In this detailed Infusionsoft Review, you’ll learn everything you need to know about Infusionsoft and whether it’s right for you and your business. It’s basically the resource I would’ve wished to have had when I was searching around for Infusionsoft reviews.
Firstly, you should be able to answer “yes” to the following questions. The more you can answer positively to these questions, the more likely that Infusionsoft will be a good fit for you.
- Can I afford to pay at least $300 per month?
Although Infusionsoft’s monthly pricing starts at $200, you really lose out on a lot of the marketing automation that Infusionsoft has to offer on this particular plan which is kind of the point of using Infusionsoft. So you may as well use their $300 a month (learn more about Infusionsoft Pricing) program. You’ll also need to pay an initial set up fee of $2,000. If these kind of numbers look too steep, you can consider some lower priced Infusionsoft alternatives.
- Is marketing automation important to me?
If you just need to send monthly newsletters or a simple Autoresponder sequence (e.g. Bob gets email #1 today, email #2 in 3 days, email #3 in 5 days), you should look at a simple email responder service like Mailchimp which will amply do the job (and do it much better than Infusionsoft). On the other hand, if you want to automate your marketing activities and have an all in one CRM solution, then you can safely answer “yes” to this question.
- Do I have an email list or can I build a valuable email list?
Are you already using an email service provider like Aweber, Mailchimp, GetResponse, ConstantContact, even Ontraport (OfficeAutoPilot)? Do you already understand the value of email marketing and now you want to take it to the next level? Then move on to the next question.If you don’t already have an email list but you know that email marketing or having a customer relationship management software is going to be important, you can also tick this one off as a yes. In my own case,
- Will I have time to learn about Infusionsoft’s system or can I afford to have someone else implement the system for me?
There is a learning curve involved when you first start out using Infusionsoft. If you’re not very good with tech stuff, then it may indeed take you some time to understand the basics of Infusionsoft. All of this will require patience and time, especially to set up your system properly. You’ll need to spend some time, at least a month, though probably more (1-3 months depending on the individual), to get everything set up properly.If you know that you’re not going to have the time, you can hire an Infusionsoft Consultant to do the work for you. The charges range from $20.00 per hour (you can Indians/Filipinos on Elance/oDesk though I wouldn’t recommend this option) to $900 per hour and the average is probably (I’m guessing) $200 per hour.If you can’t commit to spending the time necessary to learn the ropes or pay for someone else to implement Infusionsoft for your business, then you should consider putting off your purchase.
So, did you answer yes to all/most of these questions? If so, then you should continue reading. If you answered mainly no, I would consider looking at Aweber, Mailchimp or GetResponse instead rather than reading through this entire Infusionsoft Review.
Contents
Contents:
-
What Is Infusionsoft?
-
Investing in Infusionsoft
-
Setting Up with Infusionsoft
-
Flaws of Infusionsoft
-
Advantages of Infusionsoft
-
Success Case Studies
Introduction to Infusionsoft
So what exactly is Infusionsoft?
Infusionsoft is an “all in one” sales and marketing software for small businesses. It is built to help entrepreneurs and small companies build and manage their entire sales and marketing process. It is a system designed to bring together all of the different bits and pieces of your business — having an email list in one place, Excel spreadsheet for another thing, calendar in another, a shopping cart in yet again another — and bring them all under the one roof, in Infusionsoft. It is designed to help you obtain, get, follow up and keep customers in a systematic way.
Infusionsoft is considered by many as the “Gold Standard” of email marketing. It’s used by marketing pros including Dan Kennedy, Jay Abraham, Frank Kern, Perry Marshall, Joe Polish, Jermaine Griggs — the list could really go on forever. And for good reason. It’s one of the most powerful email marketing and CRM system available.
Even for current Infusionsoft users, they don’t even know the questions to ask about what Infusionsoft can do. Most people are somewhat aware of the “tagging” feature which is where if a user clicks on a link inside of your email, you can tag them. And then, based on that tag, you can segment your users.
You can easily put a lead capture form on the internet. You can keep your contact database organized and segmented by “tagging” them automatically. You can later easily find all of the people that filled out that particular form. This by itself can represent a lot of manual work if you’ve got a lot of different systems going on.
But that’s only scratching the surface.
Advanced Automation Features of Infusionsoft
On the other end of the automation spectrum, you can have the entire business on autopilot. If contact A takes action B, then follow up with C.
You can dynamically display your upsell products based on what purchases your customer has already made (compare this to offering the same product to the same customers over and over again on other email service providers).
You can accelerate or decelerate your emails based on the actions your users have taken or not taken — on your website (they watched a video, they attended your webinar, they downloaded a PDF).
You can take personalisation to a whole new level. You can incorporate direct mail into your sequence so that you can follow up with postcards, letters, books based on where they are in your sequence. In one of my sequence, after purchasing my book, they get invited into my membership program. If they didn’t accept, then 1 week later, they’ll get a personalised letter from me explaining the benefits of the membership with a personalised URL they can enter with a code. The possibilities are limitless and mind-blowing. Like I said, most Infusionsoft users still don’t know the questions to ask. Heck, even most Infusionsoft employees don’t know.
Now, having said all of that, is it perfect? Well of course not! Infusionsoft definitely has its fair share of flaws which I’ll share with you in detail. The guys at Infusionsoft probably wouldn’t like me sharing this but I want you to have the information you need so you can make the right choice without losing your Kickstarter fee and time.
Investing in Infusionsoft — My Story
I had actually signed up with OfficeAutoPilot (now Ontraport) first because their monthly fee is cheaper and they don’t have a set up fee (saved $2,000 — woohoo!). The idea of forcing me to pay Infusionsoft the 2 grands just for some “training” really turned me off… so I signed up with Infusionsoft’s competitor. I think a lot of people have gone through the same thinking process and made the same decision in the end — perhaps you’re thinking exactly the same thing right now?
Well the good thing about Ontraport is that it’s a pretty straight-forward system to learn so I got my campaign up and running within a few days of purchase. The problem I ran into pretty quickly was actually lack of automation. Now this was a while back so things have probably changed since but the frustration by itself wasn’t a deal breaker for me. I was willing to work through their API documentation (which if I remember was quite terrible but Infusionsoft’s API doc is only somewhat better on this count) to see if I could come up with some custom solutions as I had for Aweber to make it work for me.
I contact my account manager a few times to get the API feature enabled for me but he didn’t reply for close to a week. Also, I got an automated email which asked for my phone number so that they could contact me for my free “implementation” training which I filled out. But the problem was that the system kept on sending me the request to add my contact details. The lack of responsiveness, lack of automation, their system failing to save my contact detail started to annoy me.
It was at this stage that I decided to call Infusionsoft to “start a conversation”. The sales rep I got applied some pressure, pushed all the right buttons (“Infusionsoft is at least 5 years ahead of OfficeAutoPilot” which is partially true and “I heard that those guys have terrible delivery rates” which is not true). Well, with my frustration built up at this point, that was the cherry for me so I made the decision to take the plunge (the Kickstarter is non-refundable). It turned out to be one of the best decisions that I had made for my business.
Setting Up With Infusionsoft
As part of my Kickstarter package, I got 2 “Done For You” campaigns (where the Infusionsoft team sets everything up for you) and 4 hours of coaching to help me get up and running. Looking at the Campaign Builder, I honestly had no idea where to even start. Whereas with most email marketing software, you get a linear structure, with Infusionsoft, you get what resembles a mind map where you drag boxes and arrows onto a grid… Boy, was that confusing!
But, I did get the hang of it eventually and then I became obsessed with it. I’ve since deleted and redone all of the initial campaigns and Done For You’s to take better advantage of what Infusionsoft’s actually capable of.
I’ve outlined step by step how you can set up your first Infusionsoft campaign here.
Flaws of Infusionsoft
This is written in no particular order — just my gripes as they come to me.
Email Templates
The templates aren’t very pretty, they’re not mobile responsive (i.e. there are no mobile templates which is pretty stupid when everyone’s using smartphones to read their email), you can’t use languages aside from English.
Customer Service
Remember how I said that my emails didn’t get replied to until a week later? Well, with Infusionsoft, I’ve had multiple instances when they never reply. After sending multiple email reminders a 3-5 days apart, I had to call to get anything done.
Works on Firefox Only
My browser of choice is Google Chrome. The only reason I open Firefox is to use Infusionsoft. That’s annoying.
Google Analytics Integration
The native Infusionsoft analytics is pretty useless so I use Google Analytics. But I needed a custom solution to make it work. Though now that I use Stripe for a lot of transactions, it’s easier.
No Split Testing
It’s pretty standard these days for most email responders to offer a split testing feature so you can test headlines, offers, messaging, etc. in email broadcasts. So it’s very disappointing that Infusionsoft doesn’t have a native feature for this. Having said that, you can have a workaround. For example, you can tag half your users as “Sample A” and the other half as “Sample B”. Then you can send the one email to the Group A and another to Group B. It takes longer but it works.
Advantages of Infusionsoft
Systems Thinking
When I first signed up for Infusionsoft, “systems” thinking would definitely not have been something that I would have expected (nor honestly would have cared about). As an entrepreneur, “systems” and “processes” didn’t really come naturally into my vocabulary. But coming onto Infusionsoft has given me the systems mindset which has literally transformed my business.
When you first set up Infusionsoft, you will have to map out your sales and marketing process. This may sound a bit daunting, even scary at first, but it’s a really useful exercise to do, and something which I think every entrepreneur should do once they start seeing some success. Infusionsoft does have a very useful and free lifecycle marketing training for small businesses which guides you through this process and an eBook “7 Steps to a Complete Small Business Sales & Marketing Plan”.
Now some questions which you’ll need to answer are:
- How do you attract your leads?
- How do you nurture your leads?
- How do you convert your leads into customers?
- How do you continue your relationship with your customers?
These are just some of the questions that you have to answer, and these answers will help you formulate how your Infusionsoft campaigns ought to look like. Once you get into the habit of working on your business rather than in your business, you’ll learn to spot opportunities all of the time to delegate, automate or eliminate tasks.
Focus on What Matters
Part of the advantage of having a system in place is so that you can spend more time on the big picture. More time on working the system rather than in the system (Sam Carpenter). This way you get time back to do the things that you enjoy more, spend less time doing mundane admin tasks, make less mistakes (I was suppose to send out this follow up with the prospect, customer, affiliate, [insert your example], but I forgot about it!), and have a scalable business system to earn you more money.
Automation Gone Wild
I’ve already covered some of the automation possibilities when you use Infusionsoft above. It is really amazing how much automation you can do inside Infusionsoft. Infusionsoft can literally take over the work of several employees if you set it up correctly. You can have Infusionsoft act like an antenna, a receptor if you will, and listen to what your prospects, customers, partners, are doing. And you can use that information to implement a personalized and sophisticated follow up system.
Success Case Studies
Here are some successful case studies. See if there’s one that’s relevant for you business:
- Athletic Apparel
- Coaching — the Rocket Company
- Dentist
- Music Course — Hear and Play
- Education — Mathplus
- Estate Planning
- Fitness Franchise
- Coach and Author — Pam Slim
- Manufacturing
- Marketing
- Pest Control
- Swimming Pool
- Tax Advisory
Conclusion
This is a lot of information to handle and a lot of people they refer back specifically to this page over and over again. In any case, I know that this can all seem very confusing, especially when you’re first starting your research. So, you are more than welcome to ask me any questions you may have using the form below.
Infusionsoft, in my opinion, really is the leader in its particular market. Despite all of its flaws, it’s still the best in the follow up automation for small businesses and there really aren’t any alternatives (unless you’re a medium to large enterprise in which case Marketo would be better for you).
Ultimately, to help you decide whether Infusionsoft is for you, it’s a question of whether you and your business are ready.
Most customers typically come to Infusionsoft after they’ve been in business for a year or two, they’ve banged they’re head against the wall numerous times, thinking there has to be a better way to do this. At some stage, you have to decide whether your business is something that you want to get into
Questions?
If you have any questions, please feel free to fill out the following form:
– “Infusionsoft” and the “Infusionsoft logo” are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Infusion Software, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries.
Keep it UP.