Infusionsoft Affiliate Module Overall Grade: C-

The big problem with Infusionsoft’s Affiliate Module is that it relies on the Shopping Cart! And, as we already discussed, the shopping cart is a very big weakness of Infusionsoft.

Credit for an affiliate sale is given when a sale is completed. But the sale has to go through the shopping cart, so you have to use the shopping cart for the Affiliate functions to work.

For most of my clients, I have not been able to use the shopping cart, so I have not had the need to do a deep dive into the Affiliate functions. If the shopping cart is suitable for your business, I would give the Affiliate module a much higher grade — At least a B+.

• It supports multiple Affiliate levels
• Affiliates can login and setup their marketing programs, and you can create marketing resources for them.
• You can vary the Affiliate payouts by product and setup different Affiliate programs.

Maybe Infusionsoft will fix their shopping cart, and the Affiliate module will become useful for many more clients!

Clarke Bishop Infusionsoft Affiliate Module, Infusionsoft, Shopping Cart

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.

Clarke Bishop Infusionsoft Infusionsoft, Shopping Cart

Infusionsoft Automation & Multimedia Marketing Overall Grade: A+

Infusionsoft’s follow-up sequences and automation take Autoresponders to the next level. Plus, you can do more than just send email — Letters, faxes, voice mail, and more are all supported.

Nearly anything that happens in Infusionsoft can trigger an Action Set — A group of actions that can including adding the contact to a  follow-up sequence:

• A new opt-in via a web form
• A purchase
• A recurring charge that failed
• A specific date passed (A birthday or an event date)
• A click on a link in an email message
• A manual trigger by one of your sales or support employees
• An event external to Infusionsoft that triggers via the software API

Action sets can include many actions like:

• Tagging a contact to segment your database
• Sending a single email to a contact
• Adding the contact to a follow-up sequence (multiple emails or other media)
• Assign the contact to a specific sales or support employee
• Create a task for an employee
• Create an Opportunity Record
• Create an Order

Follow-up sequences let you schedule a sequence of follow-up activities for a specific contact. People are busy, and staying in touch helps them learn about your company and use your products. More on how to use Follow-up Sequences …

Follow-up sequences can contain many types of multimedia and activities:

• Email messages
• Fax (There is a per fax fee)
• Voice Message (There is a per message fee)
• Letter (You have to pay for printing and postage)
• Fulfillment (You have to pay for fulfillment costs like the product or printing, shipping, and handling)
• Add a task to one of your users
• Run some other Action Set

There is a lot of flexibility regarding how and when each of these follow-up activities happen. You can add rules that control most activities and can have people automatically removed or switched to another follow-up sequence.

In working with Infusionsoft customers, I have always been able to create workable follow-ups and automation.  Sometimes it takes a little creativity, but there’s usually a way.

Automation and Multimedia follow-up are truly strengths of Infusionsoft.

Clarke Bishop Infusionsoft eMail Marketing, Infusionsoft, Marketing Automation

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.

Clarke Bishop Infusionsoft