From ActiveCampaign to Notion to Python, here are the 14 answers to the question, “What is your favorite small business automation tool that helps save time and increase profits?”
- Activecampaign
- Salesforce Sync
- Google Data Studio
- Zapier
- Quickbooks
- Little Warden
- Notion
- Calendly
- Grammarly
- Airtable
- Zoomsphere
- Keap
- Hive
- Python
ActiveCampaign
In regard to marketing automation, ActiveCampaign, our email platform, enables us to automate email messaging for prospects and new customers. For example, when someone signs up to receive our email newsletter, we’ve configured it so that ActiveCampaign sends them a sequence of pre-written emails that have been strategically crafted and scheduled to encourage conversion. It’s also easy to personalize the messages by addressing the recipient by their first name.
At my medical practice, we have emphasized email marketing for quite some time, as it has given us great results. Adding automation to the mix through ActiveCampaign has supercharged our efforts by eliminating repetitive tasks. I would recommend it for any solopreneur or small business.
Jae Pak, MD, Jae Pak MD Medical
Salesforce
Using automation software (Salesforce) to sync my e-commerce store with my Salesforce CRM is one of the best business decisions I’ve ever made. By linking these two systems via a third-party integration, certain information like customer and payment details can be synced — which helps every large or small business save time on manual data entry. (That equates to increased revenue!) It also helps to eliminate human errors like typos and data inconsistencies. The tool you use depends largely on which platforms you’re on, and a quick Google search can guide you on which automation solution is best for your business.
Stephanie Venn-Watson, Co-Founder, fatty15
Google Data Studio
We mostly use Google Data Studio for automated reporting, not just internally but also for client reports and since they can see the data live, we are able to answer their questions and plan new strategies ASAP. It has increased clients’ trust in our work, our time response when it comes to crises, and the understanding of our campaigns’ impact.
Brenton Thomas, CEO, Twibi Digital Marketing Agency
Zapier
The best automation tool is without a doubt Zapier. Zapier can connect and do actions in almost all systems you use. You can connect your CMS with your CRM. You can create tasks in your task management system based on events on your social media. It’s the glue that binds the internet together and can save you a lot of time as it automates manual tasks.
Anders Thornild, Digital Marketing Manager, CyberPilot
Quickbooks for Bookkeeping.
My favorite small business automation tool is QuickBooks. It helps save time by automating bookkeeping and accounting tasks, and it increases profits by tracking expenses and helping to forecast future income. Quickbooks is easy to use and has a lot of great features, like invoicing, tracking payments, and creating reports. Plus, there is a lot of online support available if you need it.
Carly Hill, Operations Manager, VirtualHolidayParty.com
Little Warden
Tools like Little Warden are incredible for saving the day when it comes to domain expiry and general website issues fir small business owners.
It reminds you when your domain is due for renewal, whether your robots.txt file has changed (crucial for SEO success), as well as SSL expiry so you can keep your website as safe and secure as possible.
It would be a big time investment to keep track of all of these things alongside running a small business, so the time saved alone means these types of tools are worth it!
James Taylor, Founder, Digital Tool Report
Notion
If you’re a small business owner, I’d recommend that you get everyone on your team to track their work in Notion, which provides team leaders an easy way to keep tabs on what everyone on the team is doing and the progress they’re making. Project roadmaps can be built on Notion. Pending interviews or closings can be written and updated easily by using Notion. Updates can translate to email alerts. It’s a great tool to use to build a collaborative work environment. It also saves an incredible amount of time.
Trevor Ford, Head of Growth, Yotta
Calendly
For years, emailing back and forth to decide when meetings should be scheduled was very tedious and frustrating. As a CEO of one company with many clients around the world, it’s not uncommon to have trouble with double booking and urgent appointments. I’ve been looking for an automation tool that will handle my bookings.
Now I use Calendly, this simple yet reliable scheduling system saves hours every single week because all they need from their users are those little bits of information such as the preferred date/time range of your availability, so there won’t ever be scheduled meetings at unwanted times. Plus, you can send your links to anyone – clients, team members, new leads, etc. – the tool lets their calendars do all the work by automatically detecting different time zones while still being given complete flexibility over dates/times themselves for when those meetings need to be scheduled.
Maria Harutyunyan, Co-Founder, Loopex Digital
Grammarly
Grammarly helps save time in checking the accuracy of content before publication. It also eases the worry of unnecessary spelling and grammar lapses in emails. The least that you would want to happen is to send out communication with those mistakes. This application also gives out useful suggestions which can cut out efforts too. The higher your yields and output will mean an increase in pay and profits. Automation does help, in many ways. It simplifies and speeds up the process, allowing us to focus more on other more urgent tasks at hand. The result will be more efficient and effective work, produced and accomplished in a lesser amount of time.
Laura Martinez, Consultant and Content Writer, PersonalityMax
Airtable
My favorite tool is Airtable. It can help automate marketing, sales, and customer service processes. With Airtable, I can quickly and easily create custom applications to automate my workflow. Airtable’s drag-and-drop interface makes it easy to create custom applications without coding knowledge. In addition, Airtable integrates with several popular software applications, making it easy to automate your workflow.
Airtable is the perfect tool for small businesses looking to streamline their operations and increase profits.
Lukasz Zelezny, SEO Consultant, SEO Consultant London
ZoomSphere
ZoomSphere is one tool, which has been effective in the automation of our social media handling. It allows us to manage our social media accounts (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Google) in one location. It has numerous robust analytics and scheduling features, including assigning projects and tasks, keeping activity logs, and using instant messaging. As a result, it is professionally organizing all our social media accounts on a single platform while saving time.
Karen Cate Agustin, Business Analyst, Investors Club
Keap
From your marketing tasks to handling customer queries, we have found all kinds of automation tools on Keap. But the main tools we use are to respond to contact us queries on our website using Keap software and to operate lead magnet.
With their email automation tool, when a user fills out the contact us form on your website, they would instantly receive a thank you email from your side informing them that you would respond soon to their query.
Keap also provides a tool that provides that delivers the free content from you to those who sign up to receive an offer from you.
Shubham Saxena, CEO, CLICKVISION
Hive
For many small businesses, labor and productivity loss can be the most expensive part of your business. Much of your time as a small business owner is spent coordinating team members. What if they could coordinate themselves and manage their own productivity? There is a lot of collaborative project management software out there. Hive was the only one that combined all of the features that I wanted in one place, with the friendliest interface.
Why is the interface important? We want team members to use project management tools for their own benefit. No longer is the project lead alone, stressing out over all the details. Team members all work within the same task list, building out their sub-projects and initiating their own communication with other team members.
As a project lead, you can use software like Hive to reduce wasted time on oversight and focus on planning. In turn, your team members will feel more responsible and free to build your idea fast and cost-efficiently.
Robert Futch, CTO, Delta Development Team Inc
Python
Don’t underestimate python! It’s easy to learn and great at automating daily tasks, and if you are a no-coder, there’s still Upwork where you can hire a developer to build cheap basic automation in Python for $50-100.
Use it in combination with Zapier, which is hands down one of the best automation tools for no-coders, and you will have the ultimate workhorse. These two together can automate almost everything.
Machine learning is also very useful and easy now to use even for those who don’t know to program, thanks to tools like Mayalabs and Cheatlayer, which leverage AI to read your requests to build custom software. You can literally write down what you want and they will create your program.
Roberto Popolizio, SEO Manager, SupportHost
