There are 13 business days left until Christmas. THIRTEEN! We don’t know how it happened, either – but the holidays are well and truly right around the corner!
Planning on putting your feet up over the silly season? There’s still time to get a few easy automated systems in place to ensure your marketing and communication ticks along while you’re sipping imported beer or chilled champagne in the sun!
Basic: Schedule Your Facebook Posts
Taking time off over Christmas? There’s no reason for your Facebook business page to go silent just because you’re taking a well-deserved break with family or lounging on a beach somewhere!
Many of your fans and followers will still be active on social media over the holidays (in fact, many of them will be more active than usual!) so be sure to keep your presence active with a few scheduled posts. This is particularly important if your business offers an online shopping component and you want to keep sales rolling in – and a little pre-holiday organisation can go a long way in keeping your online presence alive and active.
If you’re new to scheduling posts, the process is simple:
Add an image (or video) and copy as you normally would when posting to Facebook – either via your desktop, or using the Facebook Pages app – and then choose to schedule your posts instead of publishing immediately. You can choose the date and time for each post to be made live, and schedule your posts days, weeks or even months in advance.
Note that, on occasion, errors can occur when scheduling a large quantity of posts well in advance. If you plan on doing this, keep an eye on your Facebook page from time to time during your break to check that those posts are being published as planned.
Bonus Points: Set Up a Facebook Messenger Chat Bot
Chat bots for Messenger have really taken off in the past few months, and some have dismissed them as a flash-in-the-pan marketing mechanism, they can offer real value when it comes to maintaining engagement with Facebook users (your potential customers) and providing a better social experience.
In the same way that scheduled posts keep your Facebook page alive, and email autoresponders help manage the expectations of clients and prospects who reach out over the holidays, chat bots can help ease the burden of needing to reply to Facebook direct enquiries immediately while responding to users for you.
There are a number of services out there (we’ve used ManyChat and Chatfuel with success), with free and paid options available – depending on how comprehensive you require your bot to be. With most services you can set rules for customised responses to be sent when a particular word or enquiry is triggered. Alternatively, you can opt for the simplest solution and have one key message sent in response to each enquiry you receive via Facebook Messenger during the break. This is what we would recommend for most businesses.
Check out the likes of ManyChat and Chatfuel to see which bot will best meet your needs, and contact our team if you need assistance with the set up.
Basic: Set Up Your Email Autoresponder
If you’re planning on unplugging entirely (or even almost entirely) over the break, setting up an auto-responder on your inbox is vital. By having a simple automated message reply to enquiries while you’re away, you avoid existing or prospective clients and customers feeling their enquiry has been ignored, while giving them an indication of when they can expect a reply from you in the New Year. It’s an easy way to manage people’s expectations – and provide them with an alternative contact (or means or getting in touch with you) in the case of a real emergency.
How you set up your email autoresponder will depend on the email client/ service/ system you use. We’ve gathered some quick-and-easy tutorials from around the web for most of the main services:
Keep your autoresponder short and sweet – being sure to include your return to work data and an alternative contact (if available) in the case of an emergency.
Bonus Points: Automate Your EDM Campaigns
Christmas may be the busiest shopping season of the year, but many people continue making purchases well into January while enjoying their break. Don’t miss an opportunity to cash in on their holiday spending!
Keep your brand active and in front of those on your existing customer list by scheduling email campaigns and setting up automated messages. It may be a New Year promo code or a simple holiday message – or it could be an automated email set up to help convert shoppers with abandoned carts.
Mailchimp is a great service that provides scheduling and email automation under its free service offering, with plans comprehensive enough to meet the needs of most SMEs. If you need help designing your email campaign template, scheduling EDMs or setting up automated email rules, let us know and we can get you sorted before the break!
Need help? Contact us ASAP and we’ll do our best to slot you in before the break!