Infusionsoft Email Marketing Overall Grade:  A-

4-8-2011 Update: In the last few months, Infusionsoft has added some new features, so I am upgrading Email Marketing from a B+ to an A-.

Email marketing is one of the best features of Infusionsoft. They do a good job with deliverability, and have all the common functions you need to execute effective email marketing campaigns.

The pricing is competitive, too. For 25,000 emails per month, MailChimp charges $250 (1-cent per message is a typical cost). But, that’s just for sending the email messages. Infusionsoft gives you the whole product (CRM and everything else) for $199 — And that includes 25,000 emails per month.

Why an B+ instead of an A+?

• They stick a message at the bottom of each message that says “Delivered by Infusionsoft.” They’ve been talking about letting you pay extra to get rid of this, but that doesn’t seem reasonable to me.
• The messages come from Bounce@Infusionsoft.com. You can’t change this. More on this problem …
• Most of the reports you’ll want are available, but they could be easier to use.  More on this …
  Also, there’s no real support for split-testing messages. Supposedly, this is in the works …
  You can’t access the email statistics via the API
• The base product doesn’t offer email spam scoring so you can check for messages that are likely to get trapped by spam filters. 4-8-2011 There is now built-in spam scoring. However, in some limited tests I did, it may not be that sensitive (It scores most message a 0, meaning no spam. I had to try very hard to create a spammy message that would register above 0!)
  
• You can’t easily have an HTML page that mirrors the content of the message. So, you can’t do a “Click to see this in your browser” link. 4-8-2011 There is now an Email merge code (~HostedEmail.Link~) that will insert this into your messages: “3 Key Areas <!– /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:”Cambria Math”; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1107304683 0 0 159 0;} @font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4; mso-font-alt:Calibri; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1073750139 0 0 159 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:”"; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:”Times New Roman”,”serif”; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;} a:link, span.MsoHyperlink {mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; color:blue; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed {mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; color:purple; mso-themecolor:followedhyperlink; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-size:10.0pt; mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} –> Having trouble viewing this email? Click here .“

For many small businesses, these are mostly annoyances. Improving your follow-up and communication with customers can be very valuable — Even if it isn’t perfectly branded and smooth.

Infusionsoft Email Marketing probably isn’t a good fit for you if:

• You spend a lot of time and energy on your brand and customer experience, and you want your messages “just so.”
• You are an analytics wizard and you want to know everything about email deliverability, email metrics, etc.

There are a couple of other nice features that I should mention:

• There’s a plugin for Outlook that lets you integrate Outlook with Infusionsoft. You can even use Outlook to send email through Infusionsoft! It’s only available for Outlook, though. This really helps if you are using the CRM features in Infusionsoft.
• You can include trackable links in a message. You can use this to trigger Automation and Segmentation events.
• You can setup sequences of emails that happen according to various rules. For example, you can setup a sequence that goes out every 4 days after someone completes an opt-in form on your website.

Here are a couple of other articles from Greased Skid:

• Infusionsoft is Great for Email and Follow-up
• Infusionsoft Outlook Integration
• eMail Deliverability Reports in Infusionsoft

If I missed anything, or you disagree, please leave a comment. If you want to see an example of an Infusionsoft Email, complete the form at:

Clarke Bishop Infusionsoft eMail Marketing, Infusionsoft, Review

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