There was a time, you were unaware of who visited your Twitter account and what you can do to increase the followers. But the nowadays you can easily get notified about who even views your Instagram profile. It has become that automated. So if you are starting off an online business, then you must know a handful of marketing tools that would make your life easier. So in order to implement marketing automation, you first need to get familiar with a few tools.
If you are aware of these automation tools then you can incorporate those into your business and need not worry about it. This will make you focus on other things. So in this blog, I will be telling you 7 tools that you can implement in your business for more automated marketing processes.
1. Email Marketing
Email marketing is considered as one of the most authenticated ways to generate leads and get more sales. And businesses, as well as the customers both, rely on this method. On an average, an individual receives 20 to 30 emails every day. And, of course, he or she won’t be getting time to open every email. So in this case, you must make your subject line so attractive that the reader will surely open the email and take some action. Here are two major tools that you can use for email marketing:
MailChimp
MailChimp is preferred by almost every marketer for email marketing. This is good for autoresponders. So if someone is subscribing to your newsletter, the MailChimp automatically sends a welcome email to that person. In order to make this work automatically, you will have to create autoresponders and then the MailChimp will do the duty thereafter. You can also send bulk emails to a list through this tool. MailChimp has many types of templates from which you can choose and create a nice looking email for the users.
Aweber
This is similar to MailChimp. Here also you can create really eye-catching emails and send it in bulk. You can schedule the email for a particular list and then it is sent to the list according to the time that you have set. You can have different lists in one single account of Aweber.
2. Live Chat
Live chat plays an important role in your online business. It gives an opportunity to your customers to clarify any doubts if they have and reach out to you anytime they want. This way, they feel important and the live chat gives a more personal touch to the communication. Here are some tools that you can use for incorporating live chat:
collect.chat
This is a chatbot that you can incorporate in your website and let people ask you what they need. And this tool needs 0% human involvement so that you can focus on other things. The tool can interact in the native language of their customers with the help of handcrafted question templates and gifs. The tool taps the qualified visitors and converts them into customers. It does this by engaging them in a conversation and does not involve them in filling any boring forms.
intercom.com
This artificial intelligence powered live chat can reply to the audience quickly. It identifies the visitors on the website, collect information from them and converts them into customers. If the customer is willing to have a meeting with the sales executive, it quickly schedules that as well. It also suggests some articles based on the questions that the visitor has asked. So basically, it does everything that a person can do while chatting with a pretty good response rate.
3. Retargeting Ads
Retargeting ads can be a lifeline of the sales team. There are instances when a customer abandons the cart due to some reason while purchasing a product. So in such cases, you can run retargeting ads in order to get back those customers by showing them advertisements on social media platforms, through emails, messages etc. There is also a tool that you can use for retargeting ads:
AdRoll
This tool not only helps you bring the abandoned shopper but it also brings in the new shoppers to your website. It also recommends products to the visitors and based on their choices it displays social and email advertisements. You can connect to AdRoll from your online store and it takes care of all your data and place the ads on the basis of the analysis of the visitors and customers. You can also measure the impact of the ads that are placed and look for the statistics of the same.
4. Social Proof
People are heavily driven towards social media and they rely on social proofs before taking any type of action. Even if they are purchasing anything, they will look for the reviews before adding it to the cart. And there are tools to tap the psyche of these audiences.
provely.io
It is basically a tool that you can incorporate on your website, which will give recommendations about a certain product. For example, if you are having a bicycle website, then when someone is looking for Schanel bikes, then this tool will give a small pop up notification to the user saying that “‘XYZ purchased this 45 minutes back”. It will give you recommendations in such a way that you will feel like the product you are looking for is of really good quality and you can go with it.
5. E-commerce tools
If you are setting up an e-commerce website, then it is not an easy task. The whole layout is completely different from a regular website. There are a different number of products that you want to display then the payment gateways and many more things are involved in it. So in this case, you need not worry as there are tools that can help you create a good-looking e-commerce website without putting many efforts and in a very little time.
Shopify
Shopify is considered as one of the best platforms to create an e-commerce website. You just have to follow the instructions that it says and your website will be made in minutes. Shopify enables you to properly organize your products and customize your whole store. It also gives you the option to accept credit card payments, track and respond to order with just a few clicks.
Oberlo
Oberlo is nothing but an application given by Shopify. After creating the e-commerce website, you need to update it on a regular basis. Thus, in order to add products to your e-commerce store, you will need Oberlo. This application is seamlessly integrated with Shopify and you can add products to the store very easily.
6. Optin forms
This is nothing but called as “permission marketing”, a term given by marketing guru Seth Godin. So if you want people to know more about your business, you cannot simply send them an email unless you have their email addresses. In this case, you put a form on your website and when anyone visits your website, that form pops up in front of them. So if they want to “opt-in” for that particular service, they provide their email id. If they do not want it, they can simply close the window and go ahead. So there is a tool that you can use to create optin form for your website.
LeadPages
The tool is specifically used to capture the email addresses of the visitors. a website has a lot to offer to its visitors as whitepapers, webinars, newsletters, lead magnets, landing pages to name a few. And for all of this, an optin form is put in front of the visitors and if they like the offer, they instantly fill the form and their email addresses are captured by Leadpages. And then these email ids can be used for email marketing campaigns in the future.
7. Drip
If you are having an online store, then it is important for you to have a good relationship with your customers. And Drip is an ECRM that helps you build profitable relationships with your customers. You can integrate your existing tools like Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, Acuity, Calendly, BigPicture to name a few. You can shoot attractive campaigns via emails or through social media channels like Facebook or Instagram that talk about the interest of the customers and their behavior.
So these are a few marketing automation tools that you can try from day one for your online business. If you are aware of more tools that can play an important role in online business, you can share them in the comment box.
