The problem

The client has a popular blog and YouTube channel. Every time a new YouTube video was published, they’d manually create an email in ConvertKit to send to their list. This involved a series of manual steps, including:

  • Getting the correct YouTube URL
  • Getting the thumb nail
  • Getting the video description
  • Creating the broadcast in ConvertKit
  • Scheduling the broadcast

The time it takes to perform these tasks really adds up when you are publishing videos on a regular cadence. And it isn’t value adding time.

So the goal was to cut out the tedious manual work and automatically create a draft newsletter broadcast in ConvertKit every time a new YouTube video is published.

The solution

ConvertKit emails

The solution was to leverage Zapier to do the heavy lifting. YouTube has an integration with Zapier. So every time a new video is added, the Zap will fire. The Zap gets the YouTube URL, video thumbnail and description.

ConvertKit does have an integration with Zapier, but (at the time at least) can’t create a broadcast email. So I used the ConvertKit API instead.

With this all in place, all the client needs to do now is open the draft broadcast in ConvertKit, and edit the copy. Everything else is taken care of.

The broadcast is scheduled date is set to 3 days after the YouTube publish date. This gives the client the time to do the necessary edits.

WordPress posts

We then took this one step further. As well as creating a ConvertKit draft broadcast, I also integrated this with the WordPress site. So every time a video is published, a new post in WordPress is also created with the YouTube video embedded.

This is set as a draft, so that the client can add the copy before publishing it.

With both of these solutions, the automation is taking care of the nitty gritty mechanics, freeing up humans to do the more creative work, like writing copy.

Systems integrated

  • ConvertKit
  • YouTube
  • WordPress
  • Zapier

Need something like this?

If you want something like this for your membership business, we’d love to talk to see if we are a good fit. Just fill in this form with a few details, and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Similar Posts