To optimize production processes, many companies choose to automate certain recurring tasks via marketing automation tools. Mainly used by VSEs and SMEs, automation consists of moderating or even eliminating low value-added processes that are repeated on a daily basis. A real time saver, this automation solution also helps to boost employee motivation to focus on other important tasks. How to automate recurring tasks?
Why should repetitive tasks be automated?
In recent years, marketing automation has revolutionized the way marketing teams connect with their audience to drive conversions. While 91% of users rate this marketing strategy as “very important” to their overall marketing success across all channels, 63% outperform their competitors with it. It is therefore a real investment to make to differentiate your company.
Within the company, tasks and all information can be exchanged easily and in real time thanks to automation. Information circulates more quickly, thus supporting the decision-making of the leaders.
But automating repetitive tasks also saves time, especially in terms of team management and data entry. Human action is thus removed from certain processes so that you and your employees can focus on high value-added tasks such as converting prospects into customers and growing your business. Such a solution also makes the company more efficient and productive.
And by saving time and productivity, you make considerable savings in the long term, a considerable advantage for the smooth running of your business and for your customers. When essential missions are prioritized, you automatically improve customer follow-up. Faced with competition, this element becomes a real asset.
At the same time, the risk of human errors, such as inattention, omission or lack of concentration due to recurring and repetitive assignments, is mitigated with automation.
How to do ?
For a better breakdown and understanding of all the flows of your operations, make a diagram of your current tasks. Take the time to detail the different steps likely to interact with your processes to better understand your workflows.
Once you have gone through the different tasks performed within your company, determine which ones can be automated. For automation, favor processes that are repeated on a daily basis and that waste your employees’ time in order to improve their productivity and thus lighten the tasks they have to perform.
For example, you can organize the workflow in marketing automation as follows:
- Encourage readers to sign up for your mailing list: If you already have a website that gets traffic from search or social media, the best way to build your marketing automation list is to capture your readers’ email addresses by giving away content;
- Keep your membership promise: Once a user has signed up to receive your emails, start a conversation. The best way to do this is to keep your promise and submit the content you offered in your signup form;
- Offer additional content to identify the most motivated subscribers: you need to identify the subscribers most interested in your product or service. Then when a subscriber downloads the additional content, use an automation workflow to move them to a new list;
- Guide your marketing team: when your most motivated leads are automatically identified, all your marketing team needs to do is track subscribers who download your additional content through marketing automation tools;
- Motivate other prospects and re-engage them : Unless you have a highly motivated audience, most of your subscribers will not choose to receive your additional content immediately. However, you can motivate them over time by sending an interesting and helpful email.
Choose the tools best suited to your expectations according to your activity and the processes to be automated. Finally, don’t forget to train your employees in the use of marketing automation tools.
Precisely, which marketing automation tool to choose?
n8n
Self-hosted and open source, n8n is suitable for connecting different kinds of APIs apart from the 200 integrated applications, such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Dropbox, GitHub, Telegram, or NextCloud for example. Following the knot method, this tool makes it possible to complete the instructions to be personalized and integrated thanks to the visible source codes. Thanks to its low-code approach, n8n is suitable for creating more complex automations.
Zapier
With a clean interface, Zapier is the automation tool most used by entrepreneurs. To allow you to quickly focus on your main tasks, it automatically moves your data between your web applications. This complete software offers you connections with more than 3,000 digital tools.
Automate.io
Automate.io is a Zapier alternative, as it can connect more than 3,000 applications, and around 200 known tools for a price two to three times cheaper. You can also use a single trigger for multiple actions and can create simple workflows through a single action trigger.
Integromate
Integromat is also an alternative to Zapier and is particularly known for its complex automations. With around 500 interconnected applications, it remains a very complete platform. In just a few minutes you can connect to different applications, design, visualize and automate all your processes.