What if I told you you could save up to 6 hours a week within your employee’s workload using automation?

You would probably tell me that it would require hiring more staff members or implementing some state of the art software solution that requires time and money.

However, the solution is much easier than you think.

Thanks to a world of constantly evolving technology and the growth in subscription-based software being released almost daily it’s now becoming easier than ever to automate repetitive tasks within your business allowing your team to focus on what matters most.

But with so many SaaS solutions available on the marketing, it’s easy to get caught up and before you know it you’re shelling out a small fortune for a stack of tools you may never use.

Don’t worry, we’re here to help.

We’ve put together a list of our favourite business automation tools that are easy to use and you can implement within your business without costing you a fortune.

Ready to grow your business’s bottom line? Let’s get started!

Top Business Automation Tools

• Appointment Setting – Calendly
• Social Media Publishing – PromoRepublic
• Accounting – Xero
• Customer Support – Help Scout
• Review Management – Reviews.IO
• Paid Ads Optimisation AdEspresso
• Email Marketing – ConvertKit
• Task Automation – Zapier

Appointment Setting – Calendly

First up in our list of favourite business automation tools for your business is Calendly.

Calendly allows you to streamline your appointment setting process with ease thanks to the well-designed interface, a host of customisation options so that you can tailor it to your needs and affordable pricing options to suit every businesses size and budget.

From sending email and SMS reminders to being able to collect pre-payments and convert time zones based upon your location Calendly makes your appointment scheduling process a breeze for your website visitors and customers.

Key Features

• Ability to schedule unlimited events
• Send personalised SMS and email reminders
• Collect pre-payments before events
• Sync all appointments with your existing calendar
• Customise your availability as required

Pricing

• Basic – $0 forever
• Premium – $10 per user / month
• Pro – $15 per user / month

Social Media Publishing – PromoRepublic

We all know the time and effort that goes into constantly maintaining a strong presence on social media.

With new platforms popping up daily and the constant need for fresh content that keeps your brand top of mind with your audience social media management can be a full-time job.

PromoRepublic is here to help solve this.

PromoRepublic allows you to plan, create, schedule and publish new and existing content across all of your social media platforms without having to switch between multiple platforms or spending hours every day doing so.

With its built-in post creation tool, you can create custom-designed posts or choose from one of their pre-designed posts and customise it to match your brand’s look and feel. You can also plan and schedule each post and even recycle your most popular posts on a regular basis ensuring your social media feeds are always full of high-value content your audience will love.

And while social media management can’t always be 100% automated if you want to build a loyal following of engaged visitors, PromoRepublic helps automate repetitive components allowing you more time to engage with your audience. 

Key Features

• Create posts using their post designer tool
• Schedule posts across Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest
• Recycle your most popular posts for future viewing
• Collaborate with team members
• View performance statistics for all posts

Pricing

PromoRepublic offers a range of pricing options with a Solo plan available annually for small businesses just getting started with social media and a Standard plan for those looking for publishing across more than 3 platforms.

• Solo – $9 month (billed annually)
• Standard – $49 per month
• Professional – $99 per month

Accounting – Xero 

Running a service-based business isn’t always easy and the last thing you want to be spending your time on is crunching numbers and worrying about cash flow.

Xero is here to fix this.

Founded with small-business owners in mind in 2006, Xero has now grown to a team of over 3,000 employees spanning the globe helping make accounting easy for small businesses.

Everything from invoicing to bookkeeping, payroll and bank reconciliations Xero removes the guesswork from accounting and presents it to you on one easy to understand dashboard.

They also offer a host of other features tailored to your industry and country and 24/7 online support to ensure you’re never left in the dark when it matters most.

Xero also integrates with a host of other platforms and financial institutions around the world to provide a streamlined accounting platform that provides you with up to date information on how your business is performing financially no matter where you are.

Key Features

• Automatically categorise transactions and charges
• Keep track of your business via mobile, laptop or desktop
• Send automated payment reminders on overdue accounts
• Synchronise your transactions between all financial institutions daily
• Connects with leading payment processing platforms for easy payments

Pricing

Xero offers a range of pricing options depending upon the size and requirements of your business with plans starting from $9 per month and discounts when paid annually.

• Early – $9 per month
• Growing – $30 per month
• Established – $60 per month

Customer Support – HelpScout

Today’s customer often demands customer support by a number of preferred channels.

Whether it’s email, telephone, FAQ’s, live chat or email being able to provide a streamlined support experience can help make the difference when it comes to providing an award-winning customer experience for your brand.

Help Scout allows you to consolidate your support into one easy to manage online platform that stores each customer engagement within a centralised location meaning you have access to every customer’s support history at a click of a button.

 From shared inboxes, to easy to access knowledge bases and more Help Scout makes customer support easy for you and your customers.

Key Features

• Manage conversations via their shared inbox feature
• Create detailed FAQs and guides for your customer
• Engage with people within your website via instant messaging
• Get detailed reports on customer engagement, customer satisfaction and more
• Integrates with many major platforms and tools

Pricing

Help Scout offers a range of pricing options to suit all budgets based upon the number of team members you have within your company and they offer a 33% discount on annual plans.

• Standard – $25 per user per month
• Plus – $40 per user per month
• Company – Custom

Review Management – Reviews.IO

Being able to collect, manage and promote reviews from your loyal customers can be one of your best sales tools for acquiring new website visitors and new customers.

However, manually requesting and publishing reviews can be very time consuming and results in your visitors not knowing whether they’re genuine or not.

Reviews.IO solves this by providing an all-in-one platform to collect, store and publish reviews from your most loyal customers while also allowing you to verify them directly with your customer ensuring you publish verified, credible reviews for your brand.

With their easy to manage platform, you can invite existing customers to review your brand and then choose where you would like those reviews published.

Key Features

• Automatically collect reviews for existing customers
• Publish reviews across your website or social media
• Publish reviews within Google Paid Ads
• Collect video reviews
• Incentivise customers to publish reviews through vouchers

Pricing

Reviews.IO offers a range of pricing options with custom features available on request.

• Small Business – $115 per month
• Growing Business – $205 per month

Paid Ads Optimisation – AdEspresso

Ever felt lost when it comes to optimising your paid ads? You’re not alone!

Not only can it be time-consuming, knowing which ads are producing the best bang for your buck and which ones you need to pause can be difficult if you aren’t well versed in this.

AdEspresso allows you to create, manage and analyse your campaigns all from one easy to manage dashboard saving you time switching between multiple platforms to know how your campaigns are performing.

You can also create split tested campaigns to determine which headline, image or call to action performs the best and AdEspresso will then do the heavy lifting but optimising your campaigns for you around the clock.

While it does take some experience to understand and optimise paid ads when running major campaigns AdEspresso will provide you with actionable insights and tips so that you can learn based upon their recommendations and data ensuring you master paid ads in no time at all.

Key Features

• Create and publish Google Ads and Facebook Ads
• Create split tests to find top performing variables in ads
• Manage and review campaigns from one dashboard
• Collaborate with team members and account managers
• Learn how to create and manage campaigns with built-in tutorials

Pricing

AdEspresso offers a range of pricing options including monthly plans starting from $79 per month and 20% off when choosing an annual plan.

• Starter – $49 per month (billed annually)
• Plus – $99 per month (billed annually)
• Enterprise – $249 per month (billed annually)

Email Marketing – ConvertKit

Next up in our collection of favourite business automation tools is ConvertKit.

If the name doesn’t already give it away, ConvertKit is designed to do exactly that by allowing you to create automated, highly personalised email marketing campaigns that nurture and convert your subscribers into qualified leads and customers like clockwork.

By creating drip based email campaigns that guide your subscribers through your marketing funnel based upon the actions they take within your website you can qualify and segment your subscribers to convert those most likely to buy and keep existing customers loyal.

Whether it’s a nurturing sequence, an onboarding sequence or something else ConvertKit allows you to create campaigns for every type of subscriber imaginable.

Key Features

• Create automated drip based email campaigns
• Segment and qualify subscribers based upon actions
• Create personalised email sequences
• Integrates with most major marketing platforms
• Get in-depth statistics on your drip email campaigns

Pricing

ConvertKit offers a free plan for basic email marketing up to 1,000 subscribers with paid plans for those looking for marketing automation of those with more than 1,000 subscribers.

• Free – $0 per month
• Creator – $29 per month
• Creator Pro – $59 per month

Task Automation – Zapier

Rounding out the list is none other than our favourite business automation app Zapier.

Zapier allows you to automate repetitive tasks by connecting the most used apps within your business and automating the workflows between those apps reducing the time your team spends on manual work such as data entry and file transfers.

Whether you’re looking to automate workflows within your customer management, payment processing, task creation and more Zapier supports over 2,000 of the world’s leading SaaS platforms.

Best of all, once set up Zapier works 24/7/365 even automating workflows while you sleep.

Key Features

• Automate single step and multi-step workflows within your company
• Reduce the risk of data-entry issues and human error
• Save your team from completing repetitive tasks on a daily basis
• Works with over 2,000 leading SaaS applications

Pricing

Zapier offers a range of pricing options based upon the number of tasks you need to automate.

• Free – $0 per month
• Starter – $20 per month
• Professional – $49 per month
• Team – $299 per month
• Company – $599 per month

And there you have it, 8 business automation tools you can implement within your business and continue to work 24/7/365 allowing your team to focus on what matters most.

Ready to Say Goodbye to Repetitive Admin Tasks Within Your Business?

Feel free to download our one-page business automation tools checklist which provides you with an overview of each of the tools mentioned within this article for you to review and implement within your business as required.

Which tool are you most interested in trying and why? Let us know in the comments.

Happy automating!