When you have a team your day might feel completely out of your control. You have your own list of items to get done, however, if your team needs support then you’re there to help them and keep things moving.
One way to help alleviate this is creating automations and information holding areas so that people have places to go to find information. It will also help take work off your plate as repeated tasks will be no more (sort of)!
What types of tasks can you automate?
Here’s the beautiful thing, any task can be automated. The general rule of thumb is that if you do the same task 3 times then its time to automate. This could include things like:
🔹 customer follow-up.
🔹 sending emails.
🔹 scheduling appointments.
🔹 reporting.
🔹 task management.
The sky’s the limit!
How to you decide what tasks to automate?
There are two things to consider here.
1. Your individual tasks.
2. The tasks your team have.
Save time on your end by automating tasks in your world. The bigger time saver can be your team. What tasks are they each doing that could be replicated and save time. So many times people don’t realize that they’re duplicating efforts. A simple conversation about what’s on people’s plates can help with this.
To get started, keep a list of the tasks you do each day. Do this for a week. Don’t worry about looking at it each day. Instead at the end of the week take a look at those tasks and categorize them in whatever way makes sense for you.
Take a look at tasks that show up multiple times a day or week. How can you make that more effecient? In some cases it might mean batching, or taking a group of tasks and doing them 1 or 2 times a week instead of multiple times. Then for others creat automations.
Here are some ways to automate!
#1 – Customer FollowUp
When a customer places an order this is the perfect time to connect with them and engage. Afterall, customer retention is critical to a thriving business. There are several ways you can automate this.
Email welcome sequence.
As soon as someone places an order it can trigger an email sequence. This sequence gives them more information on the product, how they can use it and more about why your business is awesome.
You can even go crazy and automate different types of email sequences. Maybe you have one for returning customers or for different product lines. For example, if they ordered before but are now ordering from a different product category they still might get a different welcome sequence.
Text messages.
Text is a great way to communicate with your customers. Similarly to what you’d do with email, you can do the same with text.
You can even combine a mixture of email and text to reach people in multiple places.
#2 – Scheduling
One of the things I used to waste so much time on was booking calls and scheduling appointment. Is this time good for you? What time zone are you in? And then the back and forth and back and forth. It’s exhausting!
Having an automatic scheduler saves a lot of time. Plus you can have multiple calendar options with a variety of availablity and still keep control of your calendar.
#3 – Project Management
This one is a biggie, and one of my favs.
Create templates
You probably have projects or tasks that you do over and over again. Create a template in your PM tool that you can upload each time you need to do it. This is great for events, content planning, product launches, etc.
With most tools you can also assign tasks to various people in your team. That way everyone that needs to participate in that project will be notified of what’s on deck.
Build in dependencies
Similar to your templates, this allows a new task to be opened when a previous task is completed. Think about it like a factory assembly line! This could be a list of tasks for you to complete or for a team.
For example, if you’re launching a new product it might look like:
- create social graphics
- write emails
- schedule emails
- schedule social graphics
- go live on social media
With each task only showing up when the previous one is completed you won’t be overwhelmed with a whole list of things. It’s just about getting the one thing done. You would set deadlines of course to keep you on track!
#4 – Email Nurture Sequences
We all know that customers don’t purchase the first time they encounter us, our product or our business. That means that we need to find ways to keep them in our circle until they’re ready to buy.
A great way to do that is creating a lead magnet or freebie that they get in exchange for their email address.
Then similarly to your customer follow up you would enter them into a welcome email sequence with more information on how they can use that freebie and about your product. This works for both physical and service based products.
#5 – Build a Knowledge Base
Now this isn’t an auotmation in the sense that tech takes over and handle a task for you. However, this is a space that people can find the information they need on their own. A space where replictaed tasks and laid out so they can be handled by anyone that needs to do it.
Building a knowledge base can be overwhelming, however you just start with one thing at a time. Think about the questions that you get asked over and over and start there. Then go through the list of tasks you did at the beginning of this and start putting those down somewhere. Finally, go through the tasks that multiple people on the team and make sure everyone is doing it the same ways, the most effecient way.
What tech to use for the automations
There are so many ways you can set up these automations. Here are a few that are my favorites. *Full disclosure, some of these links are affiliate links. If you choose to purchase we may receive a small commission.Â
It is important to note that these are some of my favorite tools. There are lots of options out there, so use what makes sense for you in both integration and budget.
Email Marketing
Text Messaging
Scheduling
Knowledge Base
Project Management
Conclusion
Always remember to pay attention to the tasks on your plate. What are you doing repeatedly that you can automate to save time. Have. afavorite tool of your own? I’d love to hear about it.