How to Automate Video Creation with Zapier

In this no-code tutorial, you will learn how to auto-generate any kind of marketing video using Zapier and Creatomate.

Video marketing has become an integral part of modern marketing. As a matter of fact, videos often perform better than texts or images under most circumstances.

There was a time when you would have to manually create these videos, but with the introduction of no-code tools and video generation APIs such as Zapier and Creatomate, most of the process can now be automated.

Automating video can be beneficial in many situations, but most commonly it is used to automate and streamline the creation of marketing videos. Think about posting social media videos to promote new articles, blogs, or products. But also consider sending personalized videos to current and prospective customers, repurposing social media content, adding watermarks to videos, transcribing videos, converting images to videos, etc.

Let's find out how by using the following dynamic video as an example:

Prerequisites

There are several ways to automate your video creation process. With more than 5,000 apps available, you can always customize a workflow to meet your needs. We will use a simple example in this tutorial to demonstrate how it works. If you want to follow along, you'll need:

• A Creatomate account: to auto-generate the videos. Don't have an account? Create your free trial account here.
• A Zapier account: to set up the automated workflow.

How to create videos using Zapier?

A template serves as a base for auto-generating videos. So, our first step will be to create a video template in Creatomate.

Next, we'll set up a Zapier automation that:

• Triggers for a new Push in Zapier's Chrome extension;
• Then Creatomate automatically generates a video;
• That will be sent by mail using Email by Zapier.

Here's what the Zap will look like:

Let's automate our video creation!

1. Create a template

Creatomate has a collection of ready-made templates you can use, but it's also possible to customize these templates or design your own from scratch.

Log in to your account, go to the Templates page and click the + New button. From the template gallery, we'll go with the Quick Promo template from the Featured category. The 1:1 Square size is fine and click Create Template.

It's important to know that templates are made up of elements, all of which can be marked as Dynamic, which means they're merely placeholders for our final video. For our Quick Promo template, Text-1, Text-2, and Video are already dynamic, so we don't need to change anything:

Now that we've got a template, let's set up our Zap.

2. Start with a trigger

Log in to your Zapier account and click the + Create Zap button from your dashboard. Choose Zapier Chrome extension as the app and New Push as the event. Click Continue.

You'll need to install Zapier's Chrome extension to set up the trigger. Then we'll add two input fields; a Text-1 and a Video field. Click Continue.

Test the trigger by clicking Test Trigger. Zapier will come back with some example data when it finds a push. If the test was successful, click Continue.

3. Add an action to create the video

Choose Creatomate as the app and Create Single Render as the event. Click Continue.

Choose your account from the list. If you're using Creatomate within Zapier for the first time, you have to connect your account first. Click Sign in and enter your Creatomate Project's API key. Your account will be selected, then click Continue.

We'll select the Creatomate template we just created to set up the action. If you're following along, this is the Quick Promo template. You'll see the dynamic elements from the template in the Modifications field. Since we've created input fields for Text-1 and Video in the Zapier Chrome extension, let's connect them.

• Set Video to Zapier Chrome extension -> Fields Video.
• Set Text-1 to Zapier Chrome extension -> Fields Text 1.

Text-2 is also a dynamic template element. By leaving a modification empty, it will use the template's default data instead. That's fine for the Text-2 element in this tutorial.

Once you're done, click Continue. On the next screen, we'll test our action. A request for generating a video will be sent to Creatomate.

4. Add the final action

Add another action by clicking the + button. Choose Email by Zapier as the app and Send Outbound Email as the event. Click Continue.

To set up the action, we need to enter an email address to send the email to. Then, create a subject for the email. For example, use static text and an element from the Chrome extension. Last but not least, add Creatomate - Url to the body of the email to link to the video. Once you're done, click Continue.

Let's click Test step on the last screen. An email will be sent to the provided email address when the test is successful. Click Publish Zap to turn it on.

Visiting the URL in this test email will take you to a Not Found page. That's because Creatomate couldn't make a video with the Chrome Extension test data. But in the next step, we'll give the Chrome extension the right data so Creatomate can generate a video, which we'll get emailed.

5. Test it out

Open the Zaps Chrome extension from your extensions list. Let's fill in a text in the Text-1 field and paste a link to a publicly accessible video in the Video field. You could use a Pexels video or use this URL as an example. Click Send when you're done.

Sending this data triggers the Zap and it starts running. Creatomate auto-generates a video using the data we sent with the Chrome extension. As soon as the video is rendered, we'll get an email with the link:

Next steps

Now you know how to automate video creation with Zapier and Creatomate. You can use this example as a starting point for your own use case.

Replace the Chrome extension trigger with apps, like:

• WordPress, Ghost or RSS for new posts.
• Airtable, Google Drive for new data or files.
• Shopify, WooCommerce for new products.
• Salesforce, Pipedrive, Hubspot for new leads/contacts.
• Typeform, Squarespace, Jotform for new form entries.
• ...and lots more.

Instead of Email by Zapier, use apps like:

• Twitter, Facebook Pages, YouTube to post on social media.
• Gmail, Slack for communication.
• Google Drive or Amazon S3 to upload your videos.
• ...plus many more.