Growing your business needn’t be an uphill battle. Powerful user-friendly tools can eliminate those pesky time-sinking tasks and relieve the burden of manually processing data for hours on end. How? With the power of automation.
Our working lives rely on technology now more than ever. The pandemic was a catalyst for this shift in thinking, with most companies giving their employees the opportunity for ‘hybrid’ working, or allowing teams to go 100% remote in its wake. Crucially, the business world is undergoing a digital transformation, and automation is at the forefront of it all.
The automation tools we have at our disposal are many, and range from basic scripts used to digitize repetitive tasks to complex processes leveraging machine learning and advanced algorithms. Below, we’ll go into three key ways automation can supercharge your business.
It Can Help You Scale Up Your Email Marketing
Staggeringly, recent research shows that email drives an ROI of $36 for every dollar spent, Email is one of the best ways you can communicate with your prospective customers directly, and automation can augment its effectiveness dramatically.
For example, you could configure your system so that every account creation on your store triggered a 60-minute countdown. If a new user hadn’t completed a purchase by the time their countdown finished, they would receive an automated email asking them if they’d like to learn more about your products — and any resulting leads would go to your sales team. It’s
This works great for your loyal customer base too. Set your automation software up to count exactly how many unique emails are opened by your mail recipients. Once a customer has read 10 emails, an automated process can categorize them as ‘highly engaged’ (likely with high lifetime value), allowing you to target them with tailored campaigns in the future, leading to a greater chance of conversion going forwards.
When choosing which kind of email automation software to use, focus on the factors that are most important to your businesses needs. There are all manner of specialist tools available for niche needs, but any automation software worth its salt should be capable of:
- Ecommerce Integration. You need to be able to trigger email sends based on actions users take when browsing your website.
- Can You Get Creative? Does the software integrate with your existing CRM software? The more you can customize your messages, the better.
- You’ll want to find out exactly which campaigns are performing well, so choose software that that allows you to assess the metrics in real time. This data will inform your marketing strategy, so you need as much information as you can get.
It Can Significantly Polish Your Customer Service
No matter which way you slice it, customer service is key to creating a loyal consumer base — and in the age of instant gratification, customer service standards are higher than ever before. Used well, automation can greatly bolster your support system, allowing you to meet expectations and even exceed them.
Consider that shoppers now expect their questions answered instantly (or at least extremely quickly). Leave them hanging and you’ll see them head elsewhere. Taking advantage of automation can ensure that you’re not wholly reliant upon your customer service team being active. At night, or during holidays, you can automatically dole out relevant information.
If you’re not already doing so, you should make it a priority to implement chatbot software. Using an automated system (Crisp being a really solid example), you can seamlessly add chatbot functionality to your store. Create some scripts with relevant resources (such as regularly-updated FAQ articles) and you’ll establish a worthwhile 24/7 presence.
Couple this with a live chat system and you can achieve the perfect balance between human expertise and automated efficiency. When your chatbot system is capable of understanding and resolving a problem, it can do so without any manual effort — but when it can’t usefully interpret a user request, it can rapidly escalate the issue by pushing it to the customer service team for a live chat. Efficiency and quality.
It Can Upgrade Your UX Personalization
If you’re running an online store, you can use automation tools to ensure that every shopper experiences your website in a unique way. You can do this by taking advantage of the data gathered during visits. Location, browsing behavior, even purchase history when a visitor has bought from you before: all of this information can inform your customer journeys.
For example, if you own an online store selling sports clothing and you receive a visit from a logged-in customer who’s previously purchased yoga pants, a dynamic area of your homepage can automatically populate with products relevant to their interests. Combine this with unique marketing emails (and associated discounts) for maximal impact.
Personalization is far from easy, but it’s absolutely worth investing in. The more you can tailor each customer’s experiences, the more you’ll reap the rewards through further conversions, larger orders, and organic peer recommendations.
Is your store lagging behind? Have your sales slowed to a halt? If you’re looking to accelerate your growth, take some time to consider how best to implement automation into your business. Hopefully we’ve thrown some good starting points onto the table. While it may take a little time to get set, we’re sure you’ll agree that the potential rewards are well worth the effort.
