Running an ecommerce Store is hard work. There are too many tasks to take care of and not enough time to focus on growing the business.

In many cases, the bulk of the activities comprises of mundane tasks that could be easily automated through tools and platforms. The good news is that ecommerce Store Owners and managers now have access to a wide range of marketing and store automation tools that handle the repeat tasks very effectively.

The real challenge is that there are just too many tools to choose from. To help out the readers, I have selected the following ten essential automation tools that add great value to the holiday season store management activities.

Contalog

Contalog offers a powerful inventory and order management system that keeps track of the stock levels and inventory status effortlessly. All the information is synced across all sales channels so that you could make informed decisions during the Holiday Season rush.

The system could handle a wide range of product attributes and quantities. In addition, it is smart enough to predict inventory level requirement to ensure that your store is able to fulfill all orders efficiently. Contalog could partially process the orders, improving the customer experience on your store.

TextExpander

An important part of ecommerce management is sending out a lot of emails. In addition, you have to post social media posts and custom messages. Instead of wasting a lot of time typing everything from scratch, I recommend TextExpander, a great tool that keeps all your text snippets in one place. Whenever you need to send out an email or a message, all you have to do is to choose the right snippet and insert it at the right location.

Given the highly positive impact of personalization, TextExpander is a great tool that helps you generate customized messages in a jiffy. The tool supports several languages including English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Spanish and Portuguese.

Infusionsoft

If you’re looking for an all-in-one solution for your ecommerce marketing needs, look no further than InfusionSoft. This tool allows you to access more than 200 applications and platforms from a single location so that you do not waste time switching between tasks and tools.

InfusionSoft offers a complete business suite including CRM, analytics, sales and marketing automation and credit card processing. In addition, you could take advantage of the built-in campaigns to further automate the many store tasks that take up a lot of precious time.

Developers could further expand the platform by using the InfusionSoft API that allows third-party applications and tools to communicate with the platform. Thus, you could easily setup your custom applications to work seamlessly with the InfusionSoft platform.

Zapier

Zapier is another great automation tool that allows you connect all your tools and applications to a single access point. This means that instead of juggling a lot of tasks, you only have to open the Zapier platform and get things done in minimum time.

You could setup either custom workflows or start off with the provided options. In both cases, workflows called Zaps integrate third-party tools to facilitate data and functionally exchange.

To date, Zapier supports more than 750 apps including email clients, spreadsheets, accounting tools and communication platforms. Using the platform, you could set up custom solutions that connect several applications to increase and enhance store-level automation.

Ecomdash

Ecomdash is a great solution that automates most of the aspects of store inventory management. The platform operates in real-time is available across several channels so that you do not have to guess your stock levels anymore.

However, Ecomdash is more than just another inventory management tool. It is a complete solution that covers business operations areas such as order and inventory management, drop shipping management and shipping management.

You could further customize the platform by using the Ecommerce API that allows developers to create custom integrations to suit the specific requirements of the stores.

OptinMonster

According to many experts, OptinMonster is the most powerful conversion optimization and lead generation tool available today.

Using the tool’s full-screen Welcome Mats, exit-intent popups and scroll boxes, you can drastically boost store’s conversions and gain more subscribers. The tool could redirect the visitors to specific pages as decided with the tool’s behavior detection rules.

Store owners could use OptinMoster to retarget abandoned carts by offering special discounts that intend to reduce the cart abandonment rate. Similarly, the tool could be used to generate and manage store subscribers effortlessly.

MailChimp

MailChimp is another leading marketing automation platform that is very popular for setting up and managing email campaigns. Using the builtin campaign manager, store owners can easily create and launch email campaigns. The marketing automation functions help stores attract new visitors and follow up with current customers through targeted emails.

The best aspect of MailChimp is its easy integration with all popular ecommerce platforms including WooCommerce, Shopify and Magento.

In addition to email management, MailChimp is an ideal tool for setting up and managing ads on all major social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Zendesk

Zendesk is a powerful CRM solution that takes care of almost all aspects of customer relationship management. Using the platform, ecommerce stores could automate customer relation activities and take advantage of the platform’s data processing capabilities.

The good thing about Zendesk is the close collaboration with the store functions that ensure that the management has complete insights into customer history and association with the business.

Google Alerts

Competitive intelligence is an essential business feature that allows stores to keep an eye on the competition. This way, they are not blindsided by the competing stores when it comes to prices and product range.

While there are a number of tools that gather and present competitor intelligence data, I believe that Google Alerts is the store owners’ best friend. And the best thing is that the service is free to use.

All you have to do is to sign up for a Google account and then setup custom alerts for everything from price change to new product addition. You will get an email every time the condition of an alert is fulfilled.

In addition, Google Alerts are a great way of monitoring the store’s reputation on the Internet. Setting up alerts for the brand mentions is a simple but effective way of understanding how the Internet audience view the store’s services.

Cloudways Managed Hosting

Many store owners do not realize that the hosting of their store is critical to the success of their business. This is why sensible store owners opt for a cloud-based hosting solution to ensure maximum uptime and reliability.

The downside of these solutions is the complexities of setting up servers and managing the various services on daily basis. This requires expertise in server management and maintenance – something not many store owners are good at.

This is why managed cloud hosting solution such as Cloudways really shine. They take care of all the server management hassles, leaving you free to focus on store specific activities. In the crunch of the holiday season, store owners could rest assured that their store would remain accessible to the users, regardless of the load on the server.

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