Time-saving automation hacks for marketing teams
Marketing goes far beyond the simple act of letting the world know you’ve got a product or service for sale. Particularly in 2020, when, as consumers, we’re overwhelmed by branded messaging across every medium and touchpoint in our digital worlds, successful marketing...
CRM hacks for small businesses
CRMs are as personal as drink orders. Some prefer them straight - simple, to the point, and the same every time. Others like them with a little more ‘kick’ - a new feature here, snazzy workflows, and eye-catching visuals. Whatever your preference, drinking or...
How to use automated password managers to increase your small business security
With so many of the world’s interactions taking place behind a computer screen, it’s sadly no surprise that passwords and personal information have become such hot commodities in the online underworld. When passwords hold the key to our systems, our client data, our...
3 keys to building a sales and marketing automation strategy
Figuring out the world of sales and marketing automation for small business is no small feat. A space that can offer great potential to businesses of all scales, it’s also an area where it’s easy to feel overwhelmed with information, tool recommendations, systems and...
Crib Creative: An Automation Case Study
Today we’re joined by the marvellous Alana Earl of Crib Creative. Agility worked with Alana to eliminate manual work and free her team up from daily QC requirements - they’ve got better things to do than repeat the same manual tasks each day! Alana, can you start by...
Automation Hack: Schedule Rotating Team Tasks
A load shared is a load halved, right? Being a part of a team is about communication and compromise - and knowing whose turn it is to take out the recycling. Whether you’re working in an office of two or a part of a larger team that spans offices and...
Automation Hack: Automated AI Video/Audio Transcription
If you’re in the content production space in any form - audio, video, interview, webinars, training videos, you name it - here’s an Automation Hackthat can dramatically cut down on the manual time needed to whip up stellar content. 👏 Transcription plays a crucial role...
Automation Hack: Automated Hiring Process
If you’ve ever been a part of hunting for just the right candidate for the position within your team, you’ll be familiar with how tedious it can be to work your way through the hiring process. It’s common to be bombarded with CVs, boring cut-and-paste cover letters,...
Automation Hack: Automated Prospect Screening System
It’s Monday morning. A new lead lands in your inbox. They’ve arrived there through an enquiry form, Facebook chatbot, ad lead or referral. Your heart leaps… fresh business is just around the corner! Sound familiar? If it does, then you’ll also be familiar with the...
Automation Hack: Extract Data From Emails
Previously, we took a look at some key automation habits to integrate into your workflows, which had the potential to offer hours of time back to you (and your team) on a weekly basis. Now, we kick it up yet another notch with our latest Automation Hack and its magic...
Automation Hack – Machine Learning to Identify Your Ideal Customers
Close your eyes, and imagine you're in a crowd of thousands of people. Five of those people have $1000 for you. The rest have nothing. Your job is to find those five people among the thousands. Where do you even start? It's not so different when you're finding your...
Automation Superpower – Zapier Web-hooks
Do you have a dream superpower? Mine is teleportation. Just imagine it - being able to do a quick jump to Paris for a coffee, or to visit friends and family in far away places. I can't think of a more useful power to have. Maybe super-strength, or immortality. Or...
Founder Interview: Amit Kothari from Tallyfy
Tallyfy helps you make "blueprints for repeatable work". In this founder interview, we talk to Tallyfy CEO Amit Kothari about the evolution of process oriented thinking, and how this platform was born.
Mic drop: Hands-Free Podcast Production Process
Who would have guessed it would take one true-crime podcast and a dedicated fanbase to break podcasts from the world of niche into mainstream culture? There’s no denying that ever since Serial S1 burst onto the scene in 2014, podcasts have experienced an ever-growing...
Put your content to work with the Automation Hack: The Content Recirculation Machine.
‘Sure, two blog posts a week, a podcast episode and a LinkedIn update won’t take too long.’ Even the optimists among us can come up against an unwelcome wake-up call when tasked with keeping a hungry social media machine fed. There’s no doubt about it - organic...
Automation Hack: Custom Airtable Base Build
For those of you who’ve been swept up in the awards buzz this week, I’d like to bring another contender to your attention: enter Airtable, arguably one of the best apps of 2019. And 2018. Who’s counting? Airtable’s the kind of flexible platform that can scale up and...
Social Media Automation Tools
Being where your customers are is common-sense business logic. With the rise of social media platforms over the past decade, there’s now more ways than ever to truly be amongst your customers’ stomping grounds. Instead of shouting at them from a billboard, ads for...
Automation Hack: Create A Medium Post From Blog Article
Even though social media profiles are meant to make communication with the outside world easier, juggling various platforms and making sure content is published across every base can be more of a headache than it is a help. Not only are social media profiles hungry...
Apps I Love: AgileCRM
If you’ve been following along this automation journey for more than about a minute, you’ll already be familiar with the acronym CRM: Customer Resource Management. Being familiar with the terminology is one thing. CRMs sound great in theory - an easy way to manage...
Automation Hack: Easy New Customer Onboarding & Payment
For those of us with an entrepreneurial mindset, we get a kick out of the thrill of the chase - of looking for new opportunities for lead generation, of identifying potential new market segments, of inventing new products that can pull in an entire new customer base...
To Do, Doing, Done: Super Simple Team Management
Are you an early adapter? Have you already got a friendly little voice-activated robot sitting in your home, just waiting for your next question? Smart speakers are flooding the market, changing the way we carry out simple tasks such as checking the weather, setting...
Automation Hack: ‘Hey Alexa, can you market to my customers for me?’
Are you an early adapter? Have you already got a friendly little voice-activated robot sitting in your home, just waiting for your next question? Smart speakers are flooding the market, changing the way we carry out simple tasks such as checking the weather, setting...
Apps I Love: Magic
How do you describe an app that can do just about anything for you, as long as it’s legal? Like magic. Magic’s the kind of wish-fulfilment-cross-personal-assistant you didn’t know you needed, until you realised how much its service could change your life. In an age...
More automation resolutions for 2019
With the new year ramping up and many of us returning to work, I encouraged you last week to consider how simple automation integrations could greatly impact upon your 2019 results. Since there’s so much automation is capable of, I’m back with more tips on how to make...
Merry Christmas from Agility Automation
There’s a little bit of magic that takes place each Christmas - and I don’t mean the Santa-turning-up-without-a-chimney type. It’s the magic that occurs when everyday routines slow, when champagne bottles are popped, and when family and friends gather and reflect on...
Prepping for 2019: Identify where automation can make a world of difference.
With Christmas upon us, thoughts about the New Year aren’t far behind. For many of us, we start to consider what it is we’d like to achieve. What do we want to build? What do we want to leave behind? What changes, ideas, and innovations can we implement to give...
Apps I Love: CloudApp
No matter how our workflows and habits change as new technologies emerge, the need to communicate with our teams, clients and collaborators will always remain a top priority. Face-to-face meetings with clients have morphed into email chains and Dropbox links....
Top picks for easy video calls
Video calls have a tendency to get a bad rap. When they do, it’s generally deserved - perhaps as a result of a conference call gone wrong, buggy software and apps, or the most unfortunate of moments when someone doesn’t quite realise the camera’s still on. Video call...
Apps I Love (Black Friday Special!): Kajabi
Here's a special Apps I Love highlight, and a pretty nice opportunity for those of you looking to enrich your online presence, sales funnels and customer engagement. If you’re yet to discover Kajabi, allow me to introduce you. Kajabi’s built itself a reputation as the...
Apps I Love: Dashlane
I’m sure if we all stopped to pause and genuinely consider our digital hygiene, we’d be more than a little uncomfortable with the results. A recent episode of Reply All saw podcast host Alex Goldman ask an online security expert to hack his personal details as an...
Welcome to 2019: Time for those automation resolutions
Happy New Year! The Christmas leftovers have been eaten, the wrapping paper gathered, the midnight countdown to 2019 has rolled over - so, what now? I’m sure many of us have already set some resolutions and are looking forward to this year with a fresh enthusiasm and...
21st century work: use automation to strengthen your remote employee workflows.
Remote work isn’t quite the buzz term it used to be. With flexible work conditions becoming more common across all kinds of industries, our ideas of a ‘day at the office’ are changing rapidly, incorporating technological advances and greater desires for work-life...
Build and strengthen routines with automation
There’s a little bit of irony in the fact that we’ve never had more information at our fingertips at any other point in history - and at the same time, we’ve never had to work as hard to stay focused as a result of that access. You’d think the smartphones we lug...
Show distractions the door. Focus on what matters
We’re suckers for productivity clickbait. Articles proclaiming productivity hacks, workflow techniques,and five-step-programs whet our curiosity time and time again. With the same 24 hours in the day as the next guy, it’s easy to fall into the trap of believing that...
Declutter your desk with digitisation
Some people have the gift of organisation. Their beds are made each morning. Their belongings are put away where they should be. Their desks are pristine, not a paper out of place. And then there’s the hoarders, the multitaskers, the I’ll-get-to-it type. Their office...
Declutter your desk with digitisation
Some people have the gift of organisation. Their beds are made each morning. Their belongings are put away where they should be. Their desks are pristine, not a paper out of place. And then there’s the hoarders, the multitaskers, the I’ll-get-to-it type. Their office...
How to use online forms for (almost) everything
Let’s take a look at a tool you may already have a degree of familiarity with. You’ve probably filled a couple out in the past 24 hours - the online form has emerged as a ubiquitous form of data gathering and transactional processes. However, online forms can be the...
The ABCs of sales and marketing automation (Part Two).
This is the first in a two-part series focused on the ABCs of sales and marketing automation. Take a look at the introduction here. Hopefully, you kept that list handy I mentioned in my last post, noting down manual activities related to your sales and marketing...
The ABCs of sales and marketing automation (Part Two).
Jump back a post if you’re yet to read part one of our introduction to sales and marketing automation. Once you’ve found a great CRM you can trust wholeheartedly with your customer’s data, and you’ve considered what can be integrated to drive data input in and out of...
The ABCs of sales and marketing automation (a primer)
There’s really no business activity automation can’t improve. As an automation expert, there’s nothing more satisfying for me than the change people experience when automation’s working hand-in-hand with their daily efforts, bringing about results that are greater...
Add a chatbot to your team
You’ve probably come across a chatbot before - perhaps far more often than you’ve realised. This relatively new form of communication has begun to flood apps and the online space with a flurry of activity. After all, when it comes to 24/7 customer-facing conversation,...
Make yourself heard
Even with the plethora of digital communication tools available to us, I remain a big believer in the power of voice. There’s nothing quite as personal as voice communication when it comes to creating an authentic communication experience for your customers or...
SMS is awesome
Existing technology and forms of communication can play an important role in your overall communication strategy. I’m encouraging you to keep using something - just in a kinda different way. SMS is still the most widely used messaging platform and is a native form of...
Communication Is Changing
You’ve probably sent a few text messages. Maybe jumped onto that Facebook chat group that blew up overnight and sent off a quick response. You’ve most likely sent an email, answered a phone call, or perhaps even engaged in that most old-fashioned of communication...
Episode 3- Process Street with Vinay Patankar
We’re joined by Vinay from Process Street, a SaaS product that helps teams work better in less time with peace of mind. Process Street can be described in simple terms as a checklist that’s used over and over again, but has much deeper capabilities through its ability...
IFTTT VS ZAPIER. WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?
If you’ve spent any time on our website, you may have already come across our breakdown of Zapier, an integration platform that offers users the power to set up ‘Zaps’ and automate tasks that involve two or more applications by setting them up to communicate with each...
Episode 4- Sprintlaw with Alex Solo
We sit down with Alex Solo from Sprintlaw, who’s on a mission to automate, de-mystify and simplify basic legal services for small businesses and startups, removing cost barriers that can keep this demographic from accessing the legal services they require. He shares...
Ari Meisel, Less Doing
We sit down with Alex Solo from Sprintlaw, who’s on a mission to automate, de-mystify and simplify basic legal services for small businesses and startups, removing cost barriers that can keep this demographic from accessing the legal services they require. He shares...
Why We Love Video Calls
For many, the 9-5 work day doesn’t look quite the same as it did for generations past. While many of us still face the dreaded commute in and out of the office each day, a growing amount of us are now working in flexible arrangements. Working from home, working in the...
Justifying the Cost of Automation
Runningg a business is expensive. Rent, equipment, monthly overheads, marketing, retirement plans, even staff birthdays… the costs truly do add up. In a world where many are walking fine lines between profit and cost bases on a monthly base, it can be difficult to say...
Automating Your Business Social Media Communication Channels
The way we connect and interact with our customers and clients, both potential and existing, continues to undergo radical changes as social media platforms shape consumer habits on many levels. Brand trust and integrity has extended beyond the ‘four wall’ experience,...
Marketing Automation for Small Business
Owning and maintaining an effective small business comes with many challenges. Small business owners are faced with the non-stop juggle of workload, staffing, cashflow, market conditions and competitor pressures. Although being a small business owner can be highly...
Alternatives to Fax
In our current age of online communication, it’s hard to believe that people around the world used to wait patiently by the fax machine as they received important documents, watching faxes print line by noisy line. There were no better alternatives to fax then. Now...
What the Industrial Revolution Really Tells Us About the Future of Automation and Work
THE FUTURE OF WORK AND AUTOMATION As automation and artificial intelligence technologies improve, many people worry about the future of work. If millions of human workers no longer have jobs, the worriers ask, what will people do, how will they provide for themselves...
The Benefits and Pitfalls of Email Parsers
Imagine if a technology existed that could read your email for you, and use that data to trigger a workflow, or automate something. The good news is that it already exists, and has for some time. It’s called an email parser. The bad news is that it is at best kind-of...
What is Business Automation, Anyway?
Business Automation might seem like a complex or difficult topic, but even if you have never consciously done so, you have most likely used an automation tool. Do you know what this object does? You have probably never used one. I certainly haven’t, but it was...
Taming Your Tech Stack
Apps are essential to your business, but are your current business apps overlapping and costing you too much? Would you like tech stack that could take care of all the jobs in a better and more organised way? Before you start signing up to apps to automate your...
Automating Business Show – Episode 1 – Wave with Rob Maurin
On This Episode: We talk to Rob Maurin from Wave , a free small business accounting package trusted by three million companies across the world, and counting. In a crowded market of accounting apps, Wave stands out a serious contender, even though it is free. We talk...
How Automation Helped Me Live in Italy for Three Months
It is around 11pm, and I am inching towards a project deadline for a client. The home internet connection won’t work, and I am over trying to fix it. I revert to my mobile internet connection, which is patchy where we are in the Euganean Hills (seems to be influenced...
7 Compelling 2018 New Year Automation Resolutions
The New Year is the perfect time to take stock and make resolutions for the coming 12 months. Automation adoption went ahead by leaps and bounds in 2017 and 2018 promises to be another year laden with growth opportunities. So, what do we need to do to position...