When it comes to increasing the value of a business, most small business owners think of things like increasing sales. Another option might be to take out a small business loan to open new locations. If you are looking to sure up the value of a small business before a sale, both of these options could work.
You should look to automation solutions as another way to increase the value of a business. With modern automation solutions, small business owners can take much of the work off their schedule and this will allow them to focus on the tasks that matter most. This can help you grow your business and it can be a way to increase the value of your operation. What makes this even better, is that you have plenty of automation solutions that are available to small businesses.
In this article, you will learn about several automation opportunities that can make your business more efficient while also increasing value.
Capturing Leads
For many small businesses, leads are a key source of value. With that being said, it can be difficult to get potential customers to give you their contact details. This can even be true for customers that are genuinely interested in your products or services. To get over this, you can capture more leads by offering some type of lead magnet. Something like an ebook, a white paper or a video can go a long way toward getting people to give you their email. With a simple pop-up form, you can get customers to sign up for the lead magnet, and then you can use automation to send it to their inbox.
Clean Your Email List
Having a large email list is good, but the quality of the list is just as important. If customers are not opening or responding to your email, service providers might start to view your business as a spam sender. Once that occurs, many of your customers won’t even see your emails in their inboxes.
To avoid this, you can use email automation to identify recipients that are not engaging with your emails and give them a chance to confirm that they want to be on the list. It’s as simple as identifying email addresses with low engagement and automating an email that has a link that allows them to confirm their commitment to being on the list. If they haven’t clicked the link within a few days or a week, the system will automatically remove them from the list.
Lead Nurturing
Most leads are not ready to make a purchase after the first time they talk to one of your sales reps. They might be interested, but they need more information to move them closer to a sale. Instead of pushing too hard and possibly losing the lead, you can use automation to move them along. It can be as simple as sending targeted emails with information that will move them to the next stage of the funnel.
Start by automating an email that can get sent a week after their first contact with a member of your sales team. A few weeks later, you can follow that up with the next email in the sequence. With a good lead nurturing strategy, each touchpoint will move the lead closer to a sale that can then be closed by someone on your sales team. This is a key strategy for increasing the value of leads.
Enhance Customer Service
Customers want a quick reply when they need help. If you wait too long, you might lose the sale or the customer forever. One simple way to improve the customer experience is to automate an email response to let the customer know that your team received the message. The system can then automatically assign the matter to someone on your support team to get back to the customer as soon as possible.
Cart Abandonment Efforts
If you run an ecommerce business, you have probably seen plenty of abandoned shopping carts. A customer was interested enough to put the item in the cart, but for one reason or another, they didn’t follow through on the purchase. This can be incredibly frustrating.
While you won’t be able to pull all of these customers back to complete the purchase, you can win some of them over. With a simple reminder email, you can get some of these customers to come back to complete the purchase. All you need to do is set up an automated email that will go out to the customer a few hours after they abandoned the cart. Make sure the email has a picture of the item and include a link that takes them back to the cart.
Qualifying Leads
Response time can make a big difference when it comes to qualifying a lead. One study found that businesses were seven times more likely to qualify a lead if they get back to a customer within the first hour. While it might not be possible to personally respond to every lead within an hour, you can increase the chances of qualifying leads by using automation to respond within a few minutes. When a lead provides their email address, the system can automate a quick response to let the person know it was assigned to a team member. From there, the call back or detailed email can be assigned to a member of your team and a response can be planned.
Encourage Repeat Business
A sale should not be viewed as a one-time transaction between you and a customer. Getting the first sale is nice, but you haven’t done much to help your business if you are not looking for ways to bring customers back for future purchases. These repeat customers can be a significant source of value for your business
If your business sells a subscription service or products that are expected to be used over a predictable period, you can use email automation to generate more sales. Once the customer places the initial purchase, you can have an automated email set up to remind them to restock the item or renew the subscription. Make it easy for the customer to renew or repurchase by including a link to the page for the product or service and schedule the email to be sent about a week before the product or service is expected to run out.
Send Personalized Offers
Most customers will appreciate emails with discounts and vouchers. If you want to take this to the next level, you can use automation to send personalized offers. One simple way to do this is to send an automated email with a special gift voucher on the birthday of customers. If you want to get a little more personal, you could use customer data to send offers and discounts that align with the shopping history of the customer.
Obtain Customer Feedback
Customer feedback can be a valuable resource. Positive feedback can let you know what you are doing right and negative feedback can let you know what you need to do better. Getting customers to leave reviews and ratings for your product can be helpful, but you might want to dig a little deeper.
Businesses can get deeper insights by using automation to send out surveys to customers. Along with getting them to provide feedback on your products or services, you can get information about the entire experience. Ask them what they like or don’t like about the shopping experience. If you have products delivered to clients, ask them to rate the delivery service. At the end, you can even leave an open-ended section for them to provide feedback that may not be covered by the survey.
Automation can allow your business to handle many of the smaller tasks while opening your schedule up to handle the things that require your attention. With the examples in this post, you have just a few examples of ways automation can be used to make your business more efficient and more valuable. If you are looking to sell or just increase value, automation can offer a range of tools to help you reach your goals.
