Firstly, when it comes to running a business, time is your most valuable asset – but time is limited, and there are numerous chores vying for your attention. You must ensure that the correct products are listed on your website, that orders and payments are processed and dispatched efficiently, and that marketing campaigns, user reviews, and customer service are all kept up to date… all while staying on top of marketing campaigns, user reviews, and customer service. (ecommerce business)
Your ecommerce operations will become increasingly more demanding as you scale.
So, how can you find time for the work that brings in more clients while keeping the rest of your life on track?
With the use of ecommerce automation.
Automation is playing an increasingly important part in the future of technology, and it’s no wonder that we’re seeing more of it in ecommerce solutions. It’s the key to putting your time-consuming chores on auto-pilot as a store owner.
In this post, we’ll define ecommerce automation and then show you 14 examples of how you can automate your online business.
What is the definition of ecommerce automation? (ecommerce business)
It entails converting manual operations into automated workflows through the use of software. Internal or external emails, notifications, or actions in other apps, such as opening new support tickets in your help desk, can all be triggered by these workflows. To ensure that everything runs well, you can specify numerous conditions that must be met in order for the workflow to run.
Although ecommerce automation saves time, it does not imply that you should fire your employees – or yourself. Rather, it frees up your team’s time for the most important aspects of your job: customer contacts, innovation, and big-picture thinking.
How to Automate Ecommerce Businesses in 14 Ways
Automation of the customer experience and management
1. Keep track of your most loyal consumers and thank them. (ecommerce business)
Do you give special treatment to your most loyal customers? All businesses, including ecommerce, benefit from customer retention.
It turns out that raising your retention rates by just 5% can increase your earnings by ranging from 25% to 95%.
You might automatically add a free gift or free delivery to purchases over $100 to reward client loyalty. You can also segment clients based on their lifetime spend and send them automated emails with rewards embedded using a solution like ActiveCampaign.
2. Create a Mailchimp list for your customers.
Mailchimp has native integrations with all of the biggest ecommerce platforms, including WooCommerce and Shopify. Make sure to sync your accounts if you’re utilizing the popular email marketing platform to distribute your newsletters and email marketing workflows.
A Mailchimp integration may automatically transmit the email addresses of customers who show interest in your emails to a specific Mailchimp list, allowing you to keep them up to date on your latest products and offers.
3. After a purchase, collect feedback.
Every ecommerce store understands the importance of honest feedback and reviews. It has the potential to build or break your company. Set up automatic email workflows to send follow-up emails a specified period of time after you complete the transaction to encourage reviews. Request candid comments and provide a link to where they can leave a review.
4.Respond to negative feedback.
If you get an unfavorable 1-star review, make sure you respond. To make it easier to reach out fast and make amends — or at the very least listen and comprehend what’s happened — you can set up an automatic to issue a support ticket in your helpdesk software.
5.Use tags and segments to categorize and segment customers depending on their purchasing habits.
Segmentation can assist you in better understanding your clients and staying on top of their various specific needs. You can categorize or segment customers based on demographics (such as gender or geography), lifetime order value, milestones, number of orders, or any subscriptions or memberships, for example, using a CRM.
6. Automate inventory management for low-stock items with inventory automation.
Running out of a product might result in lost revenue and dissatisfied customers. Automate your inventory management to avoid this. This way, you’ll know when a product is running low in supply.
Low stock notifications (depending on thresholds you establish) and out-of-stock notifications are both possible with Woocommerce. This way, you’ll know right away when you have to reorder a product in your inventor.
This ecommerce automation suite is only available through Shopify Pro, which isn’t inexpensive (you’ll need over $1 million in yearly revenue to justify it). It’s workflow-based, and it makes creating automation both within Shopify and with other apps via seamless interfaces really straightforward. It comes with automation templates that you can copy and modify to get start quickly.
Buyer experience, customers, inventory and merchandising, loyalty, orders, promotions, and risk are all covered by Shopify Flow automation templates.
7. Send emails to customers who have abandoned their carts.
They abandoned online shopping carts in 75% of cases. Abandoned cart reminders encourage customers to return to your site, and you don’t have to do anything because it is automation.
It’s simple to send abandoned cart emails by integrating your ecommerce software with a mailing service. Other native integrations between your ecommerce platform and transactional email providers are also worth considering.
8. If you’re looking for a way to make money on the side, consider dropshipping.
Did you know that some ecommerce companies use automation to fulfill and deliver orders? Dropshipping allows you to discover things, add them to your online store, and ship them directly to your consumers without having to keep inventory or take any risks.
Oberlo is a prominent dropshipping tool that was acquired by Shopify in 2017. It connects seamlessly with Shopify, allowing you to add dropshipped products to an existing Shopify store or create a new one specifically for your dropshipped items.
Finding products that match your store’s branding and quality criteria is the most difficult aspect of dropshipping.
9. Remind people to reorder consumables.
Are you in the business of selling food, health, or beauty products? When your clients’ consumables run out, they could be interested in repurchasing them.
Set up automated procedures to send reminder emails for these items once a specified amount of time has passed.
10. Use email marketing to convert prospects into consumers.
People aren’t always ready to buy straight immediately. Customers will go through a standard customer journey with your organization, with time spent in the research and consideration phases before opting to give you money.
You can foster this process with marketing content if someone has given you their email address and permission to reach them. Simply ensure that everything you send them is of high quality and value, such as discount vouchers or free gift offers.
11. Schedule your social media postings in advance.
If social networking is taking up too much of your time, there are several solutions available to help you do the work faster.
Post Studio Auto Posting is a Shopify app that will automatically post products to your Facebook and Twitter sites every day.
12.Use Trello, Asana, or Slack to organize your tasks.
If you’ve used automation to discover when a product is out of stock or a client has written a negative review, you’ll want to alert your team so they can take action. Besides, another advantage of automating is that you may tell your team using the internal systems you use the most, such as Trello, Asana, or Slack.
Above all, Arigato Automation offers 100+ pre-built automation tools for Shopify users, including data push to Google Sheets, Slack chats, Trello cards, and more.
13. Select a robust help desk application.
It’s critical to ensure that your customer service is covered as your ecommerce business grows. Moreover, one of the most effective methods to do this is to use help desk software.
You’ll be in the greatest position to consolidate your customer service in one place and get a clear view of tickets from all channels if you use a help desk platform. In conclusion, these solutions also provide you with a variety of choices for automating your client experience, such as bots and feedback surveys.
Source: ecommerce business , ecommerce store
