Ecommerce automation is creating a lot of buzzes. But, does your company actually need it? Let’s find out.
The main purpose of any eCommerce marketing campaign is to boost sales. This might include sending marketing emails, managing orders, dealing with customer service, and a lot more.
These tasks may not look like a big deal when seen individually but can give you a headache when they start to pile up, wasting ample time out of your busy day. Also, apart from these, there are a lot of insignificant tasks that require your time and energy.
As per Deloitte, such tasks are a waste of time, and shifting your attention can cause fundamental improvement in your operations. This is where automation comes into the picture.
“The eCommerce industry is a force that no investor can afford to ignore” – Cushla Sherlock
What Is Ecommerce Automation?
Benefits of Ecommerce Automation
Tasks to Automate in Your Ecommerce Business
Top Tools to Automate Your Ecommerce Store
Case Studies of Ecommerce Automation
What Is Ecommerce Automation?
As per the report published by NASA, 60% to 80% of businesses fail due to human errors. These errors can be easily avoided by using automation.
Like the automation of any other industry, the purpose of eCommerce automation is to simplify your work and streamline the workflow. If you are running a growing company, you understand how often the work gets overwhelming when you feel like you need more workforce or more leaders or managers in your company.
Automation can actually help you to overcome these issues by saving a lot of your time and energy. Moreover, with a machine taking care of your tasks, the chances of error are reduced to a minimum and your employees can focus on their actual work instead of worrying about something insignificant.
Benefits of Ecommerce Automation
As per Statista, the global retail automation market size which was around 11.3 billion U.S. dollars is expected to grow up to 33 billion dollars in 2030.
This data clearly indicates that automation is helping businesses to grow which is why more and more businesses are relying on it.
Let us explain in detail how eCommerce automation can actually help your growing business.
Time Efficiency
Getting rid of the repetitive tasks that have to be done every day can save a lot of your time. This increases the focus as well as productivity. Moreover, it gives you extra time to review your plans or start off the pending projects.
Also, automation gives you the advantage of scheduling your tasks. For example, announcing the release of your new product, applying discounts, providing rewards, adjusting prices, etc.
Streamlined Workflow & Increased Worker Engagement
These trivial tasks have become a part of the routine workflow of your employees. Most employees complain that miscellaneous works disturb their actual work due to which they are unable to perform up to their potential.
Using automation allows your employees to focus on more business-oriented work resulting in higher productivity and enhanced employee satisfaction.
Boost Customer Satisfaction
As a growing business, the number of your customers also keeps increasing making it difficult to keep them all satisfied. As most of the customers judge your services by the response time you can certainly improve customer satisfaction through automation.
The eCommerce automation tools facilitate online shopping engagement giving your customers a great shopping experience. These happy customers mostly turn into repeat customers.
Cost Reduction
With automation, the cost of working also reduces considerably. The main reason for this is that the mundane tasks are taken care of by the tool so your employees can focus on their work without disturbance.
This reduces the need for overtime work or increased manpower, ultimately reducing the expenditure.
Better Communication With Suppliers
The automation software gives before-time notification whether a product is about to go out of stock or inventory is below a certain level. These can also send triggers to the suppliers asking them to send in the required products.
Moreover, with timely information, you also get time to look into the supplies rates or other better contracts that may be available from different suppliers. Thus, it helps you grab better deals.
Tasks to Automate in Your Ecommerce Business
Up till now, we have given you enough statistics and reasons to know that automating your eCommerce business is in your favor and can help you run faster towards your success.
Now, let us take a look at the tasks that you can automate now to make your business grow faster.
Customer Service
Your employees may not be working after 5 but your customers might visit your website to buy a product even after the working hours are over, and they need assistance. So, how can you manage that?
The answer is simple, automation. The ability of these tools to provide real-time feedback as well as their ability to instantly answer the queries leads to satisfied customers. Owing to the pleasant experience there is a high probability of these customers coming back to you.
There are a lot of AI-based tools designed for this purpose. These work as chatbots or virtual assistants and respond to your customers based on the previously formulated rules and fed commands.
Business Management Automation
Whether you are about to add a new collection of products or have a weekly sale to offer, automation can help you with all your tedious jobs.
The tool helps you to schedule your sales with regular posts on social media to attract the attention of customers or set a countdown to keep the hype alive in the customers, and much more.
A number of heatmap tools are available that help you figure out where to post your ads while launching a new product. They also further help you identify the channels that are working well so you can pay more attention to them.
Order & Inventory Management
Managing the inventory is one of the most important yet boring tasks. You obviously need to keep track of your stock to inform the suppliers and order fresh products but doing this manually can be really tedious.
You can use certain inventory management tools for these purposes that are easy to use and work like wonder. These tools can actually save you from losing revenue owing to poorly managed inventory.
Automation tools are designed to prepare and send a purchase order to the relevant supplier whenever an item goes out of stock. You can also enable out-of-stock or low-stock notifications in these tools to keep you updated.
Email Marketing
Writing and sending emails to your customers manually can be really tedious and boring. Moreover, it is practically impossible to track the activity of each and every customer and send the emails accordingly.
This is why automation tools are available for help. Whether you have to send the welcome emails, cart abandonment emails, order confirmation emails, or post-purchase engagement emails, these tools keep track of every customer without missing the details.
Fraud Prevention
As per a survey, fraudsters take away around $12 billion each year from the eCommerce industry. They use new and sophisticated techniques every time to deceive the customers and business owners.
There are automation tools that can help you save a large amount of money going into the wrong hands. These tools help you verify each order by checking the IP address or carrying out other verification processes, thus saving you from fraud.
Accounting
From funds to invoices, or to keeping track of the payments made to suppliers, accounting can be difficult. Also, if you are new to the business keeping an accountant can be expensive.
Automating your accounts can save your day. You can use tools that will help you through all your accounting needs without taking a toll on your budget.
Website Building
If you are just starting your website to set up your online business without a big budget, the automation tools can be a big help, especially if you are not a technical person.
These tools can help you with most of your small problems like choosing a template for your website, changing themes, or adding pop-up banners. So you actually spend your money only when you are in real need.
Parnas Ghosh
Top Tools to Automate Your Ecommerce Store
Choosing the best automation tool for your website can be complicated. Below, we have listed 6 top automation tools to help you with your eCommerce business. They are:
MailChimp
This tool is best known for creating intuitive email campaigns depending on the type of business.
HubSpot
This is a very popular tool that mainly focuses on inbound marketing. It pays attention to the sales marketing activities and offers services for support, sales, and marketing.
Zendesk
This is an application available as a cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS). It is popularly used for customer service.
Verloop.io
This tool is used for customer care to automate conversational support. The insightful data help you keep the customers engaged.
Sendgrid
This tool focuses on 1:1 email communication. Moreover, it directly sends customer-centric SMS-based notifications in real-time.
Jumplead
This tool helps you generate leads for your eCommerce store. You can also respond to customers, manage leads, and handle customer accounts through this.
Case Studies of Ecommerce Automation
For your reference, we are adding a few case studies to help you understand how eCommerce automation has helped several companies grow their online business.
Truwood
This Company manufactures bamboo and wood-made watches. They utilized cart abandonment emails and messages. They target the audience based on the value of the cart, giving preference to high-value carts.
They send messages and emails to the cart owners with the picture of their selected product offering some discounts and creating a sense of urgency through a limited-time offer.
This strategy has worked really well for the company increasing their return on investment by around 35 times.
Draper James
The brand organizes a weekly sale, every year, in mid-march, for celebrating the birthday of its founder, Reese Witherspoon. They utilize the science of retention for their marketing strategy.
So, instead of the bulk emails, they only send customized emails to the users who have purchased or visited the site in the last 90 days. They nurture their leads by only sending relevant content to the target audience.
This strategy has led to a 15.4% increase in their year-over-year revenue, even when they have been sending 48.7% lesser emails.
Premier
This eCommerce store sells accessories and apparel. They focused on improving the customer experience by sending them price drop emails for the product they have shown interest in their previous budget.
The automation tools for sending customized emails have worked really well for the brand and resulted in a huge increase in open and click rates.
Blush and Bar
This brand sells sustainable and affordable jewellery. As they noticed that the maximum traffic for their site came through social media ads, they utilized these leads to reach their target audience.
They generated pop-up ads for mobile devices that do not require much information to be filled in but allowed the user to subscribe in a few taps.
This simple but effective marketing strategy has led to an increase of $39,000 in their sales within the first month of implementation.
Embla
This brand sells home goods online. They used a holistic SMS marketing strategy for improved customer experience and trust-building.
Instead of asking every visitor to subscribe to their website they only triggered this to the customers who were in the final stages of buying their product. Through this, they began a friendly re-engagement campaign for their customers.
This strategy has really helped them to win back inactive customers and resulted in a 60% increase in their conversion rates.
Priya Rajendran
Conclusion
Ecommerce automation in all its capacity is helping businesses to grow online. The different services are offered as per the business requirements. They help in better utilization of time, money, and resources as well as help in improving customer satisfaction.
These tools are designed to streamline the workflow and increase work engagement. Overall, the Ecommerce automation tools are worth your money, time, and efforts.
FAQs
Why do companies use eCommerce automation?
Many companies use eCommerce automation to streamline workflow, save time, boost efficiency, and also help boost customer satisfaction.
What is workflow automation in eCommerce?
Workflow automation is when repetitive tasks are done with the help of automation tools instead of humans.
