Automations: Your Guide to an Easier Life

What are Automations?

Automations are essentially connections made within your software to optimize business efforts and processes to boost their efficacy and efficiency.

Automations allow you to manage aspects of your loyalty, such as campaigns, triggers, email marketing & more - all without lifting a finger. In other words, they save you from doing the tasks that nobody wants to do.

Automations, simply put, are how to minimize human involvement in mundane and arduous tasks that are necessary within your business. Think of sending a marketing email to someone that has recently hit a certain amount of points. With automations, this email can be triggered by that person simply passing a certain points threshold - all hands free.

One way of thinking about automations is as a series of doors - a loyalty member will take an action, which opens a certain door. The next action they take may open another door, and so on.

The key lies in different factors - how many “doors” they could possibly open, how well they are directed to what they’re looking for, the timing of the reaction triggered and more. You’ll get better and better at this as you get more data and can predict and model loyalty member behavior more accurately.

How Does this Effect Me?

We are now offering automation tools. An example of how this could work for you is if you were to set a trigger as a loyalty member celebrating their birthday. This trigger could then result in them receiving an email on their birthday, congratulating them and giving them a personalized reward, coupon or giftcard - all automatically done and scheduled as you like.

Does this sound like a mystery to you? Automations shouldn’t frighten you. Although they complete tasks for you, you don’t necessarily need to forgo any control with automations. They’re there to make your life easier, not complicate things. 

Use automation tools to create customer journeys, send messages at loyalty milestones and make sure your loyalty members never forget about you with CRM automations.

So, How Exactly Do Automations Work and Why Are They Important?

Including automations in your business is no longer an added bonus, but rather a prerequisite when it comes to competing on a larger scale. When dealing with a larger customer base, it’s virtually impossible to manage consumers on a more individual and personal level without incorporating automations.

Automations allow you to personalize the experience of your customers or loyalty members while you minimize time spent on mundane business tasks. Use automations to construct workflows, automated marketing campaigns, and integrate your current systems while you sit back and relax.

Create Workflows and Triggers.

Choose actions that matter to your business most and set them as triggers. Once you’ve selected a trigger, you can select the subsequent actions and the applicable scenarios. You can be logical with these workflows, so choosing 'if-else' scenarios, routing and more is always at your fingertips.

Track your Data Points - handsfree.

Tracking is the name of the game with automations - connect your automation software with your CRM processes and more to track all data points. These data points are priceless, as they give you valuable insights into the actions taken by (prospective) customers. Use this data to construct various customer journeys to ensure an optimal experience.

First Impressions.

Whoever said you can’t make a second first impression was right - but automations can completely optimize your first impression, even in times when you don’t have data on that loyalty member. Choose exactly what your loyalty members see when they navigate in a certain direction on your website or complete a given action with automated loyalty member journeys.

Create an Omnichannel Experience.

Not worried about first impressions? Try second impressions - create a seamless omnichannel experience for your loyalty program members with automations. Ensure that forms are pre-filled for them, emails are targeted and personalized, and customer service agents are familiar with all customer details upon receiving a request.

Data for and from Automations.

The underlying theme here is data - data is what drives automations, but automations also enable the collection of valuable data that will once again feed back into the optimization of business processes. Loyalty members should never have to experience deja-vu when using your platform, so make sure you link your automations software accordingly.

Automations don’t give you data per se, it’s simply about gathering and interpreting the data that’s already available. This is why companies that have worked with automations for extended periods of time will be much richer in data than an alternative - whether or not they’re more effective in their work is a matter of how well they use and interpret said data.

Be Where You Couldn’t Before.

Automations also allow you to be where you couldn’t before. It’s physically impossible to collect data on where customers click without watching over their shoulders and no company has enough employees to send every prospective customer a personalized email - if they do, they should reevaluate their strategy.

How Can Automations Benefit Me?

We’ve outlined some of the main benefits of automations for you here:

Workload

Not only do you cut the amount of time and manpower required with automations, but processes will run on a set of rules that have been predetermined by you. With less mundane tasks weighing them down, your employees should see an increase in productivity. While over 40% of workers spend ⅓ of their work week on repetitive tasks, nearly 70% say that the largest opportunity for automations is to boost productivity by reducing the amount of mundane and repetitive tasks they’re involved in.

Error

Minimize the levels of error in your data and business processes. Manual data entry - and manual tasks in general - makes errors much more likely. Cutting out manual tasks and reducing the risk of human error will drastically improve the quality of your data and ensure consistency in your business processes.

Cost Cutting

Once the software is there, it’s not going anywhere. This means that the longer you continue to use your automations software, the further you’re spreading the cost. Not to mention, software doesn’t get tired - this means you can get more done with less resources. Incorporating the right automations can save you anywhere from 40-75%.

Scalability

Your automations can grow or shrink as you require. Add new triggers, take them off, add new rules or make tweaks as you see fit. This means your software can always be tailored to your customer base, no matter what - meaning you can always enjoy the many benefits of automation.

Integrations

With automations, you maximize the potential of your integrations. These can be used for email marketing, point of sale, ecommerce and more. This accelerates integration development, boosts integration quality, and increases productivity while cutting costs. Not only this, but it ensures quality and security at a level which would not be possible without automations.

Using Automations in your Loyalty Program

Looking to automate your loyalty by incorporating automations into your program? We’ve got some of the top features to take advantage of listed below.

We've got what you're looking for.

Create customer journeys to ensure that customers find what you want them to. Do you have certain actions you want customers to take, certain content you want them to see, certain deals you want them to know about? Construct your customer journeys to improve your customer experience while contributing to business goals.

Hey there!

Automate greeting emails or push notifications when you get a new loyalty member. This is your chance to stand out to people and make your brand known. Perfect your messaging in the email studio with custom templates and automate your sending and personalization. It’s as easy as that.

Wakey, wakey!

Haven’t heard from certain loyalty members in a while? Automate reminder emails or messages to get them back in gear. Incorporate your current offers and recommendations into your emails to draw inactive members back in and increase engagement.

Don’t forget us!

Send messages or emails after loyalty members have engaged with your program to keep them engaged - try congratulating them on their first reward or showing them other current rewards and offers. 

Congratulations!

Special occasion like a birthday or loyalty anniversary? Use automations to send your loyalty member a perk like rewards, a discount, or even a giftcard to celebrate their special day with them - the perfect way to make personal connections with your loyalty members!

Keep it up!

Do you have loyalty members that have developed regular habits? Use the data you’ve collected to encourage them to keep it up. Send them rewards, restock reminders and more - all automated. Become part of your members’ routines with gamified processes and strong campaign automations.