Media training 101 for small businesses

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Great news: you just scored a big press interview to promote your business. The story will expose your brand to the perfect new audience and drive meaningful traffic to your website. So…don't blow it. Yes, just as quickly as the excitement for the opportunity arrived, the realization that you now have to do an interview sets in. I get it—press interviews can absolutely be intimidating. The resulting coverage represents a significant opportunity to acquire new customers, drive sales, or raise awareness, and you want to be sure to represent your brand well and really compel the audience to check out your company. On top of that, you have to contend with adrenaline and nerves in the moment. You may be thinking, "So many other business owners are so polished and articulate in their interviews. How am I going to pull that off?" Deep breath. A successful interview is usually the result of good media training: preparation and practice in advance of an interview. I've tr...
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Our Favorite Zaps: Save Time Managing Your Shopify Store

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Successful retail businesses run on follow through. When you make a sale, you have to deliver the product or service, send an invoice or receipt, and follow up with the customer about their satisfaction. When online shoppers abandon their carts, you need to chase after them and cheerfully remind them of the tempting goodies that await. It's all in the name of building customer loyalty and a strong brand.

Following the action takes a lot of work, but you don't have to do it all yourself. Instead, you can automate some of the tedious tasks so that parts of your business manage themselves. Using Zapier, you can set up rules between apps, so that when an action occurs, such as a sale, it triggers a second action, such as sending a thank-you email. We call these automated workflows Zaps.

If you run a Shopify store, these six Zaps will help you save time and effort in managing your online shop. They're labeled beginner or intermediate based on how easy they are to set up.

Note: Since Shopify is a Premium Zapier app, you'll need a paid Zapier account to use it with Zapier. You'll be able to test these Zaps out with a free trial.

While Shopify is the focus of this article, you could easily swap it for any eCommerce app supported by Zapier and get similar results.

Beginner: Add Customers to an Email List

Making a sale is the beginning of a relationship with a customer, not the end of a transaction. How do you follow up with the people who shop at your store so you can foster that burgeoning relationship?

If you use an email marketing tool, such as MailChimp or ActiveCampaign, you can create this rule so that when customers purchase something from your Shopify store, their email addresses get added to your email marketing campaign. Don't worry about duplication, either. There's a step in this Zap that checks whether the customer's email address already exists in MailChimp.

Beginner: Email Customers Who Abandon Their Carts

It's no fun to chase after customers who abandon their online shopping carts. So don't. This Zap can do it for you. It watches for instances of abandoned carts and automatically nudges customers via email to return and checkout.

For this example, let's say we use ExpressPigeon to send a message to potential customers who have abandoned their shopping cart. The Zap below will send a friendly reminder of their pending order.

You could also swap ExpressPigeon for another email marketing tool of your choice, or you could send the message directly from your business's email address by connecting Zapier to Gmail or whichever email host you use.

Beginner: For Every Sale, Create an Invoice in Xero

Shopify helps you sell anything from temporary tattoos to furniture, and an invoicing and accounting tool such as Xero lets you manage the books. For an accounting tool to be effective, however, it must have a record of each sale. This Zap creates an invoice in Xero for every sale made in Shopify, automatically.

Zapier supports other accounting and invoicing tools, too, such as QuickBooks Online, Freshbooks, and others. You can swap in the one of your choice here.

Beginner: Promote New Items on Twitter

Get the word out about new items in your store by automatically promoting them on Twitter. With this Zap, every time you release a new product or service in your Shopify store, you'll see a tweet from your connected Twitter account announcing it to your followers and with an image.

Beginner: Add Facebook Lead Ad Leads as Shopify Customers

If you use Facebook Lead Ads to find potential customers, you may want to add their details to your Shopify account. When you set up this Zap, every new potential customer who comes to you through Facebook Lead Ad is added to Shopify right away and automatically.

Intermediate: Get a Summary of New Orders in Slack

Seeing as Slack is one of the most popular places teams communicate and collaborate, it makes sense to use it as an alert system for new sales made in Shopify. That said, your team might find that a notification for every single transaction is disruptive (not to mention annoying). This Zap compiles the notices into one summary and releases it at a time you set.

Related Content

For more tips on improving your Shopify business, see How to Customize Your Shopify Store and 7 Tips to Cut Costs from Your eCommerce Store.

Look for new lists of our favorite Zaps each month, such as:



from The Zapier Blog https://ift.tt/2QfFvy4

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