How to Set Up Make.com and Build Your First AI Automation Workflow

For Small Business Owners Ready to Stop Wasting Time on Repetitive Tasks.

As a small business owner, every day, you're pulled in multiple directions and put on many hats. You have customer service to respond to, marketing campaigns that need to be launched, tracked, and optimized, products to create and sell, and compliance and compliance documentation to generate - all needing your immediate presence and attention. Chances are you wake up to a flooded email and communication inbox and go to sleep formulating the next best avenue for expansion. When do you actually have time to focus on revenue generation? What if I told you in just a few hours, you could set up a process to automate most of these redundant tasks?

With Make.com, you can spend a few hours today setting up an account and understanding how to create your first automation on the largest integration platform of business applications and services at your fingertips.

Creating your account and first automation should be a breeze, especially when you follow along with all the steps I provide below.

What You'll Need Before Getting Started

You will not need any tech-savvy experience (thank goodness) to create your first automation, however, having the following items on hand before you start will set you up for success.

Here's What You Need:

• Accessing email address

• Login credentials to your various business applications (Gmail, Slack, Notion, Airtable, Stripe, etc.)

• Any API keys from certain tools you will want to connect to Make

• An idea of what you'd like to automate

• Most importantly: The Pain Point You'll Solve

Before starting your automations, you should ask yourself the following:

• What is one task I spend way too much time doing that could use some help?

• What is a task you would never want to touch again after automating it?

• What is a task you do so repetitively that makes you say, 'There has to be a better way?'

Some great first-time automations include:

• Automatically adding new leads from a Facebook ads campaign to your CRM;

• Adding new order information from Shopify to a Google Sheet;

• Getting a Slack message every time a payment is processed in Stripe.

  
  

Once you determine what task you plan to automate, write it down. This will help you along the way to create your very first "scenario" (that's what Make.com calls automation).

Setting Up Your Make.com Account

Setting up your Make.com account is pretty straightforward. Just follow these steps:

1. Access Make.com via your web browser

2. Select "Sign up" in the upper right corner

3. Choose to sign up with email or Google

4. Enter your name, email address and a secure password.

5. Check your email for a verification link from Make.com and click it to verify your account.

6. Return to the website and log in to access your dashboard!

   
   

Next, let's familiarize ourselves with the layout.

• Dashboard: Where everything you're working on is displayed with access to edit or manage any flows (the other word for scenarios per my introduction)

• Scenarios: This tab is where you will be creating & controlling the actual automations you create

• Connections: This tab is where all your API keys & app connections will be located.

• Templates: Pre-made workflows that you can adjust to your liking.

  
  

  

  
  

How to Create Your First Workflow: An Example from Real Life

Let's recreate one of the most sought after automations by small businesses. The email automation to manage new leads.

What We're Trying to Accomplish: When an email comes through Gmail with the subject line "New Lead," it automatically sends a message to Slack for your team and creates a new row in Google Sheets with their information.

Step 1: Create the Trigger

1. From your dashboard, click on "Create a new scenario".

2. In the empty scenario canvas that appears, click on the large "+" sign.

3. Search for "Gmail."

4. Trigger "Watch Emails."

5. Connect Gmail by giving access through Google.

6. Set up filters so it only watches for when the subject line is "New Lead."

   
   

Step 2: Add in the Slack Notification

1. Click on the next "+" sign in your workflow.

2. Search for "Slack" and choose it.

3. Trigger "Send a Message."

4. Connect your Slack channel by authorization access.

5. Select your channel and what you want to say as the message body.

6. Use the dynamic data of the email to help personalize the notification.

   
   

Step 3: Create the Google Sheets Entry2. Type "Google Sheets" and select it.

3. Choose "Add a Row."

4. Authorize your Google account.

5. Select which spreadsheet you'd like to automatically populate.

6. Map your email (from, subject, body) to spreadsheet columns.

   
   

Step 4: Test Your Scenario

You always want to test your automation before it goes live:

1. Click "Run Once" to go through the entire process as if it's live.

2. Make.com will guide you through making each connection.

3. Send yourself a test email with New Lead in the subject line.

4. Check that the Slack notification comes through and that the Google Sheet updates appropriately.

   
   

Connecting APIs and Other Third-Party Applications

Some commonly used applications connect with a standard log-in but many applications require something called an API key in order to connect. An API key is basically like a password that allows Make.com to connect to your other applications.

What you need to know about API connections.

What is an API key? A unique password of sorts that allows Make.com access to your other business applications.

How to connect APIs:

1. Go to your settings on the third-party application.

2. Go to the API or Developer section.

3. Generate or copy the API key.

4. Go back to Make.com and paste where prompted.

Common Examples of API Setups

Airtable:

• Go to airtable.com/account

• Copy personal API key

• Go to Make.com, select Airtable > Connect > Paste API key Stripe:

• Visit dashboard.stripe.com/apikeys

• When integrating with Make.com, always use the secret key (vs. publishable key)

• This is a protected key that must never be shared publicly

  
  

Notion:

• You need to create an internal integration within your Notion workspace

• You'll need to allow it access to the pages for automatic access

• You'll use the integration token on Make.com

  
  

Should you ever need to revoke access/change an integration, it's easy enough to do on the Connections tab of your Make.com dashboard where all connected accounts live.

Automation Examples Small Businesses Can Implement

No ideas? Here are just a few simple yet life-saving automations that can save you hours a week:

If You Sell Online:

• Grab attachments from Gmail and automatically add them to Google Drive.

• Post a new Shopify order into a specific Slack channel.

• Create new QuickBooks entries for WooCommerce orders.

  
  

If You Work with Clients:

• Turn new Calendly bookings into ClickUp tasks.

• Send a welcome email to all new CRM contacts.

• Update customer files in your Google Drive or Notion when they fill out a typeform survey.

  
  

If You Market and Analyze:

• Create social media posts based on a social media content calendar.

• Add new blog post subscribers to your email marketing list via Mailchimp.

• Create a weekly Google Analytics report.

  
  

Pro Tip: Make.com has a template library to get you started. From pre-made automations to inspire you to save time with configurations, it's a great resource for learning what else is possible.Now that you learned how to get started with Make.com, establish your first automation, and integrate your essential business applications, there's more!

To make it even better:

1. Start small- Pick one of the mundane tasks that happens daily or weekly.

2. Save time- Monitor how long the manual implementation takes.

3. Provide feedback and iterations- Adjust automations during use.

4. Expand over time- Bring on new workflows when you're ready.

   
   

Questions for Weekly Reflection:

• What's one task that I'm doing by hand that I could have now automated?

• Which new automation saved me the most time this week?

• What's a new task I can create?

  
  

  

  
  

The more you automate, the more time you save for growing the business from a strategic standpoint instead of working in it day-to-day. The goal is not to automate everything at once but instead, reclaim time for you in as many small amounts as possible, over time, from redundant tasks.

If you run into trouble, Make.com's support resources are incredible, but if you need help beyond that, Knowbie is here for you. The more you automate, the more hours you'll get back because hours in small business are money.

Take Your Email Marketing to New Heights

Once you learn how to control your first automation, you'll want to learn how to connect other workflows; for example, email marketing automation is one of the best things you can do as a small business (from anywhere in Canada).Your familiarity with Make.com will transfer to email marketing systems like Mailchimp. Whether nurturing leads, re-engaging customers, or converting sales, you can do it all without lifting a finger.

Do you want to create email sequences that run while you sleep? Check out this article: How to Set Up An Automated Mailchimp Email Campaign Using Make.com: Complete Guide For Canadian Small Businesses. It walks you through the process step-by-step to connect Make.com with Mailchimp so you can have your revenue-generating campaigns running without you.

Want to challenge yourself? Take one grinding task that you do and this week, set aside some time to use Make.com to ensure it's no longer on your to-do list in the future.

Need Assistance Getting Started?

Even with a dedicated step by step guide, there's much to digest and you're not alone in piecing through it all.

Knowbie assists Canadian small businesses with implementing automation that makes sense. We'll evaluate your biggest time sucks, implement the first few workflows and teach you how to sustain/properly adjust going forward.

Ready to get your time back? Contact Knowbie and we'll get you set up with your first automation!