How to Automate Your Dropshipping Business And Make More Money

Reading Time: 8 minutes

You may not think dropshipping is something you need to automate, but if you’re serious about growing your ecommerce business, then you’re going to have to get more serious about dropshipping automation.

Automated dropshipping has been on the rise for the past few years, as eCommerce retailers look for ways to increase their profit margins. 

Automation removes many of the tedious manual tasks involved in running an eCommerce business, freeing up your time to focus on other important aspects of your business. 

When you automate, you can delegate, or outsource, these tasks to experts who can run your business for you, freeing up your time to focus on the most important aspects of your business. 

Outsourcing, specifically, allows you to outsource tasks that you don’t know how to do or that you don’t want to look over your shoulder for. Outsourcing costs money, of course, but automating your business can reduce costs as well. 

Automation allows you to spend more time with your customers, which will lead to an increased conversion rate, meaning more profits for you.

Why you Should Automate Your Dropshipping Business

The most obvious benefit of dropshipping is that you don’t have to invest in a storefront.

You can automate your business and focus on your own time instead of spending hours at retail stores. 

There are also many benefits that come with using an automated dropshipping business model, such as the ability to scale up and down quickly. 

With an automated dropshipping system, your inventory is always up-to-date, so you won’t be scrambling to find products when customers are interested in buying. 

This helps cut down on missed revenue opportunities and gives you time to focus on developing your marketing strategy and expanding your customer base.

What are the benefits of automating your dropshipping business

Advantages

• Save Time — you’ll be able to spend more time focusing on other aspects of your business such as looking for new products to sell, rather than sourcing and shipping.
• Reduce Risk — this will help you avoid costly mistakes such as shipping the wrong product or worse, quantity of products
• Improve Efficiency — allows you to create a consistent flow of orders
• Increase Profitability — with an automated system that works flawlessly, nothing can stop you from scaling your dropshipping business 2x, 5x or even 10x.

Disadvantages

• Technical Expertise — setting up an automated system requires plenty of technical experience
• Become Complacent — Automation can also lead to complacency and inactivity, which can lead to a loss of clients and sales.
• Can be Costly — If you mess up, it can cost you a lot of money.

Determine what needs to be automated

Before you get started, it’s important that you know what needs to be automated. 

To do this, ask yourself if there is something that could be streamlined or eliminated in order to make your business more efficient.

Here’s a couple of questions that can help you with this process:

When you’re thinking about automation, think about the processes of your business and its flow.

Are there ways that you can make the process smoother and more efficient?

Are there any steps that you can eliminate altogether? If so, what would those steps be?

There are ways to streamline your dropshipping business and reduce costs.

What aspect of your business are the essentials? 

Can this ____ (fill in the blank) be automated or can it be outsourced to another person?

There is a certain principle called the “Pareto Principle” or the “80/20 rule” which states that for many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes (the “vital few”)

I believe this also applies to your dropshipping business. Only 20% of what your business does actually contributes to 80% of your profit. 80% of your business only contributes to 20% of your profit.

And with that in mind, what is that 80% that you think are the non-essentials that an automated wokflow or rather a rather competent person can accomplish so that you can focus on that 20% aspect of your business that are driving 80% of profit.

Do note that this can change from time to time and so don’t think that automating a certain function of your business means forever — you will need to pivot and make changes to make sure your business stays profitable.

Use Automated Email Marketing to Drive Traffic to your Website

One of the best ways to leverage your website is by leveraging automated email marketing.

This will help you reach out to potential customers with personalized content that they are more likely to engage with.

The emails can be custom tailored to the individual reader, so you know exactly what they want and need to hear.

To make this happen, you’ll need a good email marketing software like Aweber or ConvertKit.

These platforms are easy to use and have a ton of integrations that help facilitate different strategies.

With these platforms, you’ll also be able to track how much revenue your campaigns generate for your business.

Automate Tracking Details

One of the most important reasons to use dropshipping is because you can automate tracking. 

This is a feature that not all companies offer.

Using an app like Shopify or Woocommerce, you can automatically track every order made on your store. In addition to that, you can even take into account the customer location, shipping method, purchase history, and much more. 

By doing so, you can provide these tracking details to the customer automatically via email marketing. This way, you’ll have to deal less with customer interaction as all of these information are provided automatically.

Automating this process could make it much easier for you to stay on top of what needs to get done on a daily basis without dealing with too much clutter in your life.

Auto Update Your Inventory

There is no easier way to manage your inventory and sales than with dropshipping.

You simply find a supplier that deals in the product you want to sell, order the goods, and then connect them with your customers.

When customers buy the goods, they’ll automatically receive an email notifying them of their purchase.

This process can be automated so that your products are always up-to-date and there are always new items for your customers to purchase.

The challenge with dropshipping is that it doesn’t always involve high margins, but this can be mitigated by automating processes like inventory management or sales notifications.

Ultimately, automation is a key differentiator for dropshipping as it allows for timely inventory management and highly controlled customer interactions.

Create Price multipliers

Create pricing multipliers using your own pricing and payment system.

You can even setup a discounted price depending on the quantity that a customer would like to buy to make it more enticing to buy in bulk.

This will allow you to sell the product at a wholesale price at higher margin that is profitable to your business.

You can even sell products on a recurring basis if you want to build up your brand or subscription base.

Use Retargeting Techniques To Make Your Ads More Effective

In order to get the most out of your dropshipping business, you must use retargeting techniques.

The best way to do this is by using remarketing ads on Facebook and Instagram.

Retargeting is a form of digital advertising that allows you to target an individual who has previously visited your website or app with an ad for your product.

By targeting these visitors with ads placed on their Facebook and Instagram feed, you can increase return on investment (ROI) by engaging them in a new sales cycle.

Social Media Marketing Techniques

Another effective technique is through social media marketing. If you have a Facebook fan page or are active on Instagram, Twitter, or Pinterest, then try posting images of your products that show a discount code or sign up for an offer.

These types of posts will help build awareness and generate traffic to your website while increasing engagement and driving conversions.

Best part of this — you can do this without spending a dime.

Use Social Media Management tools to Schedule your Social Media Posts

There’s a lot of tools available in the market that can help you automate your social media marketing.

I have curated a list of social media management tools that I recommend to schedule your posts ahead of time so that you can spend less time on your Facebook and Instagram accounts. These tools not only allow you to get the most out of your social media channels, but they also provide features that automate a lot of the work for you!

This will allow you to automatically post updates across all your social media accounts at pre-determined intervals.

You can even track how many impressions or clicks each update generates!

If you have multiple social media accounts, using these tools would be of great benefit to post content from one account onto the other. I have categorized these tools depending on affordability, features and usability to ensure that you can focus on other aspects of your business. 

Setup a chatbot to automatically answer common questions

Create a chatbot that automates customer service and handles customer support inquiries.

With a lot of scammy websites online today, customers often need validation and have some questions before proceeding with a purchase.

By having a chatbot setup, customers can ask questions through the chatbot, which can then answer automatically.

This removes the need for human interaction and saves time for both parties. It also helps your company avoid confusion caused by the vast number of questions customers may have about your product or services.

The chatbot is also useful when it comes to customer profiles.

Often times, companies get overwhelmed with questions from people who are interested in their products but aren’t quite ready to purchase yet.

By having a chatbot as part of your wholesale platform, you can weed out these users before they buy from you and prevent them from becoming customers.

Automate Product Reviews from Customers

Customer reviews are essential to every dropshipping business, heck, it is essential to all businesses.

By having an automated system to obtain customer reviews, you can continually get and earn customer reviews that will help with the trustability of your business plus it is an effective marketing tool as well.

Customer reviews can be sent directly from your customer through SMS, email or social media channels.

It will also be useful for you to set up automated emails that can inform your customers about new products stocked in your shop.

Once these reviews are sent out, you need automation in place that can send out a notification to your existing inventory in order to add the new product into your shop.

Not only does this help with keeping your inventory stocked but it also helps with the inventory management aspect of dropshipping before it gets too difficult!

Final Takeaway

To automate your dropshipping business, you will have to invest a lot of time and money in research and development. You have to find ways to reduce costs, improve efficiency, and ensure that your products are delivered to your customers on time. If you have no previous experience or expertise in e-commerce, this can be challenging. 

There are a number of tools that can help the automation process of your dropshipping business smoother. 

If you’re interested in learning more about these tools, I’ve listed these automation tools in this article.