How to boost your business with digital automation

By Nick Harrison

Any business, small or large, has numerous functions it has to deal with on a daily basis. Some of those functions can end up being very time-consuming and, worse, distracting.

Fortunately, there are some ways to automate and plan digitally to reduce the load or increase sales conversions.

1. Auto response emails: When used correctly, automatic emails can have a ton of benefits. One — which my clients have had great success with — automatically sends out an email when a user fills out the contact form on their website. This email thanks the users for filling out the form and tells them a representative will contact them shortly. It helps to plant your company in users’ minds even more because, even though the communication is automatic, there is a new level of engagement as the company responds to users right away. I’ve found this can help detour the users from going to other websites. It is also very helpful in e-commerce to confirm to users that their order was placed and that it was shipped, which can result in fewer calls to your customer service team.

2. User recapture marketing: This is known by several other names, including “drift marketing.” The idea: recapturing the user who either got distracted (happens way more than someone might think) or meant to come back later and complete a task but forgot about it or maybe just needed the added nudge. If a user has items in his shopping cart or wish list, or simply didn’t complete an application, an email is sent automatically based on set parameters (a number of days or hours when no action has been taken) without the company having to do anything. This program has been helpful for my clients. We are in a world of constant distractions, and sometimes a user just gets sidetracked.

3. Content scheduling: One issue with having a blog or content that is constantly changing is that if it is not scheduled, it can always take time out of your busy day and distract you from things like calling clients, selling and running the business. It helped our company greatly by setting up our content changes during the weekend or at non-busy times, so that they would be published automatically when we set a time and date. If you have ADHD like me, having to stop everything to make content changes can make you lose focus on other things that might be more important.

4. Preplanning social media: Tools like Hootsuite make it easy to plan social media posts for anything from publicizing your blog posts and content (our internal office term is “pimping out”) to asking customers a question, to any type of tweet, Facebook post, etc. Social media can be extremely distracting and time-consuming. One of the reasons that ROI is difficult with social media is that, when you’re distracted, social media can take up your whole day. By spending an hour and doing all of your content pimping, as well as your social advertising and other tweets for the week, you will save a lot of time and retain your focus. I have my account set up so that I am notified if someone mentions one of my Twitter accounts so that I don’t need to be on the social network to check and lose focus. I cannot recommend this enough.

5. Scheduling follow-ups and meetings: With software like Outlook, iCal and CRM, it is really easy to schedule follow-up calls and meetings. A lot of them can tie to your mobile device via applications. If you can get in the habit of digitally scheduling things, it can be much easier to actually make that follow-up call versus just seeing it in a notebook at the start of the day.

The more you use technology to do some of the work for you, the more time you will have to perform activities that really require your full attention — like taking care of your customers.

Nick Harrison is creative director for Chicago-based branding, web development and social media firm Dashal, whose client roster ranges from small businesses to best-selling authors to major consumer brands.

Follow Nick on Twitter: @HarrisonNick.

Join Crain’s LinkedIn group for Chicago entrepreneurs. And stay on top of Chicago business with Crain’s free daily e-newsletters.Nick Harrison is creative director for Chicago-based branding, web development and social media firm Dashal, whose client roster ranges from small businesses to best-selling authors to major consumer brands.

Follow Nick on Twitter: @HarrisonNick.

Join Crain’s LinkedIn group for Chicago entrepreneurs. And stay on top of Chicago business with Crain’s free daily e-newsletters.

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