What is automation in business?

And how to make it work without losing the personal touch.  

If you think you don’t know what business automation is, think again. I bet you’ve seen it or been the recipient of it and didn’t even notice. 

That’s when you know it’s done well! 

When automations are done correctly, they guide your client down the right pathway for their needs or towards the answers they want from you. 

It’s a way of doing routine tasks automatically, removing the manual aspect that would usually take your time.

One quick tip – they are NOT a replacement for your services or magic personal touch. They are simply a way to move contacts along ‘automatically’ rather than manually completing the process.

Let’s quickly define business automation and marketing automation.

Active Campaign (a major CRM perfect for automation funnels) states, ‘An automation is a sequence of events that you create to help execute your business processes’. 

Neil Patel (SEO & marketing god) states, ‘Marketing automation is the process of using software and technology to optimise, automate and measure repetitive online marketing tasks’.

How automation can work for your business

The best thing about automation is that you can decide what you want to manage yourself and what you want systems to manage for you. The goal is to optimise your time. 

Automation has a place and purpose and is a way to automate tasks for repetitive work – it should never replace YOUR work. 

To start, look at your business and establish how automation can fit in. 

There are so many things you can automate:

• Your sales and marketing funnels (from emails, landing pages or social media)
• Sending birthday messages
• A welcome message 👋  when they sign up for a newsletter
• Delivering the opt-in or freebie
• Sending a podcast 🎙️ or blog RSS feed to subscribers
• Welcoming students to a course when they enrol
• Staged emails that encourage students throughout the course or to drip feed content
• Congratulating students when they complete a module or finish the course
• Abandoned cart 🛒  emails (I bet you’ve received these – haven’t we all?!)
• Sending surveys to customers ✏️  📋
• Cleaning up your contact lists
• And so much more – the possibilities are endless

The business software we love for marketing (and general) automation

1. Active Campaign

This platform is used for email marketing, and once set up, it saves you loads of time. It’s relatively straightforward to use, and they have help if you get stuck. 

A series of events are ‘triggered’ either manually (you hit the go button) or automatically (they sign up for something), and the process to guide them down the funnel is mapped out. 

You will have all the emails written (so it’s in your voice, and your audience will feel it’s directly from you); however the system is sending these as needed rather than you sending each one manually. 

It’s such a time saver, and you’ll love it! 

2. Dubsado

Automations in Dubsabo are called ‘workflows’. This software is excellent for tasks such as onboarding new clients. It can take clients on the entire journey of onboarding: lead calls, terms and conditions, job arrangements or specifics, contract signing, invoicing, additional projects, and so much more. 

It’s adaptable to suit your business, and you can include what you need to send to your clients throughout your working relationship with them.

Disclosure: Some of the links provided in this blog are affiliate links. I only promote services that I personally use and love. I will be paid a small commission if you use this link to make a purchase.

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