How to Use Automation in Your Editing Business

Automation isn’t usually a term you hear thrown around much when it comes to freelance editing businesses. But there are tools out there to help you connect software platforms, and taking advantage of them can decrease the time you spend on repetitive tasks. While there is an upfront investment of time (and possibly money, if you need a software subscription to help with the automation), once you get them to work, you can relax a bit and use the time you save to focus on other things in your business.

A brief note: My automation tool of choice as of this writing is Zapier, and the workflows I talk about in this article use it. As with any other articles that talk about tools I use in my business, no one has paid me to write this article.

Let’s dive in!

What Is Automation?

Before we dive into how automation can help you, let’s first explore what it is. Merriam-Webster defines automation as “1) the technique of making an apparatus, a process, or a system operate; 2) the state of being operated automatically; 3) automatically controlled operation of an apparatus, process, or system by mechanical or electronic devices that take the place of human labor.”

I think of automation as using technology to lessen the burden of repetitive but necessary tasks, allowing people to focus on the things that require human experience, intelligence, or knowledge. Put more simply: if you do the task a lot, and how you do it doesn’t vary or varies only a little each time, then it might be a good candidate for automation. Done well, automation can save you time and money.

And let’s face it, if you’re a business of one as many freelance editors are, reclaiming some of your time can have a huge impact!

You May Be Using Automation Already

When you hear the word “automation,” what image comes to mind? A factory stuffed with machines doing tasks like welding, weaving cloth, or capping bottles? Perhaps something more delicious, like watching Krispy Kreme donuts frying in a lazy river of oil before rolling their way under a deluge of glaze?

What about Microsoft Word’s Editor? Or PerfectIt? Paul Beverly’s amazing Macros for Editors or text expanders like TextExpander and PhraseExpress? Do you use a CRM software or email platform that allows you to build and send a series of welcome emails to a new client? While some folks may not consider a few of these automation because they don’t run independent of the editor, I’m including them here since they fit my definition of using technology to lessen the burden of repetitive tasks.

Each of those tools helps editors by doing some kind of technical lifting, whether it’s finding and correcting spelling errors or flagging inconsistencies or cutting down on the number of keystrokes needed to make an edit, respond to an email, or onboard a new client.

All of these are great time-savers, and there are more out there to discover. I’m going to share a couple with you that I use, and maybe it will inspire you to do your own experimentation.

A Word About the Importance of Process

Before you consider any kind of automation, you need to have processes you can articulate and, if needed, evaluate. I can’t stress enough how important this is. If you don’t have defined processes, then you’ll just end up spinning your wheels. Or worse, automating a crappy process or spending time trying to automate something that shouldn’t be.

If you’ve got your processes down pat, then you’re probably ready to go. If you don’t, then you need to put some time into nailing them down. And how do you do that?

Well, here’s where I make my confession: I’m not really a process person. I know, it’s rich my saying you need to have processes and then declaring I’m not a process person. It doesn’t mean that I can’t or don’t think about process, or that I lack set processes in my business. It means that my natural inclination leans heavily in the direction of the big picture and having to break things down into detailed, discrete steps makes my teeth hurt. My MO is much more asking Hey, what does this do? and beginning to fiddle with something to see how it works and what its possibilities are. Or I just dive in and adjust and refine along the way based on what I’m learning.

(And yes, I was that three-year-old who, while learning to swim, just flopped myself into the deeper end of the pool, floaties and all. To this day, my mom still talks about how it scared the life out of her.)

Because of my tendency to throw myself headlong into things, I’m not the best person to explain how to map out a process. But I can point you to a good resource if you’re interested in learning more: Check out Layla Pomper’s videos on YouTube. The ones about building a process map for a new service and how to systematize your business are good places to start.

How I Stumbled My Way Into Using Automation

It all started because I was annoyed. My experiments around follow-up email sequences in Moxie, my CRM platform, weren’t going well. To be clear, I like Moxie. (See my post about the tools I use in my business to learn more.) But I’d hit a limitation in the system that put the kibosh on my plans. Hence, annoyed.

I wanted the email series to trigger after someone submitted an inquiry through my website contact form. Ideally, the system would create drafts of the emails using templates I created, fill in certain bits using info from the contact form, and then hold the emails until I could personalize them and send them.

Nope. Not possible. Bits of it were possible, but what I envisioned from start to finish wasn’t—particularly the hold-emails-for-approval part. I decided to explore workarounds that would make it possible.

And then bam! I remembered a tool called Zapier. Very simply, it’s a platform that allows different software applications to connect and exchange information using APIs. Think of it like a translator, interpreting and relaying what’s being said from one app to another. It’s a powerful tool, particularly for those of us who don’t know how to code but could benefit from the ability to link our software applications together.

And, lo and behold, I discovered Zapier allows Moxie and Outlook to talk to one another.

Automating A Follow-up Email Series

Creating an automation in Zapier—called a Zap—requires you to set a trigger. It tells the software, When this thing happens, kick off the workflow. Zapier has pre-defined triggers and actions (e.g., what happens after a Zap is triggered) for all its software integrations. For my first automation, I chose the “Form Completed in Moxie” trigger. Here’s the automation flowchart in Zapier:

Screenshot of Zapier showing the inquiry follow-up automation.

Setting up the Moxie portion required me to specify which form would trigger the automation. Once I had done that, it was time to get to design the email portion of the workflow. This is where things start to get fun. When the automation triggers, Zapier will send a message to the “drafts” folder in my Outlook account.

For this part of the workflow, I wrote my email in Zapier and then told it what information from the inquiry form to use. You can see the fields in the screenshot below—“email” and “first name”—as well as a portion of the email text. When I connected my Moxie account to Zapier and allowed the information sharing, Zapier pulled all the field names from the form I had identified in the workflow’s first step. (There are others you don’t see here because they’re irrelevant to the workflow.) Choosing which ones to use was intuitive, as was filling out the rest of the template, with one exception.

The unintuitive part was trying to embed the link to my scheduler in the body of the email. Your choices for the body format of the email are text and HTML. I discovered that the only way to embed links in email text in Zapier (rather than having the link itself in the message) is to format it in HTML. That’s why you see the tags for the beginning and end of paragraphs, along with the anchor tags for the link to my scheduler.

Detail of the draft email sent to Outlook after an inquiry is received in Moxie.

Once the draft email is created, Outlook will store it in the “drafts” folder until I manually send it. This allows me to personalize the email and make any other changes before sending it. (I’ve highlighted the text that I replace when I personalize the message.)

I created a second workflow for a series of follow-up emails I can send if I don’t hear from the prospect after my initial response to their inquiry. The Moxie trigger for that one is “opportunity enters stage,” so it only runs if an opportunity enters the “inquiry follow-up” stage in my pipeline.

Screenshot showing the nine steps included in the inquiry follow-up email sequence.

When the automation triggers, Zapier immediately runs a filter to see if certain parameters are met before continuing the sequence. (That’s the “Only continue if…” part in the screenshot.) The filter checks that there’s a valid email address and a valid prospect first name. If those criteria are met, it creates and sends a copy of the first follow-up email to the “drafts” folder in my Outlook account.

Once that step is complete, Zapier will wait three days (step four in the automation) before it runs another check to see if any of the parameters have changed. For example, let’s say that the prospective client has scheduled a meeting. In that case, I would have moved the opportunity stage to something other than “inquiry follow-up,” so I don’t need it to send a draft of the second email to Outlook. If the stage is no longer “inquiry follow-up,” the workflow will stop, and all subsequent steps won’t be carried out.

If the stage remains “inquiry follow-up,” the workflow will continue. It will do that until it’s either stopped by the filter or it reaches the end of the flowchart.

Automating Client & Project Files Setup

Once I’d figured out the follow-up email series, I thought I’d try my hand at another automation.

I bet one of the first things you do is set up a client and/or project folder when you’re readying for a new job. Me, too. This automation is a simple one, but it saves time on the front end of a project. It’s also a good example of how automation in different systems can work together.

The second automation I configured creates a new client and/or new project files. First, an automation in Moxie that creates a client record, if one doesn’t exist, when an agreement is sent.

Screenshot of Moxie workflow to create a new client in Moxie.

You’re wowed by my technical skills, aren’t you?

When an agreement is signed in Moxie, the system automatically creates a project under that client record. (That isn’t something I set up. It’s one of the preconfigured workflows that comes built into the system, which is very handy.) That triggers a workflow I created in Zapier (trigger: project created), which searches for and creates a client file and a project file in my OneDrive.

Screenshot of Zapier automation to find and set up new client files and new project files.

First, the workflow searches for an existing client file in OneDrive (step two, above). If it doesn’t find an existing client folder, it will create one. Here’s the detail of step two:

Screenshot showing details of Zapier automation to find and set up a client folder in OneDrive

If it does find an existing client folder, it will skip step two and move on to step three, which creates a project subfolder in the main client folder. (The “folder path” is set to reference the client folder found in the prior step. The “name” is the project name from Moxie.)

Screenshot showing details of Zapier automation to find and set up a project folder in OneDrive

Super cool, right? It also works if I manually create a new project in Moxie, so it doesn’t rely exclusively on the agreement-project automation in Moxie to trigger it.

The next automation we’ll explore—setting up a draft client editorial report—consists of multiple, smaller automations. Because it’s the most complicated of the three, I’m splitting it off into its own post. Be sure to check it out!