Gato GraphQL is a leading GraphQL tool for interacting with data in WordPress. It makes use of InstaWP to give potential customers the opportunity to explore the features of the commercial extensions of their WordPress plugin for free in a Sandbox website of their own before deciding to commit financially.
In this case study, we will learn about how Gato GraphQ used the InstaWP webhook feature to automatically send newsletter subscribers from InstaWP to Mailchimp for effective email marketing.
About Gato GraphQL
Gato GraphQL is a free plugin with premium extensions developed by Leonardo Losoviz.
Gato GraphQL was developed as a tool to help WordPress administrators interact with all forms of data in a WordPress website in order to retrieve, manipulate and restore any piece of WordPress data in any desired way using the GraphQL language, some of which can be found as recipes in the Gato GraphQL website.
Key Features
You can use Gato GraphQL to:
- Query data and complement WP-CLI to automate or execute admin tasks and adapt content in bulk in order to create a headless site, search/replace content for site migrations, update thousands of posts with a single action, etc.
- Duplicate, translate, import, customize, synchronize and distribute content for different users and to multiple downstream sites.
- Interact with public and private APIs as well as convert the data from a 3rd-party API into the required format.
- Send notifications when something happens (new post published, new comment added, etc) and a daily summary of activity to your email.
The Challenge
Gato GraphQL wanted to automatically capture the email from the visitors who ticked the “Subscribe to mailing list” checkbox while exploring their plugin on the InstaWP sandbox website and send it straight to their Mailchimp email list without any manual intervention.
Email marketing remains one of the best ways to reach out to both existing and potential customers and maximize profits. It is one of the oldest yet effective and cheapest ways to reach out to potential customers and leads and convert them into paying customers.
According to statistics, 64% of B2B marketers say their email marketing strategy was effective for meeting business goals in 2021 (HubSpot Blog Research, 2021), and 50% of people still buy from marketing emails at least once per month. (Salecycle, 2022).
For this reason, every business online usually makes every effort to capture the email addresses of anyone who shows interest in their product or service. Most businesses use free lead magnets to get their visitors to join their newsletters.
Gato GraphQL understands this fact, and that is why they continue to brainstorm effective ways to get potential customers added to their newsletter.
Since Gato GraphQL already makes use of InstaWP to provide potential customers with the opportunity to test drive Gato GraphQL with All Extensions for free in a sandbox website of their own before deciding to buy them, they figured they could utilize the free sandbox demo websites powered by InstaWP for lead generation.
And since Gato GraphQL makes use of Mailchimp for email marketing, it’s a no-brainer that they will want a way to automatically add their newsletter subscribers on InstaWP to their Mailchimp, where they already had their email marketing campaigns set up.
Gato’s Introduction to InstaWP
Gato GraphqL already makes use of InstaWP to give potential customers the opportunity to test out the features of the commercial extensions of their WordPress plugin for free by creating a sandbox website of their own before making the decision to buy them.
However, they upgraded their InstaWP subscription to the Personal plan for two main features that come with the plan:
- An increase in the lifespan of the sandbox sites from 4 hours to 7 days;
- A “subscribe to mailing list” option when a visitor tries to set up a sandbox site to test a product.
The Subscribe to mailing list option opens up the possibility for Leonardo to capture the emails of potential customers who subscribed to the newsletter while testing out the Gato GraphQL plugin.
How Does this Business Use InstaWP?
Using the webhook feature that comes with InstaWP Personal plan and the Make platform to create a webhook, it is possible to extract data from a newly-created sandbox website onto a Google sheet.
This can be used to obtain the emails of customers that subscribed to the newsletter which can then be imported into Mailchimp. However, this approach is manual, will require repetition, and will therefore be time-consuming.
Leonardo wanted an automated approach for Gato GraphQL. To solve the challenge of doing this manually and using secondary platforms (Make and Google sheet), Leonardo resolved to directly host a reserved site on InstaWP, install the Gato GraphQL plugin with the “All Extensions” Bundle (that includes the HTTP Client and all other required extensions) in the reserved site, and use it as what he called a cheap “API Gateway” instance.
Then, taking advantage of the Persisted Queries feature found in Gato GraphQL, he was able to code and store the logic to automate the process in a GraphQL query and generate a friendly webhook URL to access its output
With just the combination of InstaWP and Gato GraphQL, he was able to automatically receive the webhook payload, extract the data, and send it over to Mailchimp.
The Result
Now, when creating a new sandbox WordPress website on InstaWP to test Gato GraphQL, and the user signs up to the newsletter, the email is automatically added to his Mailchimp list. Gato GraphQL can then follow-up potential customers with email campaigns and get them to buy any of Gato GraphQL extensions or the “All Extensions” bundle, and increase revenue.
Right now, they are yet to get accurate data and metrics for how their use of InstaWP to add potential customers to their Mailchimp email list is impacting their leads generation, conversion, and revenue.
“Now, when creating a new sandbox site on InstaWP, and the user signs up to the newsletter, I automatically get that email added to my Mailchimp list.”
– Leonardo Losoviz, Founder, Gato GraphQL
Conclusion
Having a single plugin that allows you to make a lot of changes to your WordPress website and data is really amazing and that’s what you get when you install Gato GraphQL on your website. Over time, Gato GraphQL have benefited greatly from using InstaWP to allow visitors to play with the commercial extensions of their WordPress plugin in a sandbox site of their own, before deciding to buy them.
Now by upgrading to InstaWP Personal plan, they not only extended the time users can use to explore their extensions features, but they have also taken it up a notch by successfully integrating InstaWP’s webhook feature with their plugin commercial extension to automatically and seamlessly capture emails of their potential customers from InstaWP and transfer them to their Mailchimp email list for effective email marketing and remarketing, and business growth.
With this Gato GraphQL discovery, other InstaWP users might be able to achieve similar milestones with their demo sandbox websites and the Gato GraphQL and convert more potential customers into paying customers.
We look forward to hearing and sharing more success stories and milestones from InstaWP users. You, too, could be our next success story. If you have a plugin or theme that your potential customers need to explore, why not give InstaWP a try and see how your plugin or theme works and help you grow your business?
