Someone joins your community on a Monday. Your welcome email lands right away. They log in, poke around, maybe open the Start Here space.
You fully intend to send them a personal hello. You’re also on client calls until Thursday, and by the time you get to it, the list of new people is longer than your afternoon.
You meant to say hello. You just can’t keep doing it by hand.
This is how to set up automated Circle DMs with Zapier: one Zap that sends every new member two personal messages, with their name in them, timed around your welcome emails, while you get on with everything else.
Why Automate Welcome DMs Instead of Sending Them Yourself?
Sending every welcome DM by hand stops being sustainable as your community grows. Automating it keeps the personal touch without you having to remember to send a single one.
A new member’s first few interactions set the tone for everything after. Circle’s built-in welcome message helps, but it reads like a welcome message. A direct message with their name in it reads like someone noticed they showed up.
That noticing matters more than it looks. A quiet, unacknowledged first week is often why new members leave your community without ever saying so.
The problem is volume. Manual DMs work beautifully at five members a month and fall apart at fifty. Zapier lets you keep the personal version and hand off the remembering.
Once it’s built, it runs in the background. And it’s simpler than it looks, even if you’ve never built a Zap before.
If you’d rather do this entirely inside Circle, there’s a workflow version too. The video is linked further down.
What Do You Need Before You Build the Zap?
You need Zapier already connected to your Circle community, your DM copy written out in a doc, and a test account inside Circle to send test messages to.
Get these in place first so the build itself takes minutes:
- Circle connected to Zapier. This walkthrough assumes the integration is already set up. If it isn’t, do that before you start.
- Your messages, written somewhere else. Draft both DMs in a note or document and paste them in. It’s much easier than writing inside the Zapier field.
- A test account in your community. A second Circle account, tied to an email you own, that can receive your test DMs. More on why below.
How Should Automated DMs Fit Around Your Welcome Emails?
Treat your DMs as a partner to your welcome email series, not a replacement. I send the first DM one day after someone joins and the second three days later, with emails in between.
The emails do the orienting. The DMs do the talking. When both land at once, a new member gets buried on day one and tunes out both.
So the timing is deliberate. The email fires the moment someone joins. That gives them a day to get into the community and find the Start Here space before your first DM shows up. If you don’t have an email sequence yet, an onboarding email series is the place to start.
Here’s the rhythm I use:
- Day 0: Welcome email, sent on join
- Day 1: First DM
- Days 2 and 3: Emails keep doing their job
- Day 4: Second DM
The whole point is to stay present without over-communicating. Map your DMs against your emails before you build anything.
How Do You Set Up Automated Circle DMs in Zapier?
Create a Zap with Circle’s New Member Added trigger, then add a one-day delay, a Send Direct Message action, a three-day delay, and a second DM. Test it, then publish.
Set the trigger
The trigger is what starts the Zap. Here, it’s someone joining your community.
What that looks like:
- In Zapier, create a new Zap and give it a name you’ll recognize later
- Choose Circle as the trigger app
- Set the trigger event to New Member Added
- Choose your account and your community (if you only have one, it’s already selected)
- Test the trigger and continue with the sample record it pulls in
Add the first delay
This is what keeps your DM from landing on top of your welcome email.
What that looks like:
- Add a step and choose Delay
- Set the action event to Delay For
- Enter 1 and choose days
- Continue and test the step
Add the first direct message
This is the message that makes joining feel personal.
What that looks like:
- Add another Circle step and choose Send Direct Message
- Choose your community again
- For the user email, click the plus sign and pull in the email from your Circle trigger step. That’s how Zapier knows who gets the DM
- Paste your message body in from your doc
- Where you want their name, click the plus sign and pull in First Name from the trigger
- Continue, check the preview, and test the step
Read that preview properly. It’s exactly what a new member will see.
Add the second delay and the follow-up
Same pattern, one more time.
What that looks like:
- Add a Delay For step set to 3 days
- Add another Circle Send Direct Message step
- Choose your community, map the user email, paste in the follow-up, and add First Name
- Test the step
Publish it
Once everything checks out, publish the Zap. From here, every new member gets both messages without you touching it.
How Do You Test a Zap Without Messaging a Real Member?
Swap the user email in each DM step to your own test account before you hit Test step. Otherwise the test DM goes to a real member, who has no idea why it arrived.
This is the step people skip, and it’s the one that causes the awkward moment. When you test a Send Direct Message step, Zapier really sends it, to the real member in your sample record.
So while you’re building, put in the email tied to your test account instead of mapping it from the trigger. The DM lands there, and you can see exactly how it looks and whether it works.
Once you’re happy with both:
- Go back into each DM step
- Replace your test email with the user email from the Circle trigger
- Skip the final test, since you already know it works
If you don’t have a test account inside your community yet, make one anyway. It’s the safest way to try any new feature and see what your members will actually see.
What Else Can a Zapier DM Workflow Do?
Two messages is the starting point. The same Zap can stretch into a longer sequence, pull profile details into the greeting, or send different messages depending on the plan or tier someone joined.
You don’t have to stop at two. Some directions worth building toward:
- A longer welcome sequence. More DMs, spread over more days, still spaced around your emails.
- More personal greetings. Pull information from member profiles into the message, not just the first name.
- Messages by plan or tier. Someone on your top tier and someone on a free plan probably need different first messages.
Zapier does have limits, so keep each Zap straightforward. Simple automations still make a real difference to a member’s first experience.
If you want recognition happening inside Circle too, Circle member tags that automate onboarding pair well with this. And for the full picture of how DMs, emails, and your Start Here space fit together, here’s how to build a community onboarding process that sticks.
Try This Prompt
If you sell more than one plan or tier, this drafts a matched set of welcome DMs for each, ready to drop into separate Zaps.
“I run a [type of community] on Circle for [who it serves]. I offer these plans or tiers: [list them, with one line on what each includes]. New members get a welcome email on join, and I’m sending an automated DM on day one and a follow-up DM on day four. For each tier, draft two short DMs in a warm, conversational voice that use [First Name] as a placeholder, point to the one first step that matters most for that tier, and end with a question they can answer in one line. Give me the output as a table with columns for tier, day one DM, and day four DM.”
Read each draft out loud before it goes into Zapier. If it doesn’t sound like you, it won’t feel personal to them.
Automation Should Make Room for You, Not Replace You
It’s tempting to see a Zap like this as a way to step back from new members. It’s the opposite.
The automation handles the part that depends on your memory and your calendar. It makes sure nobody slips through on a busy week.
What it frees up is your attention for the conversations that actually need you: the member who replies to that first DM, the question nobody else can answer, the thread that’s about to take off.
Let the Zap say hello. You show up for what comes next.
Watch the Video
New videos go up every Thursday on Your Community Strategist.
Watch This One
More like it on Your Community Strategist, new every Thursday.
More Like This
Listen: Engage Mode: Activated! Crafting a Welcome Series That Captivate. The email side of the rhythm your DMs are timed around.
Listen: How to Build a Community Onboarding Process That Sticks. The full system this Zap slots into, from first email to first post.
Watch: How to Create Member Tags and Automate Onboarding in Your Circle Community. Add visible recognition once your welcome DMs are running.
Watch: Transform Your “Start Here” Space: Streamline Onboarding for Your Circle Community. Build the place your first DM points new members to.
Keep Going
coCreator Society is where community builders and membership founders work through this together, with the templates, the walkthroughs, and people who are one step ahead of you. Join coCreator Society
If you would rather not do this part alone, Rachel and the team build, migrate, and run communities for founders who need it done properly the first time. Talk to the team
Comments +
Comments