So, you’ve invested your hard-earned profits…

…If you are anything like many Infusionsoft customers I have worked with you are a little frustrated.

I understand.

In the beginning, when I started to use the software, I was frustrated too.

So you’ve invested in an Infusionsoft sales and marketing automation software platform. Now you are wondering ‘How to use Infusionsoft effectively in your business to maximise the return on your investment.’

Infusionsoft, sometimes in my opinion wrongly dubbed ‘confusionsoft’ is a robust automation platform.

Therefore, if you want to learn how to use Infusionsoft to maximise its real potential, you must start with a well-structured foundation.

And eliminate the confusing errors I see working with clients, in my capacity as their Infusionsoft Consultant.

So, whether you are new to Infusionsoft or a frustrated user who has been paying for the software but getting little in return, you’ll want to learn how to use Infusionsoft and build the necessary solid foundation.

Here’s a checklist of rules, which I consider the seven essential building blocks to get you started.

Before You Start to Learn How to Use Infusionsoft

Pause for a moment, reflect and think why;

Ask yourself.. What’s the Purpose of Infusionsoft?

And, why did I invest in the automation software platform in the first place?

Now, this reason is slightly different for each user of the software it could be to:

• Consolidate all your business processes into one place.
• Automate your marketing processes with follow up email.
• Maximise sales through the opportunity management sales funnel, so that you don’t drop any balls.
• Or, like me initially, you are hoping for a silver bullet to grow your business.

I quickly learned that hope is not a strategy to grow a business with…

For me, which wasn’t why I first invested in the software, back then I was chasing silver bullets, and I was hoping Infusionsoft was the ‘magic potion’ I needed to get my new Coaching business flying.

Today it’s more meaningful.

Now it’s ‘to turn visitors to my website into contacts and automate their journey seamlessly through the sales funnel until they are ready to make a decision, to buy or not’.

But, whatever your reason to buy Infusionsoft – what is your objective now what do you want Infusionsoft to help you achieve?

Therefore, being clear on your purpose will help you as you implement the rest of the seven rules of how to use Infusionsoft.

Rule 1 – Structure Your Tags

Firstly, there are two things we talk about when we talk about tags:

1. tag categories
2. and the tags themselves.

What is a tag category in Infusionsoft?

So, let’s think of tag categories like drawers of a file cabinet, and each one is a group, like:

• Interests,
• Locations,
• or Products.

What is a tag in Infusionsoft?

And, let’s think of tags as file folders that go in that file drawer, and in those folders go your contacts. For instance, let’s say you’re a coaching business with three products:

• an e-course,
• a one-on-one coaching session,
• And a quarterly planning day.

Therefore, your tags (or file folders) in the category (or drawer) of Products might include:

• e-course
• coaching session
• planning

Or, maybe you’re a residential estate agency business; the tags (folders) that make up your category (drawer), Interests might include:

• house
• bungalow
• flat

Also, you might have a Location drawer made up of neighbourhood tags.

What use are Infusionsoft tags?

Tags are pieces of information that you know in advance. Thus, they are preferences or behaviours about your customers that you can predict.

For example, if someone contacts you (your pretend estate agency) through your website and indicates they are interested in a ‘house’ with ‘three bedrooms’, you now know two things about them that will help you determine what emails you send them.

Also, you can assign multiple tags to every contact, so if you only want to send an email to people interested in ‘houses’ with three bedrooms or more in a select neighbourhood, you can quickly send an email just to those contacts.

That’s called segmentation, and it’s crucial to a targeted email marketing strategy.

My friend Brett Farr and fellow Infusionsoft Consultant based in the U.S. recorded the following video on the 5 Rules for Naming Your Infusionsoft Tags and is well worth a watch.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/ANLLChlVM84

Also, tags are crucial in Infusionsoft because you can use them to move people from one campaign sequence to another.

More on that below.

Here’s another article on tags.

I’ll mention this again, tags and the tag structure is extremely important.

Rule 2 – Clean Your Contacts Before You Import

Metaphorically speaking of course I’m not asking you to physically dump each contact in the washing machine. But clean the data so it is as accurate and up to date as possible.

I’ve seen all too often new users of Infusionsoft import all their contacts into one unsegmented list. And then blast them with inappropriate emails, offer after offer.

And, then complain Infusionsoft isn’t working – or my email campaign received no response.

I wonder why?

So, the first step of Importing your contacts into Infusionsoft is segmentation. And, how you segment your list is down to you. Also, your segmentation depends on the information you have available together with your business needs.

Therefore, the idea is to scrutinise your list thoroughly and clean as you go, by removing any non-relevant records.

Remember the purpose of your Infusionsoft.

Deal with Non-marketable contacts

So, that doesn’t mean you can not import non-marketing contact records into Infusionsoft, quite the opposite. They merely need to be in a different segmented group.

For example, imagine you have nurtured a relationship with a strategic partner over the last few months. How damaging would it be to the friendship if they suddenly started getting spammed with inappropriate emails from you?

Segmentation

So, clean and sort your list, do this before you import your contacts, it’s far more manageable.
Incidentally, if you have a fairly substantial list of contacts, consider segmenting them into smaller files by groups and import them separately.

For example your list of:

• Leads,
• Prospects,
• Active Customer,
• Lapsed Customer
• Strategic Partners (referral partners or affiliates).
• Or, other segments you identified in the tag section above.

Here’s further information on how to import your contacts.

So, you have imported a clean segmented list of contacts into Infusionsoft.

Now what?

But, don’t panic if you have been using Infusionsoft for a while and the contacts are unsegmented inside the CRM, you can learn how to export them to a spreadsheet for cleaning and segmenting.

Rule 3 – Set Your Goals

Remember back at the beginning you paused and defined why, why you continue to invest in Infusionsoft.

You did that, didn’t you?

Well, whatever the purpose is: You’ll want to set goals that align with that purpose.

For example, if you are an existing business who is;

• spending money on various lead generation methods buy very few buys.
• Those customers that do buy do so once, then disappear.
• And you are continually dealing with returns and worst of all losing customers after they complain.

Therefore, you may want to set goals too;

• Improve the quality of your lead generation
• Boost the conversion rate of lead to customer
• Increase the average transaction value,
• And, improve the customer experience, decrease complaints and customer churn.

Rule – 4 Define Your Success Metrics

How will you know if you are on course to achieve your goals?

Of course, you will know because you define the metrics that determine your success.

So, in the example above the business will probably define the following metrics to measure success:

• The number of visitors (traffic form your lead generation) you get this from google analytics if your website and with a survey, or measure footfall in premises.
• Number of Opt-ins to your offer (leads)
• An average conversion rate of visitor to lead
• Number of new customers
• An average conversion rate of lead to customer
• Average Order Value
• The number of complaints
• Customer Retention Rate
• Net Promoter Score

Rule 5 – Configure Your Dashboard

I believe it was said by Jim Rohn, that nothing motivates like progress. It certainly motivates me. and it’s a principle I strongly recommend to my clients.

So, creating a dashboard to display your most important metrics and being motivated as they move towards your goal is rule number 5. 

Set your Dashboard up now, it does not need to be anything too complicated or fancy at first. You can build on it as you gain more insight into your metrics.

Here’s a list of actions to take as a first step

Use the Dashboard inside of Infusionsoft to display an overview of:

• Number of new leads added
• Value of products sold
• Number of new customers
• NPS
• Email open rates
• Click rates

Use Google analytics, sheets, forms:

• Traffic to your website
• Bounce rate
• New users
• No of sessions
• Pages viewed
• Record complaints
• & use the spreadsheet to work out and monitor trends

Rule 6 – Obey the Principles of Lifecycle Marketing

Lifecycle marketing is a strategic framework and is used to model your sales and marketing. There’s a full guide to Lifecycle Marketing in this post

So, basically Lifecycle Marketing focuses on the whole of the customer journey through your business.

The framework is divided into three stages:

• Attract
• Sell
• Wow

The attract stage is where you focus on your promotional activity. By communicating the right message to the right people at the right time.

Having a process where you make initial offers and have a mechanism in place for collecting their details and delivering on your promise.

The Sell stage is where you turn prospects into buyers and have processes where you can offer an up-sell, or a cross-sell to maximise customer value.

The Wow stage deals with the quality of the customer experience. In so much, they feel as though they belong.  And as a consequence come back for more and recommend their friends.

There’s a full guide to Lifecycle Marketing in this post

Rule 7 – Measure and Test

The Kaizen principle is ‘constant improvement’ well that’s rule 7 in this post “How to use Infusionsoft – 7 Rules to Ensure a Solid Foundation”.

It’s only by measuring your progress and testing very small changes and measuring again the results, that, you eventually optimise your process.

So, there you have it seven rules and if you implement some of the principle surrounding these rules, set your goals, monitor your progress, test small subtle changes and measure the results again.

You too will turn you from frustrated with “Confusionsoft” also entirely motivated and enjoying a decent return on your Investment.

After all that’s why you bought the software in the first place isn’t it?