How to Sell Courses with Zapier and WooCommerce

By: LearnDash Collaborator October 6, 2020
Filed Under:

Automate your course sales using WooCommerce and Zapier.

So, you’ve created a course on LearnDash. Next you probably want to know how to sell it, right? Your first steps will be to set up the order fulfillment system that will allow you to list courses as products, have a checkout process, and get paid. And for many of our users, the first and most obvious choice is WooCommerce.

As perhaps the most popular e-commerce plugin on WordPress, WooCommerce offers a robust system for monetizing your course content. You can use it to sell subscriptions to your course, customize the checkout process with special offers, and send follow-up emails to customers.

However, you can take things a step further by adding automations to your sales process with Zapier. By selecting triggers and corresponding actions, you can create interlocking workflows that will practically sell courses for you. In fact, once you get your WooCommerce and Zapier accounts set up, the configurations you can set up to sell more courses are practically limitless. Here’s how you get started.

1. Set up WooCommerce on your LearnDash site.

First off, you will need to have a valid licenses for LearnDash and an account with WooCommerce (you can have a free account, but some services, like Subscriptions, are paid). For the full setup process, you can read our WooCommerce for LearnDash integration docs. In the meantime, here are the basics.

  • Install the WooCommerce for LearnDash add-on from you WordPress admin area, just as you would any other WordPress plugin.
  • In your WooCommerce settings, disable guest checkout options, but keep the option for customers to create an account during checkout.
  • Create products for your courses in WooCommerce. If you want to offer course bundles, you can do so by choosing multiple courses from the dropdown menu.
  • In LearnDash, navigate to Course Access Settings, set the Access Mode to “Closed,” and paste the URL for your WooCommerce product in the Button URL field.

There are additional steps you can take to further customize your course product offerings and the checkout process, but for now this will allow you to sell your LearnDash courses using WooCommerce.

Need more info? Watch our webinar:

2. Link your LearnDash to Zapier.

The next step is to connect your LearnDash account to Zapier. You’ll need a Zapier account to do this, but you can use either the free or paid version. Again, we have support documentation for our Zapier for LearnDash add-on, which you should review if you have any trouble setting it up.

Getting started with Zapier is actually faster than with WooCommerce. You simply need to install the Zapier for LearnDash add-on just as you did for the WooCommerce plugin in the previous section, and you’re ready to start making Zaps.

Need more info? Watch our webinar:

3. Set up your Zapier triggers and actions.

With both WooCommerce and Zapier now integrated with LearnDash, you can begin creating the automations that will connect the dots in your marketing, sales, and enrollment processes.

From the list of Zapier triggers, choose the appropriate WooCommece action. For instance, if you’re selling a course as a product, you can select “Product,” or if you’re selling it as a subscription, you can select “Subscription.”

WooCommerce Zapier trigger

Next, choose the action you want Zapier to take according to the WooCommerce Trigger. The four available for LearnDash + WooCommerce include “Add to Group,” “Enroll Into Course,” “Remove From Course,” and “Remove From Group.”

LearnDash Zapier action

You can create multiple Zaps per action, including Zaps that are triggered by each line item in a WooCommerce order. For instance, if a user wants to purchase multiple courses, they can add each course to their shopping cart, and at checkout, Zapier can enroll them in each one. Or, if you sell a bundle of courses, you can use Zapier to add users to a group that contains the course bundle.

Want to sell WooCommerce subscriptions? Check out our webinar:

How can Zapier and WooCommerce help me sell more courses?

Automating WooCommerce with Zapier is one of the most popular integrations among our users. However, there are many more apps you can integrate with your course and Zapier to automate other functions of your course—everything from marketing emails to notification reminders to social sharing. Used together, and these apps can help you reach more customers with course content and send your sales through the roof.

A few examples of automations that work well together might include:

  • Trigger: LearnDash Course Complete.
    Action:
    Create a WooCommerce coupon and send to the learner to prompt them to sign up for a new course.
  • Trigger: LearnDash Lesson Complete.
    Action: Send a recommendation for a micro course based on that lesson’s content.
  • Trigger: Customer Created.
    Action: Send an email featuring popular courses and an invitation to join your community forum.
  • Trigger: Enrolled Into Course.
    Action: Send a welcome email that includes links to related courses.

Automation can save you time while also improving the course experience for your learners.

It takes some time and careful planning to set up automations, but once an automation is set up it can save you hours of administrative time while improving the experiences of your learners. At the same time, automating your sales and email marketing with Zapier and WooCommerce means you can sell more courses, which will give you even more resources to work with as you improve your offerings.

When it comes to automating your sales, you really can’t find a better match than Zapier and WooCommerce.

LearnDash Collaborator

A LearnDash specialist wrote this article to help guide new and current LearnDash members.