20+ CRM Processes That You Can Easily Automate Today

What is small business CRM automation?

As the video says, client relationship management (CRM) software allows you to store and manage all your lead and customer information.

That’s right — all of your small business in one place. That includes (but is not limited to):

• Names
• Contact information, like phone numbers and email addresses
• Job title and industry
• Sales behavior
• Purchase history
• Internal notes on interactions with the lead/customer
• Favorite color

Okay, that last one isn’t something you find in our CRM for small business, but you could store that information if it was somehow valuable to your customer relationships. The question is:

What can you do with all that information — and how does your business benefit?

How do you benefit from automating CRM tasks?

With sales and marketing automation campaigns pulling info from your small business CRM, you can:

• Set automatic follow-ups with potential clients
• Track (and nurture) customers in your sales pipeline
• Personalize marketing campaigns
• Build long-term relationships through drip campaigns and tailored offerings

Once you’ve created the automation, you can sit back and let it go to work automatically. No muss. No fuss. No burning the midnight oil, trying to handle every little detail. In fact, Keap users report saving an average of 10 hours a week with automation, freeing them from time-burning repetitive tasks.

23 everyday tasks to set and forget with CRM automation

It’s easy to get lost in the sea of options when you have the power of robust small business CRM automations. To make things easier, we’ve curated this list of some of our favorites.

Before you begin, we recommend looking through the list and taking note of some strategies that could turn your CRM into your hardest-working employee.

Sales

1. New lead follow-up
   We mentioned that Keap users save 10 hours a week. One of the biggest time-consuming tasks in any business is follow-up. A lead has shown interest, but if you don’t reach out quickly, they may move on to the competitors. With small business CRM automation, you can send new leads an automatic welcome email when they fill out your contact lead form.
   You could also automatically invite that lead to schedule an appointment, send them your latest promos, or begin a long-term drip marketing campaign to nurture them for years to come.
2. New appointment scheduling
   When a new lead or client begins getting your CRM automated follow-ups, a high-converting strategy is to send them a link that lets them immediately schedule an appointment with you. You and your clients no longer have to hash things out over email, hammer out what days are available or play phone tag. Once they have the link (which can be used on landing pages, sales and marketing emails and social posts) they can not only confirm their appointment but cancel or reschedule when necessary.
3. Reschedule existing appointments
   It’s pretty likely you or your clients will need to reschedule an appointment at some point. Done manually, this is a huge source of irritation. You reach out to the other party, everyone needs to look over their calendars and your sales and productivity decline.
   Robust scheduling automation software should allow you to easily manage your appointments. For instance, Keap users can simply change appointments from their dashboard and clients can click the “Reschedule” link found at the bottom of their confirmation emails, allowing them to choose an alternate date and time.
4. Thank-you message after purchase
   Quickly engaging with your clients after registration or purchase can be the tipping point that creates long-term brand loyalty. When users get a quick thank you response, it not only keeps you top of mind, but it reinforces the idea that you are there for them and appreciate their business. Everyone likes to be thanked, your clients are no exception.
5. Assign new contacts to owners
   Got a solid sales, marketing or support team? With all the moving parts that come with a successful sales and marketing lifecycle, you need to be agile. If responsibility for a lead or customer shifts from one team member to another, you can easily assign or reassign the owner of a contact record in Keap with just a few clicks.
6. Move contacts in the pipeline
   Pipeline automation provides the ability to automate key steps in your sales pipeline process. You can keep your leads moving through your sales process by configuring automations that trigger when a new lead enters or exits a stage.
7. Add or remove tags in pipeline stages
   Quickly tag and segment contacts to trigger CRM automations that are personalized, based on client data and activity.
8. Create tasks in pipeline stages
   Your sales pipeline shouldn’t be a mystery. Keap’s sales pipeline management tool makes it easy to not only track clients through every stage of your sales pipeline but assign tasks to specific team members based on the client’s stage and behavior.
9. Post-appointment follow-up
   Once a lead has engaged and scheduled an appointment, it’s time to follow up. Through Keap’s customizable dashboard you can easily keep track of everything, and set actions like appointment reminders up to and including a last-minute text message one hour before you’re set to meet.
10. Lead scoring
    Lead scoring allows you to target and segment the leads most likely to buy. You can use your CRM data to organize contacts into groups and build automated
    
    campaigns like the example below:
    
    
    1. The lead requests a free report on your website and becomes a contact
    2. Later, the contact registers and attends a webinar
    3. A week down the road, that contact takes an online assessment
    4. In time, the contact requests a quote
    5. Contact purchases, HUZZAH!

Marketing

1. Contact form follow-up
   When a lead fills out your contact form, immediately send them a welcome email, confirmation or appointment invite. Don’t waste your marketing momentum.
2. Newsletter sign-up
   Boost your brand image with beautiful, modern templates that are easy to implement and help you create engaging marketing newsletters and broadcasts.
3. Ask for a Google review after the job is complete
   About 76% of customers trust online reviews as much as recommendations from family and friends, so the power of reviews can’t be ignored. Keep in mind: Google’s impact as the native review channel for users is effectively measured as infinity vs. a fixed number. You need to make sure that each and every happy customer is shouting their satisfaction from the digital rooftops.
   Luckily for Keap users, the platform’s Google Reviews Dashboard Widget makes it easy to generate and share a custom link you can share with clients, making it easy and quick to leave a review
4. Congratulate customers on their birthdays
   It’s your client’s birthday. Make them feel seen and valued. Calendar celebrations are a great way to stay top of mind with your contacts. If you’re leveraging your CRM effectively, you’ll have client birthdays (and even anniversaries) on your calendar with automation set to let them know you’re thinking of them (and maybe offer a birthday coupon at the same time).
5. Free eBook delivery
   Useful info is always valuable. Ebooks and blogs are great ways to leverage content for recurring marketing. By establishing yourself as a thought leader and trusted brand, you become the industry standard for your clients.
6. Event registration and follow-up
   Keap allows you to easily build intuitive registration forms. Once you have your user’s email addresses and name, you can automate a personalized campaign to send registration info, additional resources (maps, logins, etc.) and reminders about the event.
7. Ask for referrals
   Reviews are powerful, but referrals convert on an entirely different level. Consumers trust recommendations from people they know above all else. You worked hard to get those happy customers, don’t let their goodwill go to waste. Referral marketing is a low-cost (sometimes no-cost) way to grow revenue and build trust, using only your existing audience.

Payments

1. Collect payments
   Your time shouldn’t be spent running down every outstanding invoice. Not only can you add a “Pay Now” button right in the invoice message you send, but you can build automatic follow-up reminders to pay (see below).
   Plus, you can stay organized by connecting your billing software with Keap’s CRM so payment activity is tied directly to your contacts.
2. Reminder to pay the invoice
   Use Keap’s automation platform and CRM to follow up with new and outstanding invoices through timed and action-triggered messaging.
   For example:
   
   
   1. You send an invoice
   2. You send a reminder a couple of days before the invoice is due
   3. You send a reminder a couple of days before the invoice is due
   4. If the invoice is still outstanding, the follow-up campaign begins
3. Follow up on failed charges
   Build automations triggered by a failed purchase or declined credit card. Set up the sequence to immediately send engagement and reminder messages. End the headache of manually chasing down clients and managing subscriptions.

Ecommerce

1. Abandoned cart reminders
   Whether a customer was distracted, had second thoughts or encountered technical difficulties, a simple reminder email or promotional offer may move a lead to a purchase. If you plan to build follow-up automations, we recommend employing these proven techniques:
   
   
   1. Limited-inventory alerts
   2. Limited-time discount notifications
   3. Money-back guarantees or free shipping
   4. Visuals and text descriptions in your follow-up messaging
   5. Multiple links to the cart
   6. Customer service contact information
2. Ask for product reviews
   We already mentioned the importance of Google reviews, but it’s important you understand the WHY behind reviews. It’s not just about stars on a website.
   What are the top three reasons to seek reviews?
   1. Building trust: Give shoppers input from an unbiased source. More high ratings also help Google trust your website more, resulting in better visibility on the search engine results.
   2. Increasing conversions: More than 99.9% of online customers read reviews before they purchase.
   3. Low-cost content: Prominently showcasing reviews from existing customers is one of the best ways to quickly gain the attention and trust of new leads.
3. Recommend related products
   Think about how you really shop. You may go to the store for dish soap, but you also come home with ice cream and prosecco.
   Why?
   Because you already decided to make at least one purchase. During that suggestible period, you saw other products that interested you. This is the power of timely product recommendations.

Choosing the right CRM for small business

There is no shortage of client relationship management platforms on the market. The key to choosing is finding a CRM with proven small business applications. This will empower you and your team to:

• Organize your leads: All your lead, client information and business communication are organized and segmented in one place.
• Automate daily work: End repetitive tasks and benefit from sales and marketing automation in a CRM with our easy and advanced automation builders.
• Always follow up: Use templates, automatic emails and SMS messages to quickly follow up with leads.
• Close more leads: Create a repeatable sales process from appointments to quotes, winning more business in the process.
• Get paid faster: Create custom invoices and checkout forms from your CRM and get paid faster.
• Impress your clients: Keap’s client-focused features result in happy clients who leave happy referrals.

If you’d like to see what you can do with all these features, activate your free 14-day trial now. See for yourself how your small business can save significant time and grow your sales — all at the same time.