Dropshipping automation can help you grow your store much faster. You can use technology to handle time-consuming tasks, allowing you to focus on things like marketing and making sales. Of course, it still takes hard work and effort to run a successful business.
But you’ll get much more done in less time if you use the right tools. In this guide, we’ll reveal how you can automate your dropshipping store. You’ll learn which areas to automate and the best tools to use.
Let’s get into it.
What is automated dropshipping?
Automated dropshipping is the process of using tools and software to handle aspects of running a dropshipping business. You can automate product research, customer service, and many other tasks.
Most dropshipping stores are solo operations. Even with suppliers handling the fulfillment process, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. You have to cover several bases to keep your ecommerce business growing.
Instead of trying to do everything manually, you can use automated dropshipping software to streamline processes.
Why should you automate dropshipping tasks?
Dropshipping automation is the best way to grow without hiring employees. Even if you have a team of freelancers or employees at your disposal, you should still invest in automation tools. Need more convincing?
Here are the top three reasons why you should automate your dropshipping store:
1. Save time
Effective time management helps you achieve your goals faster. It’s a crucial part of running a successful dropshipping store.
But it’s also something that most business owners and employees struggle with. According to Trafft, employees spend 80% of their time on tasks of little to no importance and only 20% of their time on tasks that matter.
You can make better use of your time by automating insignificant tasks so you can focus on more meaningful aspects of your business.
2. Reduce costs
Dropshipping has a low barrier to entry. You don’t need heaps of cash and a team of employees to set up a profitable store. But you will need help at some point.
Rather than taking on employees and seeing your profits shrink, you can invest in automation tools. Using technology to handle repetitive and time-consuming parts of the dropshipping process is much more cost-effective.
Avoid burnout
It’s not sustainable to work every hour under the sun. You’ll eventually encounter burnout. According to a survey by Capital One, the number of small business owners suffering from burnout is increasing.
So, how can you avoid hitting a wall of mental fatigue?
The answer is to build an automated dropshipping business. You can use automation tools to handle aspects of your business, so you don’t have to do everything yourself.
How to automate your dropshipping business
There are dropshipping automation tools to handle almost every aspect of running a successful store.
That doesn’t mean you can sit back and run your store on autopilot. But it does help you focus your time on the things that will impact sales.
Let’s look at how you can streamline and scale your dropshipping business with automation.
1. Automate stealth account creation on ecommerce marketplaces
Ecommerce marketplaces like Amazon and eBay can help you access a huge audience of potential customers. But many dropshippers find their accounts banned.
If you open multiple merchant accounts for stores in different niches, your IP address can get flagged. And the impact can be disastrous. All of your accounts get suspended.
The best way to avoid this is to use a tool like Multilogin. You can create multiple storefronts with unique IP addresses and browser fingerprints.
Multilogin enables you to run multiple merchant accounts to minimize the risk of account bans. For example, you can protect your dropshipping brands by ringfencing them with separate ghost accounts.
If one of your accounts is banned, it won’t impact your other storefronts. You’ll also be able to create a new seller account from a different IP address and relaunch your store.
If your eBay seller account has been banned, check out our guide to learn why it happened and what you can do about it.
2. Automate product research
Finding winning dropshipping products takes time. You can easily spend hours trawling through AliExpress to find the right product for your store. But with dropshipping automation product research tools, you can streamline the process.
Tools like Ecomhunt can help you find popular and top-selling dropshipping products in your niche. You can access curated lists of top-performing items and track products over time to see if they are worth adding to your store.
Ecomhunt shows you product sales over the last 30 days, the number of reviews, and growth over time. Automation tools streamline the product research process making it easier to identify trending products.
Need some help finding a winning ecommerce niche? Check out our ecommerce market research guide to learn what makes a good niche.
3. Adding products to your store
Once you’ve found a great product, the next step is to add it to your dropshipping store. If you do this manually, you’ll have to download the product images and upload them to your site. You’ll also have to add the product title, description, shipping info, and more.
Dropship automation software can do this for you. All you have to do is review the information and make any necessary edits before adding the product to your store.
There are several of these tools, but SaleHoo Dropship is one of the best. You can search the database of AliExpress products and import products to your online store with just a few clicks.
Once you’ve imported the product, you can customize the different information fields and adjust how the product is displayed.
4. Automate pricing
Adjusting the pricing of your products is one of those small tasks that can take up way too much time. It’s easy to waste time trying to determine the best price for your product.
If you sell to international customers, setting the pricing in different currencies can make this task even more complicated.
Fortunately, this is one of the tasks you can accomplish quickly and easily with dropshipping automation. Instead of manually calculating pricing, automation tools can set pricing in multiple currencies based on the percentage rules you set.
Once you set your pricing rules, tools like Multi Country Pricing automatically apply them when you import new products to your dropshipping store.
There are exceptions to every rule. So make sure you check how your pricing compares to competitors. Sometimes, you’ll have to break your pricing rules to stay competitive.
5. Automate order processing
When a customer buys something, you need to place an order with your supplier. If you do this manually, you’ll have to enter your customer’s details every time you make a sale. That process can become tiresome if you make dozens or hundreds of sales daily.
A dropshipping automation tool like DSers can handle order processing for you. DSers automatically synchronizes all customer orders in one dashboard. It also allows you to place mass orders with dropshipping suppliers in a couple of clicks.
You just need to enter your payment details and confirm the orders. Once payment is sent, the dropshipping automation software handles the rest of the order fulfillment process. No form filling required.
6. Automate order tracking updates
When someone buys from your store, they expect to be updated on the shipping process. Order tracking is an increasingly important part of the ecommerce experience.
According to Go For, 83% of consumers want to receive an accurate ETA when they purchase online. In addition, over 50% of people want real-time visibility regarding their order status.
Even if real-time tracking isn’t something you can provide, you can keep your customers updated with email and SMS tracking notifications.
There are lots of dropshipping automation tools that provide order-tracking features. For example, using a tool like Tracktor Order Tracking, you can create custom workflows or use existing templates to keep your customers updated.
You can send automated notifications at every stage of the delivery process. It’s also important for you to see order tracking information. If something goes wrong during transit, you need to know as soon as possible. That way, you can offer proactive customer support instead of waiting for the customer to complain.
7. Automate customer reviews
Social proof can make or break your dropshipping store.
Consumers look to user reviews to help them make purchasing decisions. Around 84% of people trust reviews as much as personal recommendations.
You can collect user reviews using dropshipping automation software without manually reaching out to every customer and asking for feedback.
Tools like automizely reviews streamline the process by automatically sending post-purchase emails to customers. You can send thank you emails and ask for feedback. The tool also helps you to display reviews on product pages using a handy review widget.
Displaying product reviews can help boost conversion rates. It can also impact SEO. This is because customer reviews usually contain lots of relevant target keywords and phrases.
8. Automate customer service
Customer service is one of the key differentiators between your dropshipping store and your competitors. Heaps of research back this up:
If a company provides excellent customer service, 78% of people will do business with them again, even after a mistake.
93% of shoppers are likely to make repeat purchases with companies that offer excellent customer service.
83% of customers feel more loyal to brands that respond to and resolve their complaints.
So how can dropshipping automation tools enhance your customer service?
First, you should create a knowledge base for your customers. A knowledge base is a self-service library full of resources about your products and store.
You can think of the knowledge base as an extended FAQ section. It covers all the common questions your customers ask.
Next, you can use automated chatbots to answer customer queries and direct them to relevant pages in your knowledge base. If a shopper has a complicated or urgent request, the chatbots connect them with you or a live customer service agent.
Shopify customer service apps like WillDesk also provide a unified dashboard that makes handling all customer queries and requests easy. Automating customer service can improve the customer experience and free up time and resources.
9. Install the Meta Pixel
Facebook Ads are one of the most lucrative ways to advertise your dropshipping products.
It’s also an activity that you can partially automate by installing the Meta Pixel on your dropshipping store. You can do this through your Shopify dashboard or on your Meta Advertising account.
This small piece of code can track the performance of your ads. It also allows you to run remarketing campaigns.
For example, you can automatically identify users that have added a product to a cart but haven’t completed the checkout process. Then, you can retarget these users and encourage them to return and complete their purchases. Remarketing is a great way to boost sales. On average, retargeting ads reduce cart abandonment by 6.5%.
10. Create automated email marketing sequences
Email marketing is one of the best channels for staying top of mind and building trust. You can greet new customers with welcome emails, distribute your content, and promote products directly to your customer base via email.
But you don’t want to have to perform the same time-consuming tasks for every subscriber on your email list.
There are a bunch of automated dropshipping tools to assist your email marketing efforts. If you use Shopify to host your dropshipping website, you can create email drip campaigns for free in the Notifications section of your dashboard.
This is a great feature. But it’s limited compared to what you can achieve with more advanced third-party tools.
Using a tool like Omnisend, you can create event-triggered email workflows to build relationships with your customers and capitalize on upselling and cross-selling opportunities.
Once you’ve created your email workflows, you can generate sales on autopilot. You can plan promotional events and campaigns to capitalize on peak sales around Black Friday and the holiday seasons.
Grow your dropshipping business with automation
The dropshipping business model has plenty of advantages. You can be your own boss and work from anywhere. And you don’t have to worry about inventory management, as your suppliers handle the fulfillment process.
That’s the dream job for many new entrepreneurs. But you’ll quickly find out it’s much more work than anticipated if you’re not using the right tools.
Dropshipping automation can help you manage your workload and get more done in less time. Enjoy the freedom that dropshipping can provide instead of being stuck at your laptop doing the same tasks over and over again.
Discover how Multilogin can help you achieve your goals by visiting our ecommerce and dropshipping use case page. You can scale your store without risking account bans and marketplace suspensions.
