How to Automate the Process of Issuing Certificates in an Evergreen Course with Azhelle Wade

Welcome back to another episode of Made with MV! If you've ever wondered how to streamline and automate the process of issuing certificates of completion in an evergreen course, Azhelle has got you covered.

She’s going to share her personal strategy using tools like MemberVault, Zapier, ActiveCampaign, and Google Docs to automate the generation and dispatch of completion certificates to students who finish her Toy Design Course.

Key Topics & Highlights

• Explanation of the motivation behind automating the process due to student requests for completion certificates
• Transition from live to evergreen course format necessitated the automation
• Mention of MemberVault, Zapier, and ActiveCampaign as the tools used and brief description of each tool's role in the automation process
• Detailed explanation of how MemberVault tracks course completion
• In-depth walkthrough of the certificate generation from Google Docs template to PDF conversion.
• Final email automation setup in ActiveCampaign to deliver the certificate to students
• Costs associated with tools, particularly the PDF converter
• Importance of testing the entire automation thoroughly

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Episode's Full Transcript 

Azhelle Wade [00:00:00]:

Hey, my name is Azhelle Wade, aka the Toy Coach. I help passionate innovators break into the toy industry so that they can get paid to play. Today's lesson is really cool. I'm going to show you how I use MemberVault, Zapier, and my ESP to automate a certificate of completion when students complete my course, as well as of course, send them an email that their certificate is ready. Okay. I started doing this strategy about three months ago when I evergreen my course. I wanted to do this strategy because I found a few people were asking about their completion certificates because they wanted to use them to prove that they completed a course, either because they were going to get reimbursed for it at work or for some other reason. Now, when my course used to be live, I always gave my students certificates of completion.

Azhelle Wade [00:00:54]:

But when the course became evergreen, I just thought that was something that was impossible. Now, this strategy is one that works perfectly. I, you know, I'm actually even still to this day, I get surprised when someone shows me their certificate because I'm like, oh, look, that was generated perfectly and I didn't have to do anything. What I like most about this strategy is, you know, that it rewards the participants, the students, for putting in the work. And it doesn't require another brain cell from me because we know being a solopreneur, an entrepreneur, your mind is pulled in so many different directions. So it's just really great that I can build one thing one time that can give this continual dopamine hit to my students after they put in the hard work of finishing my program. And my plan is to continue using this process for the other courses on my platform as well. Okay, so this strategy works for me just because, you know, I heard other course platforms will automatically create certificates that great.

Azhelle Wade [00:01:59]:

That's great for them. But, you know, I guess I don't know if this one does, but I wanted to do my own certificate and my own way, so that's why this works really well for me. Okay, so I'm going to tell you the exact action steps that you can use if you want to do it exactly the way I did it to make this happen. Okay. Before I teach this, I do need to give you a little bit of background on my program so you can visualize it all. So my program is nine modules long. At the end of every module, I have an extra lesson called book a check-in call with the toy coach. So that lesson counts if I want to, let's say, set a tag to notice when a student completes a module that is important for the following reasons.

Azhelle Wade [00:02:43]:

So this entire PDF certificate starts being triggered when someone completes a module. However, technically the last lesson of TCA is actually module nine, lesson eight. But there is module nine, lesson nine, which is the check-in call with a toy coach. So to make sure that my students didn't skip over this and not get their certificate, I actually have a celebration that pops up anytime a student finish finishes a module in module nine. That celebration happens once lesson eight is completed. So when a student marks that they've completed lesson eight of module nine, they get a celebration that says, you're so close to getting your TCA certificate, just mark the next lesson. And I named the lesson complete and it will be emailed to you. So the next lesson is check and call with a toy coach.

Azhelle Wade [00:03:46]:

So once they go to that next lesson, module nine, lesson nine, which is just check and call with a toy coach, they mark it complete. Then that activates this other action that I have set up in MemberVault. So this other action is when this happens, when a student completes a module, module nine, I want it to add several tags. The important tag here is the action tag. The action tag I have added is TCA evergreen on all modules completed. So I'm letting it know that like the student has completed all modules, that triggers something in my active campaign, which is my email service provider. And let's get into what that triggers in my active campaign shortly. Let me just pull it up real quick because I want to say exactly what it triggers and not just yes.

Azhelle Wade [00:04:45]:

Okay. So once that tag is added, because my member vault and ActiveCampaign, my email service provider are connected, then my activecampaign knows, oh, somebody, somebody completed this module and this tag was added. What that does is it starts an automation and active campaign and then it adds another tag called status TCA evergreen certificate requested. So now it's alerting my system. Someone requested a certificate, right? So now that automation is told to wait until there is a field filled in an active campaign. So I have a field in ActiveCampaign for every person called TCA certificate PDF link. This automation in ActiveCampaign is going to wait until that field is filled in. So how is that field going to get filled in, you might wonder? That's where we go over to Zapier.

Azhelle Wade [00:05:44]:

So now Zapier, I created a zap in Zapier that is activated when that tag status TCA evergreen certificate is requested, when that tag is added. Okay, so then, so that's the beginning of this zap in Zapier. So that zap starts, the first thing it does is it find a document in Google Docs. What it's looking for is a Google Doc file where I have already designed the certificate but turned it into a template.

So when you turn a certificate, when you turn a Google Doc into a template, I mean, you can google this, but you basically use, what are these, the curly brackets to denote what fields will change, and anything that's not in the curly brackets will not change. So then it finds that document in Google Docs, and after that, it is going to wait for five minutes. I think the reason I wanted it to wait is to make sure that Activecampaign had time to update whatever it has to update on its side. Then it's going to create a document from Google Docs and the document that it's going to create is the certificate.

Azhelle Wade [00:07:05]:

So what it does is it found that document in Google Docs a moment ago. Now it's creating the document in Google Docs, and what it's going to do is replace the user's name for the fields that I had denoted with the curly brackets were the first name field and the date completed field, because this certificate also says the date completed. Then I'm connecting another tool called anything to PDF converter. Because when you use the zap to create a document from a template in Google Docs, it will create it out of a, it'll create another Google Doc. And I don't want students to have access to this editable Google Doc because it's a certificate and they shouldn't have the editable file, they should have a PDF. So you do need this other tool called Anything to PDF Converter. I pay $10 a month for, I think, I don't know, I can make like thousands of, I can convert thousands of files a month. I don't need that yet, you know, one day.

Azhelle Wade [00:08:02]:

But. So that tool actually takes the template in Google Docs and converts it to a PDF. Now that the PDF file actually lives for, I think it's about an hour on the anything to PDF converter server, which is just enough time for the next zap, which will upload that file to my Google Drive. So I will always have a record of it. And also that is a public Google Drive folder that is then linked into activecampaign. So remember I told you, ActiveCampaign is over there waiting until this field called TCA, your TCA certificate PDF link. That field is blank and ActiveCampaign is waiting. Well, in the final step of the zap in Zapier, it is filling that field in with the link to the certificate from Google Drive.

Azhelle Wade [00:08:56]:

And it took a couple of tries to make sure that, yeah, this link is a shareable link and I just tested it a bunch of times till I got it right to make sure that it's a link that people can view and they can download and it will drop that link right into ActiveCampaign. Now, once ActiveCampaign recognizes, oh, this field, TCA certificate PDF is no longer blank, it's going to continue in its automation.

So the next step for Activecampaign is to send an email and it's going to send an email to that student that says, congratulations, your certificate's inside, it says, guess who's a certified toy person? And it says their name, it says, you are. Then there's a picture of a blurred certificate and it tells them to click to download their certificate. And as soon as they click to download it, it opens up into a new window. It has their name, the date, completed, completed, and everything else. And it tells them you can add TCA to your LinkedIn and there's a video of how they can do that and everything. So yeah, this is how I automate certificates being sent to my students.

Azhelle Wade [00:10:04]:

Now, another important thing is you want to make sure that at the end of this automation, after that email sent out, there are still two more steps. One step is we remove the action TCA. We've removed the tag status TCA certificate requested because that is has been completed now and we add the tag history TCA evergreen certificate sent. And that is just so that we know that we sent it. It was requested, we sent it. We did everything we were supposed to do. So we just remove all those extra tags so we don't have extra tags on people for no reason. And I just want to make sure I'm not forgetting anything.

Azhelle Wade [00:10:51]:

Yes, that's it. So things to watch out for in this strategy, choosing the right link to share so someone can actually view the certificate in Google Drive. I'm just looking through mine right now. The link that I ended up sharing is in Zapier. When you pull up a Google Drive folder and it shows you a bunch, bunch of links that you can share. The link that worked for me is called the alternate link. There was a couple other links that worked okay, but the alternate link was the best and worked the most often without error. The other thing I would say to look out for you do have to pay for Anything to PDF converter.

Azhelle Wade [00:11:35]:

I love saving money in my business. I tried a few ways around it, I really did. And I even at one point thought, is it worth it to automate this process? I could manually drop these, you know, I could, you know, automate the creation of these documents and then just manually drop the PDF's into the folder and the rest would be automated. But honestly, when I looked at the time and the value of, and the cost of PDF converter, it is worth it, you know, 100% dollar ten a month to have this whole thing automated and never have to worry about it unless Zapier sends you an error that your zap isn't working. The other things that I would say to work out for, to look out for now, honestly, I do have a delay in my zap.

I have a delay step and I honestly don't 100% remember why I put that delay step. But if I would have to guess, sometimes when you're bouncing back and forth between email service provider, Zapier, Membervault, you have to wait given of time for one tool to transfer all the data to the other. So for example, if I was getting the students information from ActiveCampaign, and that is the information I'm using to populate the certificate, I want to wait and make sure that all of that data came over from ActiveCampaign before I had Zapier continue it and put it into the certificate.

Azhelle Wade [00:13:07]:

And you might be thinking, well, gel, they're your student, aren't they already on your email list? Well, you might know this, but sometimes people sign up for your course using a totally different email than they originally did. So that then they originally did when they signed up for like your freebie or your masterclass. So that means when they complete the course, they essentially become a new subscriber on your list.

Now they might not be subscribed to receive your regular emails, but for this automation to work all of their name, you know, first and last name, their email will have to be added to your email service provider along with this link and then sent out to them. So you do want to have that delay step just to give your ESP time to get all that information before you're, you know, you're running your zap. If they were both happening at the same exact time, I'm just, I'm just personally wary that there would be an issue. It might be fine, but I personally just wanted to give it a little bit of time. And yes, that doesn't mean there's a little bit of a, more of a delay for the receiver of this of the certificate, but for me, I wanted to take that little bit of a risk.

Azhelle Wade [00:14:14]:

Yeah. And I'm just trying to think. Any other things to watch out for, you know? The last thing I would just say is test it, test it, test it. I cannot tell you. I spent about, you know, half an hour figuring, figuring this out. In another half an hour testing and testing and testing. I would test it with multiple email addresses, send it to your best friend, your husband, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, whoever, and just, like, make sure it works. Because the worst thing you could do is automate this thing and think you did something great.

Azhelle Wade [00:14:43]:

You never have to think about it again, and you find out three months later that everybody's been getting broken certificates with someone else's name on it or something like that. So just test, test, test. Now, I would love it if you shared in the Membervault Collaborative at membervault.co/collab with your takeaways from this episode and let us know if you're going to try it for yourself.

And again, you can find me at thetoycoach.com. Please give a listen to my podcast, thetoycoachpodcast.com or thetoycoach.com/podcast. You can also find me on Instagram at thetoyoycoach, TikTok at thetoycoach, LinkedIn, Azelle, or the toy coach. And I hope you found this useful. All right, until next time, see you later.

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