Have you hired a Virtual Assistant yet?

Let me rephrase that:  Are you tired of doing every single thing in your business yourself?

Chances are, if you are a small business owner or solo entrepreneur,  you have either thought about hiring some help or have already done it. Nearly everyone has thought about outsourcing marketing online – it’s time consuming.  You want help!

Every business owner has one eye on the bottom line – cash flow and controlling expenses are survival tactics. So here’s my next question:

How Low Can You Go?

Virtual Assistants cost anywhere from $1.50 per hour to $150 per hour for most types of work that a solo entrepreneur would need. That covers essentially all online marketing tasks you would want to outsource.

Can you really find a virtual assistant for $1.50 per hour? YES.

That’s the short answer – Yes. In reality, you can find someone who will charge you $1.50 per hour, but your total cost is far higher than that.

I talk a lot about total costs in my ebook: “High Profit Low Stress Business Acceleration”

The real question business owners should be asking about outsourcing marketing and hiring virtual assistants is:

How low should I go? Or better yet: Where’s the Sweet Spot … for me?

Sweet Spot for Virtual Assistant

• You get what you pay for
• Salary is lower than you think
• Factor in training time
• Factor in finding time
• Pay for keeps

Let me put these into perspective – the perspective of a solo entrepreneur who is motivated to have a profitable business.

You always get what you pay for, so just make sure you understand what you are paying for, and asking for!
At the $1.50 end of the scale, you can’t assume too much in the way of knowledge, skill, or experience.  On the $150 end of the pay scale, you better really need that level of expertise … and not be able to find it cheaper.

Anything over $50 per hour is usually a cause for pause for most business owners talking about outsourcing marketing, especially in the early years of business.

The 2 biggest problems:  Finding and Training

That’s right, usually it is a question of time – your time, the owners time.   Time is the reason outsourcing is so appealing in the first place; time is the resource to watch when deciding on what type of Virtual Assistant to hire, where to find them, and how much to pay them.

That is why you should pay for keeps – longer term hiring practices reduce your overall finding and training time … significantly!

At first glance, it appears to be a question of money ($), but it almost always boils down to a question of time.

I have tried many different tactics for effective leverage through outsourcing, using VAs, freelancers, etc.  There’s more detail in my books about my experience if you are interested – look around on this site.

Here are some best practices that I use:

• U.S. based plus Philippine based Virtual Assistants
• U.S. = $25 – $75 per hour
• Philippines = $5 – $15 per hour
• Define the job clearly, then look until you find the right person
• Pay what they are worth

The costs cited above are from my own experience and include some level of my own time investment; actual hourly pay may be lower but I wanted to put them in here for comparison costs.

Some business owners pay $1.50 per hour for online marketing using VAs in the Philippines, India, Hungary, etc.   This has not worked for me.  I use a mix of U.S. and Philippines service providers and my total costs are usually in the ranges cited above.

For most business owners, I recommend Virtual Staff Finder for finding Philippines based virtual assistants.   There are other good companies that I recommend on this site an in my books.   Virtual Staff Finder is a big time saver on the ‘finding’ end.

Does Low Cost Outsourcing Really Work?

Absolutely!  Every solo entrepreneur must find a way to leverage their time – outsourcing is ideal in most cases.  You just need to decide ‘how low should you go’ in your business.

About the Author:
Michael Wilson is an outsourcing specialist and independent business owner who uses, and refines, outsourcing strategies for entrepreneurs.  He is building his Body by Vi business and provides coaching for online marketing plus access to outsourcing services to team members.

There are 2 world class customer relationship management systems on the market–Oprius and Infusionsoft.  Both offer all-in-one integration for your contacts, an email manager, marketing funnels and sales process.  Both are feature rich and both offer great customer support.

Which is better for your business?  That depends…

Oprius vs. Infusionsoft Review

Contact manager software helps your business build a relationships.  You have easy systems to capture email addresses, start an autoresponder email campaign, integrate multi-media into your follow-up, track where people are in your sales funnel and continue communication to build repeat customers.  From lead to customer to repeat buyer, Oprius and Infusionsoft both help you build your business.

Oprius and Infusionsoft Contact Manager Software Similarities:

• Customer relationship management
• Opt-in emails
• Email marketing 2.0
• Multi-media marketing
• Marketing automation
• Sales pipeline management
• Marketing automation plans
• Customer support
• Integrated system (lead capture, autoresponder, email, contact list, calendar
• Single System solution = lower total cost

Click here for a detailed Infusionsoft Review

Click here for a detailed Oprius Review

Oprius and Infusionsoft Differences

While both of these contact manager software systems help organize your business contact relationships from lead to repeat buyer, there are a few key differences.

Oprius is excellent for direct marketing businesses, service oriented businesses and beginning businesses; in fact, it was built for the MLM industry’s specific needs.  It is simple, easy to use and very intuitive.  It is also very affordable.  It has just enough features to become your favorite business tool, with no extra bloat to waste your time on.

Infusionsoft is the next step up.  When your business starts to grow, you need more power in your business contact manager, you have ecommerce or affiliate products, or you are profitable, Infusionsoft is your answer.

Infusionsoft is a complete customer relationship management combined with a marketing automation system.  It is designed to accomplish much more than Oprius.

In addition to the features listed above, Infusionsoft also includes:

• Orders and invoices
• Shopping cart
• Affiliate program management
• Pre-loaded content and templates
• Robust database searchability and management
• Full featured Marketing Automation
• Powerful customer and list segmentation

When you start creating your own products, integrating a customer’s purchase history into your contact management system is a great bonus.  You can send emails based on previous buying preferences.  You can send FAQ emails or specials.  You can remind people to restock after a certain length of time.

Of course, there is a slight downside to having more features.  With the increased functionality comes a slightly more complex interface.  Infusionsoft may take slightly longer to learn to use.  And the monthly cost is higher than Oprius.

I recommend Oprius for beginning businesses, simple businesses, businesses with no products or affiliates, or with low cash flow.

Infusionsoft is the next step up when you need more features and more integration.  If you don’t know what to do, start with Oprius and trade up to Infusionsoft later.  Both are excellent products.

Which is better for business?  Both are good.  The more relevant question is “Which is better for MY business?”

Take the Next Step to a Single System Solution:

MLM, start-up business, simple needs?    Try the Oprius Free Trial

Established business, ecommerce, affiliates?   Check out the Infusionsoft Demo

Both of these next steps are basically a no-cost education step.  No matter which system you choose, get enough info to make the right decision for your business.

Contact me directly if you need more help.

Thanks for visiting my site, you’ve come to the right place if you’re looking for a comprehensive review of Oprius, an online integrated sales and marketing system for small business owners and network marketers.

Before I dive into the details, I just want to clarify that I will be giving you a complete, unbiased and honest Oprius review. I am going to give you all the ESSENTIAL information you need to know before buying the product for yourself – read this entire review before you make your decision to purchase.

This is a review site: Click here to visit the Oprius official website.

Full Featured Contact Manager Software
Oprius is a full featured, hosted, marketing system with a contact manager at it’s core. I call Oprius a contact manager and email marketing system but it is really an all-in-one sales and marketing system designed specifically for network marketers and small business owners.

A powerful contact manager is the focal point, which is good because that means that the customer is the main focus and that’s how it should be. Integrated with the contact manager are 6 other modules, so 7 total modules that make up Oprius.

• Contact Manager

• Relationship Builder

• Phone Assistant

• Email Marketing

• Lead Capture

• Task List

• Calendar

All the tools needed are included, and integrated, meaning that they all link together; that is why the contact manager is at the heart of the system. There are no gaps that force network marketers to go outside the system for part of their marketing strategy – it handles capturing leads, to scheduling communications and meetings, automating emails, capturing phone notes, and managing it all in a single system.

Obviously a single system is very efficient, but what about ease of use? That is a critical success factor! Even if all the tools you need to manage your sales process are in one system, if that system is too complex or hard to use, it won’t work.

Ease of Use
I’ve personally used a number of extremely complex all-in-one systems, up to an including corporate scale enterprise systems, and one of the drawbacks is always the time it takes to learn the system. It’s almost like learning a new language; once you get it, you like it, but who wants to learn a new language just to be able to get some work done?

Oprius is refreshingly different. I mentioned that it was designed specifically with the network marketer in mind. I go into more detail about the design work in the “Oprius Company Review” and other posts on this blog.

The bottom line is that they’ve built in an intuitive navigation system that makes it easy to find what you need, but more importantly, easy to get the jobs done that you want done. The result is new users are up and running in minutes and hours, not weeks and months.

Easy to learn, yes. But also easy to setup and migrate existing data into the system. Fear of moving data to a new system is a show stopper for a lot of business owners. Oprius makes it easy to get your contacts and email lists uploaded and setup; that is one of the keys to a quick start.

Features for Online Marketers
The real key to whether this is a system that will work for your business is what you can do with it.

Each module stands on it’s own plus connects intelligently with the other modules.
Here’s an example of the Phone Assistant screen:

At the left is the prospect’s key contact info (from the contact module), the things you would want to know before calling. Highlighted in green is the latest activity, the last call or appointment (from the calendar module) would show here; it’s expandable to show more or less info.

There is a place for your notes – no recopying later – to keep all the details associated with your contact in real time. This screen is designed for use before, during, and after the call. Create a new task or set an appointment while you are on the phone – it’s all associated with the contact.

With an all-in-one system, like Oprius, sometimes it’s easier to use a picture to help get the idea. In my Oprius review, and in my own use, I found that all of the module were easy to use by themselves and also had ‘smart integration’ with other parts of the system.

It is very valuable for a business owner to be able to pull up a customer in the contact manager and have instant access to all the emails they’ve gotten and the notes from the phone calls, etc. Especially if more than one person is making the calls!

Marketing Best Practices
One last comment about good marketing practices. Oprius has built in the fundamentals for you, in the form of the Relationship Builder. For marketers trying to use the ‘Seven Times, Seven Ways’ approach, the Relationship Builder is a great tool.

The main purpose is to be able to easily, with pull down selections and simple clicks, build a specific follow-up plan for an individual customer or a group. You can add anything to the plan – an automatic email, a task, schedule a phone call – which makes it very robust.

For example, your customer may opt-in to your lead capture page and Oprius sends two automatic emails then notifies you to schedule a phone call; once the phone call is complete, Oprius goes on with the other scheduled tasks.

A simple but very flexible and powerful marketing tool.

Automatic Sync and Security
Since the system is a hosted program, meaning that you access it online, it’s available anywhere with a login. It is not a program on your PC, like Outlook or Business Contact Manager, that requires you to be at that one computer.

Oprius has all your contact and calendar information in one place; it solves the synchronization problems between computers. Mobile devices can be easily synchronized individually, so new contact on your iPhone go into Oprius automatically.

Customers always own their own data, so import and export and local backup is easy. No problems using those features in addition to the company data backup systems.

They use the same security technology as online banking. These days, nearly every small business owner is using online banking, but still it makes sense to be sure.

The Bad News
There are a couple of things that aren’t in the good column that I want to make sure to point out.

• Opt-in boxes are limited

• Contact List Fine-tuning can be awkward

• Speed can be slow sometimes

The lead capture module is easy to use to create either a simple opt-in box or an entire capture page, hosted free by Oprius. However, the opt-in boxes don’t have a lot of flexibility, so sometimes tweaking it to get the appearance just right on the blog is a little tricky. Opt-in boxes work fine.

The contact list is easy to use and categorize, but once people are on a list (from an opt-in) and getting autoresponder emails, it is not easy to subdivide that list and send emails to just part of it. It can be done, but it’s more manual than I’d like to see.

I’m a bit impatient, so I notice any slow downs. Overall, the speed is fine, but every once in a while I find myself staring at an hourglass; it doesn’t last long. Uptime is not a problem, just some infrequent speed bumps.

The Good News

• Price

• Single, all-in-one, system

• Easy to use

• Integrated operation

• Relationship Builder

• Customer Support

Click here to visit the Oprius official website.

I haven’t mentioned price, but it’s a real positive for Oprius. They offer the full system at a very low monthly rate (~$15) with just a month to month billing. That is lower than most good auto-responders and isn’t even in the same ballpark as Infusionsoft or any other CRM or comparable all-in-one system.

I have talked about single system benefit and ease of use. Oprius scores well in these areas, especially at the price point they have established.

Integrated operation and especially the Relationship Builder module are the things that can really impact both the efficiency and profitability of any small business. That’s why I mention them here specifically – they are important and they are strengths of the Oprius contact manager software.

Customer support should not be dismissed. They have live, US based, customer support; quick and knowledgeable and effective, just like I prefer.

Oprius Review – What’s my honest opinion?
Oprius is a solid, independent, company that delivers a quality product. They focused on the specific sales and marketing needs of network marketers and small business owners and have designed a winning product. It is an easy-to-use, all-in-one solution at a very affordable price.

In my opinion, this is the best system on the market for small business owners looking for single system efficiency and integrated marketing system effectiveness. This is the only product that truly offers a complete solution at anywhere near this price point. I definitely believe you should try it for your business.

I hope this Oprius review has helped you,
Michael

Click here to visit the Oprius official website.

During this Oprius review I was reminded of several marketing best practices and I wanted to share one here.

Seven Times and Seven Ways – What does that mean?

You may have heard that phrase before, especially if you’ve been to any of my webinars – it’s one of my favorites. What it really means is that it takes multiple times delivering a marketing message to be effective; that’s the seven times part. The best way to get your message across is to use different media as well – that’s the seven ways part.

The fact is that most people don’t buy the first time they hear your message. Some do, most don’t. Most sales are made after the fifth time or sixth time … it depends on the sales manager that is telling the story, but everyone knowledgeable about the management of sales processes will agree the number is higher than most people think.

Oprius has seven modules integrated to form their contact manager and email marketing system. That’s what made the 7 stick out to me. In the Oprius contact manager software, the seven modules are designed to deliver an effective customer experience not necessarily to hit seven different ways to touch the customer.

But I digress. This post is about the rule of 7.

It is not meant to be taken literally, though I have certainly met some online marketers and sales management professionals that go to great lengths to ensure they get at least 7 touches and do it at least 7 different ways.

I think that probably leads to diminishing returns. However, most marketers don’t come anywhere close to communicating with their customers 7 times – they get frustrated, or tired, or just forget after 1 or 2 messages. That is the same as leaving sales dollars on the table! It’s the quickest way to lose sales!

There are literally hundreds of ways to touch your customers, but here are 7 that online marketers can use:

• WordPress Blog
• Downloadable ebook
• YouTube Video
• Email
• Direct Mail
• Telephone
• Webinar

Yes, I know, I took a bunch of the easy ones. You can think of more than that, I’m sure, for your business. But the really important thing is to pick the right ones for you, your business, and your customers. And don’t try to do more than you are capable of doing right now.

It is far more effective to pick 4 and implement an effective contact manager system so that you can communicate multiple times – maybe even 7 times! You have a much better chance of making a sale than if you only had a website and no follow-up, or a single email follow-up.

If you already have a business contact manager, like Oprius or MS Business Contact Manager or some other one, you have a head start because you’ve at least got customer and prospect contact information available. Now it’s just a matter of adding some well-chosen marketing techniques into a time-driven strategy that will keep you on track to deliver your message 7 times in 7 ways.

Many people use 4 ways and a staggered delivery time frame like this:

• WordPress Blog – ongoing content
• Email – create a series, delivered every 2-5 days after opt-in
• Telephone – follow-up call right after opt-in and regular intervals after
• YouTube Video – periodically, notify by email or Social Media

In this scenario, there are 4 different media – that helps ensure that at least one of the methods will get through. Plus more than 7 times communicating – that helps move prospects through the sales process.

I hope this gives you some ideas to implement in your own business and to think about as you finish your contact manager software review.

Click Here For a Complete Oprius Review

As I was writing this Oprius review, I realized that one of the headaches in running a business, especially an online or network marketing business, is how to manage all the contacts. So I wanted to write this article to offer one way to handle the problem.

More specifically, the problem is how to have my email for personal or general use plus all my email from by business use, or the opt-in email, all in one place.

How many email addresses do you use? How many ways do you collect emails from others?

For most businesses, there are many email addresses and many ways that they come in, so it is very hard to manage. And everyone would love to be able to go to one place and see ALL their emails – plus reply using all different addresses too.

There are multiple ways to do that from Outlook to Google. However, the software challenges are significant. Both Outlook and Google can combine email addresses, but don’t have an auto-responder capability.

Even so, the contact manager capabilities and interface capabilities of Google are limited. And for those people still using Microsoft Business Contact Manager, you know how much of a pain it is to import contacts and manage them; and still no automatic email capability.

Oprius is not the only software that has email plus autoresponder plus contact manager capabilities. A quick contact manager review online will show you that most good systems handle importing and managing contacts have decent email capabilities. The trick is getting enough pieces in one package so that you can truly login one place and work with all your emails.

When I was starting out as a small business owner, this was a problem for me – and I used multiple systems.

• Outlook for personal email
• MS Business Contact Manager business contact details
• iContact or Aweber or Contstant Contact for capturing opt-ins
• Share-O software for keeping in sync between computers

I tried a variety of different solutions and spent a lot of time doing it. But Oprius was the one thing that really solved the problem.

I was able to capture enough information to keep my business and personal emails and contacts in sync and running smoothly. Here are the steps I used.

1. Setup Oprius with a primary account – the one most used
2. Upload all personal contacts to Oprius using a CSV file format – it’s quick
3. Use a ‘personal’ category to identify them – this is important to do during or right after upload
4. Upload and categorize contacts for each business or segment you have
5. Forward all your business and personal emails to Oprius – from the provider or from your website email for your business sites.
6. Setup Oprius to be able to send from each email address — One-click, not like Outlook or other email systems
7. Create capture pages or opt-in boxes right inside Oprius – new contacts are tagged and captured

You are all set.

I was able to eliminate Outlook, Business Contact Manager, Share-O, and my separate Autoresponder. I never login to other email accounts, not even Google or my different site email addresses. That is how I was able to use one contact manager software for all my email addresses.

I didn’t need the scale or capability or price of Infusionsoft, my business isn’t big enough … yet.

Click Here For a Complete Oprius Review

Click Here to visit the Oprius official site

Oprius has been in business since 2005 and has been offering the Oprius contact manager and email marketing software since 2007.

They are based in Vancouver, BC, so just over the border in Canada and are an independent company. I’ll talk about why this is important a little later.

Small business owners, and specifically network marketers, have been the company’s main focus in developing the Oprius system. This focus is obvious in the way the product is designed and how it operates.

What I mean is that network marketers are business owners and sales professionals. They need to manage a lot of contacts and customers and prospects, plus they are typically on a sales team and are developing a sales team of their own.

The software was designed to handle that exact type of complexity and the default settings are already in place to make it seamless. The system is plenty flexible to handle any small business – every business has customers and the need to manage them.

Phone calls and meetings are key tools for network marketers and therefore the scheduling and phone contact capabilities are robust. This also serves many businesses well, not just network marketers.

Oprius has a board of advisors which includes many big name network marketers and experts that serve the network marketing industry. Names like Ty Tribble and Peter Arnold are on the board and have been advisors or consultant all during development. The company seems to take their market focus and product development very seriously.

They have clearly posted policies and a very good privacy policy – a requirement for any company handling personal information. Plus they are above board in the way they talk about their products, the features and performance.

Probably the most important fact about the company that I need to report is that they are truly independent. They are independently owned, operated, and funded which means that no network marketing company has any influence.

The reason that is of primary importance is that Oprius operates in the best interest of their customers – the people who subscribe to and use the software and services – and are NOT influenced by a parent company.

During this Oprius review, I discovered that even the people who work for the company are not allowed to be involved with any network marketing company themselves. And of course the company, Oprius itself, is not a distributor for anyone.

So I never expect to hear customer service ask me about my company … or tell me about theirs! They are known for excellent customer service, which is live and based at their headquarters, and is reachable by telephone.

In my opinion, Oprius is a stable, growing, independent company with a good management team. They have a dependable product that serves their market well. I give the company a thumbs up.

Click Here For a Complete Oprius Review

Any overworked small business owner will tell you that internet marketing automation is critical to growth and success in today’s business world. You’ve got to be marketing online and using electronic tools or you just can’t compete.

In my Infusionsoft review on this blog, I talk a lot about online and electronic marketing techniques, but when it comes to automation there is usually a time and money cost, so it’s important to answer a few questions first.

How can I pick the right CRM software? How can small business owners get started automating or get more automated?

Great questions. And answers are all around us – too much information, in fact, we are swimming in the latest and greatest fads and technology that it’s hard to tell what is good and what is a waste of time.

I’ll describe 5 tips you can use to get serious about internet marketing automation for your business. These are the result of lots of trial and error, plus lots of earned experience from many business mentors.

Here’s the short version for the skim readers:
* Start at Home Base
* A is for Automatable – online CRM system
* Multi-Media Messaging – a powerful marketing plan
* Single System Sanity – CRM software review
* Super Size It – scalable marketing CRM

All of these 5 tips are focused on customer relationship management, or more specifically, on the small business owner’s ability to manage relationships with their customers. Customers are at the heart of business profitability and therefore the capability to effectively interact with them is at the heart of how a profitable business runs.

Let’s go through them one at a time and I’ll show how they build on each other.

Home base usually means a blog or a website, some central hub for online marketing. The reason that this is so important to a business owner is that it provides an anchor and a focal point. In the beginning, it’s the default place to send your customers. Plus it invites repetition, which leads to efficiency.

I won’t go into all the benefits of having a blog, but consider the NOT having a central site. No place to send your customers means low sales or no sales. And having too many places, instead of a single optimized site – well that’s almost as bad. It leads to confusion, and a confused customer leaves, so we are back to losing sales. Start at home base – it’s the foundation that supports your marketing plans.

Automatable techniques kind of go without saying because that is the point, trying to increase automation. However, it’s so important, I always put it in. Choose your marketing strategies wisely. An email marketing campaign or a monthly newsletter is easy to automate and send out to 10 customers or 10,000 customers. However, a hand-written thank you know, while touching and effective, is nearly impossible to automate with the same effectiveness.

Multi-media may seem to be leaning toward complexity, but bear with me a minute.

Why not single media messaging and then automate only one method? Well, at the end of the day, marketing must be effective – no customers, no sales, no profit … no good. Multiple times in multiple ways is the most effective plan for communicating, and converting, your customers. It’s been proven over and over, so don’t try to swim upstream, just figure out how to handle multiple, well chosen, methods effectively.

For example, an email campaign plus a post card campaign plus a sales call is multiple methods; and don’t forget about your website, that’s four. There are so many options, and many can be easily automated; even two or three methods is far more effective than just one.

Which brings us back to the need for focus. A single system, if you can get it is ideal; a minimum number of systems is a common stepping stone. I’ve coached entrepreneurs who had more than one autoresponder system, plus a contact management system, plus a separate email system, plus … well you get the idea.

Infusionsoft talks about avoiding multi-system chaos in “The Edge of Success”. The costs are so high for buying, using, and maintaining multiple systems that I refer to single system sanity as the ultimate goal. Most people sneak up on it by dropping overlapping systems, then reducing total software, then finally consolidating into a single CRM and emarketing system.

Super Size it really means planning for growth and building your strategy with that in mind. I remember having ‘grow into’ clothes for my children – it made sense because I knew they were growing. Hey, I have an older brother; I had plenty of grow into clothes myself.

Apply that concept to business and the search for single system sanity and it makes sense to look to the future as well. Consider two steps down the road when conducting a CRM review and understand what types of features and options exist; that type of thinking is powerful and it will impact your business planning. Most business owners should be looking for a system to grow into, one that has what they need today plus what they will need tomorrow.

The five guidelines that will help accelerate your marketing automation and efficiency are: optimize a home base online presence, choose easily automatable marketing methods that cover multiple media types, and pick a customer relationship management system that can handle your current business scale with room to grow.

Click Here for a Comprehensive Infusionsoft Review

Click Here to visit the Infusionsoft official website

In my Infusionsoft review on this blog, I talk a lot about customer relationship management and CRM software.
Customer relationship management means just what it sounds like it should, and can be a pretty large concept. Simply put, it’s the ability to manage all aspects of the relationship with your customer. At it’s base would be transactions and communication.

Small business owners often look for customer relationship management (CRM) software to help with what can be a very complex task. They need a system that can handle ecommerce to bring in the money, regular communications like email or newsletter or telephone, plus just something to keep track of all the information about the customers.

Okay, so it’s complex and difficult to do. But is customer relationship management important?

Absolutely! I’m just going to give a couple of reasons why, but you can probably think of several more that are important for your business, maybe even some that are unique to your business. At a minimum, I’ll bet that you’ll think of some things you wish you could do with your customers, but don’t because it’s too difficult with your current system.

It is far easier and cheaper to keep a customer than it is to find a new customer. Nearly every business owner knows this from experience. And to keep a customer, you’ve got to reach out and touch them every once in a while. Ideally you can communicate in more than one way and do it regularly. They’ve got to know you are still there and regular communication is the key.

Most people don’t buy the first time you put your business or product in front of them. In fact, many experts agree that most sales occur after 5 messages. That means if you aren’t sending more than 5 emails or newsletters or making follow-up phone calls you are losing a lot of sales. More sales is a prime reason to manage a relationship with your customer or customer-to-be.

Clate Mask, of Infusionsoft, talks about becoming “Master of the Moment” to ensure you are in front of your customer at the exact moment they are ready to buy. It’s a book worth reading.

Managing every single detail about every customer is incredibly complex, so most people don’t do it. In fact, most small business owners drop multiple marketing and communications methods in order to be able to manage just one or two. The power is really in having more than one way to stay in contact with customers; that is how to master the moment.

Finally, a real strategy, even a simple email strategy, is only possible if you are have effective customer relationship management. Being able to easily segment your customer list into different areas of focus can increase open rates, click through rates, and ultimately increase sales.

CRM software enables small business owners to keep existing customers with regular communication, be in front of customers at the exact moment they are ready to buy, manage all their contact details, and establish a basis for email marketing strategy. Customer relationship management is a critical component to business growth.

Click Here for a Comprehensive Infusionsoft Review

Hi, Michael here.

Thanks for visiting my site, you’ve come to the right place if you’re looking for a comprehensive review of Infusionsoft’s Marketing Automation Suite which is the core product offered by Infusionsoft company, a leader in marketing automation for small businesses.

First off, I just want to clarify I will be giving you complete, unbiased and honest review of Infusionsoft. I am going to give you all the ESSENTIAL details you need to know before buying the product for yourself – read this entire review before you purchase.

This is a review post: Click here to visit the Infusionsoft official website

Infusionsoft Marketing Automation Suite
Infusionsoft is a complete marketing automation suite, a combination of fully integrated systems, that gives small businesses the ability to capture more leads, manage and convert the leads into customers, and develop long term, profitable relationships with them. At first glance it appears to be a customer relationship management (CRM) system with email marketing capabilities plus ecommerce capabilities. Infusionsoft does include all of those parts, but that is just the core components; how the pieces work together is where the company has stitched in all the automation functions.

When I first started using Infusionsoft several years ago, I was intrigued by the fact that everything was in one place. It’s a different way of thinking – kind of reminds me of moving from a PC to a Mac – it requires a shift to a holistic mindset. It was no longer necessary to log into a separate contact manager then into another autoresponder program, etc. A different way to think about marketing systems.

Nuts and Bolts
Infusionsoft contains multiple capabilities in the overall system. Most are included in the main system, but some like the affiliate module are still add-ons that you can purchase when you need it. They offer different levels and pricing, from entry level all the way up to a level that includes 500,000 contacts and 20 user accounts. I guess if your company has half a million customers and live prospects in your contact list, you probably need 20 accounts for sales and support staff.

Infusionsoft caters to small businesses so the entry level is much more modest, and suited for the entrepreneur at the beginning of the growth curve. It includes what a business owner needs but doesn’t force a lot of features that wouldn’t be used at the entry level.

Here are the main parts, or areas of system expertise:
* Customer Relationship Management
* Opt-in emails
* Email marketing 2.0
* Multi-media marketing
* Marketing automation
* Sales pipeline management
* Orders and invoices
* Shopping cart
* Affiliate management
* Pre-loaded content and templates
* Customer support
* Marketing automation plans
* Training and expertise services

Click here to visit the Infusionsoft official website

Customer Technical Support
For a product like Infusionsoft, technical support after the sale is of critical importance to business owners, so I wanted to make a couple of comments on this topic.
Even the lowest level package comes with access to full customer support and training videos. It’s not like some other companies that only give full support to the top customers or the platinum level products; owner. Every time I have used customer service, they have been professional, knowledgeable, and effective. I give the company high marks for their technical support. When I call with a technical problem, I get a US based professional live on the phone who can log right into my account and solve the problem with me.

Contact Management and Sales Pipeline
This isn’t a CRM review, but we’ve got to talk about the customer relationship management capabilities at the heart of the Infusionsoft system. The CRM database is the key to connecting everything together.

It acts as a full featured contact manager, storing all the data and details for contacts, customers, prospects, and companies. There are full search capabilities based on standard fields and custom fields. If you have a specific characteristic for your customers, you can use it to identify them; they are called tags in the Infusionsoft system.

The other side of the CRM is the sales pipeline piece. It allows for scheduling meetings, calls, follow-ups, and any other action item in the sales process. By using tasks, opportunities, and assignments it’s possible to not only track, but map out and manage your sales pipeline. The assignment aspect is for delegating or assigning a task to different users.

Infusionsoft calls it mastering the moment – being in front of your customer at the exact moment they are ready to buy. The CRM and sales pipeline smart systems help ensure that there are no orphaned leads and no forgotten customers.

Marketing and Automation
Marketing and automation are not separate components of the system, but rather the strategy and the behind the scenes stuff. The marketing is your marketing plan, or you can look over their shoulder and use one of theirs. The main point is that the system is capable of handling nearly every aspect of your marketing plan.

Multi-media Marketing:
* email broadcasts and campaigns (obviously)
* letter broadcasting
* voice broadcasting
* SMS text
* tweets

Infusionsoft designed it to meet the needs of the small business owner using online and offline methods, and there are a lot of choices inside the system itself; I even found a few I didn’t remember as I was scrolling through my account before writing this Infusionsoft review! You don’t have to use all these different methods, but if you already do, it may be possible to consolidate that function into fewer systems.

The automation aspect works in the background, of course, but includes a longer list of options than I have seen in other systems.

* API interface
* Follow up sequences
* Tasks and notes
* Smart Rules
* Marketing action triggers

The API is robust and is for interfacing with other computer systems; required for getting the financial end of the business working right.
Follow up sequences can have as many steps as you want and include much more than just a simple email series. Automating tasks and notes streamlines the sales pipeline process significantly and moves prospects along faster.

Smart rules sound complex, but really are very easy to use and don’t require coding. It’s a matter of building rules around ‘if, then’ scenarios. For example – if the prospect finished email series one and downloaded the ebook, then start email series 2 and assign to sales for follow-up call. You build the rule with a point and click interface with drop-down options.

Marketing action triggers are things that automatically happen in response to events that a prospect or customer takes. Infusionsoft calls it Motion Sensor Marketing and it’s all automatic, so once you set the action triggers, the next steps are done automatically.

Now is the time to think about watching a demo video so that you can get a good feel about how these features can be benefits for your specific situation.

Ecommerce and Affiliate Management
At the end of the sales pipeline, we all want a sale. That’s the goal, so having an ecommerce component is how Infusionsoft helps business owners create a seamless customer experience. Since it is integrated with the customer management and communications and marketing pieces, it enables a smooth transition from prospect to customer.

The shopping cart and order forms are easy to use, partly because they are well designed and partly because they are integrated, and you do not have any headaches with bolting on a separate system. I give this aspect high marks too. The last thing a business owner wants is for the cash register to not work when the customer is ready to buy. All transactions are tracked and fully connected with the customer database.

Affiliate management is a full scale affiliate program, complete with a tracking, multi-tier payment capabilities, and a back office site for affiliates. You manage your affiliate program from your main Infusionsoft system, including the signups, login IDs, and creating marketing materials and products they can sell. The affiliates log into their own sites to see the products, commissions, and marketing materials like banners, email templates, etc. The affiliate module is more robust than some companies offer that specialize in affiliate programs.

What’s Bad
I want you to benefit from a complete Infusionsoft review and there are always bad things to report. So what is bad about Infusionsoft?

* complexity
* learning curve
* migration to a new system
* price

Change is hard and a complex system is more difficult to handle than a simple one. Infusionsoft is more complex than an email autoresponder system or your Outlook email system. And just like with any new software, especially CRM software, it will take a while to learn. Add to that what I said in the beginning about needing to think differently; that’s not all bad, but it is a real issue. You won’t be logging into four systems, but you will need to shift over to thinking in slightly different terms.

Migrating to a new system is difficult too, and in this case there are often multiple migrations going on at one time. Moving all your contacts from contact management and/or email systems and all your email templates and opt-in forms from an autoresponder into Infusionsoft takes time. Throw in the products and shopping cart and maybe an affiliate program and you have your work cut out for you.

The price for the Infusionsoft system is a little higher than some other systems that offer a CRM or CRM plus autoresponder, etc. As a business owner, it’s important to make a good assessment of the price, real cost, and value for your specific situation.

What’s Good
On the other hand, some strong benefits came through during my Infusionsoft review. So what is good about Infusionsoft?

* scope
* flexibility
* single system
* system migration support
* room to grow
* facilitates effective marketing
* fully integrated and enhances automation

Click here to visit the Infusionsoft official website

The Infusionsoft Automated Marketing Suite covers so many aspects of small business marketing needs that the scope is clearly a strong suit, especially compared to other products that don’t have the same level of capability.

System flexibility is extremely high which means that every business can customize it to their needs; it is not limited to a specific business model. The fact that it is a single system is a powerful motivator for any business owner interested in efficiency. If Infusionsoft replaces 2 or 3 or 4 legacy systems, there a dollar savings from not having the old systems, but there is also an efficiency gain from needing to learn, maintain, and use just one full featured system too.

System migration support gets very high marks. Infusionsoft seems to recognize that moving from multiple old systems to their system is a difficult task for businesses – new users don’t have the time or expertise to do it well. They offer strong training and support resources, especially during the transition time, and they have added expertise services on a fee for service basis, so you can have them do it. Infusionsoft has addressed this potential issues in such a way that it is now a strength.

Offering multiple levels, from entry level to ‘big’ small business gives owners room to grown and ensures that they are able to stay with one system for the long haul.

Probably one of the biggest positives from a business owner’s perspective are that the system is designed to facilitate effective marketing practices. It includes all the tools to do the whole job of marketing, customer conversion, and customer retention, and to use industry best practices. Good marketing principles are really built right in.

A fully integrated system that makes it easy to automate workflow, marketing, and sales activities can really enhance both productivity and efficiency for any business. The total cost of Infusionsoft is probably much less than using multiple systems, especially when productivity and efficiency are factored in over time for most businesses.

Infusionsoft Review – What do I think?
Infusionsoft is a stable company that has been in business a long time and is considered a leader in the industry. They focus on helping small business owners accelerate business growth with an easy-to-use, all-in-one solution for lead generation, CRM, lead nurturing, order processing, and customer fulfillment.

In my opinion, this is the best system on the market for small business owners. I have not seen another product that offers a complete solution with the capabilities or effectiveness of Infusionsoft. I definitely believe you should try it for your business.

I hope this Infusionsoft review has helped you,
Michael

Click here to visit the Infusionsoft official website

Infusionsoft, as a company, was started in 2000, so they’ve been in business over 10 years. It wasn’t until 2007 that they adopted their current name. In many ways they are still a small company with a family atmosphere; it was started by two brothers, Scott and Eric Martineau and they brought in Clate Mask, the CEO a year or so later.

Past that beginning, the company’s development over the last 10+ years and especially their rapid growth over the last 3 years has a very focused corporate feel to it. As of this writing, they’ve got over 20,000 subscribers, supported by over 125 employees. In the last few years alone, they have enjoyed an increase of 700% in their customer base. Clearly their growth curve is accelerating, and for a 10 year old company that implies a solid foundation and good business practices.

It’s a software and service company so the first focus was on product development and performance. The company is built around Infusionsoft, the product, so continuous development – adding features and improving performance – will always be a key factor in their success. One of the founders is VP of customer experience, which means that he leads product development and customer service; that reflects the importance the company puts on customer service.

Infusionsoft software is a web-based system which combines email marketing with a powerful CRM database, marketing automation tools, and ecommerce capabilities. It’s designed to be more than a one-stop shop for the small business owner, it’s really the entire marketing engine for the small business owner.

It’s a mouthful to describe Infusionsoft and even more difficult to explain all the capabilities or put them in perspective for an entrepreneur to understand. That is why the company publishes a lot of free ebooks, like “The Edge of Success”, and reports, like “Effective Follow-up Marketing”, and white papers, like “38 Ways to Double Your Sales”. These publications link the customer relationship management, email marketing, and marketing automation capabilities of the product to real life small business marketing needs, challenges, and best practices.

My Infusionsoft review on this blog only scratches the surface, so it’s a good idea to check out some of the other resources the company offers in order to get a fuller picture of the product’s capabilities and how it fits with your business.

Infusionsoft is a solid company with a well-developed product that practices what they preach. It is easy to tell from their own marketing practices and materials that they use their own products and they follow their own advice. And their target customer is established businesses, with an existing customer base, that want effective tools to be able to grow; their ideal customer sounds a lot like the company itself. Just look at the growth Infusionsoft has enjoyed to get a feel for whether the product works.

Click Here for a Comprehensive Infusionsoft Review