Inbound & Digital Marketing Blog

Greased Skid Marketing is now part of Inbound Team --The Atlanta, Georgia Inbound Marketing Agency specializing in helping businesses grow with online marketing.

Here's how you can add custom order fields to the Infusionsoft shopping cart!

1. Go to Setup -> Misc. Settings. Under Application Settings, you'll see a section called Custom Fields. Make sure you select Order from the drop down before clicking Go.
2. Add the custom field you want. Be sure to select the appropriate field type as this will affect the searches you can do later on.

   

   Custom Field Screen

3. Click View the field database names (for the API). Write down or print out the "Database Name." You'll need this later on. For example, the name of my Test field is Test1. These names are case-sensitive, so make sure you capture the name exactly!
4. Now, go to Setup -> Shopping Cart and select Theme Gallery. The edit your current theme. Click the HTML Sections tab, and then click the Edit button for Area 1. Enter the HTML code for your custom field like this:
   <input name="Order0_Test1" id="Order0_Test1" type="text" value="Test Order Data"/>
   Notice that you have to put Order0_ in front of the database name. That's the word, "Order" followed by a zero and an underscore. You should have this in both your name and id attributes.
   Click Save.
5. Click Back to Theme Gallery and click Live Preview. You should see your store front. Add a product to the cart and click Checkout. You'll see your custom fields in Area1 above the Billing Information.

   

   Shopping Cart with Custom Fields

6. Now, pay for the order. Here's a good trick. Under Shopping Cart, Payment Options, select the checkbox for payment by check. Then, when you're testing, you can just click the pay by check option in your shopping cart. You don't actually have to pay for the order this way!
7. Finally, go to Orders -> Find Orders ..., and lookup your new order.  You'll see a Custom Fields tab. Click that, and you'll see your order complete with the custom field data.

   

   Order Screen with Custom Fields

I hope this is helpful. Leave a comment below with any questions or to let me know how this works for you!

Greased Skid Marketing is now part of Inbound Team --The Atlanta, Georgia Inbound Marketing Agency specializing in helping businesses grow with online marketing.

Infusionsoft Double Your Sales Promise Overall Grade: B+

Recently, their focus may have shifted. But, over the last year, Infusionsoft has talked a lot about their product being able to Double Your Sales. Is this true?

Actually, it is true for many small businesses. If your business fits into the following, you have a good chance to Double Your Sales with Infusionsoft:

• If you have revenues less than $1M. Obviously, it's easier to grow your business from $200K to $400K than it is to go from $10M to $20M in a short time.

• If you have a good product or services and a clear, differentiated strategy. If you have a poor or "me too" product, then doing a better job of communication and follow-up still won't help.

• If you are willing to spend your time and/or money to improve your marketing or follow-up. Sometimes, people allow themselves to believe that all they have to do is spend $200-300 with Infusionsoft and their sales will improve. Of course, this won't happen by itself. It takes a real effort to realize the potential of Infusionsoft.

• You're an established business and already have a list of customers. Startups can still benefit from Infusionsoft, but it's going to take longer and cost more.

Infusionsoft loves to talk about doubling your sales. One example company had a good product, was established, had a contact list of almost 6,000 customers, and had revenues of $200-300K when they started. So that had a good starting point. The one thing that isn't always pointed out is that Infusionsoft supplied some of their top people to provide consulting help. The company may have paid for some of the improvements to their website, but they didn't pay for the top consulting help.

Doing better at attracting leads, building your contact list, and following-up will help any business, and Infusionsoft is very helpful in facilitating this process. Plus, Infusionsoft will help with your education-based marketing programs.

The key is to provide value to your prospects and customers. I know this is obvious, but I talk with people all the time who have the idea the technology like Infusionsoft is the secret. Infusionsoft is a good tool for many companies. But, you have to know your customer, provide value, and communicate clearly. At GreasedSkid, we help Infusionsoft clients accomplish exactly these goals.

So, why a B+ instead of a higher grade? Some of Infusionsoft's marketing reinforces the idea that if you just buy the product, your sales will quickly double. As described above, it can. Just be prepared to do the needed work!

Greased Skid Marketing is now part of Inbound Team --The Atlanta, Georgia Inbound Marketing Agency specializing in helping businesses grow with online marketing.

Infusionsoft Shopping Cart & Storefront Overall Grade: D

The shopping cart and storefront are some of the worst parts of Infusionsoft!

• The customization options are limited

• The product pages are not SEO optimized

• The shipping options are limited, and you can't integrate with Fedex or UPS.

• It's not a good fit if you have very many products

Maybe I'm being too hard in some ways. If your needs are very basic, the shopping cart does work. It's a good fit for you if:

• You have relatively few products and product categories

• You are not picky about the branding for your online store

• You can use simplified shipping options

I think Infusionsoft is aware that their Shopping Cart & Storefront is a big weakness, and they have oriented their marketing toward their strengths in email marketing, follow-up, and automation. It's a shame, really. It's really great to be able to do marketing follow-up based on products purchased, etc.

The limits of Infusionsoft's shopping cart has been good for GreasedSkid, though. We do a lot of project that integrate Infusionsoft with third-party shopping carts like Volusion.

Greased Skid Marketing is now part of Inbound Team --The Atlanta, Georgia Inbound Marketing Agency specializing in helping businesses grow with online marketing.

Infusionsoft Integrated CRM Overall Grade: A

The best thing about Infusionsoft is that it integrates together most of the tools you need to run your small business. If you or your employees regularly speak directly with customers, then having a good CRM system becomes invaluable.

Infusionsoft's CRM has all the things most small businesses will ever need:

• An individual record for each contact

• The ability to associate contacts with companies

• Tracking of tasks and appointments

• Capture of contact history -- Emails, phone calls, notes, purchases (If you use the Infusionsoft shopping cart), etc.

• Import contacts from other systems

• The ability to add custom information to each contact or company

• Calendar

• Send email directly from the CRM screen

• Opportunity management (With the $299 per month Deluxe version). Track specific sales opportunities through your sales pipeline.

• Billing and Invoicing  (With the $299 per month Deluxe version). Create orders and invoice clients.

• Integration with Outlook. You can use Outlook for many CRM functions and still have all the information stored and sync'ed with Infusionsoft

In my work with Infusionsoft users, I have not found any feature gaps or problems with the CRM functionality. There are other more flexible systems available, but they are also more expensive!

You can use the CRM for your support team or your sales team.

The only time I would say Infusionsoft's CRM is not a good fit if you have a large number of users. Beyond the 2-5 users that come with their packages, each user adds another $59 per month. If you have more than 25 support or sales users, you've probably outgrown Infusionsoft.

Greased Skid Marketing is now part of Inbound Team --The Atlanta, Georgia Inbound Marketing Agency specializing in helping businesses grow with online marketing.

Adam asked about using Infusionsoft primarily for eMail and Follow-Up:

I’m not looking to use Infusionsoft for everything that they advocate using it for…just as an email tool so that I can build rules-driven email campaigns that reference customer behavior data (we will send daily transactional data via API). For example, if customer purchases X, send them message 1…if customer is in Florida and has not purchased Y in more than 12 days, send them message 2, etc.

Follow-up up eMail campaigns are a real strength of Infusionsoft!

First, specifically for Adam. I am assuming that you are going to use your own shopping cart with your own customer behavior data. Then, via the API, you'll trigger a Follow-up Sequence or Action Set. If this is your plan, I expect that Infusionsoft will work wonderfully for you!

Follow-up sequences are one of the best features of Infusionsoft. You can:

• Setup a sequence that includes multiple messages and even multiple types of media (Fax, direct mail, gift fulfillment, etc.)

• Specify the delay between steps in a sequence

• Schedule steps forward or backwards from a date or event

• Have a sequence trigger a follow-up phone call from your sales team

• Cancel the sequence when your prospect responds (Or put them in a different sequence)

Here's how you would typical use a follow-up sequence. Let's say a customer buys a product from you. You use that event to trigger a customer satisfaction follow-up sequence like this:

• Day Zero: Dear Customer, thank you for buying our product ...

• Day 7: I hope you're enjoying your new product. Did you know it can ...

• Day 30: Please complete our survey and let us know how the product can be better ...

It's also great to complement your eMail messages with direct mail, and Infusionsoft can easily handle this as part of a follow-up sequence.

There are a lot of great ways to trigger a follow-up sequence, a specific action, or an ActionSet.

• A follow-up sequence is a sequence of actions or events that with set time delays (Like I described above)

• A single action can be things like sending an email, assigning a task to a salesperson, sending a direct mail piece, etc.

• An Action Set is a set of actions, but there are no set time delays or sequence. These are essentially just a group of actions.

Some of the ways you can trigger any of these are:

• A prospect fills out a web form on your website

• A customer buys a product

• A user manually causes a trigger (Example: a salesperson finishes a phone call and puts someone in a follow-up sequence)

• A person clicks on a link in an eMail message

I hope this helps Adam and any other current or prospective Infusionsoft users. There's a lot you can do! It make take something to set all this up, but once you do, it's wonderful.  Usually, the hard part is doing the serious business thinking about how you actually want things to work.

There are some other ideas in our Special Report: Infusionsoft: 7 Keys to Top Results. Check it out, and let me know what you think.

And, keep those questions coming!

Greased Skid Marketing is now part of Inbound Team --The Atlanta, Georgia Inbound Marketing Agency specializing in helping businesses grow with online marketing.

John recently left me a question asking:

What is API? I just signed up with InfusionSoft and I'm pretty annoyed at their support. I put a ticket in on Wednesday - to fix a ticket they did not fix earlier in the week - and 48 hours have passed and I have not heard a thing. I am not at all happy with them.

API stands for Application Programing Interface. That helped a lot didn't it!

An API is a way for two different computer programs to communicate with each other. Sometimes you want to do this to integrate two systems and have them work together. Or, you might use an API to extend a system and add new capabilities.

If you want some examples,  Joe Manna posted his ideas on ways to use the Infusionsoft API on the Infusionsoft blog.

Greased Skid Marketing is now part of Inbound Team --The Atlanta, Georgia Inbound Marketing Agency specializing in helping businesses grow with online marketing.

Here is a 4:50 video demonstrating the Outlook integration feature of Infusionsoft.

See the Video ... (It's best to click the Full Size button before watching the video.

Infusionsoft offers CRM features along with eMail marketing, follow-up automation, and a shopping cart.

Outlook integration lets you access the CRM features and link eMail messages to Infusionsoft -- All without leaving Outlook!

It's still a beta, and there are even some glitches in the video, but it definitely makes it easier to use Infusionsoft.