Reply

Setting Up a Windsor campaign with Reply and Zapier

Step 1: Create a custom contact field in Reply

Windsor works with Reply by populating a custom field for each contact with a unique Video ID. This ID will be used in your email to show the correct video personalized for that contact. Create a new custom contact field on Reply. Name the property something useful for the campaign you're setting up, like "Windsor Outreach Video ID".

Step 2: Set up your Reply sequence

Sequences using Windsor always start with a Zapier Step.

Example of a Reply sequence

In the Zapier step, Choose "Wait for Action from Zapier to move to the next step". This lets Zapier move contacts to the next step when the video is ready in Step 4.

Setup your video email

Just like {{FirstName}}, a video email will include a personalized Windsor link. This link is the magic that makes Windsor work. To make sure the link is unique to each contact, we will use the custom field created in Step 1. Here is what the link looks like

https://videos.windsor.io/v/{{Windsor_Outreach_Video_ID}}

Replace Windsor_Outreach_Video_ID with your custom field. For instance, here's what your email might look like.

If you want to add a thumbnail to your email (like above), Windsor automatically creates them for you.

Step 3: Create a Windsor Campaign

When setting up automations for your campaign, setup Zapier as both the source and destination.

Step 4: Setup Zapier

To put everything together, we will now set up two Zaps. The first will create Windsor videos when someone joins a sequence. The second will update the custom field and trigger the email when the video is ready.

Here's what the zaps typically look like:

Please refer to Reply - Zapier docs and Windsor - Zapier docs if you need help setting up these Zaps.

FAQ / Troubleshooting

My contacts are getting marked as missing data even if the custom contact field is set.

This happens if the contact moved from the Zapier step to an email step prematurely (i.e. before the Windsor video was created for them). This could happen for a number of reasons - maybe your Zap step isn't set to "wait for action", or you might have a different Zap on Zapier that's pushing these contacts through even before the Windsor video is ready. First, set up a smart filter like this so you can identify all the contacts that should not have missing data.

This makes it easy to retry everyone who has bad data. Simply select everyone and mark them as active.

To prevent this from happening again in the future, make sure that your Reply integration is setup correctly and that there aren't other zaps on your account that might be pushing them prematurely to the next step.

My Windsor/Reply Zaps are failing

Your Zaps could fail for a number of reasons, and most of the time they can be fixed with a simple retry. If the problem persists after retrying, please reach out to support.

How do I setup an A/B test

If you are A/B testing different email copies, but with the same video, then refer to these Reply docs. If you are A/B testing different videos, then we recommend setting up a unique Windsor campaign and Reply sequence for each branch of the test