As technology evolves, businesses must stay updated and ahead in their industries to ensure profitability. In dropshipping, the two main areas to focus on are automation and AI. If you don’t, you can lose your competitive edge in the market, regardless of your niche.
That’s why I’ll be focusing on how you can utilize both for your dropshipping store in this blog. Get a breakdown of different ways and tools you can use to improve your business and operations. Use this to pave your way to success!
What is Automated Dropshipping?
Automated dropshipping is the modern way of dropshipping. Sellers with automated dropshipping stores use various tools, software, and sometimes outsourcing to streamline tasks. Most of the time, it’s for inventory management and order fulfillment. But automation can also be used for any repetitive and time-consuming process.
Pros of Automated Dropshipping
With automation, you can enjoy the following benefits:
- Improved Efficiency
Automation frees up your plate as a business owner—you’ll have more time for other things. Instead of processing orders and monitoring inventory levels yourself, technology will do it for you. With the right tools and systems, you can just set the rules, and they will do the tasks for you.
- Reduced Operation Costs
Automated tasks help reduce the chances of data inaccuracies and human error. At the same time, automation speeds up tasks, reducing the resources you use and the amount of time you spend on them. This frees up resources that you can reinvest in scaling your business.
- Data Accuracy
Remember that data inaccuracies can result in costly mistakes. Since automation lessens or removes manual procedures, there’s less chance of human errors. As a result, you get better data quality. Plus, using tools and software will help you ensure that you have accurate data, which is essential for making decisions.
Cons of Automated Dropshipping
Despite their advanced benefits, there are some disadvantages you must consider before getting into automation:
Increased Technical Knowledge Requirement
Automation means you need proper knowledge and understanding of using digital tools and resources. At the same time, you must know which tools are the right ones to use. This can be a huge challenge for dropshippers with little to no technical expertise. Of course, you can learn—but be prepared to invest time and effort.
- Reduced Control and Flexibility
With everything automated or outsourced, you have less control over every task or transaction. For example, you won’t be able to accommodate any unique customer request. You might miss these requests entirely, since automated systems skip manual order reviews.
How Does Automated Dropshipping Work?
It follows this concept: trigger, condition, and action. Think of it this way: If something happens, then do that. This is what the tools and systems follow to automate the business.
Here’s an example of how this works:
How to Automate Your Dropshipping Store
Follow these steps to start automating your store:
1. Search for the Right Automated Tools
If your store is on Shopify, you can easily automate it by installing automated dropshipping apps. Before that, think about what you want to automate. Order processing? Inventory management? Pricing? Or all of it?
Once you're sure, go to the Shopify store and select a software program. Here are some recommendations:
AutoDS: This app will automatically fulfill orders in your store and update tracking numbers.
Duoplane: This automates order fulfillment for multiple suppliers and even syncs inventory levels.
Dropified: You can use this to automatically send customers and order information from your store to your suppliers.
Ordoro: This can manage inventory, order fulfillment, and shipping for you.
Of course, expect to pay for these, but free trials are available. This will allow you to test if the app works well with your store and suppliers. If not, you can always find and choose another app.
2. Streamline Order Processing With Suppliers
Order processing can be one of the most demanding tasks in dropshipping. But once you’ve chosen an app, that app can automatically route the orders to your suppliers. It’s also best to notify your suppliers that you will automate this process so they can adjust accordingly if necessary.
Connect the tool to your suppliers. The tool connects your store and supplier systems using API keys. When an order is placed in your store, the tool will automatically route it to the corresponding supplier. The supplier will then be notified so they can start the order fulfillment process.
3. Automate Inventory Across Channels
Another process you can automate is inventory management. Most order processing tools will also offer automated inventory management. This will help you prevent out-of-stocks and pre-orders in your store, which can drive some customers away.
With the tool, you’ll have to establish your preferred inventory levels. When your supplier's stock drops below this level, the tool will automatically update your inventory and mark the product “out of stock” in your store.
Some tools even offer demand forecasting to help you predict future sales and adjust stock accordingly. This is a good way to ensure that your best sellers never run out of stock.
4. Optimize and Automate Your Pricing
Automated tools will allow you to automate any updates to your product pricing. There are two strategies you can use for this. The first one is dynamic pricing, which is based on competitors' data. This means you can set a trigger and condition when a top competitor’s price increases or decreases. This will allow you to stay competitive.
Another strategy is setting a fixed markup. Remember, aim for a 30% profit margin to ensure consistent profitability. You can set that as your rule. This way, you can ensure that whenever your suppliers increase their prices, your store prices will automatically update. Of course, you can tweak this based on your competitors’ prices, too, so your customers will still choose your store.
5. Implement Tracking Updates for Orders
Order tracking updates are important for your customers—it’s something you shouldn’t overlook. Always let your customers know where their order is and when they can expect it to arrive. You can automate this process to improve their experience with your store. It will also help you stay on top of your sales and ensure that there are no order delays.
Depending on the app you use, updates can be automatically updated in your store and send emails to your customers. The email notification is a more personalized approach to this, so your customers are always informed about their orders.
AI for Dropshipping: 7 Different Ways to Use It
Aside from automated tools, AI is another technology that you can utilize for your business. AI can act like an all-around assistant that will help you improve efficiency in your operations. With the right tools, you can use AI for the following:
1. Product Research (Best-Sellers)
If you’re new to dropshipping or looking to expand your existing store, you can use AI to find the right products. You can use it to identify trending products and evergreen niches. Use this to find a niche and product where your store can consistently make sales.
In Drop Ship Lifestyle, we want high-ticket products so you can enjoy a 30% profit margin. These are products that cost at least $200. Looking for these products can be time-consuming. But with AI, you can streamline the process and even let AI analyze any helpful data to identify your best options.
2. Competitive Pricing
You can use AI to optimize your pricing strategies. Since maintaining competitive pricing can be challenging, AI-powered tools can make it more straightforward. AI can monitor and analyze large volumes of data for pricing and even market trends. The tool can suggest product prices based on different factors, such as product performance, competitor prices, and demand. With AI, you can find the right balance between competitiveness and profitability.
3. Improving SEO
AI tools can help you improve your website’s SEO. There are now many AI-powered tools you can use for this and for different aspects of SEO. For example, you can use AI to conduct keyword research. Keywords play a huge role in helping your content and pages rank in search engines. With AI, you can easily identify which keywords to use in your website and marketing materials.
4. Writing Content
AI can also help you in writing your content, especially for product descriptions, ad copy, and blog posts. You can instruct AI-powered tools to use the keywords from its research when writing. With the right prompts, you can quickly make written content that will help you engage and persuade your target audience to buy your products.
5. Customer Support
You can use AI to enhance your store’s customer support. There are tools you can use for AI customer service. These apps can handle basic and common customer inquiries. Plus, they’re available 24/7, so your customers can get quick answers to their questions.
Of course, to ensure that they can still ask more complex questions, offer other contact options in your store. These can be through email inquiry or transferring them from the AI-powered chatbot to a live agent if you have one in your team.
6. Product Imagery
If you think the product photos you have aren’t enough, you can use AI to customize more. There are AI-powered design tools you can use to edit the stock photos from your suppliers. You can add some realistic backgrounds or extra details to the images—anything that you think can make them more appealing to your customers.
7. Email Marketing
Lastly, you can also utilize AI to build strong relationships with your customers through email marketing. It’s an effective way to nurture your leads and existing customers. Writing and sending personalized emails to your customers is time-consuming and takes a lot of effort. AI can make it easier.
Depending on your customers’ behaviors and preferences, you can use AI tools to automate email marketing tasks like the following:
Top 10 AI Tools for Dropshipping Stores
To give you a head start, here are some of the best tools you can utilize for your store:
1. Instant: For Product Pages
This is a Shopify product page builder that you can use to create unique pages for your store. Its main benefit is that it designs pages without coding; it's just drag and drop. You can also integrate it with other tools, like Figma, so you can further enhance your store’s conversions.
2. Google Gemini: For Blog Posts
You can create informative and persuasive content through blog posts. These will help you build your credibility and make marketing easier. But writing from scratch takes time. You can use Gemini to write various engaging articles quickly. Just input some writing prompts, and you can have content that can help your website rank on search engines.
3. Jasper: For Marketing
Jasper is a comprehensive marketing platform with various AI tools that you can use for different aspects of marketing. For example, it has an image editor that you can use to remove the background of product photos or upscale them. But it’s more popular for its content generation function, which will help you create high-quality marketing content.
4. CopyAI: For Product Descriptions and Translations
Focus on crafting engaging and compelling product descriptions with this tool. In just a few clicks, you can write a product description that will help you increase your conversions. This product description generator is a free AI tool from the platform.
At the same time, you can use it to expand your reach. CopyAI can help you translate content into other languages so you can adapt your store to different regions.
5. Flair: For Product Images
Product images can help your store stand out in the market. To improve the stock photos from your suppliers, you can use Flair. This AI tool allows you to remove backgrounds and stage scenes. It has templates and digital props that you can use to create unique visuals without taking new photos of your products.
6. CustomGPT.ai: For Custom Chatbots
This tool will allow you to build a personalized chatbot, which is powered by GPT-4, for your store. Using your business data, CustomGPT will create a chatbot that can provide non-hallucinated or human-like responses. You can directly integrate the chatbot into your store without any coding. This makes it easy to access for your customers, which helps improve the customer experience.
7. Murf AI: For Natural-Sounding Voiceovers
Create videos with voiceovers in a faster manner with Murf AI. It uses text-to-speech technology to generate realistic voiceovers that you can add to your product videos or marketing videos. You just need to upload your text and choose your preferred voice, accent, and language from its library. This saves you time and even money—you don’t need to hire professional voice-over artists.
8. Creatify: For Video Ads
Video ads are time-consuming and often expensive to make; Creatify simplifies this process. Using your product’s URL and page, this AI tool can easily generate a video ad. It has AI personalities and scriptwriting features that make it an all-in-one tool for creating video content for your ads.
9. Pencil: For Visual Ads
Visual ads are some of the most effective advertising tools. With Pencil, you can design, test, and optimize the content of these ads. It has a chat interface where you can brainstorm concepts with an AI agent. It will then create a visual ad based on these conversations.
Furthermore, once these ads are live, this tool can conduct advanced data analysis on them. This allows it to suggest variations that will help you improve the ads.
10. Browse AI: For Competitor Analysis
Staying ahead of your competitors allows you to stay profitable. You can use Browse AI for this. It’s a data scraping tool that extracts data from websites, viral videos, and even ads. It then uses this data to help you make informed decisions for your business so you can maintain your competitive edge in your niche.
Conclusion
AI and automation make dropshipping easier for both beginners and experienced business owners. With the right tools, you can streamline your operations and workflows—from order processing to fulfillment. At the same time, with AI-powered tools, you can create different forms of content that will help you rank, convert, and stay ahead of your competitors.
Share your experience with AI and automation in the comments below! Need focused help with your dropshipping journey? Join my webinar today!
