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Tag course waitlist signups in Kit

Waitlist signups arrive in Kit tagged course-waitlist, ready to email as one segment on launch day.

When this happens

New waitlist form submitted

Do this

Add the subscriber and apply a "course-waitlist" tag in Kit

One-directional. A submission triggers the action — nothing is written back into your form.

Interest collected weeks before a launch is only useful if it is still findable on launch day. A tag does that job: everyone who asked sits in one Kit segment, separate from the rest of the list, and gets the doors-open email while the general newsletter gets a quieter mention.

Course creators and cohort programmes run this between launches. The reason people give for wanting the course travels into Kit alongside the tag, which is the material you write the launch emails from rather than guessing at it.

Setting it up

  1. 1

    Publish the waitlist form on the course page with Your Name and Email Address required, and leave the rest optional so the list actually fills.

  2. 2

    Create the course-waitlist tag in Kit first. Zapier reads the tag list when you connect the account, so a tag made afterwards will not be selectable.

  3. 3

    In Zapier, set the New Submission trigger to the waitlist form and pull a sample so the field names appear in the mapping dropdowns.

  4. 4

    Add Kit's Add Tag to Subscriber action and choose course-waitlist. This creates the subscriber if they are new and tags them if they already exist.

  5. 5

    Map Email Address to the subscriber email and Your Name to first name.

  6. 6

    Map What are you hoping to use this for? and How did you hear about us? to Kit custom fields — the first is launch copy, the second tells you which channel filled the list.

  7. 7

    Add a second Kit action, Add Subscriber to Form, if waitlisters should also join your main list. Keep the tag in either case, because the tag is what you segment on later.

  8. 8

    Test with one submission, check the tag on the subscriber record in Kit, then switch the Zap on.

What maps where

Using the Waitlist Signup Form as the starting point. These are its real fields — swap in your own and the mapping works the same way.

Form fieldKit (ConvertKit)
Your NameKit subscriber first name
Email AddressKit subscriber email address
Company (optional)Kit custom field: company
What are you hoping to use this for?Kit custom field: waitlist_goal
How did you hear about us?Kit custom field: source

Variations worth knowing

A tag per cohort

Running the same course twice a year leaves the old waitlist mixed in with the new one. Name the tag after the intake — course-waitlist-autumn — and change it in the Zap when the next round opens. The old tags stay behind as a record of who never enrolled.

Warm the list while it waits

Add a Kit sequence alongside the tag: three short emails about the problem the course solves, spaced across the wait. The tag still does the launch-day segmenting, and the sequence stops a list going cold between the signup and the announcement.

If something isn't arriving

The tag exists in Kit but Zapier's dropdown will not show it.

Zapier caches the tag list from when the Kit account was connected. Refresh the field first; if it still does not appear, reconnect the Kit account under Zapier's app connections and reopen the action step.

Waitlist signups are receiving launch emails early.

Add Tag to Subscriber sends nothing by itself, but a Kit automation watching that tag will. Open Automations in Kit and look for a rule triggered by course-waitlist before assuming the Zap is at fault.

Frequently asked questions

How do I see how many people are on the waitlist?

Filter Kit's subscriber view by the course-waitlist tag for the live count, and check the responses view for the submission count. The two can differ, because repeat signups from one address collapse into a single subscriber in Kit.

Is a tag better than a separate Kit form for a waitlist?

A tag is easier to remove after the launch and sits alongside whatever else the subscriber carries. A separate Kit form gives its own confirmation email and its own reporting. Using both — form for the confirmation, tag for the segment — covers each need.

What happens to the tag once the course opens?

Nothing automatic. Kit keeps it until you remove it, which is useful: you can email everyone who joined the waitlist and did not enrol. Bulk-remove the tag from Kit's subscriber view once the launch is finished and the follow-ups are done.

Related automations

Build the form first

The automation needs somewhere to fire from. Publish a form, connect it once, and every submission from then on runs this flow.

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