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Ahh. Automation. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just press a button and watch your entire business run itself, while you kick back in your chair and watch the money roll in?
That’s an amazing dream. And while you can’t get that degree of automation yet, you can certainly use automation to drive your profit through the roof.
Here are some places (and examples) of ways to use automation to make a big difference in your bottom line:
1. Customer Experience
This is one of the greatest strengths of technology and the whole digital world: to offer customers personalized experiences which seem suited almost exclusively for them.
You just can’t do the same with people.
Starbucks, for example, has created the Order & Pay App. A customer simply orders their items using the app, and they go in-store to pick them up so they don’t have to wait in line.
Simple. Easy. Fast. And they get exactly what they want when they want it.
2. Engagement Automation
You’ve seen on websites where they show things like,”Customers who bought this, also bought…”
That’s actually a standard now. It’s no big deal.
The next step, executed perfectly by 7-Eleven, uses an app which sends customers promotions based on their location and the weather.
Too cold outside? Come on in for a steaming hot chocolate!
On your website, you can also automate email to drive engagement and purchasing behavior. Hint: most online retailers do not do this well at all.
For example, did you know 20% of your website’s customers make it to a product page, but don’t actually add a product to their cart?
Not only can you recoup much of these lost sales with email, but shoppers actually like getting emails triggered based on this behavior.
Doing this takes too much space, so here’s an in-depth article on this type of email (and several others your website should use too).
3. The Internet of Things
Small businesses have done a much better job of adopting IoT than their larger counterparts (on average).
What can you use IoT to automate?
Everything. No joke. Literally everything:
So really, you have to decide your biggest in-store pain point. And then you have to understand how IoT’s automation can help you from there.
In sum, your retail store has abundant opportunity for automation so can capture more sales, increase operating efficiency, and increase your profit.
It’s up to you to learn from these examples and identify the next direction to go.[:]
