⚙️ What automation actually is
Automation is when a trigger in one system causes an action in another — without you doing anything. The classic example: someone fills in your contact form → you get an email notification → the contact gets added to your spreadsheet. That's three apps talking to each other automatically.
With AI in the loop, it becomes more interesting: someone fills in your contact form → AI reads their message → AI categorises it and drafts a personalised reply → you review and send with one click. The difference between these two automations is enormous in terms of time saved.
Something happens
Optional condition
Optional
Something does
The key question to ask yourself: "What do I do more than twice a week that's the same every time?" That's your first automation candidate. It doesn't have to be complex — even routing emails to the right folder automatically saves real minutes every day.
🔧 The three tools — Make, Zapier, n8n
Recommendation for Raglan small businesses: Make.com for free. If you hit limits or need something it can't do, evaluate Zapier's paid tier. Only consider n8n if you're comfortable in the terminal and want no vendor lock-in.
💡 Real workflows for Raglan businesses
Here are automations that are genuinely useful for the kinds of businesses in this community:
AI step: Classify enquiry type, extract key details, draft a personalised reply
Action: Save to Google Sheet + send draft to your Gmail as a draft (not auto-sent)
Time saved: 10–20 min per enquiry
AI step: Expand the short description into a platform-specific caption
Action: Schedule post via Buffer or Later
Time saved: 30+ min per week
AI step: Pull last week's bookings/sales, summarise trends in plain English
Action: Send yourself an email digest
Time saved: 20–40 min per week
Action: Send personalised follow-up email 24 hours later asking for a Google review
AI step: Personalise the email using the customer's name and service details
Time saved: Consistent, zero-effort review generation
🤖 Adding AI to your automations
Make.com has native integrations with OpenAI (ChatGPT), Anthropic (Claude), and Google (Gemini). You can drop an AI step into any workflow — it receives text as input, processes it, and passes text as output to the next step.
To add a Claude step in Make.com:
- Add an "HTTP" module or use the "Anthropic" module (if available in your region)
- Paste your Anthropic API key
- Write the system prompt that defines what Claude should do with each item
- Map the input from the previous step into the user message field
API costs in automation context: Each call to Claude, GPT-4, or Gemini costs a small amount. For most small-business automations (processing a few enquiries a day), this is cents per week — less than you spend on a coffee. Get the API key from Anthropic console or AI Studio, and set a spending cap so there are no surprises.
One important rule: Never auto-send AI-generated replies without a human review step. The workflow should draft → notify you → you approve. AI gets things wrong. An embarrassing auto-sent email is harder to fix than an un-sent draft.
🚀 Build your first scenario in Make.com
The best way to learn Make is to build something real. Here's a step-by-step walkthrough for one of the most useful starter automations: saving new form submissions to a Google Sheet automatically.
Now add the AI step: Once the basic flow works, go back and add an Anthropic or OpenAI module between the form trigger and the Google Sheets action. Give it a system prompt like: "Categorise this enquiry as: sales lead, support request, general enquiry, or spam. Return only the category label." Now your spreadsheet has an AI-generated category column for every submission — zero extra effort.
👇 Map your first automation
You don't need to build it today — but sketch it out right now, on paper or in a notes app. Answer these questions:
- What's the trigger? (Form submitted, email received, time-based, file uploaded...)
- What happens now? (What do you manually do when the trigger fires?)
- What would an AI step add? (Classification? Draft? Summarisation? Translation?)
- What's the output? (Email sent, spreadsheet updated, notification pushed, file saved...)
- What tool would you use? (Make.com is the right answer for most people here)
Then: go to make.com, create a free account, and look for your trigger in the module list. If the trigger app is there, you can build it today.
Branch complete ⚙️
The most powerful automations are the boring, repetitive ones you do every week. Start there. One automation that saves 20 minutes a week saves 17 hours a year.