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What would you do with an extra 10 hours every week? 

Take your kids to school. Squeeze in a round of golf. Learn to play the piano. That’s 40 hours per month, 520 hours per year to spend on…whatever you want. 

Packing orders, chasing leads, fixing customer issues — it all adds up. Why run a business that runs you? I’m willing to bet that 80% of your tasks can be automated. In just 5 days, you can set up systems to pay you back in the world’s most valuable currency: Your Time. 

This guide is based on 10+ years of working with direct-to-consumer and B2B brands. It’s angled toward Shopify store owners, yes, but the tactics can apply to anyone running a small business with a digital footprint. 

In this guide, you’ll learn how to:

  • Run marketing campaigns on autopilot
  • Handle fulfillment and inventory without your input
  • Answer customer questions while you sleep
  • Create books that keep themselves
  • Delegate tasks like a CEO

“Many a false step was made by standing still”

  • Fortune Cookie

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Before You Get Started: Essential Tools

Take a quick look at your credit card statement and tally up your SaaS (software as a service) charges this month. A typical small business has 58 subscriptions. Yikes.

The goal of this guide isn’t to add to your software bloat—it’s to simplify. These tools are all you need to start automating your Shopify store without breaking the bank.

Must-Have Tools (Start Here)

  1. Google App Suite
    • Spreadsheets, Docs, email, calendar. 80% of your business can be run from these 4 tools. 
  2. Zapier
    • The lifeblood of automation. We’ll use Zapier to connect apps for more complex processes. 
    • Use Case: Send form submission data from your website to a spreadsheet, filter based on topic, and send a follow-up email to the customer/lead

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Budget-Dependent Tools (Invest When You Can)

  1. Klaviyo (Email + SMS Marketing)
    • A game-changer for Shopify stores. Create email flows that recover abandoned carts, welcome new customers, and drive repeat sales. Best-in-class data and automation features. 
  2. HelpScout (Customer Service)
    • Simplify customer communication with shared inboxes, automated responses, and self-service portals. 
  3. QuickBooks (Bookkeeping)
    • Automate bookkeeping, sync sales data from Shopify, and simplify tax compliance.

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Nice-to-Have Tools (For Scaling)

  1. ShipStation (Fulfillment)
    • Automate shipping labels, carrier selection, and tracking for seamless order fulfillment. Inventory management across multiple channels
  2. HubSpot (CRM)
    • Manage customer relationships and automate follow-ups for B2B or high-touch sales.
  3. Airtable (Advanced Data Management)
    • Think Google Sheets, but supercharged. Perfect for inventory tracking, team collaboration, or building lightweight CRMs.

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Day 1: Turn Your Marketing Into a Money Machine: Automate Traffic, Sales, and Loyalty

Your marketing should run on autopilot, turning visitors into buyers and buyers into loyal fans—all without you lifting a finger. This isn’t magic; it’s systems. These systems, when set up properly, will drive traffic, recover lost sales, and build customer loyalty automatically.

Here’s how to make it happen.

1. Automate Traffic Generation: Bring Visitors to Your Store 24/7

Why It Matters:
Simple. No traffic = no sales. If no one’s visiting, your incredible products, punny email flows, and generous loyalty programs don’t matter. Instead of hustling to generate traffic manually, let’s automate the sh*t out of it.

Paid Ads That Run Themselves

  • What to Automate:
    • Use Shopify’s integration with Facebook and Google Ads to create dynamic ad campaigns based on your product catalog.
    • Start with retargeting ads, showing customers the exact products they browsed or left in their cart.
    • Expand to new customer acquisition campaigns. Use lookalike audiences built from your top customers, or Facebook’s selective interest-based audiences.
  • Quick Setup Tip:
    • Use Google Smart Shopping Campaigns to automatically optimize ad placement, bids, and targeting for maximum ROI.
  • Pro Tip:
    • Automate audience updates. Sync Shopify data with your ad platforms so recent buyers are excluded, saving you ad spend.

SEO for Evergreen Traffic

  • What to Automate:
    • Use Shopify apps like Avada SEO to automate metadata, perform regular SEO audits, and boost your page speed with image compression.
  • Quick Setup Tips:
    • Generate a site map and automatically submit it to Google for indexing.
    • Automate SEO improvements for your product pages by targeting high-intent keywords like “Buy [Your Product] Online” or “Best [Product Category].”
  • Pro Tips:
    • Pair your SEO strategy with high-value blog content (e.g., “How to Style [Product]” or “The Ultimate [Seasonal] Gift Guide”) to attract consistent organic traffic.
    • SEO blog content is a LONG GAME, so consistent posting is key. On average, it takes 6-9 months to see significant traffic growth from blog content.
    • Don’t just write about anything - do keyword research to find what your customers are searching for.
    • AI writing tools like ChatGPT can supercharge the blog writing process to help you ideate and create relevant content in less time.

Affiliate and Influencer Marketing

  • What to Automate:
    • Use Shopify apps like Refersion to track affiliate sales, create custom commissions, and manage payouts.
    • Automate onboarding and reminders for your affiliates or influencers.
  • Pro Tip:
    • Offer affiliates dynamic discount codes tied to their campaigns to track performance and incentivize traffic generation.
    • Start with BIG Commissions! Offering 10% to an affiliate doesn’t move the needle. Offer large commissions upfront to get your affiliate used to promoting your product.
    • Anyone can be an affiliate. Send an automated invitation to join your affiliate program 5 days after customers receive their order. 
    • Micro-influencers can deliver great ROI. Don’t focus on the big fish, influencers with 1,000 followers can still generate solid results.

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2. Automate Sales with Klaviyo Email Flows

Why It Matters:
Email marketing consistently delivers one of the highest ROIs in e-commerce. With Klaviyo, you can turn email into a money machine that works while you sleep.

Before setting up the flows outlined below, make sure you have a great email collection pop-up on your site. We want to take advantage of the new traffic we’re generating and get them on our mailing list.

I learn A LOT from Max at Wellcopy. He has a great video on setting up your popup

Essential Flows to Set Up Today

  1. Welcome Flow:
    • Turn first-time visitors into buyers with a personalized email offering a discount or incentive. Make this flow a 5-6 email sequence spaced out over a few days
  2. Abandonment Flow:
    • Don’t just focus on abandoned carts, but send this flow to Browse Abandonments to hit anyone eying the products on your shopify store. 
    • Recover up to 20% of lost sales by sending automated reminders.
    • Pro Tip: Add urgency with a time-limited discount or free shipping.
  3. Post-Purchase Flow:
    • Delight your customers with a thank-you email, followed by upsell recommendations or loyalty program invitations.
  4. Winback Flow:
    • Re-engage lapsed customers with a personalized email offering an incentive to return.

Klaviyo Pro Tip: Get approved for SMS marketing through Klaviyo and start growing your list of SMS subscribers. Email is increasingly crowded, and reaching customers via text is a great supplement to your regular email campaigns.

3. Build Loyalty with Automated Rewards

Why It Matters:
According to Business.com, Repeat customers spend 67% more than new customers. A loyalty program encourages them to keep coming back, increasing their lifetime value.

How to Automate Loyalty Programs

  • What to Automate:
    • Use a tool like Loyalty Lion — a Klaviyo partner loyalty program that allows you to tap into Klayviyo events for an ultra-personalized experience.
  • Pro Tip:
    • Dig into your customer data to understand what keeps people coming back. Below is some data on the incentives customers most like with loyalty programs.

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Source Statista

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Call to Action

Email flows provide the best ROI. Assuming you already have some level of traffic to your website, start building out your multi-email Klaviyo flows. 

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Next Up

Jump to Days 2-3: Operations and customer service.  Automate orders and fulfillment, and deliver faster customer service responses with less effort.