Businesses need defined processes to accomplish tasks efficiently. Unfortunately, many workflows and processes are hindered by the number of time-consuming manual tasks that create bottlenecks. Manual tasks, including data entry, are tedious and prone to human error.
The more time your employees spend on these tasks, the more your company is wasting resources, including time and money. When you need to increase efficiency, productivity, and accuracy, turn to workflow automation.
Workflow automation is a straightforward way to streamline essential processes and minimize delays so things get done faster.
If you have reservations about automating processes, don’t worry. Workflow automation doesn’t reduce or eliminate the human element—just the opposite. It puts people at the center by automating recurring functions so that teams can do more planning, strategizing, and thinking.
What is workflow automation?
Workflow automation happens when you take a traditionally manual process and create a set of rules to automate key steps.
You might also hear terms like business process automation or robotic process automation (RPA) — they all fall under the same umbrella of letting technology handle repetitive tasks.
Robotic process automation is a bit different because it uses software bots to handle specific digital tasks like data entry or form filling, while workflow automation is broader and can include any automated process with triggers and actions.
The steps that get automated are what some people call “if-then” actions:
- If a customer makes a purchase, then they get an order notification.
- If a customer adds an item to their digital shopping cart but leaves before checking out, then they get an abandoned cart email enticing them to finish the transaction.
Because actions like these don’t take much thought, they’re easy to automate. This streamlines the entire process, and you can do more with your time.
Why use workflow automation?
Workflow automation can make almost any process more efficient and effective. By taking simple tasks off your plate, it frees more time and mental energy for running and growing your business. The benefits are visible both on the operations side of things and from a team management point of view.
Some of the many benefits of workflow automation include:
1. Improve clarity and consistency
Workflow automation standardizes the steps of a process, aligning them in a defined task pathway. Once that pathway is set, it becomes a guide for everyone working on that project. All someone has to do is go back to the workflow design to see what happens first, what that event triggers, what comes next, and so on.
This kind of clarity is important for today’s busy teams. Without it, there’s always the chance that a critical step will be missed. With workflow automation, it’s all there in front of you with specifics and an “if-then” flow—with many outcomes happening automatically.
2. Provide accountability
Accountability is important for any team. When you improve accountability in the workplace, you also improve:
- Employee performance
- Participation and involvement
- Feelings of competence
- Commitment to work
- Team morale
When you set up workflow automation, you delegate certain tasks to your automated system. If any tasks need human input or approval, they get delegated to a specific person. People feel better because they know who’s taking care of what.
Plus, with automation taking care of the rote manual processes, the tasks left to real people are much more interesting.
3. Increase work satisfaction
According to Deloitte Insights, meaningful work is one of the most important contributors to employee retention. More than 40% of job-seeking workers said they were looking because their current situation didn’t use their abilities well. Another 27% cited a lack of challenge in their jobs.
When you automate mundane tasks, you increase the amount of time that employees get to spend on stimulating and mentally challenging work. Instead of spending time scheduling messages, they can craft strategic initiatives and research the latest best practices. They end up doing the jobs they were hired to do, and that makes them more likely to stick around.
4. Increase productivity
Every company has a limited number of employee hours available, no matter how big the team. As workflow automation takes redundant tasks off your team members’ to-do lists, they can fill those hours with higher-level work.
The result is better productivity for your team and its members. When professionals answered a survey after their teams automated workflows, 86% reported that the change made them more productive.
5. Reduce the risk of error
Being a human at work means needing a sense of purpose and productivity, but it also means making mistakes from time to time.
Everyone does it. They hit the wrong key and send a reimbursement request to K. Smith instead of J. Smith. They read “8” as “9” and enter it into a spreadsheet incorrectly, throwing off a full set of calculations. It happens, but when it does, it can cost money and time to fix.
When you automate manual processes, you reduce—and sometimes even eliminate—the risk of a clerical error.
Workflow automation in marketing
Workflow automation can improve almost any business process, but some of the most direct benefits to your bottom line happen when you automate your marketing.
For starters, workflow automation lets you deliver the level of personalization that today’s customers demand. According to Dynamic Yield, more than 60% of North American consumers say they’re more likely to engage with an email that’s personalized to their interests. And 80% prefer to buy from brands that personalize customer experiences.
Effective personalization is difficult when you do everything manually. Someone has to check the email list for new subscribers and send out welcome messages to those who’ve recently joined. If you have customers who’ve dropped off your radar, someone has to find their emails and schedule a “we miss you” promotional message.
Automation frees you from manual tasks like these so you can focus more on strategy, analysis, and planning. Instead of spending most of your time executing campaigns, you can work on optimizing the audience experience and determining which messages get the best results.
Segmentation
Audience segmentation is the practice of dividing your audience into subgroups, each with a particular set of shared characteristics. For example, a retail clothing brand could create segments of 20-to-35-year-olds, fitness enthusiasts, or 20-to-35-year-old fitness enthusiasts. The brand could then create personalized marketing campaigns that are relevant to each group.
Automation can allow you to segment contacts without any manual effort. The process is more efficient and accurate because the software won’t forget about a segment.
Drip campaigns
One of the most useful automation methods in marketing is the drip campaign. A drip campaign lets you set up specific messages to go out in a set sequence, based on an event or an audience member’s interaction.
Here’s how it works. A contact interacts with your brand in some way, such as:
- Signing up for your mailing list
- Placing an online order
- Contacting your customer care department
- Not buying for a while
This action triggers the first email in the drip campaign to go out automatically. Ideally, the email will include personalization with the contact’s name and a reference to the action they took. Their response (or nonresponse) to that initial email triggers the next step in the process.
Say the campaign is a promotional one for a class of products that the person browsed, and the first email offers savings on that product. If they view the email but don’t buy, they might get a similar promotional offer in a month. If they don’t open the email, they might get a “we miss you” email in 8 weeks. If they buy, they go into another drip campaign altogether.
The beauty of this process is that it’s all automated. No one has to spend time deciding whether to follow up with a contact or which message to send. No one even has to schedule an email send—it all happens based on a trigger.
Targeting shopper behavior
Automation also lets you follow up with people who would otherwise escape your reach. Consider remarketing ads and emails, for example.
A remarketing ad is a message that you send to a customer who browsed your site or looked at a particular product but decided not to add it to a cart. Later on, the person gets an ad or follow-up email for that product, possibly with a promotional offer.
You can also use automation to set up abandoned cart emails. Approximately 69% of all online shoppers abandon their carts before they check out, but you can recapture some of those lost orders by reaching out as soon as the cart is abandoned.
Mailchimp users see about 34 times more orders per recipient with cart abandonment emails than with bulk emails that aren’t personalized. You design a message that matches your brand and set it to send whenever someone abandons a cart.
Again, automation does most of the work. You just tell the system what actions you want to target and with what messages.
Why marketing workflow automation works
Automated workflows free up time for your team. You can send messages that are more personalized with less effort. Mailchimp makes it even easier by tracking the results of those messages, so you can go into your dashboard and see what’s working best. You’ve got more time to do that when you spend less time scheduling and sending emails.
Also, because automation lets you set up and market to specific audience segments, you can build better relationships with your contacts. Your audiences come to view your messages as relevant and valuable, so they’re more likely to click on them and ultimately convert.
How to build an automated workflow
To start building a workflow automation, think of a process that you could automate. Maybe for your team, that’s building audience segments, creating targeted drip campaigns—or both. Alternatively, maybe you want to start by automating retargeting or abandoned cart emails.
These are just starting points. You can create an automated workflow for any marketing process you have that includes an if-then trigger: If the contact does this, then they’ll get this email, Google ad, or social media ad.
Set goals
Once you’ve identified your process, decide what you want the automation to accomplish by setting SMART goals. For example, if you’re automating the abandoned cart email process, is your goal simply to reduce your number of abandoned carts? That’s one possible goal, but it’s not the only one.
You could use workflow automation to increase your average order value. In that case, you’ll want to go a step further and add product recommendations to your “You missed something!” message.
If you’re building a drip campaign, be specific about what actions you want people to take. This is an important step any time you have multiple automations within a process because the recipient’s action will trigger the next step. You’ll know the process has successfully run its course when a contact’s action matches your final goal.
Work with your team
Take your goal to your team and communicate what the workflow automation process will entail. Talk to everyone who will have a role in working with the automated process so they understand what those roles are.
You’ll probably have some people whose responsibilities will change because of the automation. Make sure they know that they’ll be working smarter, not harder. Show them why this change will make their work more satisfying and help them use their skills better.
Create the workflow
Automated workflows are essentially flowcharts, so they’re best created in a visual format. Many automation programs, including Mailchimp’s marketing automation feature, let you build out your workflow using a drag-and-drop tool. It’s easy and hands-on, and you can edit it as you go.
Just set up the trigger and the triggered action. Then, think about what the contact could potentially do in response. What are your triggers going to be, and what will they launch within your system? Play around with it until it looks right. Remember, you can always change it later based on results.
Move forward and measure your results
As with everything else in marketing, it’s important to regularly evaluate how your workflow automations are doing. Are your drip campaigns getting results? If not, what steps aren’t performing?
If everything’s working great, how can you keep it working for you going forward?
The best way to answer these questions is by identifying key performance indicators (KPIs), such as:
- Open and click-through rates
- Conversion rates
- Average order value
- Customer lifetime value
- Campaign ROI
The campaign you design will depend on the specific process you’ve automated. Choose a separate one for each process, then keep a close eye on what the numbers do. You’ll be amazed at how much more you can do with the same resources and time.
Workflow automation examples
Automated workflows can improve many different business processes. The best way to understand what workflow automation can do is to see it in action. Here are some real-world examples of how different departments use automation to cut down on busy work and get better results:
- HR: Human resources automation helps managers recruit candidates faster with tools that can help individuals pinpoint keywords and data within resumes. It also streamlines the onboarding process, including background checks, and reduces the amount of paperwork.
- IT: Information technology automation can reduce the time it takes to address concerns by assigning tickets and preventing duplicates. It can also be used to reduce security risks and integrate with security tools to manage infrastructure.
- Marketing: Marketing automation can help you segment your audience to market to customers more effectively. With drip campaigns, automated social media marketing, and segmentation, you can start building more effective marketing campaigns based on user behavior and customer data.
- Sales: Automation can improve the sales process by allowing you to segment leads based on where they are in the customer journey. You can also automate customer communications and lead updates that can impact the sales process.
- Accounting: Financial automation can streamline reconciliations and payroll while reducing human error and your level of risk. Automation software also integrates with your financial tools to simplify accounting, bookkeeping, and reporting.
- Operations: Operations teams can automate inventory management, order fulfillment, and supply chain tracking to keep everything running without constant manual oversight. Automated alerts notify team members when stock runs low or when shipments are delayed.
- Project management: Project managers can automate status updates, deadline reminders, and task assignments. When one task gets completed, the next one automatically gets assigned to the right person with all the context they need to jump in.
Benefits of implementing workflow automation across industries
Workflow automation isn't just for one type of business. It works across pretty much every industry you can think of.
Whether you're running a marketing agency, managing a hospital, or overseeing a manufacturing plant, there are routine tasks that eat up time and could be handled more efficiently.
Marketing and sales
Marketing teams waste tons of time on repetitive work like sending follow-up emails, updating spreadsheets, and assigning tasks to different team members. Workflow automation streamlines all of that by handling routine tasks automatically.
You can build drip campaigns that send the right message at the right time based on customer behavior, automatically segment your audience, and even trigger automated notifications when a lead takes a specific action.
Sales teams can also benefit from implementing workflow automation. They can automate lead scoring, follow-up reminders, and pipeline updates so they spend more time actually talking to customers instead of updating their CRM.
Customer support
Nobody likes waiting for a response, and customer support teams never want to let people slip through the cracks. Automation helps by routing support tickets to the right person immediately, sending confirmation emails as soon as someone submits a request, and escalating urgent issues without manual intervention.
HR and employee onboarding
HR departments deal with mountains of paperwork and repetitive processes, especially when bringing new people on board. Implementing workflow automation here means new hires automatically get welcome emails, training schedules, and all the documents they need to sign without HR having to manually send everything.
You can automate background checks, expense reports, time-off requests, and performance review reminders. This gives HR more time to focus on actually supporting employees.
Finance and operations
Finance teams need to be accurate, and workflow automation eliminates a lot of the human error that comes from manual data entry. You can automate invoice processing, payment approvals, and reconciliation tasks so everything moves faster and mistakes get caught before they become real problems.
Operations benefit from automated inventory tracking, order processing, and vendor management. When you understand workflow automation, you realize it offers you speed and creates reliable, consistent processes that keep your business running smoothly.
Key features of effective workflow automation solutions
Not all workflow automation software offers the same features. Selecting the right workflow automation software for your business means you need to look beyond flashy features and focus on what matters most.
The best tools make your life easier, not more complicated, and they grow with you as your needs change. Features to look for when selecting workflow automation software are:
Integration with existing platforms
Your new automated workflow needs to work with the tools you're already using. Choose an automation solution that offers seamless integration with your existing systems, whether that's your email platform, CRM, accounting software, or project management tools.
If your workflow automation solution can't connect with the systems you already have, you'll end up creating more work for yourself. The whole point is to streamline processes across your tech stack, not add another isolated tool.
Customization and flexibility
Every business is different, so you need workflow automation software that bends to fit your needs. Good automation tools let you customize triggers, actions, and conditions to match your actual business workflows.
You should be able to build complex workflows when you need them and keep them simple when you don't.
Tracking and reporting
If you can't measure it, you can't improve it. Your automation tool should give you clear visibility into how your workflows are performing. That means tracking completion rates, identifying bottlenecks, and showing you where issues might be occurring.
You need real-time data on what's working and what isn't so that you can optimize processes as you go instead of guessing.
Scalability for business growth
What works for a team of five won't necessarily work when you're a team of fifty. The right workflow automation software grows with you, handling more users, more complex workflows, and higher volumes without slowing down or requiring constant workarounds.
Common challenges and how to avoid them
Even though workflow automation can enhance daily tasks, it's not always easy to implement. Most businesses run into a few predictable problems when they're getting started. Luckily, these challenges are available if you know what to watch out for and plan accordingly.
Overcomplicating workflows
One of the biggest mistakes companies make is trying to automate tasks and processes that are too complicated right out of the gate. They build elaborate workflows with several branches and conditions, and then nobody can figure out how to use them.
Start simple. Pick one straightforward process, automate it, make sure it works, and then move on to the next one. You can always add complexity later once you know the basics.
Lack of team alignment
Automation fails when people don't understand why it's happening or how it affects their work. If you just spring a new system on your team without explaining what's changing, you'll get resistance and confusion.
Before implementing workflow automation, sit down with everyone involved and walk them through what's changing, why it matters, and how it'll make their jobs easier. You should also get their input since they might be able to identify problems you didn't think of.
Neglecting ongoing optimization
Streamlining internal workflows isn't a one-and-done task. Your first version of any automated workflow probably won't be perfect, and that's okay. The problem is when businesses set up automation and then forget about it.
Markets change, your business evolves, and what worked six months ago might not work today. Check in on your workflows regularly, look at the data, and be willing to adjust when something is no longer working.
Use Mailchimp for workflow automation
Marketing workflow automation can improve productivity and prevent human error for better, more effective marketing campaigns. With Mailchimp’s email marketing automation tools, you can create personalized, automated workflows for each customer segment by setting up trigger-based messages and scheduling emails at the best time to increase conversions.
Mailchimp’s customer journey mapping tool helps you visualize the different triggers you set for customers based on where they are in the customer journey, allowing you to reach the right people at the right time.
Key Takeaways
- Workflow automation uses "if-then" rules to handle repetitive tasks automatically, giving teams more time to focus on strategy and high-level work instead of manual processes like data entry and scheduling.
- Automation improves accuracy, productivity, and employee satisfaction by eliminating human error and letting people spend time on meaningful work that actually uses their skills.
- Successful implementation requires starting simple, getting team buy-in, and regularly optimizing your workflows as your business needs change.
- The right workflow automation software should integrate with your existing tools, offer customization options, provide clear tracking and reporting, and scale as your business grows.