Market automation is the practice of utilizing specialized software and tools to streamline, automate, and measure marketing tasks. 

This helps marketers and businesses increase their efficiency by automatically completing repetitive activities such as lead generation or data entry.  

Data entry Automation takes this concept a step further by enabling businesses to save time and reduce human errors through automated processes that capture and input data accurately and efficiently.

With automated processes, marketers can save time and money while simultaneously being able to target and engage potential customers at scale. 

Market automation also provides valuable insights that can be used to make data-driven decisions around customer segmentation, engagement strategies, testing various content pieces, generating reports and much more. 

Through advanced automation technologies marketers can significantly reduce costs associated with marketing efforts while simultaneously optimizing their strategies for greater success.

What are marketing automation tools used for? 

Emails are the de facto standard form of communication for businesses and they have been for a long time. There are many jobs in which one's duties are primarily reading and sending emails. Businesses receive thousands of emails daily, most of which are repetitive. Spending valuable human hours responding to questions of "What are your business hours?" or "Where's my order?" isn't only inefficient, it's insane.

Software and artificial intelligence (AI) present a new paradigm for solving these problems and saving time. And, as we all know, time is money.

Using the best marketing automation software you can reduce labor cost of time-intensive manual business tasks like back-and-forth email communication, manual tracking of sales prospects and client financials, calendar bookings, and more.

What are scheduling tools and how do they help businesses?

 Scheduling is a huge time sink for businesses and an egregious perpetrator of the notorious back-and-forth email clutter we all hate. Thankfully, scheduling tools exist as a remedy. 

These programs help businesses easily schedule meetings and appointments, block out time for activities, and automate tedious tasks to save time, bolster productivity, and ultimately improve a business's margins.

X Tools to Automate Your Scheduling

We've assembled a few of our favorite scheduling tools that put the power of automation in employees' fingertips. Try them out and see the results for yourselves.

Calendly

One of the most popular scheduling services, you've probably come across Calendly before. The tool allows you to set available dates and times and then send out calendars that allow others to schedule meetings or book appointments with you during those available slots.

Calendly integrates well with most any calendar on your device as well as video conferencing apps like Zoom and Microsoft Teams, allowing you to launch the meeting with just a click on your calendar.

A few other features we like are email and SMS notifications, time buffers that prevent last-minute bookings. Most of these integrations and add-on tools are locked behind the Pro plan, so only users willing to pay $15 a month will have access to such features. 

You can use these zapier to automatically set up video conferencing for Calendly events.

-Create zoom meetings for new Calendly events
-Create meetings in GoTo Meeting from new Calendly events
-Schedule Join.me meetings with new Calendly invitees

Google Calendar

Google Calendar is a terrific free option. You can schedule events, block off time, customize your notifications, and even set up a calendar through which others can schedule appointments with you, just like Calendly. 

It is limited in terms of automation, but it's a great way to get a taste of what scheduling tools can do for you. One additional drawback is the lack of automated reminders for clients - the matter of a lead receiving meeting reminders is entirely dependent on their own Google Calendar settings.  

You can create automation to perform automated tasks in google calendar.

-Add Microsoft Outlook events to Google calender
-Create new trello cards from new google calendar events
-Create new Asana task from new google calendar events

QikChat

QikChat offers a wide variety of tools for inbound marketing by accelerating the sales engagement process through distributing leads and setting up meetings automatically. One-click scheduling makes it easy to meet with and manage leads while easy-to-use integrations with video conferencing software are totally free.

Automation is taken one step further with automated sharing of your availability calendar with leads as they come in, no matter what channel your lead comes from, drastically reducing non-completion rates of booking forms.

You Can Book Me 

With customizable booking pages that can be sent or embedded anywhere, YouCanBookMe is a stellar way to ensure customers have a smooth, hassle-free experience booking meetings all while maintaining brand consistency.

Bookings automatically pop up in your calendar with all the relevant details you need to know, letting you track all your meetings in one place. You'll have peace of mind knowing you can never be double-booked!

Sprintful 

Sprintful is a great option if simplicity is your goal. All you need to do is set up the duration, capacity, and the pricing, if applicable, of your meeting. It's got the full suite of calendar and video conferencing app integrations as well as all the bells and whistles of short notice, meeting buffers, blocked dates, etcetera if you want to dig deeper. The pricing here is a bit steep at $19/month for the Professional plan and $49/month for the Business plan.

Book Like a Boss  

  If you're looking for a reliable, customizable booking solution that is dead-simple for both you and your clients, then Book Like a Boss is for you. They offer clean and effective booking pages with calendar integrations that are fully customizable, meaning you can easily make the page match your business's brand. You can create your own clean URL or integrate the page into your existing website.

Wrapping up 

See how much time, money, and effort you can save in your marketing efforts by using scheduling software. It's like having your own personal assistant to alleviate some of the burdens of pesky emails and the back-and-forth of booking appointments. 

Your customers will appreciate how easy it is, too. With some market research and experimentation, you'll find the right tool for the job and your business will see the benefit!