Work & OperationsDone with Zapier Agents
Draft replies to podcast listener emails and log story ideas
Blake Oliver's Zapier Central agent watches Gmail for contact-form emails, drafts replies, and copies each original into a Notion database of story ideas.
- What They Did
- Blake built an agent called Email Assistant in Zapier Central with access to his Gmail. A behavior written in plain English triggers on new emails from the podcast contact form. The agent drafts a reply in his voice in the same thread, pulls the listener's address into the To field, and signs off. It then creates a Notion page with a topic title, a summary and the full message. He reviews drafts himself.
- How It Went
- The behavior worked on his test email. It was one of three behaviors he tried, though. The other two had issues, and he says agents are far from perfect.
- Worth Knowing
- The agent was limited to two actions, drafting replies and creating Notion items, so it could not send email. Blake suggests full automation only for low-risk cases such as sending a W-9.
Try it yourself with Zapier Agents
Create a Zapier Agent that watches [my Gmail label or address] for emails that arrive from [my website contact form]. For each one, draft a reply in a [warm and concise] tone and save it as a Gmail draft, and add the original message as a new entry in my [Notion database of story ideas]. Never send an email automatically; leave every reply as a draft for me to review. You're done when a test email gets both a draft reply and a Notion entry.