Top tools of the month – Zapier and KickOffLabs

This month I came across two really, REALLY cool online services that made it just that much easier doing business online (and a lot more enjoyable).

The first of these was Zapier. Credit to Google who somehow knew that I was looking for a service just like the one Zapier was providing – to link two otherwise unlinked online services through their API, without being a developer. Zapier lets you link several dozen services by creating a “zap” between them.

In my case I wanted to make sure that every time a customer fills out one of our Wufoo forms, our Desk account automatically not only received the e-mail, but also used the information from the form to create a new customer profile (complete with name, e-mail and phone number). This makes contacting each customer just that little bit  faster and easier; over time leading to an increase in our efficiency.

Then thanks to Zapier, I found out about Kick Off Labs. I had been trying getting our graphic designer, Martin, to design us a landing page for Diamonds in Africa and while we had the design ready I was still dependent on the developers who needed to actually turn that design into a working page. When it comes to landing pages I can safely say I may never need a developer ever again; and here are two example why:

These two landing pages took less than an hour to create. What is equally impressive is that you can use Zapier to then link these landing pages to a range of other services we use such as MailChimp to manage the database of e-mails we collect for future marketing purposes.

Finally KickOffLabs also has a really cool feature. Even though it only asks the visitors to your landing page for an e-mail address, it then looks through the various social media sites to identify the name, age, location and other social networks linked to this e-mail address. You only ask for their e-mail, KickOffLabs gives you their identity. What more can I say?! 

P.S. The 5 Diamond Secrets You Need to Know landing page leads those who sign up to this Diamonds in Africa report (just in case you were interested).