The 2026 Zappy Awards are open — and this month, we're partnering with Yelp to spotlight something specific: what Yelp advertisers are actually building with Zapier.
Turns out, the integration story goes well beyond connecting a form to a spreadsheet. These builders are using Yelp leads as the trigger for systems that route, respond, follow up, and convert — automatically, across multiple locations, at any hour. With 70+ submissions in already, here are two that stood out.
Caleb Whalen, Owner, Crest Pest Control
Caleb understood something most competitors don't: in pest control, being first to reply isn't enough. The first right reply wins the job.
A generic auto-response that dumps a price on someone who hasn't told you whether they have kids, pets, or a rodent problem isn't a reply, it's a guess. As a small team, Caleb couldn't be on call around the clock, but he could build something that was.
The system he built reads every variable in a Yelp lead before it responds: pest type, desired frequency, phone number provided or not, and special requests around pets or organic products. Each variable changes the path, with two leads almost never receiving the same message. If the customer goes quiet, the system doesn't.
"In pest control, the first company to reply is likely to win the job. But the company to reply first with real value — and come to an informed proposal — is even more likely," said Caleb.
Response time: from five minutes (or hours overnight) to under 30 seconds, any time of the day. Leads who end up on a call with the team, even without leaving a number, went from 5% to 20%. Caleb went from three hours a day on manual replies to thirty minutes.
Christian Espinal, Marketing Director, SecureSpace Self Storage
Christian’s problem wasn't a single location, it was the math of a growing portfolio. As SecureSpace expanded across markets, Yelp leads started arriving faster than any manual triage process could keep up with. Some leads sat, some got routed to the wrong location. The bigger the company grew, the worse the drop-off got.
The system Christian’s team built turns every Yelp lead into the start of a standardized workflow. The lead hits Zapier the moment it's submitted, gets validated and categorized, and lands directly in the customer communication platform the engagement team already lives in — with the right context for the right rep, at the right location. No one is watching a dashboard or forwarding emails.
On top of the routing layer, SecureSpace partners with Yelp directly to test new lead-quality features and AI-driven enhancements, so leads are stronger by the time the team picks them up.
Lead response time is down more than 60% across participating locations. Routing that used to take minutes now happens in near real time. And because every lead now follows the same automated path, Christian’s team can actually measure what's working — response speed, engagement, conversion — across the whole portfolio instead of guessing location by location.
Already advertising on Yelp? Your first automations are free.
Automatically route new Yelp leads into your CRM, trigger follow-up messages, and send conversion data back to Yelp to see which campaigns drive real customers — no code, no manual work.
