How Does Online Business Automation Work [Anatomy of Automation]. Ep 3

There’s really two main components to the anatomy of the business automation workflow and there's the first thing which is called the trigger. And the trigger is basically something that happens that starts or begins the workflow. A workflow can have multiple additional workflows or it can be a single workflow or a single action.

So, a trigger is usually created by some sort of action that the user or in this case let’s say of course, a human being - or a person that's visiting a website - takes or it can be a different type of trigger that is not necessarily on a website and we’re going to go through that in a minute.

And then the second step is the actual automation workflow, it really means that it’s a series of activities that follow a very specific order. The action order can be divided into two types of workflows: one is what's called a linear workflow, which means one thing happens right after the other and nothing that the user does will affect the order of those actions and then, there's more advanced one called, what I call a dynamic automation workflow and that means that; depending on what the user does throughout the workflow process, different actions are taken and the actual automation workflow goes into a different path. So, let me show you this visually but first, let's talk about the triggers.

Business Process Triggers

We're going to talk about two types of triggers: Business process triggers. Which means anything to do with automating different administrative things inside your business and of course, everything has to be digitalized. We're obviously not going to talk about anything that you do here in paper but instead, everything in a computer and here’s twelve examples that I came up with.

1. Creating an invoice - When you create an invoice, you can trigger that something happens in your organization, such as for example; sending a task to your accounting department, to make sure that they note down that there's something that has to be in accounts payable so somebody needs to get paid.  Or;

2. Tagging a contact - For example, another trigger could be when somebody from your sales team tags a contact in your CRM. That means, for example, they created a tag called “lead”. Okay? So, when that contact in your CRM is tagged as lead, maybe it creates another task for somebody to go follow up with that person a couple days later.

3. Receiving a payment - Some other triggers could include; receiving a payment and of course, noting it down in your accounting software; or

4. Completing a task, whether it's a project task or a sales and marketing task; or

5. Creating any sort of task, either in your CRM, your customer relationship management system, or in your budget management system.  

6. Creating a new contact

7. Creating a new sales opportunity - or what's also called a deal.  It's actually something that you put in your sales formula as a note of what is the potential that you can sell and that could be a trigger that when that happens, something else is going to... for example, you could create additional lead scoring points into your contacts, so that you know that you're closer to that, you'd actually getting closer. I mean, maybe that's not the best way to do it but it's definitely possible way.

8. Creating a note - Also, another trigger could be creating a note

9. Updating a contact - Updating some contact information

10. Updating an opportunity sales stage. - Let's say that you know your sales stage move from prospecting into the proposal stage, so you know, when that happens, you can create another automated task, for maybe letting the sales manager know that, you know, your sales team is doing better

11. Completing a phone call - Or for example, when you complete a phone call, you can actually automate, so at some point; somebody calls your business and the moment that the call finishes, we can create a process that automatically creates a note of who called, what was the duration of the call and then, let's say that the user can be sent a notification to add the notes of the phone call.

12. Closing a support chat - And another last example; the trigger could be closing a support chat. So, that when a user is chatting with your sales agent or your tech support agent and they close the chats, you can make something else happen; such as sending an email to that person.

So, that's everything related to business process triggers and again, this is not the finite list but just twelve examples.

Triggers for Sales and Marketing

And here we have another twelve examples, on this case specifically, triggers about sales and marketing.

1. Filling out contact form - The first one could be filling out a contact form on the website; another one could be

2. An opt-in for lead magnet - it’s another type of form, when somebody is requesting to download, I don't know, the guide for the ten best tips for how to design a logo;

3. Answering a survey - or when somebody answers a survey, opening an email; or for example

4. Opening an email - when somebody opens an email, we can trigger that another email be sent out, if we choose to do so; or

5. Clicking an email link

6. Visiting a website - a specific web page or clicking a specific page,

7. Clicking website links - sort of clicking a specific link within another page;

8. Time spent on website - or measuring how much time was spent on a website. Let's say that, you know, you can say that if any user spent more than five minutes on a website, we could create that to be the trigger that triggers maybe a pop up, to appear on the website and that could be automated.

9. Number of web pages visited - We could also say that, you know, if any web visitor visits more than ten pages, we should send a notification note to the sales team, so that they try to get in touch with them. This of course, assuming we can actually track exactly who it is, which again assumes we already have that contact saved into our CRM.

10. Watching a video - We could also have a trigger being; when somebody watches a video;

11. Chatting with a web operator - or when they chat with the web operator;

12. Phone call received - or when there's a phone call received, very similar to the example I was explaining before, alright.

And now, let's visually explain to you the actual automation.

So, once a trigger happens, we could have at least these two types of automations work for us.  This one is the first one I spoke to you about; the simple linear. In this case, there’s two actions; there's the trigger, then there's the action beginning and then the reaction. So, the trigger in this case is a new contact on the CRM, it’s tagged as "Lead" and that was the example I was talking about before.

This is actually something we actually use on our CRM, on AgileCRM. I created a workflow so that every time some contact is tagged with the word "lead" or the tag "lead", I automatically have my system.  In this case, specifically using Zapier, create a task, for me to follow up with that contact 7 days from the trigger date, which is great because, all I have to do and save time, is simply tag a contact with the word lead and then, I know that automatically, there will be a task created for me to follow up with that person in 7 days.  That way I don't have to spend the additional minutes or seconds, going to creating a task to remind myself to do it.  The reminder will be created automatically.

And then, of course, what is the reaction in one week from today or from whenever the contact was tagged?  Then, I’ll be seeing a reminder on my task list, inside the CRM that now, I should go follow up with them. In this case, you can see that it's linear because, no matter what the user does, the trigger simply, automatically creates this task.  Now, I'm going to show you something more complex but before I do that, keep in mind that this simple linear automation could have multiple steps, so, after the reaction, then we could have additional tasks created or additional email sent or whatever we wanted but what we mean by linear is that, one thing happens after the other, there is no IF or THEN statement.  Okay?

Now, onto the dynamic workflow, which is what most of the modern marketing automation tools allow you to do including: complex email drift campaigns.  It's something that allows the user interact in one way or another with your workflow.

So, let's go through this example: a user fills out an online form requesting a design guide.  In this case this could be some type of PDF.  The moment that somebody fills out that form, they will automatically get an email with a link to download the PDF or with the PDF as an attachment.  Then, as part of the workflow set up. We can create a note that checks: "Hey! Did the person open the email or not?"  If they didn't open the email, then we will ask the system or the workflow to wait 2 days and then send another email reminder.

So, this clearly shows that depending on what the user did, the workflow gets adapted, but  if the user did open the email, then we check: "Hey! Did they click on the guide or not?"  If they did click on the link to the guide, in this case, we see right here, we'll wait 3 days and, then, we try to send another email.  Well, we don't track, we actually send another email where we try to sell some paid services.  Okay?

But what happens if they didn't click on the guide?  Then, we wait another two days and we send them another reminder.  And, of course, in this case, it looks like it will go on forever. Every 2 days it’s going to send an email, until they click the link to the guide.  And, then, we wait for 3 days and then we see if they are, you know, they send an email to upsell some paid services.

Then in the next blue box, we check: "Hey! Did they purchase a service? Yes or No?"  If they did purchase a service, then, that's it!  You're basically done.  You'll take them out of the workflow because, they've completed a sale.  I mean they bought something from you.

If they didn’t, let's say in this example, you wait 1 more day and then, maybe you send them an email with a 20% off coupon, so that maybe you incentivize them to buy. Then we check again: "Hey! Did they purchase?  Yes or No?"  If yes, then, you're done.  If not, if not, in this case, which maybe it doesn't make any sense, you'll wait another day and we send an email with a 20% on forever until they buy.

So, at least like this, you can get a good idea of the difference between a simple or a more dynamic automation workflow. So, that's pretty much it, I wanted to keep this video short and explain to you the main parts that make up business automation and again, that is a trigger and then the actual automation workflow itself.

Thank you so much for watching this video and I hope you're going to be learning a lot from this #MarketingFridays video blog. Thanks a lot, bye, bye.

Related Post: Use Marketing Automation to Turn Leads Into Brand Ambassadors

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