Automated Add to Calendar Links in Zapier

How to use AddEvent’s Automated Add to Calendar links with Zapier

Automated add to calendar links allow you to build dynamic known Add to Calendar links into your email campaigns to personalize add to calendar links for each individual recipient. We’ve made it even easier to use our automated Add to Calendar links by including an action to create these links in our Zapier integration. This means that you can now automatically add Add to Calendar links to your emails without writing a single line of Add to Calendar.

This tutorial will show you how to create an automated Zapier workflow (also know as a “Zap”) that will automatically pull in event information from a 3rd party source (which could be your CRM, an events database, or a spreadsheet) and dynamically generate add to calendar links based on that content, and then insert those links into an email template.

What you will need

• A paid AddEvent account (to access our automated Add to Calendar links)
• A paid Zapier account (to give you access to multi-step Zaps)
• A place where your event information is stored (in this example, we will pull the data from Google Sheets)
• An account on an email-sending platform (in this example, we will use a MailChimp account)

How it works

We’ll set this Zap up as a simple 3-step flow:

1. Trigger: New Spreadsheet Row
   • When the event data is added to a Google Sheet, Zapier automatically pulls this data into the system.
2. Action: Create Automated Add to Calendar Links
   • Zapier sends the event data to AddEvent, and AddEvent generates the Add to Calendar links and returns them to Zapier.
3. Action: Create Campaign
   • Zapier sends the Add to Calendar links to Mailchimp, and they get added to the email template.

Once you have logged in to your Zapier account, click on Create Zap in the top left-hand corner. This will open the Zap editor, where you can set up your new workflow.

Pull the event data from Google Sheets

These steps will show you how to set up a Zapier trigger to pull your event data from a Google Sheet every time a new row with event data is added.

In this tutorial, we are using a Google Sheets spreadsheet as our events "database," but you could use any CRM platform, 3rd party database, or spreadsheet to achieve the same thing. Here we use the Google Sheets "New Spreadsheet Row" trigger, but any trigger that makes sense in your workflow will do.

1. Create a new spreadsheet in Google Sheet and add example data for at least one event to test the trigger. Make sure you add column headers to enable you to correctly identify the data when mapping to the input fields. Your spreadsheet should include the following columns:
   • Title (required), Start date & time (required), End date & time, Timezone (recommended), Recurring Rule, All day event?, Description, Location, Landing page template, Reference In Zapier, in the new Zap editor, search for "Google Sheets" in the search box, and then choose "New Spreadsheet Row" as the Trigger Event. Click "Continue"
2. Choose which Google account you've created the spreadsheet in. You'll need to connect your Google account to Zapier if you haven't already done so. Click Continue
3. Choose which spreadsheet and worksheet you want to pull data from, and click Continue.
4. Test your trigger by clicking Test and continue. If it's a success, you can continue to connect your AddEvent account. If not, check the error message and review the above steps to make sure you have the trigger set up correctly.

Create your Automated Add to Calendar links

These steps will show you how to set up a Zapier action to create Add to Calendar links containing the event data that's been pulled into Zapier in the previous step

1. Click the "+" button to add a new step to your Zap. Choose AddEvent as the app, "Create Automated Add to Calendar Links" as the action, and click Continue.
2. If you don't already have your AddEvent account connected to Zapier, you will have to do so now. Open the drop-down and click Connect a new account. Enter your API token on the pop-up that appears. Your API token can be found on your account page in AddEvent. If your AddEvent account is already connected, simply choose the account from the drop-down.
3. Connect the data from the Google Sheet with the input parameters for the direct URL method by selecting the appropriate column header for each parameter. The required parameters and the expected format of the input are given within the Zap editor, and you can also check out our Automated Add to Calendar Links documentation for more information.
4. Test the action! From the previous step, click Continue, and then click Test and Continue on the next step. Zapier will try to create Add to Calendar links using the data you provided and will return an error if the data is formatted incorrectly or if you are missing a required field.

If you run into an error that you don't understand, or if you're getting an error where you think you shouldn't be, please check out the documentation or contact our support team, who will be happy to help.

Add the Add to Calendar links to an email

These steps will show you how to set up Zapier actions to create a new email campaign in Mailchimp and add the Add to Calendar links to the email template for that campaign.

1. Click the + to add a new step to your Zap. Choose Mailchimp as the app, Create campaign as the action, and click Continue.
2. If you don't already have your Mailchimp account connected to Zapier, you will have to do so now. Open the drop-down and click Connect a new account button. Follow the steps to connect your account. If your Mailchimp account is already connected, simply choose the account from the drop-down.
3. Set up the action by filling out the information necessary to create a campaign, including:
   • Campaign Name, Audience, Email subject, From name, and From email address.
4. Copy and paste your email template HTML into the Email content (HTML) field. If you don't already have an email template, you can log into your Mailchimp account, create a new template, and then export that template as HTML and copy and paste it into Zapier.
5. Within the email template HTML, select the location that you want to insert the Add to Calendar links. In the Insert data dropdown, expand the AddEvent section and choose the Add to calendar image links (HTML) option.
6. You're done! Make sure you turn your Zap on before leaving. Every time you create a new event in your Google Sheet, a new campaign will be created in Mailchimp, and the Add to Calendar links for the event will be automatically inserted.

Make sure you test your email templates before sending them!

Additional actions in Zapier

Zapier allows you to connect AddEvent with over 3,000 apps and services. You can use many of these within a Zap similar to the above to create powerful automations around your events. For example:

• Connect Zoom, GoToWebinar, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams to include a webinar or meeting link within the location field of the calendar event
• Connect your CMS to pull in event descriptions unique to each user
• Send confirmation emails with add to calendar links included when a user registers for an event or books an appointment with you

Output options

The Create Add to Calendar Links action in Zapier has the following outputs. You can choose whichever output best suits your needs.

• Add to Calendar image links
  • A block of HTML with the add to calendar links embedded with images of the calendar service logos
  • This is our most popular option for email campaigns
• Add to Calendar text links
  • A block of HTML with the add to calendar links in text form
  • These are more subtle than our image links and great for plain-text emails
• Event landing page link
  • A link to the event landing page hosted by AddEvent
  • This is great for sharing on social media or when you want users to see all of the event details before adding it to their calendar
• Download .ics file link
  • A link to the event that will download a .ics file when clicked
  • You can use this to add an .ics file as an attachment to your emails
• Calendar service links
  • Links to each of our supported calendar services that automatically redirects the user to the calendar service or downloads a .ics file, depending on the calendar service
  • Individual links are available for Apple, Google, Office 365, Outlook, Outlook.com, and Yahoo
  • Perfect if you want to do some custom formatting for how your Add to Calendar links appear!