How Jen Runs 95% of Her Business in Shout

Jen is an ambitious business owner, devoted military wife, and busy mom. She’s passionate about running her life and business as efficiently as possible so she can focus on what matters most to her: her family.

Jen’s Problem

Until mid-2020 she’d relied mostly on email marketing to communicate with her customers and team members. Her system worked well but didn’t do everything she really wanted it to—she wanted more flexibility to communicate with her customers and wanted to streamline her order workflow.

Despite her pain points, Jen was hesitant to look for and potentially switch to a new solution. She worried that learning a new CRM and marketing platform would be too much work for her already-packed schedule. Jen ultimately took a chance on Shout and “was immediately amazed.”

Jen’s Approach

Jen decided to take a strategic approach to moving her business over to Shout. She felt like trying to tackle its numerous features all at once could be overwhelming, so she set one thing up at a time.

Here’s how she got started in Shout:

1. Import Contacts from Square

Jen was already using Square to manage her invoices, so she needed to import all her existing customers into Shout. She also notified her customers that she’d be switching over to a new order management system so that they wouldn’t be surprised by any changes.‍

2. Set Up Conversation Bots

Shout’s automations are what drew Jen to the platform, and it’s easy to see why. She created multiple bots within Shout so that they’d be ready to communicate with her contacts in multiple ways. Jen uses bots to:

• Wish Customers a Happy Birthday—Jen uses a bot to collect information from each new customer, including their birthday. She uses that information to organize all her contacts’ birthdays into groups. Then, each month she uses a bot to send everyone in that month’s birthday group a message and discount on their birthdays. The bot also sends a follow-up message at the end of the month with a reminder to use their coupon code.

Learn more about birthday alerts

• Send Exclusive Discounts—Jen offers text-only discounts to her customers via her Shout marketing number. Customers can opt-in to receiving these offers by texting a specific message to her number, which she advertises in her social media profiles and captions.

Learn more about using a marketing number

• Manage VIPs—Jen also utilizes a bot to manage a specific group of VIP customers. Each month, her bot sends exclusive content, sneak peeks, and discounts to keep these customers ultra-engaged.

Learn how to set up a VIP bot

3. Set Up Shout Shipping

Jen runs a skin care and cosmetics business, and as you can imagine, she spends a lot of time shipping products to her customers. In fact, she ships to about 95% of her customers and says she spends about 70% of her time creating shipping labels and packaging orders.

Prior to switching to Shout, she utilized three different platforms to manage her invoices and shipping labels.

“Shout has made it so much easier than trying to track things in three different systems, none of which talked to each other,” Jen said. “It’s just so easy having everything right there on my phone.”

Learn more about Shout shipping

Jen’s Results

Thanks to Shout’s CRM and automations, Jen’s been able to streamline her business and eliminate time-consuming tasks. She’s also cut her shipping times in half.

“The app is amazing,” she said. “Being able to do 95% of everything from my phone has been a lifesaver.”

Conclusion

Jen made the switch to Shout a year ago and has advice for those considering doing the same:

"Just jump in and do it. Give yourself 2-3 solid weeks of getting in and getting set up to see what it can do for you.”

What bots will you have set up 3 weeks from now? Click here to upgrade your Shout account and get started.