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Tuesday, August 10th, 2010
Infusionsoft
The answer to your e-marketing prayers
Attention business owners: Finish this sentence: I wish I didn’t have to waste time….
Chances are, your answer will be something along the lines of “fielding customer service-related questions,” “answering emails,” “chasing leads,” “maintaining my customer list,” or countless other e-marketing-related tasks necessary to keep a 21st-century small business in the running with its competition. And it’s probably a safe bet, too, that you’ve silently (or not-so-silently) lamented the fact that you have neither enough hands/hours in the day to complete these tasks, nor enough money in the bank to pay someone else to do them for you. It’s ok; almost every small business owner has felt that way at one time or another. You’re certainly not alone. The good news is, with Infusionsoft on your side, e-marketing just got a whole lot easier. It really is possible to cram more than 24 hours’ worth of work into a day. How? By automating your e-marketing. Let Infusionsoft prove it to you. But first, let’s examine what e-marketing actually entails, and then move on to a discussion of how Infusionsoft can help you with these tasks.
What is e-marketing?
In one incarnation or another, the concept of marketing has been around as long as there have been business transactions. From the days of the fur traders, it has been a common part of the business world to market one’s wares or, in other words, to convince another party of the value of something one has to offer. Modern marketing looks much different than the rudimentary version during the fur trade, but the goal is the same: To convince someone else that they want – in fact need – what we have to sell. In the 21st century, this is accomplished through many means, most of which fall under the umbrella known as e-marketing. The methods modern businesses employ look a little (or a lot!) different than those early methods: We get our messages out there faster and more efficiently now, thanks in large part to e-marketing solutions.
In essence, e-marketing is the result of the convergence of modern ways of communicating and the elementary ideas of peddling one’s wares. E-marketing (which, not surprisingly, stands for electronic marketing) is the implementation of standard marketing principles via electronic means. It is the process by which a company communicates its brand messages, generates new business and takes care of existing customers’ needs by using a variety of Internet-based technologies.
When done correctly, e-marketing strategies can provide a company with a huge return on investment, one that far exceeds the capabilities of traditional, pen-and-paper methodologies. No matter if your business exists in a towering downtown skyscraper, a small, home-based office, or purely in cyberspace, effective e-marketing can mean the difference between making a splash in the business world and being relegated to virtual anonymity. Which would you prefer for your business?
That’s where Infusionsoft comes in. This comprehensive software solution can effectively help your business wade fearlessly into the e-commerce waters. It will change the way you do business forever. No, wait – it will change the way your business takes care of itself forever.
What is Infusionsoft?
Fundamentally, Infusionsoft is an e-marketing software solution created with you, the entrepreneur, in mind. It is designed to help you grow and expand your business and, most importantly, to help you make money and giving you more free time in the process. Sound too good to be true? It’s not. Read on.
You’re probably wondering how a piece of software can both make your business more profitable and afford you more time to focus your energies, efforts and expertise on other things. It’s this simple: Infusionsoft, an Internet-based software suite automates all of your company’s sales, customer relations, and marketing interactions. It’s like putting your business on auto pilot. But let’s get down to details. How, specifically, does Infusionsoft do that? By using Automated Follow-Up Technology, or ATF.
In essence, Infusionsoft’s ATF technology will help you work more efficiently by helping you to automatically convert potential customers into actual customers, by securing more repeat sales, and by helping your business to grow without your having to invest in more staff.
Features of Infusionsoft
Infusionsoft provides subscribers with myriad e-marketing automation features. These include the following. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it does give potential users an idea of the kinds of things that the program can handle.
Lead Captures: This includes the creation of a “task” that lets the user know to call and follow up with captured leads to welcome them to the subscriber list.
List Segmentation: Easily divide your subscribers based on their needs and preferences, so you can more easily and effectively meet their needs. The more targeted your marketing messages can be, the higher the chances are that you will convert a prospect into a sale.
Templates and Merging: Use templates to insert subscriber information collected from your site (through web forms) into your marketing materials, so that you can easily provide information that can influence subscribers’ buying decisions. Don’t waste time cutting and pasting!
Automated Follow-Up Marketing Processes: Infusionsoft will follow-up with customers by sending template messages to them. This can be done either through email, fax, voice messages, or snail mail.
Email Scheduling: Users can choose to send out promotional emails at designated emails to coincide with key times in your marketing plan or business cycle.
One-click Registration: Offer users easy, one-click registration to your events or seminars, simply by including the registration “opt-in” link in your emails promoting the event. Then, by clicking the registration link, users can also be added to a follow-up list, which will ensure they receive all future emails about the event.
Unsubscribe Options: Each autoresponder or follow-up email message can include an option to unsubscribe not only from your entire subscriber database but they also have the option to opt out of only certain follow-up sequences, thereby keeping them “on board”
Link Tracking: Keep track of which links are clicked in your email, how many times they are clicked, and who is doing the clicking!
Customization of Order Forms: Having customized order forms that integrate with your website and promotional materials not only gives your business a cohesive, professional look, but it also has proven to help raise your conversion rates, probably because a professional look indicates a reputable business. You wouldn’t trust a dentist that was located in a dirty back alley, but you’d probably have a different view if the same dentist had a fancy office in a skyscraper, right? The same thing applies to your business’ appearance via its website and other points of interaction with customers. Perception is reality.
10. Drip Marketing:Drip marketing refers to the direct-marketing strategy in which businesses send out a series of promotional materials, over a given period of time, to a list of potential leads. The goal is to provide these potential customers with promotional information about your business in small-but-steady amounts, with an eye toward converting a lead into a sale.
Typically, drip marketing techniques include some combination of the following: postcards, newsletters, brochures, flyers or, for e-marketers, an email newsletter. Drip marketing is an effective way to take care of your customers, both future and current.
Infusionsoft takes care of your drip marketing for you. You no longer have to spend time sending out emails or flyers. Infusionsoft does it for you!
12. Sales Force Automation:
Often abbreviated as “SFA”, sales for automation refers to the use of software (like Infusionsoft!) to automate business tasks such as tracking and processing of orders, sharing of information, monitoring of inventory, management of customers, analysis of sales forecasts, and evaluation of employee performances. Basically, Infusionsoft performs the work of an entire sales force – automatically!
13. Automated management of your contact list:
Thorough customer care and follow up is crucial to the success of any business. To forge solid relationships with your prospects and clients, it is important that you stay in constant contact with them. That’s no easy task and it can take up a great time of a small business owner’s time if it has to be done manually. Infusionsoft gives you back that time by taking the care of your customer list off of your to-do list. Infusionsoft will:
Automatically capture customer leads from your website using custom web forms.
Automatically keep track of your billing and collections processes. No more chasing down payments!
Manage and divide your customer and prospect lists into “meaningful lists” according to the customers’ particular needs and wants, likes and dislikes. Never again send a promotional email for your new steakhouse to a family of vegetarians!
Send audience-specific emails and follow-up emails that reach their destination virtually every time (as opposed to self-sent emails that may get caught by spam filters)
Automate follow-up emails designed to keep your brand in your customers’ field of vision
This is just a small snapshot of what Infusionsoft can do. To fully appreciate its versatility, you really have to try it for yourself. Fortunately, they offer a 15-day free trial so you can do just that.
But can’t I just do all of that myself? Why should I pay to have a software program do it for me?
The short answer is yes; you could do all of these tasks yourself. But consider this: Particularly when you own a small business, you end up wearing many hats and serving as the company’s secretary, accountant, marketing manager and more, all in the run of a day. Many business owners perform scores of monotonous, repetitive and often painstaking tasks all by themselves. For those people, their days are spent making phone calls, chasing leads, generating invoices, drafting emails, fielding customer service inquiries, and countless other boring, but essential, tasks. So, ask yourself this question: Would you rather spend your day performing those tasks, or would you rather spend your days poolside, relaxing with a cocktail while your business – and your bank account – takes care of themselves?
What’s that? You’d rather work on your tan than your telephone manner? You prefer sipping Shiraz to sifting through emails? OK, then! You need a way to automate your business. You need to delegate those tasks that take up too much time during the course of a business day, thereby freeing yourself up to take care of other things. Think that can’t be done? You’re wrong. Infusionsoft is the answer. All you have to do is invest a little time in the setting-up phase of the program, and then presto: Your to-do list just got a whole lot shorter. Item #1 on the list: Order Infusionsoft. The rest will take care of itself.
OK, so you shouldn’t reserve a permanent chair on the deck of the country club pool. Even with Infusionsoft in your arsenal, you will still need to work on growing your business. But the best part about Infusionsoft is that because so much of the tedium is taken care of automatically, your time is freed up so that you can focus on the big picture. When your efforts are focused on growing the business, you’ll start to see the bottom line increase before your astonished, and much better rested, eyes. But Infusionsoft doesn’t just crank out sales emails with reckless abandon. If it did, it would be no more valuable to your business than a dime-a-dozen spam email program. Oh no! The program implements the most impressive marketing and sales technologies available, designed specifically to help business owners focus on other, more important, business tasks.
Why not just hire a human marketing assistant?
Interesting question, right? After all, human marketing assistants have the schooling, knowledge and (usually) experience that they should need to perform all of the above-mentioned tasks quite effectively. True, but in today’s day and age, the human way isn’t always the better way, particularly when it comes to e-marketing. Sometimes, implementing computer-based business solutions can make available human resources for more complex tasks or even make sections of your human workforce unnecessary. And when you consider that in our economy it is almost always desirable to trim excess where you can as long as it maintains or improves productivity that could be a very good thing. Human resources are no doubt still very valuable assets to any company, but it is important to consider how they are deployed and where it would be beneficial to allow computer-based solutions to handle the task.
Before the computer age, everything was done by humans. When you called somewhere, a human answered the phone. When you wanted a document sent to you, a human typed it out, put it in an envelope, and left it for the mail carrier (another human), who then brought it to the post office for delivery. It was a system that worked well – or so we thought, until something new came along. As with all forms of change, there are some who embrace technological change and there are those who did, and still do, resist it with every fiber of their being. In today’s business world, there are some people who believe that it is more efficient and less troublesome to have their company’s marketing tasks performed by a person rather than by a piece of software. To them, to replace a human by a computer is the ultimate in laziness, impersonality, that it is fraught with potential problems. But how true is this thinking when it comes to Infusionsoft? Let’s scrutinize this further.
Based on an average marketing assistant’s salary (which is around 18 dollars per hour in the United States), if you required them to work around the clock, every day, you would have to pay them around $187,000. How does that compare to using Infusionsoft, a round-the-clock solution to your marketing needs? After all, no one works around the clock, right? Wrong. Infusionsoft does.
Infusionsoft Pro costs $499 per month, which translates into $5,988 annually. It is easy to see, then, that using Infusionsoft is about 6 times more cost effective than having a human marketing assistant. Moreover, because it is physically impossible for a human marketing assistant to work around the clock, Infusionsoft has an inherent leg up: It doesn’t require sleep, it doesn’t take vacations and it won’t get testy if you deny it a lunch break. In short, Infusionsoft is never off the company clock. And bear this in mind, too: Infusionsoft can’t walk off the job, can’t demand more benefits or a higher salary, it won’t take a sick day or have a personal emergency when you’re trying to meet a deadline. You’ll never have to pay it overtime, and you’ll always get the same high standard of work, day after day, week after week, year after year – with Infusionsoft, there’s no burnout.
Still not convinced? Consider that to match the workload that Infusionsoft takes on for your business, you would need to hire at least four, preferably five marketing assistants! Can your bottom line afford that? Probably not, and what’s more, Infusionsoft is even faster and more efficient than a five-person brigade would likely be. Computers can handle multiple tasks at once, with lightning speed.
For less than $500, you get the equivalent of a team of workers, with all of the benefits and none of the disadvantages of maintaining a staff. And if that price is still a little too rich for your blood, bear in mind that that is for the upper (“Pro”) level of Infusionsoft. There are other, less-expensive services levels offered, which can save you money and still meet your business’ needs.
There is one caveat, here, however: As effective, efficient and comprehensive as Infusionsoft is, it is not a magic spell that will solve all of your marketing problems without an effort on your part. You’ll still have to make it work for you. The good news is that your role in all of this requires nothing more than a little planning. Once you get past the initial implementation phases, Infusionsoft essentially takes care of itself, at least until your company’s needs change again. But when you compare that to the work involved in managing a team of employees, the more efficient answer seems to be clear.
Infusionsoft
The answer to your e-marketing prayers
Attention business owners: Finish this sentence: I wish I didn’t have to waste time….
Chances are, your answer will be something along the lines of “fielding customer service-related questions,” “answering emails,” “chasing leads,” “maintaining my customer list,” or countless other e-marketing-related tasks necessary to keep a 21st-century small business in the running with its competition. And it’s probably a safe bet, too, that you’ve silently (or not-so-silently) lamented the fact that you have neither enough hands/hours in the day to complete these tasks, nor enough money in the bank to pay someone else to do them for you. It’s ok; almost every small business owner has felt that way at one time or another. You’re certainly not alone. The good news is, with Infusionsoft on your side, e-marketing just got a whole lot easier. It really is possible to cram more than 24 hours’ worth of work into a day. How? By automating your e-marketing. Let Infusionsoft prove it to you. But first, let’s examine what e-marketing actually entails, and then move on to a discussion of how Infusionsoft can help you with these tasks.
What is e-marketing?
In one incarnation or another, the concept of marketing has been around as long as there have been business transactions. From the days of the fur traders, it has been a common part of the business world to market one’s wares or, in other words, to convince another party of the value of something one has to offer. Modern marketing looks much different than the rudimentary version during the fur trade, but the goal is the same: To convince someone else that they want – in fact need – what we have to sell. In the 21st century, this is accomplished through many means, most of which fall under the umbrella known as e-marketing. The methods modern businesses employ look a little (or a lot!) different than those early methods: We get our messages out there faster and more efficiently now, thanks in large part to e-marketing solutions.
In essence, e-marketing is the result of the convergence of modern ways of communicating and the elementary ideas of peddling one’s wares. E-marketing (which, not surprisingly, stands for electronic marketing) is the implementation of standard marketing principles via electronic means. It is the process by which a company communicates its brand messages, generates new business and takes care of existing customers’ needs by using a variety of Internet-based technologies.
When done correctly, e-marketing strategies can provide a company with a huge return on investment, one that far exceeds the capabilities of traditional, pen-and-paper methodologies. No matter if your business exists in a towering downtown skyscraper, a small, home-based office, or purely in cyberspace, effective e-marketing can mean the difference between making a splash in the business world and being relegated to virtual anonymity. Which would you prefer for your business?
That’s where Infusionsoft comes in. This comprehensive software solution can effectively help your business wade fearlessly into the e-commerce waters. It will change the way you do business forever. No, wait – it will change the way your business takes care of itself forever.
What is Infusionsoft?
Fundamentally, Infusionsoft is an e-marketing software solution created with you, the entrepreneur, in mind. It is designed to help you grow and expand your business and, most importantly, to help you make money and giving you more free time in the process. Sound too good to be true? It’s not. Read on.
You’re probably wondering how a piece of software can both make your business more profitable and afford you more time to focus your energies, efforts and expertise on other things. It’s this simple: Infusionsoft, an Internet-based software suite automates all of your company’s sales, customer relations, and marketing interactions. It’s like putting your business on auto pilot. But let’s get down to details. How, specifically, does Infusionsoft do that? By using Automated Follow-Up Technology, or ATF.
In essence, Infusionsoft’s ATF technology will help you work more efficiently by helping you to automatically convert potential customers into actual customers, by securing more repeat sales, and by helping your business to grow without your having to invest in more staff.
Features of Infusionsoft
Infusionsoft provides subscribers with myriad e-marketing automation features. These include the following. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it does give potential users an idea of the kinds of things that the program can handle.
10. Drip Marketing: Drip marketing refers to the direct-marketing strategy in which businesses send out a series of promotional materials, over a given period of time, to a list of potential leads. The goal is to provide these potential customers with promotional information about your business in small-but-steady amounts, with an eye toward converting a lead into a sale.
Typically, drip marketing techniques include some combination of the following: postcards, newsletters, brochures, flyers or, for e-marketers, an email newsletter. Drip marketing is an effective way to take care of your customers, both future and current.
Infusionsoft takes care of your drip marketing for you. You no longer have to spend time sending out emails or flyers. Infusionsoft does it for you!
12. Sales Force Automation:
Often abbreviated as “SFA”, sales for automation refers to the use of software (like Infusionsoft!) to automate business tasks such as tracking and processing of orders, sharing of information, monitoring of inventory, management of customers, analysis of sales forecasts, and evaluation of employee performances. Basically, Infusionsoft performs the work of an entire sales force – automatically!
13. Automated management of your contact list:
Thorough customer care and follow up is crucial to the success of any business. To forge solid relationships with your prospects and clients, it is important that you stay in constant contact with them. That’s no easy task and it can take up a great time of a small business owner’s time if it has to be done manually. Infusionsoft gives you back that time by taking the care of your customer list off of your to-do list. Infusionsoft will:
This is just a small snapshot of what Infusionsoft can do. To fully appreciate its versatility, you really have to try it for yourself. Fortunately, they offer a 15-day free trial so you can do just that.
But can’t I just do all of that myself? Why should I pay to have a software program do it for me?
The short answer is yes; you could do all of these tasks yourself. But consider this: Particularly when you own a small business, you end up wearing many hats and serving as the company’s secretary, accountant, marketing manager and more, all in the run of a day. Many business owners perform scores of monotonous, repetitive and often painstaking tasks all by themselves. For those people, their days are spent making phone calls, chasing leads, generating invoices, drafting emails, fielding customer service inquiries, and countless other boring, but essential, tasks. So, ask yourself this question: Would you rather spend your day performing those tasks, or would you rather spend your days poolside, relaxing with a cocktail while your business – and your bank account – takes care of themselves?
What’s that? You’d rather work on your tan than your telephone manner? You prefer sipping Shiraz to sifting through emails? OK, then! You need a way to automate your business. You need to delegate those tasks that take up too much time during the course of a business day, thereby freeing yourself up to take care of other things. Think that can’t be done? You’re wrong. Infusionsoft is the answer. All you have to do is invest a little time in the setting-up phase of the program, and then presto: Your to-do list just got a whole lot shorter. Item #1 on the list: Order Infusionsoft. The rest will take care of itself.
OK, so you shouldn’t reserve a permanent chair on the deck of the country club pool. Even with Infusionsoft in your arsenal, you will still need to work on growing your business. But the best part about Infusionsoft is that because so much of the tedium is taken care of automatically, your time is freed up so that you can focus on the big picture. When your efforts are focused on growing the business, you’ll start to see the bottom line increase before your astonished, and much better rested, eyes. But Infusionsoft doesn’t just crank out sales emails with reckless abandon. If it did, it would be no more valuable to your business than a dime-a-dozen spam email program. Oh no! The program implements the most impressive marketing and sales technologies available, designed specifically to help business owners focus on other, more important, business tasks.
Why not just hire a human marketing assistant?
Interesting question, right? After all, human marketing assistants have the schooling, knowledge and (usually) experience that they should need to perform all of the above-mentioned tasks quite effectively. True, but in today’s day and age, the human way isn’t always the better way, particularly when it comes to e-marketing. Sometimes, implementing computer-based business solutions can make available human resources for more complex tasks or even make sections of your human workforce unnecessary. And when you consider that in our economy it is almost always desirable to trim excess where you can as long as it maintains or improves productivity that could be a very good thing. Human resources are no doubt still very valuable assets to any company, but it is important to consider how they are deployed and where it would be beneficial to allow computer-based solutions to handle the task.
Before the computer age, everything was done by humans. When you called somewhere, a human answered the phone. When you wanted a document sent to you, a human typed it out, put it in an envelope, and left it for the mail carrier (another human), who then brought it to the post office for delivery. It was a system that worked well – or so we thought, until something new came along. As with all forms of change, there are some who embrace technological change and there are those who did, and still do, resist it with every fiber of their being. In today’s business world, there are some people who believe that it is more efficient and less troublesome to have their company’s marketing tasks performed by a person rather than by a piece of software. To them, to replace a human by a computer is the ultimate in laziness, impersonality, that it is fraught with potential problems. But how true is this thinking when it comes to Infusionsoft? Let’s scrutinize this further.
Based on an average marketing assistant’s salary (which is around 18 dollars per hour in the United States), if you required them to work around the clock, every day, you would have to pay them around $187,000. How does that compare to using Infusionsoft, a round-the-clock solution to your marketing needs? After all, no one works around the clock, right? Wrong. Infusionsoft does.
Infusionsoft Pro costs $499 per month, which translates into $5,988 annually. It is easy to see, then, that using Infusionsoft is about 6 times more cost effective than having a human marketing assistant. Moreover, because it is physically impossible for a human marketing assistant to work around the clock, Infusionsoft has an inherent leg up: It doesn’t require sleep, it doesn’t take vacations and it won’t get testy if you deny it a lunch break. In short, Infusionsoft is never off the company clock. And bear this in mind, too: Infusionsoft can’t walk off the job, can’t demand more benefits or a higher salary, it won’t take a sick day or have a personal emergency when you’re trying to meet a deadline. You’ll never have to pay it overtime, and you’ll always get the same high standard of work, day after day, week after week, year after year – with Infusionsoft, there’s no burnout.
Still not convinced? Consider that to match the workload that Infusionsoft takes on for your business, you would need to hire at least four, preferably five marketing assistants! Can your bottom line afford that? Probably not, and what’s more, Infusionsoft is even faster and more efficient than a five-person brigade would likely be. Computers can handle multiple tasks at once, with lightning speed.
For less than $500, you get the equivalent of a team of workers, with all of the benefits and none of the disadvantages of maintaining a staff. And if that price is still a little too rich for your blood, bear in mind that that is for the upper (“Pro”) level of Infusionsoft. There are other, less-expensive services levels offered, which can save you money and still meet your business’ needs.
There is one caveat, here, however: As effective, efficient and comprehensive as Infusionsoft is, it is not a magic spell that will solve all of your marketing problems without an effort on your part. You’ll still have to make it work for you. The good news is that your role in all of this requires nothing more than a little planning. Once you get past the initial implementation phases, Infusionsoft essentially takes care of itself, at least until your company’s needs change again. But when you compare that to the work involved in managing a team of employees, the more efficient answer seems to be clear.
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