How Zapier Gets Customers

Limitless possibilities are exciting.

It is also paralyzing.

That tension sits at the heart of how Zapier thinks about growth, marketing, and customer acquisition today.

I sat down with Dan Slagen, VP of Marketing at Zapier, to talk about how they approach getting customers in a world where automation, AI, and “you can build anything” tools are exploding faster than most teams can keep up.

What you’ll read below is drawn directly from that conversation. Some of these are Dan’s words. Some are mine, shaping the story. All of it reflects how Zapier is navigating one of the most complex go to market challenges in software right now.

Dan joined Zapier after spending six years at Tomorrow.io, a company where the problem was similar in spirit. Weather affects every business, but in wildly different ways. Zapier faces the same challenge. Every team, every company, every role can use automation, but not in the same way.

The danger is obvious. When a product can solve everything, people do not know where to start.

When Dan got his new laptop, YouTube history was turned off. 

No feed. 

No algorithm. 

Suddenly his usage dropped. No doom scrolling. No endless discovery. Just a blank slate.

That is what it feels like when someone opens Zapier for the first time.

Unless you put something structured in front of them, they are left staring at possibility instead of progress.

This insight drives a huge amount of Zapier’s marketing strategy. The goal is not to show everything the platform can do. The goal is to help people solve one real problem, build confidence, and then expand from there.

Dan sees this mirrored in the current AI moment. Management expectations are racing ahead. Tools are multiplying. Confidence is lagging behind. Helping people master one workflow or one use case creates momentum that no high level positioning ever could.

At a tactical level, Dan wants the team focused on today.

Those daily and weekly muscles matter because growth happens in execution.

At the same time, Zapier plans far ahead. Dan mentioned planning out through 2027 at a high level, with more detailed planning completed for the first half of the year.

The difference compared to earlier stage companies is scale and stability. Zapier is at a stage where long range planning is possible, but only if the team stays grounded in what is actually happening on the ground.

Zapier uses a fairly traditional OKR system, but with one major twist.

The entire go to market organization shares the same top level goals.

Marketing, sales, and customer teams are all working off the same four OKRs.

That level of alignment is rare and it removes a huge amount of friction. There is no debate about whose number matters more or which team is pulling in a different direction. Everyone is accountable to the same outcomes.

This matters even more because Zapier serves multiple segments, from self serve and PLG all the way up to large enterprise. Each motion has its own plan and team, but they all roll up to the same shared goals.

Dan runs a weekly marketing leadership meeting with a group of about eight or nine leaders.

He listed the functional owners as:

Dan is also covering brand in a more hands on way right now, in a player-coach mode.

Those weekly meetings focus on business metrics, major programs, what is working, what is not, and short range planning so they stay on track.

Dan stepped into a very different environment than his previous role. He went from running a 4-person team to joining a marketing organization of roughly 70 people inside a 1,000 person company.

Dan made changes quickly after joining, based on where he knew the company wanted to go in 2026 and beyond.

He also talked about the broader evolution of the company as it moved upmarket and served larger businesses.

While the structure largely makes sense, Dan sees the team at an inflection point that every modern marketing org is facing:

He gave one concrete example: video production.

Dan framed Zapier as being in a really interesting phase.

The company was already on a good growth path, and the AI wave opened up a new set of opportunities.

That changes the profile of people he wants to hire.

He’s looking for people who can operate in the core business and also live inside the emerging part that shifts constantly.

But you can’t hire purely early stage chaos energy either. It’s still a 1,000 person company. There is structure. There are rhythms. There are processes.

The hard part is finding the middle.

Dan’s answer was honest: it’s spread across systems.

He mentioned:

At this scale, the marketing org lives on visibility. If you can’t see what’s happening across programs, it’s hard to steer.

Dan has stepped into roles before where a company had been searching for a marketing leader for a long time. He knows the discomfort that comes with it.

You have to earn trust.

You have to decide what to change and what to leave alone.

You have to listen without freezing.

In Zapier’s case, clarity from the CEO made a big difference. Dan and Wade were blunt with each other from the start about expectations, involvement, and boundaries. That clarity allowed Wade to step away from day to day marketing oversight and focus elsewhere in the business.

Trust can’t be built through performative alignment.

Zapier takes “using your own product” seriously.

Dan described a constant internal question. Could this have been automated more without sacrificing quality.

Performance reviews. Internal processes. Documentation. Marketing workflows. 

Everything is up for scrutiny.

One interesting structural choice is that Zapier’s Chief People Officer also acts as Chief AI Transformation Officer. Each team has AI captains focused on fluency, tooling, and day to day usage.

A recurring challenge is not interest in AI, but adoption friction. Legal processes, procurement delays, and internal constraints often slow teams down. Zapier invests time and people to reduce that drag.

1. Education.

Dan was careful not to claim uniqueness, but the depth of commitment stands out.

Zapier leads with education and thought leadership because it has earned the right to. Wade, their CEO, spends an enormous amount of time with customers, learning how they work and where they get stuck. Those insights flow directly into public education through content, speaking, and community.

2. Zapier also runs highly curated in person experiences called AI Outposts.

These are not slide decks and keynotes. They are multi day working sessions where people get hands on with tools, build workflows, and leave with real progress.

Many attendees expect inspiration. They get execution.

That gap is intentional.

Zapier also has a massive top of funnel. A major part of the strategy is deciding where to focus energy and which opportunities are worth advancing deeper.

Dan pushed back on the idea that the CMO role is disappearing.

If anything, brand matters more than ever.

The challenge is that brand planning cannot be static. Zapier operates in a market that shifts weekly. It makes no sense to lock into a rigid annual brand plan.

Instead, the brand needs a clear hierarchy and enough flexibility to move as the market moves. That includes how brand programs are funded and measured. Zapier thinks in terms of performance branding rather than pure awareness or pure direct response.

Brand is expected to drive results. Just not always immediately.

Zapier constantly asks whether it is automating enough internally.

Dan also highlighted a broader reflection happening across the company. In a world of AI and automation, what does a great employee look like?

For Dan, many traits he used to list now collapse into one word.

Bandwidth.

Not hours worked.

Not hustle.

The ability to operate across domains.

Someone who can think about brand and direct response. Data and people. Systems and storytelling. Zapier needs generalists who actively increase their own bandwidth through tools and systems.

In interviews, Dan asks candidates to describe a packed week. The answers reveal far more than resumes ever could.

1. Send this in a DM to your teammate:

“Lindsay - I read about how Dan Slagen from Zapier gets customers and how they run marketing inside a 1,000-person company. There's 3 things in there that'll really help our team.”

2. Meeting with your boss:

“Read this recently about how Zapier aligns marketing, sales, and customer teams on the exact same OKRs + what they're asking about AI that most companies aren't. Might be worth bookmarking.”

3. Linkedin Post:

Most companies have infinite use cases

and no idea where to start. Zapier is no different. Here's how Dan Slagen builds pipeline at scale…(+ connect with & tag Dan!)

OR, share with them one of the 14 other behind-the-scenes case studies I’ve done from companies like ActiveCampaign, Help Scout, Jasper and others 👇