachable courses by receiving real-time updates in your Slack channel. With this seamless automation, every time a new student enrolls in a course on Teachable, a channel message will be sent to the chosen Slack channel, notifying you and your team of the new addition. It's an efficient way to keep track of course growth and welcome new students to the community.
Send sms notifications for new full enrollments in Thinkific with Twilio
Thinkific + Twilio
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Stay connected with your new Thinkific enrollees by sending them a welcome SMS through Twilio. With this automation, every time a new user fully enrolls in a Thinkific course, they'll receive a personalized text message from your Twilio number. Keep your students engaged and informed, all with a seamless workflow.
Send Slack channel messages with new Thinkific orders
Thinkific + Slack
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Need to keep your team in the loop about new orders? This integration can help, automatically sending a message to a specified Slack channel as soon a new order is created in your Thinkific account.
Register students for your course
Once your students pay for a course, they're probably raring to get started. But first, you have to add their details to your online course software, which can take unnecessary time (and lead to the occasional mistake). Instead of enrolling new students manually, Zapier can do it for you, helping you scale the number of students you onboard. That means that whenever someone purchases or signs up for your course, their information will be automatically transferred to your online course platform.
Here are some pre-made Zaps to get you started:
Enroll users in Teachable courses with new paid Shopify orders
Shopify + Teachable
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Your users want to get started with their courses the moment they pay for them. This integration can streamline that process, saving you time that you can spend elsewhere. This integration, once active, will automatically trigger when users on Shopify make new purchases, giving them instant access to a specified course on Teachable so you don't have to do it yourself.
Enroll new Thinkific users when Stripe checkout sessions are completed
Stripe + Thinkific
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Save time and simplify your course enrollment process with this powerful workflow. Whenever a customer completes a checkout session in Stripe, they'll be instantly enrolled in your Thinkific course. Boost your student experience with seamless and efficient enrollments, while focusing on providing exceptional content for your e-learning business.
Enroll Shopify users with new paid orders in LearnWorlds products
Shopify + LearnWorlds
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If you're selling via Shopify, managing data between platforms can be dizzying. This integration allows you to automatically give Shopify customers access to LearnWorlds products (course or bundle).
Enroll new clients into Teachable courses once they book you on HoneyBook
HoneyBook + Teachable
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Do you have knowledge that you want to share? Using this HoneyBook-Teachable integration, you can now automatically enroll clients into a teachable course once they have booked you on HoneyBook. Now you can quickly send clients any information you need!
If you use an eCommerce platform or payment processor, you can use a filter step—available on our paid plans—in a Zap to automatically enroll students if they purchase a specific product.
Welcome—and follow up with—new students
You've done the hard part. You've marketed your course and you have a new student in your midst—congrats!
But don't leave them hanging. Once they've signed up for (or finished) a course, keep the communication going by reaching out with a quick welcome message or post-course next steps, so they know what to expect.
To communicate with students at scale, you can use these Zaps to send automatic messages the moment they've enrolled in or finished a course. And, if you're not sure what to write, you can use AI to draft a professional message for you.
Send Gmail emails for new enrollments in Teachable
Teachable + Gmail
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This integration sends Gmail emails for new enrollments in Teachable.
Send emails via Gmail for new Thinkific orders
Thinkific + Gmail
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Thank anyone who places a new order from you in Thinkific or send them a note with some next steps! Connect new Thinkinfic orders to Gmail through Zapier, and have those emails send without you needing to do that yourself.
Send new Teachable students an AI-generated email
Teachable + OpenAI (GPT-4, DALL-E, Whisper) + Gmail
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Want to welcome new Teachable students a welcome or onboarding email? With this integration, every time a new student is enrolled in Teachable, OpenAI will draft an email (according to your own brief) and send it via Gmail. Onboard new students at scale, effortlessly.
Send Gmail emails for new completed courses in Teachable
Teachable + Gmail
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When you have users completing courses, you'll want to know about it. This integration helps by automatically sending a Gmail email with details of a new course completed in Teachable. You'll always know when users are completing their courses.
Add students to your marketing platforms
When a student enrolls in or purchases your course, that's hopefully just the beginning of their relationship with your business. After they finish one course, you'll want to market other lessons you've created that might interest them. You also might want to send follow-up content or tips for how to continue the learning process once the course is over.
These Zaps will automatically pass your students' information to your email marketing tool or ad platform, making it easy for you to send them campaigns in the future.
Subscribe new Thinkific students to Mailchimp
Thinkific + Mailchimp
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It's extremely important to keep in contact with students who sign up for your courses. This Zap makes that work easy. Each time a student signs up for one of your Thinkific courses, they'll be automatically added to your subscriber list in Mailchimp. Send promotions, reminders, and general notifications, hassle free!
Create or update HubSpot contacts for new users in Teachable
Teachable + HubSpot
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When you have new users, you'll want the details added to your marketing tool for follow up. This integration helps by automatically creating/updating a contact in HubSpot when there is a new user in Teachable. It's never been so easy to follow up with your new users.
Add contacts to a Google Ads customer list for new orders on Thinkific
Thinkific + Google Ads
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Got a new contact? Make sure they are on your list to receive the most relevant advertising. Zapier makes that easy. Just set up this integration and your customer match lists will be updated from Thinkific.
Log sales and customer information in your database
Do you want a better sense of who's taking your course? Depending on the information you collect at the point of enrollment or purchase, you might analyze geographic location, job title, age, and more. That can help you get to know your students and market your courses better in the future. Or perhaps you just want to keep a running log of all your sales, for better data management down the line.
Whatever the case, Zapier will automatically send enrollment information to a spreadsheet, so you can take the data and analyze it however you want.
Log new Teachable sales in Google Sheets rows
Teachable + Google Sheets
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Once it's active, this integration will automatically copy new Teachable course orders into a Google Sheets spreadsheet as new rows, so you can be sure to find all those details once you need to refer to them. Let Zapier capture your needed data, so you don't have to waste any time managing it by hand.
Log new Thinkific orders to a Google Sheet
Thinkific + Google Sheets
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Keep organized and on top of your sales! Use this automation to log new Thinkific sales to a selected Google Sheets spreadsheets and create new rows to archive information.
Create Google Sheet rows from new Podia sales
Podia + Google Sheets
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No one likes manually entering sales transactions. Make your workflows easier by using this Zapier integration, which automatically records all your Podia sales data into a specified Google Sheets spreadsheet.
Assign badges and certificates
Once your students complete a course, you might reward them with a digital badge or a certificate so they can show off their new achievements to the world.
Instead of creating—and sending—these accolades manually, you can use Zapier to automatically acknowledge your students for their hard work without manual input.
Create Accredible Certificates for new Teachable course completions
Teachable + Accredible Certificates
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Enable graduates of your Teachable courses to share their achievements with the world. This integration creates a new Accredible Certificates certificate or digital badge every time a user completes a course on Teachable, so your students will get the certificate they want without you needing to send it manually.
Issue badges with Badgr to new Teachable course completers
Teachable + Badgr
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This zap automatically awards learners with badges from Badgr when they complete a Teachable course. Issuers can select an image and define the badge awards according to the course. Badge awards are emailed to learners.
Create course certificates with Docupilot for new completed Teachable courses
Teachable + Docupilot
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Need a way to instantly generate certificates when a student completes your course in Teachable? Setup this Teachable-Docupilot integration and when a student completes a course, Zapier will automatically send course/student information to Docupilot to generate the certificates.
Streamline and scale your teaching business
With a few automatic workflows, you can spend less time worrying about the administrative details and more time on your class content.
From onboarding new students to keeping track of all your sales, automation will help you scale your business, so you can get back to what matters: your students.
New to Zapier? It's workflow automation software that lets you focus on what matters. Combine user interfaces, data tables, and logic with thousands of apps to build and automate anything you can imagine. Sign up for free.
This piece was originally published in April 2020, with previous contributions from Deb Tennen and Krystina Martinez. It was most recently updated in October 2023 by Elena Alston.
