4 Ways You Can Use Ontraport for Task Automation
Ontraport allows you to visualise how customers flow through your various funnels. But it’s also an automation tool. Here are four ways you can take advantage of this for your business
Ontraport is a comprehensive tool that allows you to manage an array of processes.
Many use it as a marketing tool. Using Ontraport, you can create emails and opt-in forms that pull people into your sales funnels. The key with the platform is its visualisations. Ontraport uses a flowchart format to help you see the journeys that customers take with your company. Better yet, it collects key data that you can use to make improvements.
As importantly, the platform offers you plenty of opportunities to automate.
This article examines some of the automation techniques that you can use with the platform.
But let’s answer the key question first.
Why do you need to automate at all?
The answer is that there is an array of benefits that come from automation…
The Benefits of Automation
Automation benefits your business and its processes in the following ways:
- It eliminates many of the human errors that can affect the consistency of your offering. With automation, you ensure each action in a process gets performed in the same way each time. As long as you set a high standard for the process, automation maintains this standard every time.
- Productivity improves enormously with automation. You can use it to handle many of the manual and repetitive tasks that are time sinks for your team. For example, a salesforce can benefit from automation within a CRM. Automation could allow the CRM to determine where a lead is in the sales funnel. This then informs the actions that a salesperson needs to take. In this scenario, knowing where the lead stands minimises the time wasted on inappropriate actions.
- Automated processes have defined standards. This makes it much easier to set targets and analyse workflows. With automation, you can set key metrics for a process and get consistent and reliable data about how well it works.
- You get greater reliability with automated processes. You don’t have to worry about a machine or platform taking sick days or missing work. They operate to the same standard at all times. This reliability adds to the consistency mentioned earlier.
When combined, these benefits lead to something extremely important – cost savings.
Your business processes become more reliable and efficient. Your people spend less time on manual tasks, which means they can focus on more important aspects of the business. All of this reduces your expenses. Plus, it bolsters productivity to the point where automation helps you to make more money.
Now, let’s bring things back to Ontraport. Here are four tasks that you can automate using the platform
Task #1 – Job Application Reviews
It usually falls to your Recruitment or Human Resources (HR) departments to review job applications. This is a manual process that may require people to read through hundreds of applications. They’re looking for key information that determines if a candidate’s eligible to move further into the process.
The main problem comes from the volume of applications you receive. You’ll have an application queue that the reviewers have to keep checking. This distracts away from the main task of reading the applications. It’s also possible that your reviewers will miss applications.
Using Ontraport, you can automate this process. Add a task that emails the appropriate person when a new application gets added to the queue.
This eliminates the issue of human error as it ensures every applicant gets accounted for. Thus, you deliver a more consistent recruitment experience.
On a side-note, you can use this for other tasks that require constant checking of queue. For example, you may create a contest on your website. Using this technique allows you to keep better track of the applications that the contest generates.
Task #2 – Handling HR Requests
Efficient handling of internal requests is a crucial aspect of running a business. Your HR department has a lot to deal with in this respect. They have to handle all employee issues, from disputes through to holiday requests.
Traditional paper-based systems don’t scale with a company. Instead, they create a lot of paperwork that’s easy to lose. With Ontraport, HR professionals can create forms for every possible request they may receive.
But that’s just the beginning. Using Rules, they can also designate actions for each request. You can use Rules to add the requester into an automated sequence that updates them on the status of their request. You can also use them to determine who receives which types of requests.
Here’s an example of such a process in a marketing department:
- A Marketing Associate fills out a form to ask for time off.
- Ontraport sends notifications to the employee’s manager and an HR representative. It also triggers a task for the manager.
- The manager completes the task by approving or denying the request. The completed task gets plugged back into Ontraport and the automation you created.
- The employee receives an automatic notification when the manager completes the task.
This eliminates the need for manual forms and face-to-face meetings. It’s a quick and easy system that ensures all involved parties stay informed.
That’s just one example. There are many similar HR requests that you can automate using this basic method.
Task #3 – SMS Responses
Let’s jump into direct marketing to customers now. SMS provides you with an immediate way to market to leads. Almost everybody carries their phone with them. And most people check their texts within minutes of receiving them. If you need to get a message out quickly, it’s the ideal method.
Most businesses don’t have a problem sending an opening text. There are plenty of platforms that will help that. The issue comes with the follow-up. You lose the immediacy if you blast texts out to thousands of people and then take hours to respond to those who text back.
Ontraport allows you to automate the process.
You can create rules that determine what happens based on the recipient’s responses. On the basic level, this could work as follows:
- You send a text to a lead with an offer and a prompt for a “yes” or “no” reply.
- The lead sends the reply:
- If “Yes”, the lead receives another text message that confirms receipt and informs them of the next step. You can also use Ontraport to send notifications to salespeople, if needs be.
- If “No”, you can still send an automated response. But this gives you another category of leads that you should follow up with in different ways.
Sometimes, a quick response can make the difference in whether you achieve a sale. With automation using Ontraport, you ensure you send responses immediately.
Task #4 – Communicating with External Contractors
Ontraport offers a useful feature that you don’t see in other automation platforms. It allows you to send task notifications to people who aren’t part of your account.
This is especially useful for businesses that make use of external contractors. For example, you may have external copywriters who provide content for your blog. You can use Ontraport to automate the sending of task notifications when you need new content. You can also make these tasks recur if you require weekly or monthly content.
Again, this saves time that you’d otherwise spend trying to contact the contractor yourself. It also ensures you don’t forget to notify a contractor of a task that you need completing.
The Final Word
This covers just a small number of the many tasks that you can automate using Ontraport. What’s clear to see is that it’s a very versatile platform.
With Ontraport, you can automate internal tasks as easily as you automate your external marketing. This makes it an effective tool for project management and maintaining employee relationships.
Ontraport also allows you to automate tasks for external contractors. This makes it particularly useful for businesses that outsource a lot of work. While we looked at a small example above, it’s likely that businesses with offshore teams could make great use of Ontraport for managing tasks.
In fact, you can learn more about using Ontraport by downloading our
You can also sign up to use Ontraport directly from the company’s website.
Automation Agency can help you to get started with Ontraport. We can help you to get it set up and integrate it with other platforms. And if you have an issue, our team can help you fix it. Send a task to get started.
And if you haven’t started working with us yet, we have the perfect way to help you figure out if we’re the right fit. Chat to our Right Fit chatbot to see if we can help you.
