I passed it to Infusionsoft via the URL like this Order0_OrderID=12345. Infusionsoft will automatically add the information to the custom order field I had already created.

I haven’t used 1ShoppingCart much or even evaluated it that thoroughly. I usually recommend Volusion’s shopping cart along with Infusionsoft for a really strong eCommerce site.

Infusionsoft does have some shortcomings. I wrote an extended review if you’d like to know more. Overall, Infusionsoft can be a big help for companies — I’m using it for some of my internal projects. You just have to make sure it’s a fit for your situation.

If I had it to do all over again, I would not be using infusionsoft. But now, with a huge database it is too hard to transfer to something else. So, I’m stuck.

Sorry for the confusion!

I did write a complete review of Infusionsoft and you might want to have a look to see which types of situations are the best fit.

I think the reality is that effective marketing requires real work! There just aren’t any shortcuts. I use Infusionsoft to run my business, but like all marketing it sometimes takes some work.

I have a sales rep scheduled to call me at 3:30 today… this thread does not help. I have limited patience with buggy software, and even less with a co. that gives the run-around.

Damn. It sounded so perfect…

Is there any way to hide these opening and closing tags?

The trouble with Infusionsoft and much of online marketing for that matter is that doing it well requires a lot of work and/or a steep learning curve. But, companies marketing products in this space often downplay the difficulty. Even experienced developers sometimes still have a learning curve.

Membership sites are especially challenging, and that’s why I usually build them for my clients!

The good:
Well, IS (InfusionSoft) seems to have some good “potential”

The bad:
Is is so terribly “buggy” that I really cannot take advantage of most of the “potentially” good functions.

Here’s the deal; something as simple as an email editor should work fine 99% of the time. However, I find that with IS, it works less than half the time. It either is EXTREMELY slow (can take a minute or more sometimes to simply move the cursor position) or it seems to BOLD everything randomly, or it just doesn’t save your changes. As a note: On the “BOLD text issue I got an email form a support rep saying they looked at my issue and the problem “seemed to be fixed” then I went back in and it actually wasn’t. Funny also that I was told this was a “known bug” so why was my acct. mysteriously “fixed” 5 minutes later.

Now, I will tell you that I am no developer, but I am also no idiot. I have lots of experience with similar tools PLUS my DEVELOPER is highly experienced and has the same issues (ie: these are NOT “user error”). On one occasion, the support rep actually said (when he couldn’t fix our issue) “well, you guys see the potential IS has, so try to use it…” Seriously? Was he telling us that somewhere way out in the distant future that we will like this product when they finally release it’s true potential? In other words, WE are living in the past while IS is somewhere way out there in the future? My developer and I seriously laughed at this and said “we better tune up our Flux Capacitor and get this baby up to 88 MPH!” (sorry-bad “Back to the Future” reference)….So, I would say emphatically, that there are support issues and bug issues, and that the claims here are valid.

After weeks of creating campaigns (very simple and basic email follow-up sequences) we test them and NOW the html links appear as text links…hmmmmm…they WORKED when we tested the emails upon creation. I am afraid to call support on this because, well, last time we were told “you need to clear your cookies”-huh? How in the world will this have ANY effect on email delivery within the system?…nevertheless, we tried this last time we had email issues to no avail…..We were also told “the editor only works in Firefox” (ironically, FF is exactly what we BOTH were using…but a note somewhere saying this would be a nice thing to have, in case you weren’t using FF and wasted a lot of time fighting IS).

We have also been told things like “well, the editor was so powerful that we didn’t want people to miss out on being able to use it right now, so we put it out there”-REALLY? hhhhmmmmm……interesting concept…..I ordered pizza on Friday night. If the delivery driver showed up with a box that had a half-baked gooey pizza inside and told me that their new recipe they were working on “was so delicious that that they just wanted to get it out there”, I swear he would WEAR that half-cooked dough back to the shop.

So, end of my rant is this:

I would LOVE for IS to work out. It DOES seem to have great potential. But it is so damn buggy……OK I seriously JUST got a call from my developer while I am writing this declaring “I will NEVER log into your account again. I spent 30 minutes for this guy to say “oh…just tell your client that we have a bug”"-WTF?!!!

Holy crap! Seriously, this is 1000% true. I am beyond response at this time.

IS could be very powerful. It just is not NOW. So what do I do? Weeks of programing and we are stuck AND out of money (even for the membership plugin that they recommended.). I do not WANT to cancel IS because I have too much effort into it. I just want it to work. I will fight the bugs and pray that we get traction and that the campaigns are actually working. I guess we will go on faith and constantly check reports. Now with the issue with my developer, I have lost another day.

These are not my only issues. I just do not have the time or energy to write about all of them. I am going back to trying to work with IS.

Do not by IS until the bugs are worked out. You will be disappointed. In fairness, the “potential” is there. They just have a lot to work out.

Your solution worked like a charm! Thank you for sharing this information with everyone!

A couple of months ago, I wrote up a detailed review of Infusionsoft that might help you or others see whether it’s right for you.

Clarke

Like every SOHO biz owner, time is precious. If we have to screw around working out the bugs in a system like Infusionsoft then why do it? it’s crazy.

We have a similar email marketing system (but far less robust) at Solid Cactus that’s only $30.00 per month but I was looking for something better. The moral of the story . . . the grass in not greener. Thank you, everyone, for you comments. You saved me a ton of time and way more in frustration.

Good luck,

Jose

Ultimately, all the email open metric measures is the number of times the unique image was requested from the server. So, if you click the message in gmail to display it, and then click the browser’s refresh button, you’ll get multiple opens. Gmail does a bunch of AJAX javascript and other tricks, so they may be automatically reloading the page.

As far as Wednesday/Thursday, sometimes you can get some surprising time zone effects — Especially if the server is recording GMT. Mostly Infusionsoft runs their servers on Eastern Time, but you never know.

One last thing. By default Gmail does not load images. You’d have to specifically ask Gmail to Display Images to even be counted as an open!

I’m assuming that the order fields are showing up when your cart is displayed? Check the field names — All this is very sensitive. The names are case sensitive.

And, it’s always possible the Infusionsoft has changed or broken something. Hopefully not, but I have seen some problems lately.

Thanks,

Brett