6 Task Automations to Make Your Agency More Productive

Keeping your clients in the loop is an essential part of any successful consultancy project. However, check-up meetings, metric reports, and email exchanges can take up a lot of time. With task automations, you can say goodbye to unnecessary admin and hello to a simpler, more productive workflow.

We spoke with four agencies and consultancies about how they’re running their client projects in a transparent, communicative way using task manager MeisterTask and automation tool Zapier. With Zapier connecting over 750 apps via their so-called “Zaps“, teams are running great projects in MeisterTask, without letting periodic updates take over their daily to-dos.

Here’s how these agencies are streamlining their projects using MeisterTask and Zapier:

1. Never Miss an Appointment with an Automated Calendar

Bradley Ellison, the Director and General Manager of Equitem, a consultancy based in Perth, Australia, has a choc-a-bloc schedule packed out with client visits.

To get all dates in one place, the team use the Google Calendar integration with Zapier to turn their calendar events into tasks within MeisterTask. For each new client, the team creates a new Project Board for that consultancy partnership. Then, as soon as a new calendar event is added to Google Calendar, a relevant task is created within the linked MeisterTask Project via the Zap.

As a result, all upcoming appointments are listed within their Upcoming Tasks and via the MeisterTask Calendar View. This allows the team to see what meetings are coming up and for who, as each appointment is a task assigned to the relevant team member.

As Bradley shares, Equitem save time by not switching between multiple programs to view their upcoming meetings or communicate:

“It’s incredibly easy to update our team via the embedded communication features. The fact that the tools are accessible from anywhere, on any device, means we can keep everyone on the same page, even when out at external meetings.”

Get all your dates in one place, using the Calendar to MeisterTask Zap:

2. Collate Your Metrics Automatically

As a digital marketing agency, Peritive need to provide regular updates to their clients on project and campaign progression. Managing Partner Adam Hyucke shares how the team collates metrics automatically to make this process more productive:

“Many of our clients, whether dental, medical, or legal, schedule staff meetings on a certain day of the month. Knowing this, we use ‘Zaps’ to collect the necessary performance metrics from our team to debrief our clients in a timely fashion.” 

To prepare for client meetings, teams can use the MeisterTask to Google Sheets Zap, to collate all relevant data.

The Google Sheets Zap automatically collates MeisterTask tasks in a Google Sheet, as they’re completed. This allows teams to quickly present a spreadsheet of completed tasks to clients, evidencing their progress. Other performance metrics, such as those collated from Google Analytics on marketing campaigns, can then be added alongside this task archive, ready to share with the client.

3. Set Recurring Reminders for Daily To-Dos

If there are to-dos that your agency needs to periodically complete, you can set up a recurring task within MeisterTask. Recurring tasks act as periodic reminders on a daily, weekly or yearly basis.

Digital marketing agency Peritive use recurring tasks when coming up with a foolproof social media calendar for each client:

“Each week we rely on Zapier and MeisterTask to automate our client workflow. We schedule as much as we can, including our social media and content calendars, ad campaigns and SEO checks,” says Adam. “Using MeisterTask Zaps we’re able to stay on point for our clients while saving several hours per week.”

For example, the team can set up a daily reminder via the MeisterTask Zap to check each social media account on a daily basis, and respond or update accordingly:

By setting up a schedule of recurring tasks for all of your marketing to-dos, there’s no need to schedule regular reminders manually. The reminders also help to ensure that no to-dos will slip through the gaps:

4. Create a Transparent Project Plan

By inviting your clients to a shared Project Board in MeisterTask, you can provide your clients with a clear project roadmap. Plus, by keeping them in the loop every step of the way, you can cut down on catch-up calls and in-person meetings.

Digital agency We Brand Creative create a new MeisterTask Project Board for every new client they work with. The team then invite their client to collaborate in the Project, sharing project progression with the client transparently.

Each Project Board includes all pre-agreed tasks and the stage that those tasks are at in their journey to completion. So, for example, the team have a Section for ‘In Progress *Client Name*’. This Section will include all tasks that are in progress but are currently with the client for feedback. This feedback can then be given within any attached documents or via the in-built task commenting features.

As Wouter Zwarekant, the Creative Director at We Brand Creative, shares, this enables the agency to collaborate with their clients efficiently:

“We’ve long been looking for a tool that allows us to work with our clients in an accessible way. With MeisterTask we can simply provide clients with access to the relevant Project, and because MeisterTask can be used via the web, mobile, and desktop apps, it’s a solution that every client can work with.”

Hint: You can also time track tasks

To provide the client with more overview, these transparent tasks can be time tracked using the Toggl integration, via Zapier. Toggl offers a simple online timer that lets you track the time you spend on each task, automatically generating timesheets. Teams can use these automated timesheets as evidence for how long tasks have taken, within client activity reports.

5. Turn Emails into Action

With emails flooding in from clients, colleagues, and stakeholders on a daily basis, your inbox can really take a hit.

Aaron Roberts, Innovation Coach at Mason City Schools, shares how he stays focused on tasks within his consultancy role:

“My job as the Innovation Coach is similar to the work of a consultant. Teachers are my clients, so I have a great deal of teacher questions rolling into my inbox,” Aaron explains.

To help him manage these emails, Aaron set up a Zap that turns labeled Gmail messages into MeisterTask tasks. For example, by labeling an email as “Middle school teacher needs,” the email is added to that Project in MeisterTask.

“I can be an emailaholic,” Aaron says. “Thankfully, MeisterTask keeps our team out of our email and focused on the bigger picture, while still managing the day-to-day client needs.”

To help achieve inbox zero, try setting up your own Gmail to MeisterTask Zap:

6. Send Periodic Updates

Another way to reach inbox zero is by switching communication from email to a chat tool like Slack or HipChat.

Communicating via chat channels can save a lot of time, as, without all the typical email niceties, quick queries are far more efficient. As a result, teams like We Brand Creative are making the jump to Slack for both internal and external communication.

In addition, via the Slack and HipChat Zaps you can send automated updates on project progression to your chosen chat channel. With Slack, you can set up a Zap that delivers a digest of completed MeisterTask tasks to your chosen chat. You can select to send these on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. By setting up a Slack channel for each project, agencies simply need to choose how frequently they’d like to send updates, et voila! Begin enjoying periodic project updates, without having to write a single email.

And if your team is using HipChat, there’s a Zap for that too! With the HipChat Zap, your team will be sent an automatic message every time a task is completed. 

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So those are six ways that your team can provide a stellar service, with less of the legwork.

Have any time-saving tips of your own for agencies or consultancies? We’d love to hear them in the comments below!