SPECIAL REPORT INFUSIONSOFT: 7 KEYS TO TOP RESULTS OVERVIEW You have your data imported, some follow-up sequences, and some initial results with Infusionsoft. Now what? Infusionsoft is a powerful product, and you may have only scratched the surface of what it can do for your business. This special report will help you get maximum results from your Infusionsoft investment. So let s get started with the first key to making Infusionsoft work for you. KEY # 1: RESPECT YOUR AUDIENCE Whether you are new to email marketing or not, there is a tendency to abuse the people on your list. You ve heard about some clever business person who sends out an email and then has sales skyrocket. So, you put together your best offer with your most aggressive sales copy and blast away. Don t do it! Instead, treat the people on your list like friends. Have respect for them. You will maximize your revenues over the long term. Some email marketers refer to their audience as their "herd." Would you want to a marketer thinking of you this way? Instead, refer to your list as your audience, your constituents, or as Seth Godin says, your tribe. It does matter how you think about them. It will come through in your messages They can tell! Here's another term to remove from your vocabulary email blast. A blast implies the shotgun approach. Would you want to be blasted? "Campaign" is still another word we could forget. It implies an effort with a specific beginning and end. But, the most effective use of email is in building a relationship. Instead of "campaign, think follow-up or touch. Calculate and know your customer lifetime value (LTV). What is it worth to you to have this relationship with your audience? If it's low, add more value or find an audience you can serve better. If it's high, love, respect, and appreciate them! LTV = Avg Profit per Sale X Orders per Year X Customer Lifetime (yrs) So, if you have a subscription product with a profit of $19/mo, and customers stay for 3 years, the Lifetime Value is $684. What s Inside? Key #1 Respect Your Audience. Treat your audience like your best friends. They ll reward you with loyalty and sales. Key #2 Clean and Tag Your Database. Know who is interested in which topics and send relevant content. Key #3 Be Clear and Simple. Have clear calls to action and simple instructions. Key #4 Use Multiple Media. Use more than just email for your follow-up. Key #5 Automate Your Operations. Save money and better serve your customers by automating all your business activities. Key #6 Measure Your Results. Know what s working and what needs work. Key #7 Test and Improve. Keep testing and tweaking Even when you like your results.
Think about the total Lifetime Value when you are getting ready to send out a message. 100 of those $684 customers are worth $68,400. Don t treat them badly and risk losing them! Be Relevant! Make your messages relevant! You probably already follow the opt-in and double opt-in best practices required by Infusionsoft. Still, if you're not relevant, you might as well be a spammer! Have you ever heard the term, Permission Spam? That s email someone opted in for, but that s not relevant. It might as well be spam! For any message you send, ask yourself: "So what!" Why would your audience want to read your message? Why would they care? Think about the kind of email you like to receive -- The kind that you actually pay attention to. When a good friend sends you something with a useful piece of information about something you have in common, you're glad to pay attention. Right? Make your messages like the ones from a good friend -- Relevant and useful. You probably already know how to create useful content, but making it relevant requires another step -- You'll need your database to reflect who is interested in which topics. Next, you ll see how to target messages to your database and send messages that your audience wants to read! KEY # 2: CLEAN AND TAG YOUR DATABASE Unless you ve just started using Infusionsoft, you probably know how easy it is to create tags. Log in to Infusionsoft, and go to: Setup -> Tags You ll see a list of all your tags, and you can sort or filter them by category. There are several ways you can add tags to a person: Open a person s record, and add tags to them manually. Just find the person and click on the Tag tab. If you have sales people using Infusionsoft, make sure they review the tags and make updates after each customer interaction.
Do a search and then select Action -> Apply/Remove Tag. It s worth learning how to use Infusionsoft s powerful search tools. For example, you can find and tag people in a certain geographical area. Your audience in the Northeast will want to know about your seminar in Boston. The people on the West coast probably don t care. Add tags automatically via a web form, trackable link, or product purchase. Many areas inside of Infusionsoft have an Action tab that lets you run an action when a user does something. Just select Add/Remove Tags from the actions drop down list. Apply tags when you import users. When you re doing an import split your list up into groups and then import them one group at a time. You can Add/Remove Tags separately for each group you import. What if you don t know what your users are interested in? Well, how about this: Ask Them! Here s an easy way. Send an email asking a question about what your audience might want. Then provide several trackable links that are setup to tag your user s preference. Or, you could do a survey and import the data into Infusionsoft. Now that you ve tagged your users and segmented your database, there s one more thing. Actually use the data! Don t send your snow shovel promotion to people in Phoenix and Miami. Keep your Database Clean Keeping your database clean is also essential. Make sure you have upto-date email addresses. People are continuously changing jobs and email addresses. Have your sales people and customer service people verify email addresses whenever they interact with your customers or prospects. Did you know Infusionsoft automatically stops sending email to hard and soft bounces? A hard bounce happens when the user s email server says they aren t there anymore. A soft bounce is when the user s mailbox is full or there is some other temporary problem. Infusionsoft will try soft bounce addresses three times before that email address is marked undeliverable. Too many bounces or spam complaints will hurt your email deliverability. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) monitor this data, and will brand you as a spammer if the numbers are too high.
Be smart about double opt-in. You may be tempted to shortcut the double opt-in process. Don t! The size of your list does not matter. It s the number of qualified people on your list that matter! Qualified people want your products. They want to hear from you. Infusionsoft uses different servers to send to your double opted in people. The result is higher deliverability. You could have the biggest list in the world, but it won t help you if your messages end up blocked by a spam filter or dumped into a spam folder. Double opt-in is worth the trouble. Keep an eye on your complaints and opt-outs over time. If they jump up, you re doing something wrong. Either your content isn t relevant, you re sending to the wrong segments or something else isn t working. Of course, you can t email people who have opted out or are bouncing. But, you can and should call them or send them a postcard to get them re-engaged. Send Relevant Messages Once you know which people are interested in which topics, use the data. Do a search for users who are tagged with a specific interest and send them information and special offers they want to see. You ll see a much higher response rate. Yes, it s more work to understand your users and their preferences and interests. The payoff is that your messages are much more relevant, and your audience is much more likely to pay attention to you. Ultimately, they are much more likely to buy more when you deliver what they want! KEY # 3: BE CLEAR AND SIMPLE You re probably proud and excited about your business and what you re doing. Just don t try to tell your audience about everything all at once. Think about how you go about sorting through your email messages. Do you go through and quickly delete everything you can? Maybe you only look at the Subject, then quickly press the delete button. Even when a message seems interesting and you open it, what happens if it doesn t make sense or hold your attention? There goes the delete button, again!
And surely, you would never send a message with a confusing or missing call to action! Still, for some reason, many companies do send messages with poor calls to action. The likely result? The user does nothing. Spell out exactly what you want them to do, and make it easy for them. The essential thing to remember is that people think differently when they are reading email then when they are browsing the web. Here are some recommendations for great messages: Ask yourself, So what? Why would anyone care? If you don t have anything important to say, don t send the message! Spend extra time on the Subject line. The rest of the message is irrelevant if it get s deleted due to a poor or confusing subject! Have a consistent style. Besides the subject line, people look at the From information. Have a consistent From Line, and make it from a real person. Avoid using: NoReply@mybusiness.com. Would you want to do business with Mr. NoReply? Consider limiting yourself to one topic per message. Some may disagree, but this helps your message cut through the clutter. Write like you are talking to a friend Be personable. Your messages are there to build a relationship, remember? Have a friendly tone that sounds informal, the way people actually talk. Keep the paragraphs short, use bulleted lists, and white space. Make your message easy to read. Remember mobile readers. More and more people read email via their Blackberry, iphone, etc. Keep your message width narrow and test what the message looks like on a PDA. Deliver the key idea or benefit, and then send them to your website for more information. Your website is the place for the longer copy you wanted to write, for the video you created, or for all the other resources you can provide. Tell them what action to take. People are too busy to take time to figure out your intentions. If you want them to forward the message to a friend, say Forward this to a friend. If you want them to click a link, say Click now to People have different opinions, so some may disagree with the ideas on this list. The answer? Test it and see for yourself! Every audience is different, so find out about yours. There s more on testing in Key #7.
The first three keys have been mostly about email. Next, you ll some other ways you can you leverage Infusionsoft to improve your business results. KEY # 4: USE MULTIPLE MEDIA Email offers an important way to maintain contact with your audience. The problem is that many companies fall into the habit of only using email or another single approach. Multiple media is usually more effective. Follow-up sequences can include any of the following: Email to your audience Email to customer support or someone on your team Text Messages via an email SMS gateway Fax Letter to merge and mail letters from Word Fulfillment to mail packages or cards Voice Broadcast to deliver a telephone message Task to assign a task to a sales person. For example, to make a phone call or take some other action. You need to consider what makes sense for each situation. For example, many people are annoyed by voice broadcast marketing messages. But, the same people might appreciate a voice broadcast reminder to come to an event! Or, the media might be too expensive. You would only assign a sales person to make a call or send an expensive mailing where you thought the prospect was really ready to buy. Just remember Mix and match media to get your message through. KEY # 5: AUTOMATE YOUR OPERATIONS Some Infusionsoft users get so excited about automating their marketing that they neglect the opportunity to automate the rest of their business operations. Once you gain a customer, you still have many opportunities to interact with them, build a long-term relationship, and add value via automation.
Every business is different, but Infusionsoft can often help. Please consider each of the following ideas to automate your operations: Help your audience consume your product. You are so familiar with you product, that you may forget there can be a learning curve. So add value by helping your new customer consume your product. Put them in a follow-up sequence that teaches them how to use your product, or send them user tips. Event management reminders. You ve worked hard putting together an educational seminar. Let Infusionsoft automate the reminder email or voice mail messages. Customer reminders. There may be things your customers need to do like make appointments or provide you with information you need to serve them. Use a follow-up sequence to make sure this happens. Assign tasks on product purchase. When a customer buys your product or service, automatically assign a follow-up task to a sales or support person. Assign hot leads to your sales team. When a prospect shows repeated interested by clicking on links, etc., assign them to your sales team for follow-up. Send Birthday cards or seasonal gifts or messages. Up sell! You know which products they already own. So send a special offer for a companion product. Customer Support. Keep your customers taken care of with ongoing follow-up. KEY # 6: MEASURE YOUR RESULTS You can t manage what you can t measure! Fortunately, email and Internet marketing allows for unprecedented forms of measurement. Ideally, for your audience, you d like to know: Who is ready to buy, right now? Who is really engaged and looking for information? Who is paying some attention to you? How carefully are they listening? Who is ignoring you? Who thinks you are a spammer or is complaining about you? Think of what you could do if you had this information. Wouldn t you talk differently with someone who is ready to buy versus someone who seems uninterested?
Unfortunately, reporting and measurement is currently a weakness of Infusionsoft. Maybe this will change, but in the meantime, there are things you can do. Let s look at some of the data Infusionsoft does provide. One of the more useful reports is the Email Batch Status report. Go to: Reports -> View All Reports -> Marketing Reports -> Email Batch Status You ll see a list of your recent email batches. Click the View link to see detailed information for any batch. There is some overall information along with a pie chart like the one below. The first chart is the Delivery Report. Some users don t know that the pie chart is interactive, and you can click the slices to see additional information. This chart shows: The number of messages that were Delivered (988) The number that were Skipped (73). Skips are usually due to people who have opted out, bounced too many times, or made a spam complaint. Click on the Skipped slice to see a list of who was skipped and why. The number of Bounces for the batch (56). Click on the Bounced slice to see a new chart that shows the Bounces by Type.
Here s an example of a Bounces By Type chart. This chart get s into the technical details of email deliverability that may show more than you want to know. If you start having too many bounces, this chart can help you diagnose the problems. For now, just know it s there if you need it. Now, look back up at the Deliverability Report, and click on the Delivered slice. You ll see a Tracking Report chart like the one below. There is no detail for the Nothing slice, but for Opened or Opened & Clicked, you can see a list of who actually interacted with the message. The Open statistics are not as useful as you might hope, and this is true for any email provider Not just Infusionsoft. Due to the way opens are measured, it doesn t mean that someone actually opened or read your message. The good news, though, is that many of the Nothing group really did read your message!
Open rates will vary for each audience and they will usually be in the 10-20% range. What is most useful is to track your opens over time. If you see a big drop all of a sudden, it may mean you have a deliverability problem. Beyond the opens, it s a good idea to also track your bounces, clicks, and complaints over time. Use percentages to compare larger mailings with smaller ones. There s an Email Complaint Summary report that lets you see your complaints over time. For the rest of the data, you ll have to track the data manually in a spreadsheet. For the Email Complaint Summary, go to: Reports -> View All Reports -> Marketing Reports -> Email Complaint Summary Trackable Links Trackable links can be an invaluable way to learn about your audience. You can assign actions to a person when they click a link, and can tag them or assign them to a follow-up sequence. If you know who is clicking, you know who is interested and you can focus your follow-up efforts. Here s another trick if you use Google Analytics. When you setup your trackable link, add the utm codes to the end of the URL. Your URL will look like: http://www.greasedskid.com/index.php?utm_source=ifscon&utm_m edium=report&utm_campaign=7keys By putting this information in your links, you ll be able to use Google Analytics to track your clicks. As you can see, there can be a lot to effective measurement. If you have specific questions, please visit GreasedSkid.com and ask your questions. KEY # 7: TEST AND IMPROVE You ve just seen how to measure your marketing effectiveness. Now, how can you use this information to improve your business results? The answer is to test and learn what works! Even small changes can sometimes make a big difference.
Each audience is different, and what works great for one group might fall flat for another. You may even learn that certain segments of your list respond differently than others. There seem to be an unlimited number of books or websites promising the magic answers for how to communicate with your audience. These can be good resources for ideas, but there is no substitute for finding out what makes your audience respond! A/B Split Testing Split testing is a proven way to find out what works for your audience. Here s what you do: Randomly divide your list or a segment into two groups The A group and the B group. Create two messages One for each group. Send the messages, track the data, and compare the results. There are a large number of variables you could potentially test. For example: Short versus Long Subject lines. If you research the topic, you ll find all kinds of opinions. But, what matters is your audience What do they prefer. If you re testing two offers, you may want to test against a subset of your list. One offer might be 10% off. The other offer is $20 off. See which one offer has best response and then send the winner to the rest of your list. Over time, this kind of testing can make have a major impact on your results! WHAT TO DO NEXT Hopefully, the information in this special report has given you some new ideas that help take your business to the next level. If you have questions, please visit GreasedSkid.com, and leave a note. We will do our best to answer help you build your business.