How to Improve Your Business This Year

Growth is the main objective of most businesses, but to reach that goal you need a game plan. You should always strive to find new ways to improve your business and optimize your processes. This helps make time-consuming or menial tasks more efficient and frees you up to focus on growth efforts. There are plenty of things you can invest in that promise growth, but three, in particular, are likely to produce significant returns.

Order Management System

In the age of eCommerce, keeping track of product orders has gotten quite complicated. That's why businesses who work with frequent product orders should consider adding an Order Management System (OMS) to their business arsenal. These systems are computer programs or software that help businesses manage everything in the order process. They can as complicated or simple as your business needs but all accomplish three important tasks:

1. Track orders. This is perhaps the most important function of an OMS because it provides a pulse check on the status of ongoing business. You can see which orders are in your queue and what stage in the process they're in. Many OMSs even let you filter to see all the orders that are in a particular stage, such as "recently ordered," "fulfilled" or "shipped."
2. Monitor inventory. You don't want to keep receiving orders for a product you've run out of, and an OMS can prevent this problem from arriving. Your OMS can monitor your inventory levels so you know when you're running low or if you need to increase your order size of a certain material or product. Some systems even offer inventory management, where you can set it to order materials as you hit certain thresholds so you never have to worry about running out again.
3. Manage order fulfillment. Just like tracking orders is the most important, this function might be the most helpful. You can set up your OMS to automatically fulfill orders as they come through the system. This could mean sending notifications to the proper departments or employees or sending invoices as orders are fulfilled. Whatever helps you better manage this process is where your OMS should step in.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is the marriage of direct and digital marketing. It allows you to send valuable, engaging messages directly to prospects or customers so your brand stays top of mind and they remain interested in your services. Plenty of businesses either miss out on this opportunity altogether or don't have their system set up to intelligently market to the correct audiences.

One aspect of email marketing that can be incredibly valuable is nurture campaigns. These are email series meant to guide prospects through your sales funnel to a purchase. It starts with a couple of educational messages, then a few with more specific details, then an offer to engage with your brand by either speaking to someone or making a purchase. These typically run for four-to-six weeks and are a great way to engage new leads.

To make that process even easier, you can implement list segmentation and automation in your email marketing campaigns. List segmentation helps you categorize your contact list based on specific criteria, such as "new subscriber" or "has purchased one item." It also keeps your database of contacts neatly organized so you can easily identify people who are still engaged and people who are no longer interested.

With automation, you can set up your email marketing platform to automatically enroll people in nurture campaigns based on a trigger action. This might be viewing a product or subscribing to your email list. It will send emails based on your established parameters to hopefully convert leads into sales.

Order management systems, email list segmentation and automation all help make email marketing more effective and less time consuming. Each of these tactics can help you better manage your business and foster growth this year, so try them out now!