If you’re like most small business owners, you wear a lot of hats. You might be the CEO, the CFO, and the head of marketing all rolled into one. And while you might be a jack of all trades like turmeric farmer Ed Taylor, from American Turmeric Company, there’s one area where you could probably use a little help: automation.
Luckily, there’s a tool that can take some of the daily tasks off your shoulders and help you collect more leads, convert more clients, and create more fans: Keap.
Keap is a CRM and all-in-one sales and marketing automation software that helps small businesses automate repetitive tasks, data collection, email marketing, invoicing, collecting reviews, getting more referrals, and following up with prospects and clients.
American Turmeric Company is one of the many small businesses that has leveraged the power of marketing automation and Keap to great effect. In the last year alone, they were able to grow sales by 52%.
“It’s amazing to see our clients continue to grow revenue from the campaigns, automation, and customer journeys that we’ve developed leveraging the power of Keap and its sales and marketing automation solutions,” said Jason Benedict Co-Founder of the Automation Agency.
One way American Turmeric Company was able to increase sales was by using marketing automation to launch targeted email marketing campaigns. They used behavioral data — like which products a customer purchased and time lapsed since a customer’s last purchase — to segment their list and send each group highly-targeted messages. For example, they sent discounts to first-time buyers and special offers to customers who hadn’t purchased in a while.
Behavioral data is data that describes the observed actions of customers. It gives you real insights into how people are using or will potentially use your product. The Keap CRM helped the Taylors to not only grow turmeric but also grow their customer base.
“It is one thing to hear what people say they want, but to see how they actually behave is even more insightful for business owners to make decisions that can lead to accelerated growth and better customer service,” said Benedict.
Another way American Turmeric Company increased sales was by using lead generation forms on their website. They used these forms to capture new leads of potential customers who had shown interest in their product but hadn’t made a purchase yet, and then followed up with them through automated email drip campaigns without losing the personalized touch required to build client relationships. These follow-up emails contained valuable content like educational tips, remedies about turmeric and what it does for inflammation, along with recipes for making everything from drinks to shakes to delectable meals with this miracle plant.
With the help of the Automation Agency implementing proven and tested marketing automation strategies into their business, American Turmeric Company was able to free up the necessary time needed in their business to focus on expanding their product line into new markets like skincare and dog food. They even donated 30 pounds of turmeric each month to the North American Elephant Reserve to help elephants with arthritis!
“The problem with elephants is the same problem with humans or dogs or anything – is that as we get older, our joints get stiff. We have so many testimonies Jason, from people that have experienced the healing qualities of turmeric. It’s really a privilege for us to be able to do what we do, and work with some of these people,” said Ed Taylor, Owner of American Turmeric Company.
When asked about how Ed and his wife Diane balance the farm life of growing turmeric along with running a small business and keeping organized, he said, “Soon after we got our website up and got our E-commerce site going, started selling products, shipping – we didn’t realize it, but we were building a customer base. But we didn’t really know what to do with it (at that time). They were just names and email addresses in a spreadsheet. So, we started thinking, what are we going to do with it (the email list)? I don’t know who’s buying, you know, more than once, who are my repeat customers? What are they buying? Where are they located? I didn’t know any of that stuff. So, we started looking around and we found Keap and the Automation Agency and decided that Keap was the vehicle that we wanted to use to put our information in regarding our customers.”
This was a leading indicator that the Automation Agency identified during their initial assessment that could help American Turmeric Company benefit from analyzing its behavioral data. By tracking, storing, and organizing their customer database in one centralized cloud-based solution, using Keap, these powerful analytics along with automation proved effective in helping them grow sales revenue and increase their efficiency.
Before hiring the Automation Agency to help them build out more advanced automations and designing a frictionless customer journey, the American Turmeric Company started leveraging Keap on a basic level.
“We started doing that in a rather simplistic way. And then we discovered there was this thing called Zapier, that would move our customer data out of our website every time we made a sale, and it would put into Keap,” said Taylor.
Like most new Keap users who start with humble beginnings, their curiosity grows alongside their sales, leading to continued revenue growth and more efficiency in their business, which means more margin growth. More margin growth means more profits and longevity for small businesses.
“The thing that impressed me once I understood what was going on… Is that this is an evergreen process. It’s not something that you need to focus on daily. Like you know, you wake up, you set your priorities, you do the important things that need to do. Once the automations are set up in Keap, you know, as far as I know, as long as there are computers, as long as there’s the internet, that’s kind of going to keep grinding it out. I don’t have to go in. And I mean, I can update it if I need to. But it just works. And that’s the miracle to me, is that we’re able to communicate to our customers, through the series of seven emails, initially, we have reminders in there, we have thank you’s in there – it’s just been very interesting. And to me, one of the more rewarding parts of what I do is work with Keap and work with Automation Agency, and see this thing work,” said Taylor.
So, if you’re looking for a way to grow your small business, investing in marketing automation software is a great place to start. Marketing automation will help you save time and money while still reaching new customers and growing your sales. Just take it from American Turmeric Company—automated campaigns helped them increase sales by 52% within their first year of working with the Automation Agency.
When asked about why Ed and his wife Diane chose to work with the Automation Agency, Ed stated “I liked your approach. I just liked the feeling of it. I liked what you showed us you could do. And I’ve said to you and to others before, that the team that you have the team that we worked with through Automation Agency, was part of my team. It wasn’t just your people. It wasn’t just Automation Agency, people that we were working with, they were our people. Because, really, we are in the middle of all of this, we launched a whole new website, that was a big deal for us to launch a whole new website. We brought on our new products and your team members were right there with us. If we need technical work done, it was done. They really went above and beyond what I had expected to help us solve some of the problems that we faced.”
Interested in getting results like the American Turmeric Company? Request A Free 14-Day Trial To Keap, (the all-in-one CRM for Sales & Marketing Automation) and receive a complimentary 1-hour assessment of your business from the Automation Agency.