It IS possible to send SMS text messages as part of a follow-up sequence from Infusionsoft!

There are a couple of tricks, though.

• You have to buy an external SMS text messaging service like Clickatell.
• Set the To address for the template to: sms@messaging.clickatell.com, and all messages get sent to this address.
• In the body of the message, embed a custom field with the contact’s SMS phone number. The number should be unformatted to match Clickatell’s requirements.

You can’t use one of Infusionsoft’s phone number fields because it automatically formats the number and Clickatell won’t work right! But, if you just use a Custom field, then everything will be OK.

I made this work with Clickatell’s SMTP API, by sending an email template like this:

user:xxxxx   {Your specific Clickatell info}
password:xxxxx   {Your specific Clickatell info}
api_id:xxxxx    {Your specific Clickatell info}
to: 448311234567  {Insert the custom field data here}
reply:youremail@yourdomain.com
text:Meet me at home {This is the message you want to send}

I hope this helps. There’s also more on the Infusionsoft Blog.

Clarke Bishop Infusionsoft

Mike asked a question about eMail Deliverability Reports in Infusionsoft:

First of all, as a newbie to Infusionsoft, its good to find your site and the pdf download (the analytics clickable links helped already).

My question is, is there a way to get an email deliverability (opens/clicks/hard and soft bounces etc) for all emails sent over a certain period?

I’d love to see Infusionsoft improve their reporting or open up more of the data to the API so I could create better reports.

One report you can run is the Email Batch Status report (Under Reports –> Marketing Reports). Then, click the View button to see the report.

It’s not obvious, but you can click on the pie charts to get more detail! If you want a more detailed explanation, please download my free special report: Infusionsoft: 7 Keys to Top Results. Key number 6 has some detailed information on how to use the pie charts and get all the information.

You can also request new features at ideas.infusionsoft.com.  They do pay attention and do implement some of the requests!

Please leave a comment if you have other questions!

Clarke Bishop Infusionsoft

Conrad asked about using Infusionsoft web forms inside of WordPress:

Can I put Infusionsoft forms in a Wordpress blog?

Is there a plug-in?

This is actually quite easy, and here’s a movie that shows you how to use Infusionsoft Web Forms in WordPress:

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

Basically, the steps are:

• Create the Web Form in Infusionsoft
• Click the “Gimme the Code” button, select all (ctrl-A), and copy (ctrl-c)
• Create a WordPress Post or Page and click the HTML tab in the WordPress editor
• Paste in the Infusionsoft web form code
• Edit the web form code to clean it up or style it if you want
• Switch back to Visual mode and add other text, images, etc.

Clarke Bishop Infusionsoft Infusionsoft, Web Forms, Wordpress

Malcolm asked about marketing automation and follow-up:

Email campaigns based on purchases

Generate a “send person A written Thank You card″ or something like that.

I have no e-commerce or web-based sales… I just want something to manage email and real mail campaigns based on clients’ potential interests or recent purchases or referrals.

I’d also like to provide people the opportunity to “request information” off my website so I can (A) send them info, and (B) capture their contact info for additional contact later to try to win them over as a client.

Once you DO get someone as a client, how do you track their change in status?

Much of our business is run off a SQL database kinda program I suspect there would be a lot of manual data entry or updating as our clients buy things or refer people or what have you.

Since much of my business is run on a different program, I wonder if automating my email and regular mail campaigns is kind of like looking for a unicorn.

In another post, I described how Infusionsoft is Great for Email and Follow-up — This is really a strength of the product!  This post goes into detail on how you can define customer follow-up sequences that:

• Send written Thank You cards or other physical packages
• Send different messages or items based various rules involving customer interests or recent purchases
• Have multiple steps over time to stay in touch with your prospect

But Malcolm also raises another question. What if you already have a customer database you’re using to manage your business? Depending on your situation, there are two fundamental options:

• Replace your existing customer database with Infusionsoft. As long as your database is clean and well structured, you can easily import all your customer information. Infusionsoft allows you to create up to 100 custom fields for your specific situation. Amd, if you need to, you can integrate Infusionsoft with your external applications with the API.
• Keep your existing customer database, but synchronize the contact information with Infusionsoft. This may require using the Infusionsoft API to keep everything up to date.

Infusionsoft will only email contacts that are imported into your Infusionsoft application. So, you can’t avoid keeping all your contacts in Infusionsoft.Either way, giving people the opportunity to “request information” off your website is simple. You just create an Infusionsoft web form and put the code on your website. Then, the propspects information is automatically captured in Infusionsoft.

For more information, see our special report: Infusionsoft: 7 Keys to Top Results.

And, thanks again for the great question, Malcolm!

Clarke Bishop Infusionsoft eMail Marketing, Infusionsoft, Marketing Automation