10 Things That Make Infusionsoft Easier Than Other CRMs

Infusionsoft is hardly the easiest software on the market, but it is the most robust, integrated, well document, and supported software in its industry. In my 8+ years of helping small businesses use Infusionsoft to manage and grow their businesses more consistently and efficiently, I’ve come to really appreciate these 10 key feature that make Infusionsoft so much easier to use than other CRMs I’ve used.

1. It’s an All-In-One solution for Sales, Marketing, Fulfillment, Customer Service, and Ecommerce.

This is #1 for a reason. Having a robust integrated system makes real-time follow up and reporting a breeze. All of your departments operating under one roof helps reduce multi-system chaos and seeing how marketing and sales efforts relate to each other under one system is a powerful business tools.

2. Real-time updating when someone buys something, or clicks a link, or fills out a form.

In an integrated system like Infusionsoft, you can set up real-time responses to what your leads and customers are doing. They fill out a form – you send an ebook. They click a link in an email – you tasks someone to call them. They buy a download – you deliver the download. It’s almost instantaneous and it’s consistent and predictable.

3. Email Builder is drag and drop simple.

Absolutely no coding needed. You don’t need to know one stitch of html or css to build an attractive email template. The color picker under the Style section allows you to pick colors from your image to be your background or text color. A 2-column email is easy to create by using the Sidebar setting under the Layout section. You can even adjust the sidebar width. Being able to send yourself a test email is a valuable feature.

4. Campaign Builder is also drag and drop simple.

The new campaign builder makes it easier than ever to plan out your campaigns. Dragging different goals, processes and emails onto the canvas is not only fun, but provides a great visual of what your campaign process is, making it easier to identify holes or gaps that were being overlooked. One of the things I appreciate most about the campaign builder is that a simple campaign can prove just as effective as a complicated one and the proof is in the performance reporting, which you can see right inside the campaign.

5. A plethora of add-ons and plug-ins that enhance existing functionality or provide a bridge between Infusionsoft and other software systems.

Holy cow! There are a ton of add-ons for Infusionsoft. They can all be found in the Infusionsoft Marketplace. Head over there sometime and check them out. It’s well worth 30 minutes of your time to shop around for apps that can help you get more out of your Infusionsoft. Here are a few of my favorites.

1. Infusionsoft Sync for Outlook and Gmail.

This awesome little plugin is free and it allows you to view contact record information in your right sidebar while reading an email from the contact in Outlook or Gmail. You can also easily added a new contact via the sidebar app. Besides that, you can push a copy of your email conversation from Outlook or Gmail into their contact record so others on your team can view the communications. It works for both incoming and outgoing emails received/sent from your Outlook or Gmail.

2. SNAP

Great for networking events, this handy iPhone app allows you to scan an image of a business card to add the contact information to your Infusionsoft. It takes approx. 15-30 minutes for the card to be transcribed and for the information to be added to your Infusionsoft. Oh, and you also apply a tag to the contact so that when their record is created a campaign is fired offed at the same time. How cool is that? Way cool, that’s right! Imagine meeting someone and scanning their business card, then 15 minutes later they receive an email from you saying how great it was to meet them and delivering to them more information about your business. That’s right, way cool!

3. Quickbooks integration for easily updating your bookkeeping when people order from you.

There are actually two different types of QB integrations available. The free one comes automatically with your app but you do have to request that it be turned on. Infusionsoft will require you to fax in this form that you can download here <insert download link here>. Give them 48 hours to process your request. You’ll now it has been completed when you view a product record and see the new Quickbooks tab. There will also be a new Quickbooks left sidebar menu item under Order > Settings. The free integration does require some manual effort. What it allows you to do is

Looking for something more automated and don’t mind paying a fair price for it? Here are a few options to choose from.

1. Autofy for Quickbooks at $49/mo will:

– Bring items, customers and invoices into QuickBooks from Infusionsoft

– Sync payments from Infusionsoft with invoices in QuickBooks

– Automatically create payments in QuickBooks according to payment plans in Infusionsoft

– Map items and customers between QuickBooks and Infusionsoft to avoid duplicate data

2. Quickbooks Online by Zapier is FREE and will:

– Create a customer in QuickBooks when an invoice is created in Infusionsoft

– When a Contact in Infusionsoft becomes a Customer, can create a Client in QuickBooks

– Can create contacts in QuickBooks based on a selected Infusionsoft tag

– Post invoices from Infusionsoft into Clients in QuickBooks.

– And more! You can sync only the data that you need to support your business.

Zapier is a 2013 Battle of the Apps Finalist and has been highly-rated by Infusionsoft users.

3. Cloud Cart Connector for Quickbooks is $49/mo and will:

– Create a two way automatic sync between QuickBooks and Infusionsoft.

– Sync every time an order gets entered into Infusionsoft

– Eliminate manual entry into QuickBooks

– Sync customers, items, invoices, payments, and subscriptions from Infusionsoft to QuickBooks

– Import customers, items, and orders from QuickBooks into Infusionsoft

– Perform order processing by a number or a date range

6. Ability to link contacts to other contact and contacts to companies.

This feature has come in handy with many of my consulting clients who need to link contact records together. For example, some businesses service or communicate with an entire family and want to link individual parent records with individual child records. When these records are linked, you can go to any one of the records, click the Linked Contacts tab and see the names of the other family members who are linked. You can also click on their name to visit their contact record.

For company records, it works in a similar way. All contacts who are associated with a particular company can be linked to the company record and show up under a Contacts tab within the company record.

7. Branding Center templates

Yay! I love Branding Center templates. They save you hundreds of hours over the life time of your app. They include email templates, web form templates, and thank you page templates. You just set up your colors, logo and other styling once and then everytime you use the template it automatically starts out with all of your styling and such.

8. Pre-built Campaigns

Who doesn’t love this? Infusionsoft provides 50+ different pre-built campaigns that you can load into your campaign builder at the click of a button. Visit the Marketplace to find all of the campaigns available. More are being added every month. Here are a few of my favorite go-to campaigns as of the time of this writing.

Free eBook Campaign – Generate leads with a free ebook and track your results.
Event Registration and Follow up – Simplify the registration process and send out reminders emails.
Easy Networking – Automate follow up for new contacts in your personal network.
Purchase Follow Up – Wow new customers by sending them a welcome email and another post-purchase email to check in.
Long-term Prospect Nurture – Nurture your prospect until they’re ready to buy from you.

9. Over 500 training videos and documents and other training resources.

Say what? You heard it right. Infusionsoft goes way above and beyond in the training department. Afterall, it is a somewhat complicated software and when that’s the case you need to make it easy for people to learn. Check out all the training resources available at these links.

10. Last but not least… Awesome tech support.

Bonus – I know, right? Hey, those guys rock it every day! If you need help, just give them a call and you’ll get caring, knowledgeable support delivered in English. Whether you’re calling in or using the Online Chat, you can count on a caring individual to help you out.

Now that you know what makes Infusionsoft so much easier than other CRM Marketing Systems, check out some of these resources and go do something amazing with your Infusionsoft. 🙂

Would you like to download an audio recording of this article for offline listening? It’s yours for the asking. I recorded one just in case you or someone in your business prefers to audio recordings.

Vania Clark-Butler is an Infusionsoft Certified Consultant (ICC) and self-proclaimed power user since 2005. Process oriented, she shares Infusionsoft best practices to help you get set up the right way to optimize your software. For fun, she enjoys cooking, kundalini yoga, business podcasts, and spending time outdoors with her husband and their two exuberant boxers exploring the Arizona desert. - See more at: http://www.automatingsuccess.com.

Visit www.automatingsuccess.com/consultation to request a free 30-minute consultation with Vania to discuss your Infusionsoft strategy.

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