How many times have you wished, futile as it is, that you could clone yourself? Or that you could grow two extra arms?
As a busy entrepreneur, you’re likely wearing many hats and working long hours, especially in the early days of your business. Maybe it’s too early tohire staff, or you’re still struggling with delegating to the staff you have. It’s your baby, after all, built from scratch with your bare hands.
But what if you couldautomate some of your daily tasks, leaving you more time to do what you do best? Enter bots.
We’ve introduced bots for business in the past,specifically chatbotsthat perform tasks or return information based on a text or messenger “conversations” much like you’d have with a friend. But bots have evolved beyond their chatbot origins, communicating with us through voice, learning and adapting to our needs, and eventalking among themselves.
You probably already use bots in your daily life, whether it’s asking Siri for a traffic update, or controlling smart devices in your home via Alexa. Bots can help a weather app talk to a garden sprinkler, or send push notifications every time a post on Craigslist meets your search criteria.
Often, as in the case of Siri and Alexa, bots are given human qualities, with commands more conversational, versus typing in a search engine.
Yes this isThe Future. And not the “robots will steal our jobs then kill us” future (I watch too much Netflix). As bots become more intelligent, their skillsets expand. They’re not only handy for personal tasks—they can be valuable members of your team and help you work more efficiently, too.
That is the real promise of the bots: an army of automated agents, collaborating to work for you, unleashing huge value for consumers and entrepreneurs.
In a growing category in theShopify App Store, bots help business owners runmarketing campaigns,pair store functions with smart devices, and access data via chat.
These 6 bots, bot integrations, and automation tools work with your Shopify store to help you get more done without actually cloning yourself:
1. Social Share Bot
Price: from $3/month, free 5-day trial
Creating content for all of your social accounts, keeping them active, and engaging with your audience can be a full-time job (and we know your business already has you working overtime). But, well-managed social accounts help drive traffic and build a community around your brand. So, they’re important.
While social bots are easy to sniff out, and you’ll still have to give your accounts a human touch, Social Share Bot can ease some of the burden. The bot creates content for Twitter and Pinterest whenever new products and collections are added to your Shopify store. It randomly chooses from a set of custom messages written by you, in your voice. Customize social posts with product url and title from the app dashboard.
2. NumbersBot
Price: $9.99/month
NumbersBot gives you easy access to your store’s data on the go. Ask about your sales, conversions,average cart value, and more. Every day, NumbersBot follows up with you via Facebook Messenger or Telegram with current sales reports and suggestions. It also learns from you—the more you interact with the app, the more reports it can provide to you via a simple chat.
3.facebook Messenob欧宝娱乐app下载地址ger Remarketing by ShopMessage
Price: free (premium plans available)
Turn your abandoned carts into sales through Facebook Messenger.
ShopMessage uses personalized messaging to automatically contact customers who leave your store with full carts. The bot can bring customers back to your site with a conversation, reminding them of the specific items in the cart, and offering a discount. Track the success of your interactions through the ShopMessage dashboard.
“You can see exactly how much revenue you're getting from the app in real-time, so you can see the awesome ROI for yourself. We saw the sales start to flow in on Day 1.”
—Mint & Lily on Shopify
4. Zapier
Price: Free-$100/month
Zapieris a handy tool that acts as a liaison between hundreds of apps, even if they don’t natively integrate.
It allows one app to talk to another and perform tasks based on your instructions, or “Zaps”. These Zaps then activate whenever a trigger action occurs, and can help youmonitor brand conversations on social, or manage your inbox automatically. If it wasn’t easy enough, Zapier also integrates directly with Shopify. Drag and drop to connect to dozens of apps, or even build your own integrations. Zapier can help you stay informed of your store’s activity, even when you’re doing a million other things: get a text when you receive an order, or a message in Campfire each time a new customer registers an account.
5. Simple Shop Automation by Hextom
Price: Free
Simple Shop Automation helps perform everyday business tasks automatically. This free bot can perform actions based on set criteria, cutting out manual workflows. It can even handle complex tasks—combine multiple conditions to trigger a series of actions when all conditions are met.
Example actions:
- When customers have spent over $1000 cumulatively, tag customers with "VIP"
- When a product is sold out, hide it from your online store
- When a quantity of a product is less than 10, increase the price by 20%
- 更新订单时,订单发送一封电子邮件information to the customer
- Every Friday at 4:30 PM, send you an email with low inventory products, top 5 bestselling items last week, and weekly sales data
- Every Day at 6:00PM, email you today's sales report
Install Simple Shop Automation
6. Shoppy Bot Smart Assistant
Price: Free
Like NumbersBot, Shoppy Bot is a concierge data assistant that delivers reports on demand.
Ask Shoppy Bot a question to access your store’s data through over 30 custom reports. Wellen Surf says Shoppy Bot saves the team over 10 hours per week. The Shopify store uses it to access data quickly rather than exporting reports and manipulating the data in Excel. The Shoppy Bot team can also help build out custom reporting solutions for your unique business.
Shoppy Bot integrates with Slack—ask it your data questions using @bot.
How do you use bots to automate your daily business tasks? Share your tips in the comments below.