• Do people constantly request the same piece of information from you?
• Do you constantly send the same document to people?
• Are you required to produce the same reports every month?
• Are there repetitive tasks that are required every week, month, quarter?

Does automation of routine business tasks sound like the Back to the Future hoverboard? Or the NBN? Something we all thought we would have by now but don’t.

Yes, yes, and yes. All of the above tasks can be taken care of by your website or automated. How can we automagically free you of these tedious items? Read on.

Information Requests
A well structured website can showcase products and services or act as a first port of call for support. Online tools help users evaluate and make decisions on your offering. For BaptistCare.org.au we created a calculator that helps users calculate their out of pocket expenses for Aged Care accomodation and compare the types of rooms available. 

Danes Specialty Coffee wanted to help customers "Find their taste". We created a Coffee Definer, users select how they drink their coffee - black or with milk and how they brew their coffee. The Coffee Definer then displays the perfect coffee for their taste and brewing method.

Offering guides, manuals and FAQs will save precious time on the phone or responding to emails. It also shows customers you care by providing additional and ongoing support. 

The website can also collect email addresses prior to download, building your email list. That’s customer care and a marketing goal - it’s a twofer!

Marketing Automation
Most people think of marketing automation for online purchases, a welcome email is sent when you sign up, a confirmation email is sent when you purchase and tracking email is sent when the product is dispatched.

This kind of automation can work just as well for support. Once the user has downloaded a document you can further assist them by activating an email sequence, that continues to offer supporting documentation and marketing collateral.

Mailchimp offers marketing automation that makes sure your emails get to the right people at the right time. You can target customers based on behaviour, preferences and previous sales or downloads. We love it so much that we built a Mailchimp Subscription Module for Silverstripe CMS, our preferred CMS solution.

Event registrations and attendee management are a source of pain for many marketing teams.  The days of managing lists in spreadsheets are over.  For AustraliaEggs we created online forms for their annual conference. The forms collect attendees standard contact details, as well as days they wish to attend and dietary preferences. The details are then sent to Mailchimp for further follow-up emails containing details of the event and reminders. 

Website Reports
Wading through monthly Google Analytics data can be a nightmare. Website reports and Google Analytics analysis can be created automatically by connecting Google Analytics and Google Sheets using a Google Sheets Add On. Reports are set up once and can be run whenever. There is also the ability to run scheduled reports. Reports can be scheduled to run every hour, day, week, or month. Imagine the time you will save.

Do you have other systems and wonder if there are other regular tasks that you could automate? Give us a call or drop us a line and we can chat through the options.

So, unlike the hoverboard, automation is possible. It just take some time to set up and then you are away. Sort of like the NBN...we'll let you know when we get it in 2019.