Automatically welcome your new patients

Here's how to create an automated workflow that will send new patients to your practice a series of welcome emails to help them learn about your team and what you offer to your patients.

There are 3 simple steps to this workflow:

1. Add new patient to Dentally.
2. Have an account with Zapier, so it can send this patient through to Mailchimp.
3. Have an account with Mailchimp or some other form of modern email marketing tool, so you can create a workflow of emails that your new patient will recieve.

Simply, this workflow says, "When a new patient is created in Dentally, use Zapier to add them to a mailing list in Mailchimp".  So, what are each of these tools and what do they do:

• Dentally is a rocking piece of dental software!
• Zapier is a tool that lets you connect different online services to get them to interact.
• Mailchimp is an email marketing tool that can send one-off emails or a series of emails over time.

Let's get going! Make sure you sign up for an account at Zapier, and if you don't have an account with Mailchimp, go grab one.

Setting up your Mailchimp workflow

In Mailchimp, make sure you have a list set up.

Go to the 'Automation' tab and click 'Create Automation Workflow'.

Once you have created a new workflow, choose the 'Welcome Series'.

Set up the basics of your campaign. When you get the 'Emails' section add a series of emails that you would like to send. You can change the delay for each email to space out when the emails get sent to the patient.

Hit confirm, and your automation workflow is live. Though it will only send emails once a new patient has been added to the list, this is where Zapier comes in.

Setting up Zapier

Log in to your Zapier account, then go to this link to get access to the Dentally integration.

Once you have gone through that, click "Make A Zap!" at the top.

For this Zap, we will make Dentally the 'trigger' app and Mailchimp the 'action' app.

Click 'Choose trigger app' and search for 'Dentally'.  Do the same for the Action app, but search for your email marketing tool.

After you have selected both Dentally and Mailchimp, select the trigger below Dentally and set it to 'New Patient'. 

Do the same for Mailchimp but choose 'Add Subscriber' then click 'Continue'.

Now it is time to connect both of your accounts to Zapier. Click to add a connection do you Dentally account, this will bring up a new window asking you to log in to Dentally.

Log in with both your Dentally account and your Mailchimp account and make sure it says 'Account is working'.

Once both accounts are working, it's time to fill in a couple of details using fields from Dentally. Click 'Insert fields' to get access to what Dentally is piping into Zapier.

You will want to ensure you have:

• Selected the correct email list so they are subscribed to the correct workflow.
• Added the email field from Dentally to the 'Email' section.
• Added the First name and Last name fields from Dentally into the relevant name fields at the bottom of the match up screen.

Testing and Turning it on 🎉

Lastly, we need to check the Zap works and turn it on.

When testing a Zap make sure you use a test patient, you can just create a test patient in Dentally and it should show up in the 'Test this Zap' section when you click 'See trigger sample'.

When you click 'Test Zap with this sample', you should check your email list in Mailchimp to see that a new subscriber has been added.

Finally, name your Zap and turn it on! 🎉

This is just one example of what you can do with Dentally and Zapier. There is tons of potential to integrate more aspects of your business together.

Photo by Steve Jurvetson