Funnels that Automate Dropshipping – How to Automate Dropshipping Orders: Ultimate Guide
Overview
“Going digital” always sounds nice because it means you have access to technology, tools, and software that will make your work easier. Yet, even with the aid of computers and phones at a time when online shopping is becoming a norm, you will still find arduous e-commerce tasks that will require time, effort, and attention more than the other areas of your business.
One of the best ways to help you deal with the weight and pressure of starting your own dropshipping business is by using automation tools. If you are a one-man team, you especially need to automate particular areas of your business to make management, monitoring, and other daily tasks easier for you.
With automated dropshipping, you’ll be able to manage products, orders, and customer concerns better. Most importantly, you can speed up your processes and sales.
What is Dropshipping, and How Does It Work?
Dropshipping is arguably one of the easiest and fastest business models to adopt in terms of setting up. As a drop shipper, you won’t need to pay for warehousing because you don’t have an inventory to stock. Without inventory to keep, you also don’t have to allocate a large amount of capital to start your business.
Knowing this, you might wonder about the process through which you acquire products to sell and how you sell them to customers in a dropshipping business. You must also be asking right about now how you earn a profit in a dropshipping setting.
Here’s what you need to know. In a dropshipping business process, there are three vital elements involved, which are the buyer, the seller, and the supplier, who can be a manufacturer or a wholesaler. You, the seller, put up an e-commerce store, website, or digital page where you can showcase the products you outsource from the supplier.
The supplier holds the actual inventory of the products, and what you do is only feature the product information in your online platform and market the products to customers. The customers select products to buy from your store, and once they check out a product, you pass their order to the supplier. The supplier then handles all the shipping matters and fulfills the customers’ orders.
How do you earn your profit?
The suppliers from whom you outsource your products sell them to you at wholesale pricing. When you list the products in your store, website, or page, you add a markup price to the wholesale price that the supplier offered you. The markup price refers to the additional amount you add to the wholesale price, which covers any overhead cost and your profit. On the other hand, the overhead cost refers to any ongoing expense you will incur in operating your business, which is not directly related to creating a product or service. That’s how you earn in a dropshipping business model.
What Does Automated Dropshipping Mean?
Automated dropshipping is the process of making your dropshipping business processes faster and more convenient through the use of digital tools and technology. Automating your dropshipping orders means you find and use technological and digital aids to process your customer’s orders.
It allows drop shippers and business owners to let go of tedious tasks that can be done with the help of a program, app, or software and focus on improving other aspects of their business. It also ensures analysis, reporting, and management that is more accurate than what humans alone can do.
Yet, automating your dropshipping tasks doesn’t necessarily mean that there is only pure technology or digital tools working for your business. In most cases, automation may also mean human intervention coming from skilled individuals with expertise on particular dropshipping tasks. Sometimes it means delegating a particular area of work to a highly skilled individual who will use digital tools and technology to maximize dropshipping outputs at a given time. At any rate, it’s about speeding up dropshipping business processes.
Significant Reasons to Automate Your Dropshipping Orders
Automating your dropshipping orders can provide significant benefits for your business. There are a lot of things needed to be done and considered in launching a business. No matter how simple the dropshipping business model seems, you will find yourself faced with arduous tasks. Automated dropshipping simplifies these tasks and helps you easily handle them. It may sound self-serving, but in truth, automating your dropshipping orders gives benefits beyond your personal needs.
1. Accuracy
Dropshipping automation tools and software are designed to analyze, measure, and manage consumer data with accuracy. It can provide reliable reports and output while simultaneously dealing with multiple tasks. For instance, automation tools can remember data you input for shipping details, delete duplicate data, show real-time tracking reports from the supplier’s warehouse monitoring system, and some can automatically change errors.
2. Speed
Automation tools and dropshipping software are made for businesses to achieve maximum output with minimum effort at any given time. It means that in terms of speed and accuracy, digital tools work better than humans. With these tools, it’s easier to get things done faster than the manual way.
3. Time
When dropshipping orders are automated, you get freed from the tasks that mostly take up too much of your time. Instead, you get to focus on other areas of your business that need concern, like your marketing strategies and customer support. If these areas aren’t your concern, you get the extra time for your rest and other personal plans. Believe it or not, even a dropshipping business will ask much from you in reality that you will need a “me-time.”
4. Saves money
Automation and other digital tools cannot replace what employees can contribute to the growth of your business. Yet, when you’ve just launched your e-commerce business, you might not have enough capital to spare for an employee’s salary. Most often, fee-based dropshipping tools and other software adapt monthly subscription schemes that are much lower than an employee’s monthly salary. They cannot replace the flexibility and skills of man, but they can help you manage complex or heavy tasks while you save money for the salary of your future employees.
Moreover, automation tools help create seamless processes that improve and scale your business. With better e-commerce store output comes better conversion and sales performance.
5. Resources and additional skills
Dropshipping automation tools, apps, and software don’t come solely as a tool. With it are learning resources, training and how-to videos, and other materials which you can use to develop best practices and dropshipping strategies.
Ways on How to Automate Dropshipping Orders
Email Automation
Email marketing is a great strategy to keep your customers in the know and engaged. But emailing your email list takes so much time and energy. The good thing is that you can automate your emails and trigger email messages when customers make desired actions in your e-commerce store.
Email marketing is a great strategy to keep your customers in the know and engaged. But emailing your email list takes so much time and energy. The good thing is that you can automate your emails and trigger email messages when customers make desired actions in your e-commerce store. You can use email marketing tools that will display email subscription pop-ups on your website. Automating your email also means that customers can receive order confirmation, shipping and payment details, check-out reminders, and promotional emails automatically.
Automation tools you can use: Shopify’s own notification email option, MailChimp, Omnisend, Klaviyo, Outfunnel
Customer Order Processing Automation
Automating customer orders means that in just a single click, your supplier can receive the order and shipping details of your customer. It saves you time and energy, especially when you receive multiple orders every day. Instead of manually typing or copy-and-pasting every customer order and their details to send to your supplier, you only need to click a button to send the details needed by the supplier.
With automation, order processing becomes faster, therefore avoiding possible shipping delays. It also provides accuracy, which is very important in shipping details.
Automation tools you can use: Oberlo, Inventory Source, Shopify’s order processing section, or the Google Autocomplete feature.
Order Tracking Automation
Customers want to know what happens to their orders after buying. Part of enhancing customer experience and gaining their trust is letting them know about the whereabouts of their order.
By integrating tracking apps to automate your order tracking, customers can receive shipping notifications and tracking numbers on their phones and emails. They can track their orders using the tracking number and tracking website link provided in the automated notifications.
Automation tools you can use: Oberlo, Spark Shipping, AfterShip, Shipway, and Inventory Source
Social Media Automation
When running an e-commerce business, you need other channels to increase your customer reach and market your products. Social media serves as a marketing platform where you can establish your brand and integrate your e-commerce store.
If you have already created your business’ social media account like Facebook, you can automate instant replies on your Messenger. This way, customers may feel entertained and assisted regarding FAQs, order updates, and customer service concerns. You can also integrate other chat apps or chatbots to assist customers with initial inquiries.
Moreover, you can use CMS (Content Management System or Crisis Monitoring System) tools to follow up on customer concerns. It is also helpful in scheduling posts to save you time.
Automation tools you can use: Hootsuite, Chatfuel, Manychat, and Buffer
Automating Product Reviews
Reviews are vital in establishing customer trust and attracting new buyers. Sometimes, people tend to forget to leave ratings and feedback after receiving their orders. You can’t message them one by one because it will take time, so you need prompts and notifications that will remind them to add their feedback and reviews.
There are multiple review apps and tools you can use to send review prompts and notifications on phones and emails. Some of these tools also filter reviews. They send you bad feedback and low ratings while they automatically add the ratings of 3 stars and above on your store.
Automation tools you can use: Reviews.io, Bazaarvoice, Shopper Approved, and Loox
Putting Select Tasks on Auto-pilot
You can automate repetitive and minor tasks to focus your energy on other important and urgent business responsibilities. Putting tasks on auto-pilot helps you organize and prioritize your tasks.
Some examples of tasks you can put on auto-pilot are auto-restocking of inventory, automatic setting of round-up prices, or automatically unpublishing products that are no longer available.
If you are new to dropshipping and still checking your options for your business, you might want to check this blog: What is Best: Shopify or Amazon to Start Dropshipping Business Online and Why
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does it cost to start a dropshipping business?
Dropshipping business requires no large capital, and you can technically start just by combining free platforms and tools to launch your business. However, excluding marketing expenses, you can start your e-commerce dropshipping store with $100- $200. Your costs and expenses will increase depending on the tools and apps you integrate with your business, which usually follows a subscription scheme, too.
Do customers know that you don’t have the actual products and some other company fulfills their orders?
An unwritten and unsaid rule about dropshipping: do not let your customers know that you are a dropshipping store. It’s because it’s easy to lose the credibility of your store and the trust of your customers when they find out that you don’t own the products you sell and you don’t have them in stock. It implies that customer service can be tricky, with another party handling their actual orders, and you are not in charge of quality control.
Are there free dropshipping automation tools and software?
Yes. You can find free dropshipping automation tools and software as a built-in app or extended service of the website builder or e-commerce platform where you set up your store. Sometimes, you can find free automation apps in the app store of website builders like Shopify. There are also automation apps and tools you can use as a free trial within a period of time.
Conclusion
Automating your dropshipping business processes help you improve the performance of your e-commerce store. It also helps you see problem areas in your business and identify aspects that need more of your time and energy.
Automation tools are there to aid you in handling your dropshipping business, especially if you don’t have any employees yet. It doesn’t just help free up your time but allows for better management of data and content. It helps you conduct business with accuracy and speed. They also serve as guides when you lack the skills to manage a particular area of your dropshipping business.
