Automation Makes Follow Up Easier and More Consistent

When your business is bright, shiny and new, it’s easy to follow up with your customers. As time goes by and your customer base grows, it can become harder and harder to have a one-on-one experience with everyone. This can lead to opportunities falling through the cracks and customers feeling ghosted.

Automation makes follow up easier and more consistent. Since you can create your follow up ahead of time, you can rest assured your clients will get the contact they need to keep them engaged and interested in your business.

What is Follow Up?

Follow up isn’t just about saying thank you for your business and offering new goods and services. Follow up includes activities like:

• Social media engagement
• Offering resources and referrals
• Providing value after and between sales
• Ongoing electronic touch points like newsletters
• Maintaining relationships and a sense of community

Trying to manage a variety of touch points manually would take all day, every day. Thankfully many of these tasks can be automated.

What You Need to Know About Automation

There’s a platform for every type of automation. Social media posts can be prepared and dripped out over time. Email campaigns can be created for a variety of sales and marketing goals. Finding the right platform for your needs is the first step, but the most important thing to remember is automation isn’t one and done. Here are some tips to ensure your automation feels deeply personal to your customers.

Tip 1: Update your automation when you update your website – Most people are very particular about their website. They want to ensure the customer experience is on point. It’s equally important to ensure your automation, especially email campaigns, are reviewed regularly. Make certain your message remains on point and relevant.

Tip 2: Infuse real-time content with automated content- It’s easy to create automated information to be released over time, but you may be missing big opportunities to connect with your customers. Be sensitive to world events, conscious of the social climate, and engage with customers in real time as well as through automation. Customers will appreciate and respond to content and touch points that are timely and personal.

Tip 3: Be strategic with your automation- It’s important to have goals when you automate your follow up. Strategize what you’re driving your customers to do over time. Sending an automated birthday card is fairly cut and dried, but sending out an automated email series should strategically build on itself towards taking specific actions.

If you realize the value of following up with your customers but find it hard to be consistent, automation may be the answer. You can automate all or some of your touch points to create the right balance for you and your brand.