Guides
Use Zapier to send product events from Segment to Orbit
If your community is built around a product, you certainly know how important it is to understand a member’s product usage alongside their community engagement. It’s very helpful to know when someone in your community has signed up for your product, invited people to their account, or upgraded their plan.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to connect product-related activities to your Orbit workspace so that you can get more insights on your community.
Orbit does not currently offer built-in integrations for so we will show you how to send product events by using Zapier (a no-code platform) to send the events and Segment (a customer data platform) to trigger the sends.
Part 1: Plan
Step 1) Decide which product events to send to Orbit
You’ll need to identify some key events to send to Orbit. Product analytics stacks commonly track tons of product events, and you don’t want to send them all to Orbit.
Some suggested product events to start with include: creating an account, inviting a user, and providing feedback. We think these are most useful to see in a member’s timeline and can help you segment your product users based on their community potential.
- Product sign-up/activation is a prerequisite to adding value in a product community.
- Inviting another user represents the willingness to share and connect with others around the product.
- Sending feedback shows willingness to help improve and contribute.
Reach out to the team that manages your product analytics to find our what product events are available to you.
Part 2: Build
Step 1) Set up Zapier as a Segment Destination
- In Segment, add Zapier as a new Destination.
Step 2) Choose a product event to use as your trigger
- Click on “Event Zaps” on Segment’s Zapier Settings page to create a trigger for the specific product event you’d like to send.
- Enter the Segment name of the product event you’d like to send.
Now, every time this event occurs, Segment will trigger the Zapier workflow located at the URL in the right column. You haven’t created a Zapier workflow yet, so leave the right column blank and the Segment page open for now. We will fill it in later on.
Step 3) Create a Zap for this product event
You can create a Zapier workflow (aka a Zap) in two ways: from scratch or by using a workflow template. We will walk through how to do this with a template.
- Open this shared template and click on “Try this Zap”:
Note: If you’re not logged in, you will be prompted to log in to Zapier.
This Zap works in 2 steps: a Trigger step and an Action step. Let’s start with the Trigger step. We want the Zap to trigger when it receives on its URL the event you just added in Segment. To do this:
- Copy the URL in the “Test trigger” pane:
- Paste it in the right column next to the event name in the Segment window you still have open.
- Test your trigger. Click “Test trigger” in Zapier. This will load the data of the event you just triggered:
This data will be used to configure the Action step.
- Scroll down to the Action step called “Create Activity in Orbit”, and click on it. Choose an Orbit account to connect.
- Note: The first time you use this Action, you’ll be prompted to sign in to Orbit and to enter the URL slug of your workspace name and your API key:
This Action step creates an activity in Orbit using the user’s email address collected through Segment and available in the event data. If a member tied to this email address already exists in Orbit, it ties the new activity to this member. Otherwise, it creates a new member, then ties the new activity to this new member. To configure the activity to be sent to Orbit,
- Click Set up action.
- Fill out the following fields:
Field | Definition | Example |
Activity Title | This is a title you can set for this specific activity | Signed up for Product |
Activity Description | A specific description for this activity | Signed up for an account for our product |
Activity Type | The name for this type of Activity. If you’ve used this activity before, you can leave this blank | Product Sign Up |
Activity Type Key | The key for this activity type | product:signed_up |
Activity Weight | The importance of this activity type. If this product event is important for your community goals, consider using a higher Activity Weight for this Activity Type (the highest weight is 10, the lowest is 0). | 6 |
Occurred at | The time this activity occurred | use data field [ ] |
New or Additional Member Tags | If you want to tag members who have done this activity so you can easily find them and report on them | Product User |
Member email | The member’s email (will be used to match this activity to the appropriate member in Orbit) | use data field [Properties User Email] |
Member name | The member’s name | use data field [Properties User Name] |
Step 4) Verify that Orbit received your product events
After you turn on your Zap, your product events should start flowing into Orbit. They should appear as custom activities in the activity feed of your workspace. Go to Orbit, click on a member’s profile and see if they have a product activity.
Step 5) Repeat the process for any other product event
Once you’ve created your first product event send, you can repeat steps 2-4 for any other product events that you’d like to send to Orbit.
Here’s what your final workflow setup may look like in Zapier:
Next Steps
If you’d like to see how to get insights that correlate your product data with your community data, check out the guide below
FAQ
What if I’m not using Zapier or Segment?
All you need is a product analytics tool, such as Amplitude or Heap.io, that has the ability to trigger webhook events and an equivalent of Zapier, such as n8n.io or Integromat, to be able to automatically send product events to Orbit.
- Use Zapier to send product events from Segment to Orbit
- Part 1: Plan
- Step 1) Decide which product events to send to Orbit
- Part 2: Build
- Step 1) Set up Zapier as a Segment Destination
- Step 2) Choose a product event to use as your trigger
- Step 3) Create a Zap for this product event
- Step 4) Verify that Orbit received your product events
- Step 5) Repeat the process for any other product event
- Next Steps
- FAQ