Does Infusionsoft Make Business Impersonal?

Junk MailA common question from non-Infusionsoft-users is the idea that powerful marketing software such as Infusionsoft makes business impersonal, even cold. It’s a legitimate concern, no one enjoys junk mail sent to “Resident” or email blasts that aren’t relevant to you! So how can so many businesses show increases in engagement and sales after switching to Infusionsoft?

Better Tracking Means Better Messaging

With Infusionsoft’s dynamic open, click, and campaign tracking you can see – at a glance – which messages aren’t connecting to your audience when they reach the inbox. This means if your message is currently inauthentic, boring or impersonal, Infusionsoft will help you identify the problem so you can make changes.  Continue reading

Tags vs Tag Categories in Infusionsoft

understanding-tags-post-thumbOne of the most powerful yet under utilized features of Infusionsoft is tagging. If you’re unfamiliar with tagging, think of it like labels you use for your friends. You can categorize who is married, who’s single, who has a truck when you’re moving and who has great advice when you’re stressed.

Tagging your clients and leads is very similar, it allows you to identify groups easily and target your message very personally.

Instead of broadcasting news of a 50% off sale for your new program offer to everyone on your list, you can now broadcast to everyone who hasn’t purchased (and paid 100%), those who have viewed the sales page and those who haven’t bought from you in 6 months.  Continue reading

How Marketing Automation will Save Your Business

IHow Marketing Automation Will Save Your Businessf you’re like most entrepreneurs you find that your time is often spent following up with customers and leads as you promote your business to pay the bills. The problem with this focus is that while you’re busy with managing ads on Google or Facebook, using social media, blogging, and talking or email with potential customers, there’s little time to think about the growth of the business.

Sound familiar? You’re not alone. It’s easy to get caught up in the merry-go-round of customer support and sales because it’s the most pressing problem on the table. And you care about your clients and want to ensure they choose the right program and mix of services.

To compound the problem, if your advertising and word of mouth marketing works then you’ll have even more leads clamoring for your attention.

If you don’t solve this problem soon you’ll lose business and possibly your mind.  Continue reading

Using Infusionsoft to Earn Trust

In online business it’s hard to earn the critical “know, like & trust factor” when you’re asking people who you’ve never met to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to work with you. Using Infusionsoft you can automate this process of trust building and – best of all – this can happen immediately after you get started with Infusionsoft.

Using Nurture Sequences to Build Trust

How To Nurture Prospects with a Drip CampaignOne of the first things your Infusionsoft Certified Consultant (ICC) should teach you in the software is how to set up a campaign, and one of the best types of campaigns to start with is called a “nurture” sequence.

Nurture sequences acknowledge that not every lead is immediately ready to buy your products and services and may need more information or time before making a buying decision. These sequences are less intense than sales campaigns which often drive toward a goal date such as “buy by Friday for 50% off” or “group program closes on the 30th!”

Instead, nurture sequences are designed to drip out content over time and answer objections, educate leads on the process and share success stories. These sequences aren’t just for new clients – you can create them for clients ready for your second or third programs.

Design a Nurture Sequence

It’s all about delivering the right message, to the right person, at the right time. To do this you can use the power of Infusionsoft to segment and categorize your list into smaller groups. After all, you don’t want a long nurture sequence to sell a program that your lead has already purchased.

By using Infusionsoft’s powerful tagging feature you can separate your leads and clients by purchases, clicks, even psychographic and demographic information. Imagine being able to email just those leads in North America who have visited your sales page and have purchased from you in the past, but have not signed up for your May workshop.

With Infusionsoft this kind of nurture campaign is not only possible, it’s easy!

Nurture sequences eliminate the need for large sales teams keeping notes on every client call and interaction – Infusionsoft can track all of this information with incredible accuracy. The result to the client or lead is the that they get personalized messages that address their objections and concerns and you’re able to show that you understand their worries, which positions you as trustworthy.

Given the right timing of messages and copy, nurture sequences can dramatically improve your sales closing rate. Infusionsoft understands that many small businesses like yours may not have the brand recognition and marketing budget of Coca-Cola or Nike, so you need to build up the faith in your business with a consistent message.

While Infusionsoft gives you the tools to get started, you’ll need to design and implement your own nurture sequences. The easiest way to get started with nurture sequences that build trust is to ask yourself, “what if the leads don’t buy this program?”

Write down what you’d want to communicate and how often you should be reaching out with this content. While some programs are evergreen, also consider programs that launch annually or quarterly. By building up the program to your leads and then giving them another chance to work with you, Infusionsoft can help you stay in touch with warm leads and increase your conversions with minimal effort.

If you’re just getting started with Infusionsoft be sure to talk to your ICC about these campaigns or contact us to discuss which nurture campaigns you need for your business to increase sales and serve your clients.

Image Credit: sfxeric

Are Your Split Test Results Lying to You?

Statistical DifferenceStatistical Significance in Split Testing

In Marketing, we LOVE split testing — and for good reason — it’s a fantastic method of optimizing a campaign for the best conversion rates and ultimately biggest profit margins.

However, one very important thing to keep in mind when performing these split testing experiments is the “statistical significance” of the results from a split test.  For those of you who’s eyes just glazed over when I dropped the word statistics… I’ll try to keep this topic high-touch and easy to digest.

If you look up the wiki on statistical significance, you’ll find that we’re essentially attempting to predict if the results we get from a split test are meaningful and repeatable.

Why is this important?

Let’s imagine that we are attempting to test the effectiveness of 2 headline options on the sales page for our next launch.   We want to figure out if headline “A” or headline “B” is producing more sales.

Here are the theoretical results after sending 1100 visitors to both sales pages:

[hr]

Example #1

[twocol_one]Headline “A”

# of visitors: 1100

conversion 5%

[/twocol_one]

[twocol_one_last]Headline “B”

# of visitors: 1100

conversion 9%

[/twocol_one_last]

[hr]

Using a Statistical Difference calculator, we can determine that the difference is 4%, with a comparative error of 2.1.  Don’t worry if you don’t understand the math behind it, just be aware that a higher comparative error is bad!

The part you should care about is that the answer is “YES“, there is a statistical difference.  We have statistically proven that Headline “B” is converting better, so we’ll go ahead and run all of our advertising dollars towards Headline “B”.

Now what happens if we reduce the traffic to the site during the test?  Can we still be sure that Headline “B” is better?  Let’s suppose that we were only able to drive 200 visitors to each test.  Are our results still valid?

[hr]

Example #2

[twocol_one]Headline “A”

# of visitors: 200

conversion 5%

[/twocol_one]

[twocol_one_last]Headline “B”

# of visitors: 200

conversion 9%

[/twocol_one_last]

[hr]

Checking the calculator again, we now see that the comparative error has jumped up from 2.1 to 5 (remember, higher is worse!).  And the result is that there is NOT a statistical difference between our results.

What does this mean in practical terms?

Say we have $10,000 to spend on advertising for this campaign.  From our quick calculations, we have proven that the results from Example 2 could be a total fluke.  We didn’t have enough visitors to the site to validate that the results are meaningful!  So now we really DON’T know what headline should yield higher results without sending more traffic to verify.  Better do some more testing!

Have you ever run a split test with interesting results?  Post your story below in the comments.

Can You Tell What Your Visitors Are Thinking?

DemographicOne of the most commonly under-used parts of Infusionsoft (or marketing automation in general) is collecting psychographic data and acting upon it.  It’s hard because it forces us to use our heads.

It’s much easier to collect demographic data (location, age, etc.) but that’s not nearly as helpful when it comes to developing a solution to a deep seated goal or pain.

For example, let’s pretend that we are creating a few campaigns to market new products for a health and fitness website.  If visitors opt-in on a page related to losing weight, we can assume that losing weight is likely a goal of theirs, and we can capture that information by tagging anyone who opts-in on that web page as [Goals -> Lose Weight] in Infusionsoft.

Now that we understand a primary goal of the visitor, we can add them to a sequence that specifically offers advice on the best ways to lose weight. Doing so, we’ll also be able to reduce the chance of losing their attention by sending information that he or she is NOT interested in.

Sending ultra-targeted information will reduce unsubscribe rates and improve conversions!

Now let’s look at another example.  An older gentleman visits our theoretical site, fills in his info to download a free report on nutrition to slow down the effects of aging on our body.  We notice (by paying attention to Infusionsoft analytics) that he has viewed nearly every page related to nutrition for wellness, but hasn’t clicked a single link related to losing weight.

For this guy, it makes way more sense for us to send him a tailored campaign surrounding the content that he’s shown interest in.  By sending him relevant information, he’s more likely to stick around and hopefully become a customer!

Can you think of any good examples of psychographic data to be collecting for your CRM?  Share them below in the comments!

What is Marketing Automation and Why Should I Care About It?

In an ideal world, we would have the time to reach out to each customer in a very personal manner.  We’d call them and chat with them for hours on end, trying to help them in any way possible.

We’d treat them as if they were the only other person in the world, and our only goal would be to help them achieve their goals.

Unfortunately most of us don’t have time to spend endless hours with every single customer.  As our businesses grow, our time available to interact with each customer starts to dwindle.  Responsibilities arise, management duties expand, and the customer is often forgotten amidst the hustle of running the business.

However, new tools are emerging that help us to leverage our time so that each customer feels loved and appreciated.  Those tools are bundled into marketing automation software such as Infusionsoft.

The Problem With Automation

The problem with sitting behind a powerful piece of software like Infusionsoft is that it’s easy start talking like a robot.  There’s some psychological switch that gets flicked when we gain the power of speak to a large audience online.  What starts as well-meaning, value-adding information somehow twists into a cold corporate voice when blasting emails to a list.

Think about it — would you write emails to your best friend that sound like that?  If not then why are we talking to people (our loved customers) in such a way?

Jermaine Griggs coined the term “Scaling Personal Attention”, and I think it really suits the optimal way to take advantage of a tool like Infusionsoft.

Marketing automation provides us with the ability to treat each customer as if they were our only customer.  We can listen closely to them and discover their deepest goals through intelligent web forms and tagging.  We can customize product suggestions based on what we already know about their frustrations.  We can stay in touch with them via multiple channels of communication.  We can automatically follow up with customers if we haven’t heard from them in a while.

Treat your customers like your best friend.  We have the power to do so with marketing automation – the key is tweaking how we approach the power.

12 Infusionsoft Tag Categories You Should Be Using

Last week Jordan Hatch from Infusionsoft gave another awesome mastermind call.  (If you aren’t already registered for these, I highly recommend them! You’ll pick up some great tips and Jordan is an awesome guy.  You can get set up for those here.)

My favorite bit of this week’s call was about tag categories that everyone should be using in Infusionsoft .  I think this is a big piece of confusion for people just getting started with the system, because you only get set up with a few categories by default and you need to figure out what to set up to best suit your business.  This can be tough to know what to do if you haven’t already been using Infusionsoft for quite some time.

How to Set Up Tag Categories

Just in case you’re not sure where to do this, here’s a quick primer.  First, you need to navigate to the CRM settings.  Click Infusionsoft Nav -> Settings (Under the CRM category).

 

 

 

 

Next, click “Tag Categories” on the left side panel.  Now that you’re on the right page, you just click “Add Tag Category” and start adding as many as you’d like.

 

 

 

 

Jordan provided a pretty huge list of tags, but here’s my condensed list of tags that just about anyone using Infusionsoft should be utilizing.  After you’ve set up the tag categories, the next step is to actually go through and add your specific tags.  (You can do this by clicking “Tags” on the left hand panel on this same page.)

For example, if you have someone who bought product XYZ, you’d want to create a tag for “Product XYZ” in the “Ordered” tag category.

Without further ado… here’s the list:

Clicked – When anyone is clicking links in your emails, you should be tagging them with this category.  You can start building some pretty impressive psychographic data about your customers and prospects with this alone.

Ordered – This one is probably obvious, but it’s important none the less.  It’s essential to easily be able to identify which of your customers ordered which products.

Problem Client – When you’re running a business, it’s an unfortunate reality that some of your customers are just going to give you way more trouble than others.  Why not reduce your headaches by creating tags to avoid them for products that aren’t quite perfected yet?

Financial Issues – Use this for clients that have billing issues like failed credit card payments.

Refund/Return – It’s very helpful to know which customers have requested a refund for you.  Often you can re-capture them as a future buyer with the right nurture sequence lovin’.

Event Registered – Hosting a webinar, teleconference, or live event? Set up tags to know which prospects are registered so you can target your emails towards this group.

Event Attended – Take the last one a step further: figure out which people actually attended the list.  This way you can be sure to send the ones who didn’t attend another chance to see a replay, attend an encore event, etc.  You can figure this out by filtering for people WITH the “event registered” tag, and WITHOUT the “event attended” tag.

Web Form Filled Out – You definitely want to know where your leads are coming from.  This is super easy by applying tags based on which web forms lead them into your CRM database.

Pains – When you are building your infusionsoft system, you really want to build out your psychographic data just as much your demographic data.  If someone fills out a web form where you offer a free giveaway to fix a particular problem, you can capture their motivation and be sure to target them with similar solutions in the future.  When you can solve your prospects pains, you’ll have plenty of happy customers ready to buy anything you throw towards them.

Goals – Similarly to pains, what goals are your prospects and customers trying to achieve?  Create these tags and it will be easy to see which people in your database are looking for your solutions.  More targeted email = better conversion and less opt-outs = profit!

Social Media – How are your prospects finding you?  In addition to making a custom field in your CRM for their social media handles, you can also tag where they came from.

From Partner – Have some joint venture partners?  You better know which customers came from them so you can offers some special incentives and really capture them as YOUR customers now.

Time to Take Action

Start by automating these tags in your Infusionsoft campaigns and action sets, even if you do one per week . It takes time to utilize the automation power of Infusionsoft so you can maximize your business growth with targeted campaigns.

Add your questions below or leave a comment on which tags you’re implementing in your Infusionsoft account first.