In a growing e-commerce sector, businesses have plenty of development opportunities. By taking a closer look at its processes, an e-commerce firm can get a more significant slice of the market. Workflow automation is a smart way for a firm to boost its bottom line.

Online retailers have an abundance of choices when it comes to tech to aid automation. This recent retail tech stack report provides an in-depth breakdown. The following are seven business areas to which workflow automation ideas apply:

1. Customer experience and support

(i) Track and reward your most engaged customers.

For all types of businesses, customer retention is critical. One of the best ways to boost retention is by rewarding customers for their loyalty.

(ii) Sync your customers to an email list.

Email marketing is vital to ecommerce businesses. Strategic, targeted email campaigns are an excellent way to generate more sales. Most firms use a dedicated platform for their email marketing. If you do, it’s simple to automate workflows to make the process frictionless.

(iii) Gather feedback after a purchase.

If you’re going to improve CX, you must first understand your customers’ perception of your products. The best way to assess this is by simply  asking them. Seeking customer feedback is how successful brands identify their weaknesses. Only then can they act to improve them.

(iv) Reach out to negative reviews.

Customers who leave feedback unprompted are more likely to offer negative reviews. It’s human nature to register dissatisfaction more readily than contentment. When your firm does get a negative review, it’s vital that you respond. Doing so shows the complainant and other customers that you care about solving problems.

(v) Tag and segment customers based on buying behavior.

Analyzing and tracking customer behavior will help you tailor CX. A vital element of monitoring customer behavior is segmenting your list. What that means is dividing your patrons by their characteristics. You might segment them by age, gender, or order value, for example.

2. Marketing

(i) Schedule social media posts automatically.

Social media is a potent marketing channel for ecommerce businesses. The   number of global users of social networks is vast and climbing. 54% of social media users research products via their preferred platform. Effective social media marketing is an ongoing process. You need to continually create and share content that engages your audience.

(ii) Nurture leads with continual marketing.

The customer journey comprises many touchpoints. Not all    customers will visit your site, find a product, and buy it right away. Some may come back several times. In between, they may spend time researching and considering the purchase. If you have their contact details and permission to reach out, you can help sway their decision. That’s the principal idea behind lead nurturing.

3. Purchase order approvals

(i) Get purchase orders raised according to incoming sales.

When a purchase reduces your stock to a predetermined level, the order can be generated automatically. You can even create rules about first choice suppliers for different items.

4. Vendor and supplier onboarding

(i) An automated supplier portal can take that burden away from your workers.

You can share and receive all details pertinent to a vendor relationship via a web-based interface. It’s quicker, more accurate, and lets your team stay productive in other areas.

5. Order management

(i) Shipping labels.

The dispatch and delivery of orders is a crucial element of every ecommerce business. Failed deliveries can be a huge expense in the long run. Often, problems with distribution are down to small mistakes along the way. A worker might mistype an address on a shipping label, or an order could be incorrectly recorded in your system as complete.

(ii) Send reminders for customers to reorder.

Your contact with customers shouldn’t end after a single purchase. Post-sale support and continued marketing are vital. If you sell particular products, too, there’s another essential process to consider.

(iii) Send abandoned cart emails.

Most people who add products to ecommerce carts don’t go on to buy them. According to the Baymard Institute, close to 70% of shopping carts get abandoned. That’s a lot of customers you’re missing out on. Abandoned cart emails are a proven way to win some of them back.

6. Inventory

(i) Proper tracking and management of stock using automated inventory management tools.

Understock, and you won’t be able to fulfill critical orders. Overstock, and you’re wasting valuable warehouse space. By automating inventory management, you can make warehousing and fulfillment a breeze.

7. Sales

(i) Automate deal follow-ups.

You can set up automated workflows that reflect those different courses of action. For instance, if a sales call goes poorly, the immediate chance of a deal may get lost. An agent can mark the prospect or deal as lost in their automation tool. A follow-up email or other communication can then get scheduled at a suitable point in the future. When that time arrives, the follow-up gets sent automatically.

(ii) Automatically track your calls with prospects.

When a member of your sales team does make multiple calls to a prospect, those calls must get tracked. Reps have to stay on top of where they are with each contact. Workflow automation plays a part here, too.

When these jobs get automated, your workers can spend their valuable time elsewhere. They can complete the tasks that demand human intelligence and attention.