As a CMAC for over a year (nearly three years now – 2-13-11) I like Infusionsoft and the people.
While I have had some frustration with some features (or lack thereof) the staff has treated me like gold and, no, I don’t think it’s because I’m a CMAC. (I’m not some world-renowned super marketer. Just a former Air Force football player with 6 kids building my own sales and marketing consulting gig in the bowels of SoCal with a passion for sales and marketing training/consulting.)
I am also certified as a trainer with Salesforce.com and I have used SFDC since 2004 with various high tech companies.
With that experience I have no qualms recommending Infusionsoft to small business owners over SFDC. SFDC was meant for large enterprises. SFDC sucks when it comes to helping small businesses market and sell and grow.
I will stipulate that I approach using Infusionsoft from a sales and marketing standpoint vs. a programmer, which I am not.
Infusionsoft has been great for my small business clients that are looking to:
- embed web forms.
- build a database.
- tag that database for future, relevant correspondence.
- communicate with that database regularly with good, relevant content.
- codify and quantify their unique selling propositions to ensure their messaging is delivered to 100% of prospects 100% of the time.
- track open rates with HTML emails and trackable links embedded in the emails.
- process credit cards (ecommerce) for both one time orders and subscriptions via order forms and/or a shopping cart.
- offer an upsell at the time of checkout.
- store and share notes and files/documents with small teams.
- grow.
I’m glad Infusionsoft dropped the $5,000 setup fee. I was not a fan of that at all.
Infusionsoft, when installed and used properly like Gregg LaPore described above, is PERFECT for the one-office dentist, Realtor®, mortgage broker, promotional items company, IT VAR, restaurant owner, etc with 1 – 25 employees and thinks marketing is putting a wrap on their car and their picture on their business card and expect the phone to ring.
I’ve been selling and/or training since 1995 and I can tell you that Infusionsoft and Dan Kennedy made me stretch to fully comprehend and begin to master the art of marketing through persuasive copywriting, consistent follow up and upsells.
Did Infusionsoft sell a little more than they could handle? Probably. (How many small businesses [or former small businesses] wished they had that problem?)
Did it cause some pain for some users? Obviously.
Are some of their sales people a little pushy and cheesy? Yes (but none of them have been through my sales training courses!)
Do any of the sales people possess the power of telekinesis or Jedi Mind Tricks that forced people to buy? Not that I know of.
Do the support staff blow people off? Apparently, but they’ve never done it to me nor any of my clients and I don’t have ESP, telekinesis or Obi Wan’s powers.
Are the support staff inexperienced? I noticed an influx of rookies 6-8 months ago but that seems to have tapered off and the folks I’ve spoken with since then have been fine if not superb.
Is Infusionsoft a better solution for the small businesses I listed above compared to hobbling together Outlook, Excel, 1ShoppingCart, aWeber and ConstantContact and Salesforce.com? Without a doubt.
If you’re a 90 person company with 650 SKUs and you’re growing 50% a year and you’re adding 5 products a month…Infusionsoft may not be right for you…but they admit it.
If you don’t have a list, you’re just starting out online, you’ve never created a webform and you’ve never even used the “Categories” feature in Outlook to segment your contacts, might you be better off with a ConstantContact account for $19 or $29/mo? Probably. But how big do you want to be and how quickly? If the answer is “BIG” and “fast” then it may be worth it for you to start out with Infusionsoft.
If you’re a 10 person company with two sales people and you, the owner, are involved in sales and and you’re doing manual, duplicate entry and sales and leads are falling off the table then Infusionsoft can be a life-saver.
But if you’ve never written a follow-up sequence or exported contacts as CSV files or tagged/categorized contacts, and you can’t explain your own company’s USP and you can’t rattle off in your sleep 3 COMPELLING reasons why I should buy from YOU then you’d be well-advised to take the $5,000 you just saved on the Infusionsoft setup fee and retain someone to help you set all of this up for you FROM DAY ONE!
Why?
Because sales and marketing are:
A) Not the same.
B) Not as easy as it looks.
C) Friggin’ IMPOSSIBLE to master in a timely fashion for the typical “E-Myth” technician that thinks “I can shimmy a door better than my jerk of a boss” and goes out on his own to open his own contracting business only to have his ass, kidneys, liver, lungs, nostrils, knee caps and esophagus handed to him a mere 6 months later after he’s run out of fancy business cards and relatives he can beg business off of.
If you try to duct tape your marketing and bootstrap any platform, in 4 months you’ll be out $800 to $3,000 in consulting in fees, $8-$20,000 in lost opportunity costs, and 80 hours of software-induced frustration and you’ll be posting on here your love for Infusionsoft rather than Infusionsoft is awful or Infusionsoft sucks.
Remember, Life’s too short for follow up calls.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
I am an Infusionsoft certified marketing automation coach or CMAC. I sell and install Infusionsoft. That is for full disclosure.
I also am a small business owner and experienced large corporation manager.
Unfair implied comparison?
I’ve used several CRM’s at enterprise levels but all were very, very expensive and took years to implement. Any griping by IT professionals about various software packages limitations always seem quite odd to me as I’ve watched them develop unnecessary complexity into project after project then point the finger at others over unmanagable/poorly documented programs.
Comparing Infusionsoft with SAP R3, ORACLE, Salesforce.com is an apples and oranges comparison. Alot of IT pros expect any software to be held to the standard of those titans (amazing documenation, 5 years of testing and development pre-release, etc). There is some implied standard in some internet comments which is really this apples/oranges comparison.
Infusionsoft strike zone-best fit
Infusionsoft is fantastic for certain small businesses. If a business needs a solid CRM, marketing system tied to websites with webforms, shopping cart, amazing autoresponders…it is a tool which can make a business alot of money.
Infusionsoft Management Character
The management and staff of Infusionsoft to my experience is top notch. They are aggressive marketers and very principled people. I have seen first hand many situations where Infusionsoft management has always made the right decision. The decision which isn’t easy but they do what is right for the long term and the client. I’ve seen business owners change their mind, break contracts and agreements and Infusionsoft has always do the right thing.
Every person I have dealt with (and that is alot of people) at Infusionsoft are people you would be proud to invite to your home for dinner. You’d be proud to introduce them to your parents and children.
I worked at Johnson & Johnson for many years before becoming an entrepreneur. The quality of character of the management between J&J and Infusionsoft is the same…they are guided by doing the right thing first.
At J&J, we had the Credo…our first obligation was to patients, parents children who use our products, second to our users, third to our communities, next to our employees and finally to our shareholders.
At Infusionsoft they are guided by Mission, Values which I’ve seen tested and they live by. Walking the talk is the real acid test. At Infusionsoft, they walk their talk.
All products are imperfect and unfortunately people are to. I don’t doubt there are many issues which come up. At the end of the day what is important is how they are handled…forth rightly, directly and aggressively. Infusionsoft, to my experience, is great.
The quality and character of management sets a direction and culture of a business. Infusionsoft’s top management is of the highest character.
Last Point
I’ve helped many small businesses benefit from Infusionsoft and make money. That’s the bottom line.
Craig
I like the features of Infusionsoft but it seems a bit pricey. All in all though, it’s an okay system.
Owen,
Thanks for the comment. If you are running a business with fewer than 25 employees and need to grow sales without adding staff there is not a better solution on the market than Infusionsoft. When you say “pricey” let’s look at the alternatives.
As of this writing I have 19,591 contacts in my database. If I were using Aweber to communicate with them it would cost me $149/mo and Contant Contact would run $150/mo. 1ShoppingCart’s Professional Package gives you 10,000 clients for $99/mo. So to get some of the features of Infusionsoft’s Deluxe edition you would need either AWeber or Constant Contact and 1ShoppingCart Professional, which means you’d then have two systems, which need integration, which are opportunities for data loss and redundant effort, and you’ll be spending $250. Infusionsoft’s Deluxe edition gives you two user licenses, 50,000 contacts, 75,000 emails for $299/mo.
That includes the eCommerce and Affiliate modules, hosted CRM, tagging and follow up sequences, opportunity management, reporting, Outlook integration and more. When you look under the hood you quickly realize how misleading – and incomplete – most other offerings really are. Sure, you may be able to save $11 or $17 or even $28.97 a month by rigging your own programs together but is it worth the effort?
If you’d like a 30-day free trial let me know and I’ll walk you through setting up the system and kicking the tires until you’re satisfied with your decision.
Good Selling,
Wes
I’ve been an infusionsoft user for about 5 years now, I was a legacy client who paid nearly 10K for the program.
I truly believe that the concept/vision of the company is GREAT but the execution is far less than acceptable.
I am in a similar business, so I understand the complexities with developing software and customer service.
Over the years I’ve dealt with the inadeqacies that were related to infusionsoft BUT now I’m completely at my breaking point and realize infusionsoft is NOT the end all solution and it probably is a better idea to have multiple solutions that interact than have an “all-in-one” that doesn’t work.
We all know email deliverability is not consistent with Infusion, although it has improved – it’s certainly not even in the same hemisphere as aweber or constant contact.
Now.. what’s thrown me over the edge- Infusionsoft reporting DOESN’T WORK! My team has spent HOURS with support trying to figure out why the reporting #’s aren’t congruent. Recently there was an update made to the projected revenue report, and it doesn’t include a substantial amount of data. The old report was way too high in estimations, now the new report barely counts anything…
BUT.. that’s not what’s forced me to write this.. we’re getting ready for a boutique event tomorrow and we’ve been going through our list of attendees to ensure everyone is paid (daunting task for my team.. but had to be done).. Ops manager was puzzled why an individual who is setup on autobill wasn’t billed (not the first time a massive problem like this has happened with billing)… So back to Infusion customer service… who after having to go back and forth for assistance 8 times finally came up with the problem…
Our system was setup to stop autobilling on clients whose outstanding invoice is not paid for “ONE MONTH” (how it was labeled in the system). So if a payment has not been made in a month then the invoice would automatically be marked as inactive and would NOT autobill… The problem is ONE MONTH to infusionsoft = 30 DAYS.. What happens in a 31 day month you ask????
Well… What happens is all outstanding invoices in a 31 day month get marked inactive and no autobilling takes place…
Tech Support was kind enough to email us an excel sheet of all invoices that were effected by this.. good thing it was only 84 invoices totaling 38491.37
… YEP $38K…
Now.. if they had any type of substantive reporting we could have caught this months ago…
I will say a positive thing along with the negatives… although I will never refer another one of my members to infusionsoft – I do believe it’s their intention to do things right BUT they are stuck with poor execution on the details..
I’ll likely have to stay with them for a while as we create a system to manage the issues we have BUT I am severely disappointed…
Mike,
Thanks for the post. How much have you grown since you invested in InfusionSoft and how much would you say InfusionSoft helped in that growth? Would you say it was a better platform for you when you were smaller?
Wes
The above comment by me, was the first time that I’ve ever written a blog post about a company – positive or negative (that I can remember).
What I can say is this- Infusionsoft responded rapidly to an email that I sent- they quickly are working to resolve the issues. I am satisfied at the response I received form infusionsoft, and agree that the issue that pushed me over the edge was a shared liability.
Both Infusionsoft and I could have prevented this, so I cannot pin the “blame” directly on them 100%.
I look forward to new updates and enhancements that I’ve been notified of. I truly believe in any company that responds to adversity as well they did.
If you’re thinking about using Infusionsoft, don’t let my opinions change your thoughts, we have a unique business with unique needs that always align with everyone else s.
Mike,
Thanks for the feedback. InfusionSoft (and I) readily admit that they are not right for everyone. In fact, InfusionSoft has grown so much they have to use other software for some of their affiliate tracking and reporting as well. However, for the 1-15 person company that is juggling AWeber, Constant Contact, Outlook, Excel, QuickBooks, 1ShoppingCart and who-knows-what-else, InfusionSoft is still the best platform I’ve found to help those entrepreneurs “Conquer The Chaos.”
This is proven daily as I get emails from Dan Kennedy, Perry Marshall, Jay Cross, Ari Galper, Travis Campbell, Robert Skrob, John Carlton, Chris Koehl, Doug Harrison and many other leading marketers and entrepreneurs leveraging InfusionSoft to grow their businesses.