For businesses with limited resources, every effort to save money, effort, and energy counts. That said, to automate repetitive agency workflows means freeing more time you can spend on strategizing to expanding your business.
Here are seven tools that will allow you to streamline workflows so you can focus your resources on growing your venture faster and more efficiently.
1. Penji
Best for: Ventures with high volume of design needs, marketing agencies, content teams
Hailed as the best on-demand graphic design service, Penji is a graphic design company that offers unlimited graphic design at a flat monthly rate. If you want to automate repetitive agency workflows related to graphic design, this platform is the solution for you.
For a monthly subscription, you can request all the designs (and revisions) you need through Penji’s dedicated app. Is is also through this app that you can communicated with your design team and download the files. The app has a point-and-comment feature that allows users to pinpoint the exact sections they want to be revised.
Penji takes pride in hiring the top 2% of designers from all over the world, allowing users to take automation to the next level. All they have to do is request the design, let the designers do their magic, and approve and download the designs. If they’re not 100% happy with the results, they could always request revisions, as many as they want, all included in the subscription. By the way, they offer more than 120 creative projects and their pool of designers are experts in a wide variety of design niches.
Pricing: Penji’s plans start at $499 per month, with a 30-day money-back guarantee
2. Zapier
Best for: Marketing agencies, operations teams, businesses that want to automate administrative tasks
Zapier, meanwhile, offers a no-code solution for users who want to automate tasks. This tool connects thousands of apps, allowing for a streamlined workflow that automatically gets work done once triggered.
The beauty of Zapier is the wide variety of apps it could connect - more than 8,000 of them. These apps include CRM platforms, email, Slack, and even project management systems. That said, you can design a multi-step workflow or “zap” tailor-made to fit your unique needs.
The platform also features AI automation and templates. Plus, you won’t need to know how to code to be able to use this tool. It’s easy to use and offers a massive integration system, especially if you go for a paid plan.
Pricing: Free plan available for 100 tasks per month, paid plans start at $19.99 per month billed annually
3. ClickUp Automations
Best for: Businesses or agencies handling multiple clients, ventures with remote teams
If you want to automate repetitive agency workflows related to handling multiple clients or remote teams, check out Clickup Automations. This tool, intended for tasks related to project management, helps streamline documents, sync timelines, and centralizes operations in a one unified workspace.
Some of the features that make this tool useful are automatic triggers and statuses, dashboards and reporting, and workflow automations. You can also integrate the tools or apps that your team already use, such as Google Workspace and Slack.
Though the initial setup may need planning and the tool could feel a bit overwhelming for beginners, its strong automation rules and highly customizable feature make it worth it.
Pricing: Free plan available, paid plans start at $7 per user per month
4. HubSpot Marketing Automation
Best for: Sales-driven organizatiions and growing teams
Next up is Hubspot Marketing Automation, which promises to set marketing campaigns on autopilot. Aside from its marketing automation software, Hubspot also offers CRM, sales tools, and customer service software. That said, using it could automate repetitive agency workflows as tied up with your other operational processes.
Some of the top features of HubSpot include an AI-powered CRM paired with lead scoring and segmentation. It also offers email marketing automation as well as campaign analytics and reporting, allowing users to make marketing decisions based on data, instead of hunches.
Pricing: Free plan available, paid plans start at $9 per month per seat
5. Hootsuite
Best for: Content teams and social media agencies
Hootsuite, meanwhile, helps automate repetitive agency workflows related to social media management. This tool offers scheduling posts, monitoring engagement, and tracking analytics across multiple social media channels.
Some of Hootsuite’s key features include social listening tools, multi-channel dashbboards, and performance analytics. But perhaps, the most common use of this tool among marketers is scheduling and queueing posts in advance so they don’t have to worry about them in real time.
Pricing: Plans start at $199 per month per user, 30-day free trial available
6. Loom
Best for: Remote teams, businesses that spend a lot of time onboarding new team members
Loom, meanwhile, is a screen recording tool for PC and Mac that allows users to share quick video feedback, walkthroughs, and explanations. With Loom, users can record both camera video and the screen, along with audio, allowing recordings to be as thorough and detailed as they need to be.
Though using this tool is technically not full automation of agency work, it still saves a lot of meeting time and is easy to use, making it a great app for client feedback. Its team libraries that allow for comments also make it a great collaborative tool for many types of users.
Pricing: Free plan available, paid plans start at $15 per user per month
7. ChatGPT
Best for: Content and marketing agencies, teams involved in knowledge management
Last but not least is OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Contrary to the common notion that you can only use ChatGPT to draft texts for emails, articles, or captions. There are a whole lot of use cases for this AI tool.
For instance, you can use it to help brainstorm ideas, summarize meetings, and even generating standard operations procedures. You can also use it to analyze data sets and look for patterns. It goes without saying that this tool offers a massive productivity boost across many tasks and departments. Often, the quality and suitability of results rely on the prompt you use so it’s crucial to put a lot of thought on the prompt you use for tasks.
Though it’s not advisable to depend on ChatGPT without human overview, it can surely reduce manual work and content turnaround time, allowing teams to focus on other tasks that require human insight.
Pricing: Free plan available, paid plans start at $8 per month
Featured Image Credit: Photo by RDNE Stock project from Pexels
