as a busy small business owner, it’s hard to find time to balance your marketing efforts with day-to-day operations that keep your business running. according to a survey by constant contact, small businesses spend an average of 33 hours per week on marketing activities. think about what you could do with all that time.

that’s where our feature, autopilot comes in. autopilot helps you scale back the hours you may spend on marketing by sending messages and rewards to customers automatically based on their latest visit or purchase behavior.

download our free retail customer loyalty success guide to learn how to drive customers back 2x more.

we’ve recently made three notable updates to autopilot, which will help you bring in even more repeat business, and track results easily. here’s what’s changing:

bring in more business with two new autopilot messages/campaigns

thousands of businesses are using our autopilot feature, and we’ve found it to be ten times more effective than traditional marketing channels.

autopilot currently offers five types of automatic campaigns or messages you can set up based on customer behavior:

• first visit – a reward sent to your new members
• growth  – a reward sent to customers on their every 3rd or 5th visit
• at risk  – a reward sent to those who haven’t visited in 30 days
• lapsed – a reward sent to those who haven’t visited in 90 days
• birthday – a reward sent for a customer’s birthday

in addition to these five campaigns, we wanted to present even more opportunities to automatically reach out to customers and drive in-store traffic. so, we’ve added the following two autopilot campaigns:

• new: network – this new campaign allows you to automatically reach out to potential customers who have shown interest in your business through the fivestars “network” aka the mobile app and/or website. showing interest means people have either added your business to their list of memberships through the mobile app, or they’ve added a bonus point to your business online. once a fivestars user has added you to their list, a message will be sent to them a week later reminding them to come in-store for an exclusive deal. 
  • side note: this particular audience, previously called “online,” will also be segmented in your dashboard and renamed “network,” so you can monitor their performance overall.

• new: lost – this campaign allows you to reach out and send an enticing deal via email or push to customers who haven’t been back in five months or more. you can set this campaign to reach out as far out as 180, 270 or 360 days. 

to activate your new autopilot campaigns, navigate to your settings section of your dashboard. from here, select autopilot,  then edit autopilot. switch the network campaign and lost campaign to “yes” under active, and you’ll be good to go!

track your campaign success with improved autopilot reporting

we’ve added a slew of new autopilot stats including: opt outs, claims, and visits. this means you’ll have the same level of insight into your autopilot campaign as you do with promotions reporting. here’s what the updated view looks like:

our product keeps getting better thanks to your feedback, and you’ll continue to see even more success as a result. have any thoughts or comments about these updates? let us know!