How to Connect Fomo with Zapier

Zapier is a powerful platform that lets you connect ~2,000 apps together, without writing a single line of code.

Below is a step by step guide to help you connect your Fomo account to Zapier, and begin automatically streaming new Fomo notifications on your website.

Note: the following images and steps are from a real Fomo customer. Therefore, some of the details you see for their account may be slightly different than yours.

Step 1 - Create a Fomo Application

Fomo applications are unique to each website where you want to show live Fomo notifications. If you haven't alraedy, create a Fomo site from your dashboard with your website's URL.

Step 2 - Setup your Fomo Notifications Widget

Set up the timing and display logic of your live Fomo notifications by clicking  Settings > Timeline:

For more thoughts on choosing the best settings, go here.

Step 3 - Enable the Zapier Integration

Visit the Integrations tab, then click Zapier. Click 'Enable Zapier API Key' to create a unique access token for your Fomo account:

Copy down these keys. You'll use them in the next step.

Step 4 - Enable Fomo access to your Zapier Account

While logged into Zapier, go here. Or, if you're in the middle of your Zap and have connected another app in Step 1 already, search "Fomo" in Step 2 of your Zap setup.

You'll be asked to enter the credentials you created in Step 3.

 Step 5 - Connect your First App

There are literally thousands of things you can do with Fomo, using the Zapier integration.

Want to show off recent purchases? New blog comments? Five-star product reviews? What about sell event tickets, encourage donations, or simply show your latest Tweets and Facebook posts?

All of this is possible with Zapier.

In the example below, we're going to connect Fomo with Stripe, a popular payment gateway service that makes it easy to accept credit cards online.

Pressing "Continue" will ask you to authenticate your Stripe account. Now, click "Test & Continue":

Step 6 - Connect Fomo on Zapier

You should now be on Step 2 of your Zapier creation.

Simply search 'Fomo' and the app should appear:

Step 7 - Select the Fomo 'Event' Trigger

This is another critical step in the Zapier creation process.

After selecting the Fomo app from the Zapier marketplace, select the 'Create Event' option.

Step 8 - Authenticate Fomo on Zapier

You've made it! It's finally time to connect your apps together.

First, click 'Connect a new Account.'

Then, add your API keys from Step 3 above.

You can optionally name the app, to make organizing your Zaps easier.

Step 9 - Map Fomo notification variables together

Below, we've connected a few custom variables from this user's Stripe account to their Fomo template.

But wait, what's a template??

Here goes. A template is the structure of your Fomo notification messages, and Events are the custom Fomo notification message content.

So, you might have multiple templates such as:

And the events you create would simply contain the merge details, ie:

In this Zapier guide, we assume you've already created a Template in your Fomo account.

If you haven't, but still want to follow along, here's the template we created for Kettle and Fire:

Click the green "new +" button to create a template for the data you'll send from Zapier:

You can go ahead and change the messaging:

We named this template 'Recent Sales on Stripe,' which you'll see used below.

Got it? Great! Let's keep moving.

First, we select the Fomo template we just created from the dropdown:

Now, we map our variables.

Click into each input (First Name, etc.) and select its corresponding value. Make sure you map every variable included in your Fomo template notification, except for "time_ago".

Pro Tip: Do you want to add a variable you don't see in your Zap form? No problem! Check out our instructions here.

NOTE: Events can only be created if you've mapped all variables you've added to your template's notification message. For example, events will not be created if your notification message is "{{ first_name }} just bought {{ title }} for {{ amount }}" and you did not map the {{ amount }} variable.

Lastly, in this example, we're going to hard-code a product image and a link to the product itself. 

If you have a dynamic image or title link available in your Zap's Step 2 mapping dropdown, you might not need to hard code this.

We found this on the Kettle and Fire website:

So we pasted this value into the Zap, instead of mapping a variable from the dropdown:

Step 10 - Test and go live!

With all our template fields registered, we're ready to test our Zap.

After clicking 'Continue' from the end of Step 9, make sure your mapping looks good. Then, you can click "Test & Continue":

Note: Make sure to turn your Zap 'on' from the next screen (top right corner) -- Zaps default to be turned off!

Embedding Fomo on your Website

In case you haven't dropped the snippet of Fomo code on your website, now would be a good time.

While logged into Fomo, use the navigation to select Settings > 'Embed'.

Here you can either copy/paste the code snippet yourself and put it anywhere within your site's <head> HTML element, or you can send instructions directly to a developer.

Summary

Connecting Fomo to Zapier takes a couple minutes to configure, but once you integrate, you're hooked up with fresh Fomo notifications forever.

Here's what this Zap looks like on the Kettle and Fire website:

Now, new product purchase from Kettle and Fire will be automatically sent to their Fomo notification feed, and streamed live on their website.

FAQ

1. Zapier is sending multiple Zaps for 1 event and this is generating multiple notifications per sale, appointment, review, etc.!

No worries! Using Step 9 above, map a custom variable called "external_id" that Fomo will use to de-dupe an event. In other words, Fomo will check all future events to see if the "external_id" value matches a previously created event's "external_id".

Choose something that will be unique to the event itself, typically something like "order_id", "appointment_id", "customer_id" and not a product title or customer name. Otherwise any other events with that product title or customer name will not be captured!

2. How do I add a custom variable beyond what's provided in the default template?

Follow these steps to add your own custom variables so that you can map over any value that Zapier sends!