Editor’s Note: In conjunction with our new website launch in July, we are introducing a new newsletter.  Consider this inaugural issue a “sneak peek” of the new Infusionsoft branding you’ll see in July.

7 Steps That Will Transform Your Business

Adhering to the 7 steps of the Perfect Customer Lifecycle will help you build a fail-proof marketing plan for your small business.  What are the 7 steps? 1) Attract Traffic, 2) Capture Leads, 3) Nurture Prospects, 4) Convert Sales, 5) Deliver & Satisfy, 6) Upsell Customers, and 7) Get Referrals.  Sounds simple, right?  But actually executing against these seven steps requires a toolbox of tactics and techniques. Read how to do it in the Small Business Marketing Guide.

Marketing Automation Success Story: Hear & Play Music

Hear & Play Music founder Jermaine Griggs has used Infusionsoft to double the profits for his “learn to play music by ear” teaching system. Not coincidentally, he was also honored as the 2011 Infusionsoft Ultimate Marketer.

For the first time, we are providing free access to the video of Jermaine Griggs’ presentation at InfusionCon, where he specifically details the tactics he used to create his marketing automation success story. You must watch this video! You can see it right here.

Infusionsoft Views: Securely Storing Credit Card Numbers

By Infusionsoft Product Development

The credit card information you take through an Infusionsoft order form, through the shopping cart, or enter as part of recording an order payment manually is automatically encrypted. This protects your customers from credit card fraud and protects you from issues that might otherwise arise. If you have been storing credit card numbers in any other Infusionsoft fields, you are putting your company at risk. Read More

Marketing Idea of the Month:  The Unique Selling Proposition

One key to marketing success that many small businesses overlook is development of their Unique Selling Proposition (USP).  What is a USP?  It’s the one thing about the product or service you’re offering that differentiates you from your competition. And it answers the primary question of all prospective customers – “Why should I buy from you? “.

For FedEx, the USP (for a long time) was “when it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight”. For Netflix, the USP was “no more trips to the video store, no more late fees, and no cost to return DVDs”.

Your USP should be something that sets you apart from all competitors in your category. It could be price, it could be product details, it could be service and support, it could even be a guarantee.  Whatever your USP is, make sure that it’s truly unique, hard to imitate, and powerful enough to capture the attention of your target audience. Once you develop your Unique Selling Proposition, you’ll find that everything else in your business will fall in place to support it.

Resource of the Month: Get A Handle On The Reputation Of Your Business With Addictomatic

Each month we scour the web for free, useful tools that help you market your business.  This month we are focusing on a social media tool.  As your business grows, you may need to establish a “listening post” that tracks what your customers, prospects and competition are saying about you.  This will help you understand who your champions and detractors are, provide you with feedback on how you are perceived in the marketplace, give you ideas for new opportunities, and identify any external threats.

There are many web/social media monitoring tools out there that can aggregate all this data for you on one web page.  One of the easiest tools to use is Addictomatic.  Go to www.addictomatic.com and enter your company name (or product name) in the “Create” box. You’ll instantly create a web page which will show all references to you across Twitter, blogs, websites, YouTube, search engines and more.

Add-On of the Month: CustomerHub

CustomerHub is an Infusionsoft partner that enables you to create a content-rich, password protected membership site using video, audio and other multimedia. And it seamlessly integrates with Infusionsoft.  If you’re interested in a solution that automates your membership process and leverages Infusionsoft functionality while you run your business, then we encourage you to check them out.

CustomerHub and Infusionsoft will host a joint webinar - “Maximize Your Profits through Automated Membership Sites” – on June 29th that will focus on the essential tactics for successfully selling your content online through a membership site. If you’re running a membership site (or even considering it), you really need to attend. You can get all the details here.

Ask the Experts

Question: “How can I tag a person when they open an email I’ve sent?”

Answer:
There is no automatic function to tag people when they open an email, but you can still do it fairly easily. Go to Reports,  Marketing Reports,  Email Batch Status and click View on the desired email broadcast. Click on the pie chart for emails delivered, then again for all those who opened. This will take you to the list of contacts who opened the  email. From here, simply apply an action to set an “opened email” tag and you’ll be ready to follow up with them.

Do you have an application question? Be sure to check out our all-new HelpCenter — featuring an expanded “search” function – premiering in early July!

Important Dates

June 24th – Customer Tour Event in San Diego
June 29th – “Maximize Your Profits through Automated Membership Sites” – Webinar
July 29th – Customer Tour Event in NYC area

I can’t believe it’s March already and InfusionCon is right upon us.  I love InfusionCon because I get to see a ton of customers all at once. And I get to hear the great things our customers are doing in their businesses. I must admit, I especially enjoy hearing how our customers are using Infusionsoft. As you know, our Dream is “to revolutionize the way small businesses grow.” Never is that revolution more apparent than at InfusionCon. I hope you’ll be there.  Here are six reasons why you should attend:

1. Learn how to use Infusionsoft to more effectively grow your business.
2. Get access to experts who can work with you in your app right at the conference.
3. Learn marketing automation strategy and other business growth strategies from speakers.
4. Network with other entrepreneurs to get tips and tricks about growing your business.
5. Bend the ear of Infusionsoft execs and employees to tell us what you want.
6. See the new features in the software that you never knew were at your fingertips.

Watch this short video where I explain what I like about InfusionCon:

Our software update is a biggie. Especially because the release that’s currently rolling out is so meaningful to our customers. We’ve made it easy to design and publish beautiful web forms, without having to hire a graphic designer and/or webmaster. We’ve created integrated spam score checking. We’ve extended the compatibility of our Drag ‘n’ Drop Email Builder so that it works with all major browsers (if you’re not using it, you SHOULD!). And we’ve done some amazing things to make it easy to create campaigns in the app.  (Hint: no more bouncing around to multiple areas of the app to build out a campaign—it’s all in one central “Campaigns” location!)  Plus, there are a bunch of other things many of our users will benefit from.

These improvements in the software are a huge step forward. Over the past six months, we have re-vamped our Product Development methodology to make it totally customer-centric. And YOU are the big winner in that re-vamping. I am ecstatic that we are developing more and more of the critical features our customers need to achieve the high-level benefits of marketing automation: more time, more money, more control over the business.

I hope you enjoy the software enhancements my team is delivering to you. We’re working hard for you. We’ve amped up our support over the past six months.  We’ve continued to improve our email deliverability to the point we are on par or superior to the top deliverability achievers in the industry.  We have 99.999%+ uptime of the application. And yet, there is much more to do.  We are working tirelessly to make Infusionsoft better for you. I hope to see you at InfusionCon so you can tell me how we’re doing and how we can improve.

Until then, I wish you the best as you grow your business.

Clate

Ready for a fresh, new perspective on entrepreneurship? Then “The Entrepreneur Equation,” by respected business strategist, Carol Roth is a must-read for next month (release date is March 22, 2011). In the book, you’ll discover how to stack the odds of business success in your favor and succeed in the long term.

One of the great things about Carol Roth’s book is that it doesn’t launch into “you-can-do-it” mode. The first few chapters actually challenge whether you should be an entrepreneur at all…even if you already own a business. Carol demystifies entrepreneurship and discusses the realities that you can expect once you venture out on your own.

The bulk of the book focuses on assessing your own situation, skills, ambitions, ideas, motivation and…well…every trait that could make you or break you as an entrepreneur. But along with your personal assessments, the book helps you determine the risks and rewards of a specific opportunity.

The framework in the book is a great analysis whether you are starting a new venture, evaluating the launch of a new product line or service or perhaps overwhelmed and overworked and thinking about changing up your business model.

The Entrepreneur Equation has not yet been released. But if you choose to pre-order the book this week, you are eligible for some of the bonus offers that Carol is giving away. Pre-order and learn more.

As consumers, we all want to feel as if our hard-earned money is appreciated by the businesses we patronize. But as business owners, how often do we give the impression that we simply don’t care?

It’s not that we’re indifferent. It’s just that we’re ridiculously busy. However, it’s the customers perception that matters, so if you want to create and keep good relationships with your customers, you’ve got to show them how much you appreciate them.

Here at Infusionsoft, our favorite way to express our appreciation is though InfusionCon, our annual user conference. Unlike other software conferences that cost an arm and leg to attend, InfusionCon is free—and between the training sessions, free one-on-one marketing consultations, and engaging keynote presentation—our customers get so much value from it that they can’t afford NOT to attend.

Do we recover the money we spend? Not directly. However, we suspect it pays off in customer loyalty further down the road.

If an annual customer event doesn’t make sense for your business, there are a lot of other ways to show you care. Send your customers a gift for no reason. Call them up and ask if the purchase they made last week was satisfactory (and then really listen to the answer). Write a free report or ebook and give it to your customers for free.

Showing your customers you love them may require time or money from you. But the result will be better relationships, repeat business, referrals and ultimately, more profits.

By the way…this year we’ve opened our conference, InfusionCon, to the entire small business community. So please feel free to join us, but act quickly because registration closes on March 11^th. See you there!

Learn more about InfusionCon…

Sometimes, the best thing for your business is not what makes the most sense. Last month we gave you three radical ideas to try in 2011: stop branding your product, give away your trade secrets, and forget the big picture. Ready for two more unconventional ideas?

For the last two ideas, we want you to focus on your customer interactions. After all, without customers, you don’t have a business. These ideas may challenge everything you believe about the best ways to treat your customers but we believe you’ll experience amazing results.

Raise your prices

When times get tough, business owners tend to lower prices in an attempt to attract and keep customers. But if a lack of money is keeping your customer from buying, it’s because they’ve decided they can do without your product or service. Lowering your price does not put more money in their pocket. It just gives your other customers – the ones that still want your service or product – a nice break.

Competing on price is always a risky game. You’ll never be able to offer the lowest price on the market. As John Jantsch, author of Duct Tape Marketing says, “There’s always someone that’s willing to go out of business before you.” So avoid the poor economy panic and stick to your guns.

By raising or maintaining your prices, you are proclaiming to the world that your service or product is valuable. Your price is a clear indication to your customers (and your prospects) that you provide a superior service or product. And those that want it will gladly pay that price.

Rather than dabbling in price-slashing, focus your energy instead on creating products and/or services that have unquestionable value. If the value is there, your most loyal customers will be willing to pay.

Realize the customer isn’t always right

We’ve all got them…customers who will never be happy no matter how much you do for them. They complain. They demand refunds. They will only talk to the manager. And they eat up all your time. If you’ve got customers like that, it’s time you fired them.

The customer is not always right. If you’re spending a large chunk of time on a single customer, it’s time to cut your losses. All your customers deserve your attention. Not just the ones who constantly nag you about something. By firing your bad customers, you can concentrate your efforts on the ones who will make the biggest difference to your bottom line.

Your best customers know your value, they pay you for it, and they send their friends your way. Spend more of your time finding those who will love what you do and become your advocate.

Customers you’ve outgrown probably weren’t a great fit in the first place. And they’re certainly not profitable to keep around. If you can’t give them great customer service (determined by their standards, not yours) it can create a drag on your brand. So, take the advice of John Jantsch and sort through your CRM and fire 10% of your customers. You’ll find you have more time, a better reputation, more profits, and more enjoyable days.

As we said, these are five radical ideas. And you may not be comfortable trying them all. By why not test one of them out. See if it works for you. If it does, then you can spend the rest of 2011 turning your business on its head and enjoying a more productive, profitable year.

2010 was a year of growth and learning for Infusionsoft. We stepped out of our comfort zone to meet our challenges head on, and this is reflected in a new core value we added to our wall—“No Ego, No Fear.”

Core values are at the heart of Infusionsoft’s culture. There are:

• Entrepreneurship – We ourselves are entrepreneurs who empower other entrepreneurs to build and grow their businesses quickly, efficiently and more easily than they ever thought possible.
• Authenticity – We are genuine, transparent and sincere with our co-workers, customers, and ourselves.
• Integrity –We act with integrity in all of our dealings with customers, partners, and fellow employees. You can count on us.
• Passion – We have a true passion for our work to revolutionize the way small businesses grow.
• Compassion – We care and have empathy for our customers. We are here to ease their pains and help them grow their businesses.

The unique challenges we faced in 2010 led to the adoption of a new core value “No Ego, No Fear.”

No Ego.

Ego is one of the leading causes of stagnation in an organization. Why? Because someone with an inflated ego is perfectly content with that status quo and lacks the desire to change things for the better. If we believe our way is always best, we’ll just keep white-knuckling it through the tough times, too proud to make any changes. In the end, ego ensures that we sacrifice progress for comfort.

No Fear.

On the flip side, fear robs us of the courage we need to try new things. There are many things we may fear:  rejection, failure, or even success. But in order for us to truly step out of our comfort zone, we need to lose the fear and have faith in ourselves.

In 2011, it’s time to step outside of your comfort zone. Lose the ego. Lose the fear. Just go out there and take your business (and your life) to new heights.

“Found Money” by Steve Wilkinghoff turns the traditional approach to running a business on its head by challenging small business owners to decide how much money they want to make, and work backwards from there. The book is packed with strategies for taking control of your business finances…and your live.

“Found Money” shows business owners how to look at their finances in an entirely new way by focusing on areas that could be bringing in more money. Instead of talking about expanding into new markets, extending product lines, or acquiring competitors, the author recommends examining things that are already in place in your business but aren’t producing the financial results you want.

Key strategies and tactics include:

• The Triple Overlap – How to find the sweet spot of success as you focus on three important areas of your finances (including net profit, positive cash flow, and ROI).
• Customer Profitability Mapping – How to find your best customers and focus on them.
• Found Money Breakeven – How to decide what end result you want and reverse engineering your actions to make a plan to achieve it.
• Pricing Bootcamp – How to “price on purpose” to make the most of your marketplace.
• Quick-Failing – How to test new ideas before making major changes.

This book is not necessarily an easy read. It is full of complex ideas and terminology, but the author does a good job of breaking things into digestible pieces. It is full of hands-on exercises that make it a valuable reference book that will get plenty of future use.

If you’re looking for way to take control of your finances and start maximize your results, “Found Money” is a great choice. While it might not be a cure-all for your business challenges, it will definitely give you some great ideas to get on the right path. For more information, you can visit the official website.

With every New Year comes an opportunity to reflect on the past and find new and better ways to proceed in the future. If you are game to make a radical change (or two) that will have a huge impact on your business.

As you begin 2011, consider making five simple changes to the way you do business. The recommendations may seem a little crazy at first…even scary. But as you change your perspective, you might just find a way to create more time for yourself and a better bottom line for your business.

Radical Change #1:  Stop Branding Your Product

There are several world-class brands that everyone recognizes:  McDonald’s, Disney, Microsoft, Apple, etc. Because of the immense success of these brands, many small business try to achieve a similar status (on a relative scale) with their product brand. This is a mistake. Why? Because unless you have access to a Madison Ave media buyer and a warehouse full of cash, you won’t be able to brand your product as effectively.

There is something you can do to build a great reputation in your market without breaking your budget—brand yourself! People buy from people, and buyers want to know who you are before they hand over the money. You are a walking billboard for your business and it’s your values, personality, and dedication that will help you sell your product.

There are many ways you can successfully brand yourself. You can use blogs, social media outlets, community involvement, industry forums, events, and more to share your message. Most of these methods are completely free.

If you need a little guidance around how to do this, MyMark (link to:  https://mymark.infusionsoft.com/go/MHP/infusion/vault0111) has developed a system that includes all the tools necessary to brand yourself.  As you successfully show the world who you are, you’ll gain trust, admiration, and eventually a tribe of loyal followers. Sounds a lot like Disney, after all.

Radical Change #2:  Give Away Your Trade Secrets

Behind closed doors, you have “secret” ways of running your business. You are an expert in your field and have likely developed (or discovered) the easiest and most effective way to do what you do. Most business owners horde these trade secrets but doing the opposite can have an incredible impact on your bottom line.

It’s time to share your secrets with the world. If you’re a plumber, offer a free report about how to unclog a bathtub without expensive chemicals? Most people would be provide their email address for that information, giving you an appreciative prospect who now respects you, trusts you, and will come to you when their water heater explodes. When you give away your trade secrets, you become the trusted expert. And you’re the one they’ll find when it’s time to make a purchase.

Radical Change #3:  Forget the Big Picture

Every motivational speech you’ve ever heard has probably emphasized the importance of having a vision of where you are headed. There’s nothing wrong with that – it’s important to think big. But if you don’t start thinking smaller, you’ll never live large.

Let’s put it in terms of a vacation (which is arguably the second most stressful thing next to running your business). If you’re driving to Disneyland, you can’t simply focus on boarding the Teacups or giving Mickey Mouse a hug. You have to make that right turn to get out of your neighborhood, stop at a rest area so your kids can take care of business, etc. You have to focus on one thing at a time, all of which will eventually lead you to the “Happiest Place on Earth.”

The same holds true for your business. While you shouldn’t lose sight of your ultimate goals, you should focus on what is directly in front of you. What do you need to do today to accomplish your goals? Maybe it means that you have to make three calls to potential partners before lunch, write five emails before the end of the day, and complete inventory by Friday. Whatever the case, you need to give yourself manageable (and trackable) goals. Break it down so you know what you have to do in the next 10 minutes to be successful.

So forget the big picture during your work day and start checking off those little goals on your way to the top.

Be sure to check out our newsletter next month when we dive into the final two radical ways to change your business in 2011: “Raise Your Prices” and “The Customer is NOT Always Right.” Happy New Year…onward to your success!

To get where you’re going in your business, chances are you need to rely heavily on a team of some sort – whether it be made up of internal employees, external partners, or even just your support system of friends and family. Patrick Lencioni’s book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, dives right in to help you solve the challenges that face most (if not all) teams in the workplace.

As with most of Lencioni’s books, Five Dysfunctions is written in “fable” style. You’ll follow the day-to-day processes of a real team and the struggles they are facing. Along the way, you’ll discover what you can do better to create a successful, efficient team. The book is easy to read and digest in just a few hours.

Lencioni goes through the Five Dysfunctions in pyramid style, working from the bottom up. The principles are:

• Absence of trust
• Fear of conflict
• Lack of commitment
• Avoidance of accountability
• Inattention to results

And since this book is written in narrative form, you’ll walk away with a true sense of what you can do to change. These aren’t vague principles – they are actionable steps with true-to-life examples of other businesses.

This book might be just the thing you need to get started on the right foot in 2011. Make sure your team is operating together for success – and eliminate the five dysfunctions from your life altogether.

It’s been a great year at Infusionsoft. It hasn’t always been easy, but we’ve definitely grown as a company. We are able to look back on 2010 and be proud of how we were able to help hundreds of small businesses grow. It’s fun to look back and see what we’ve done … but it’s even more fun to look forward.

I can’t wait for 2011! We’re going to continue to bring the best marketing automation software to successful small businesses. Our team is poised to take the software to another level with some amazing new features. We’ll also continue to find new ways to provide the highest level of customer support. 2011 will be Infusionsoft’s best year ever.

Have you made your New Year’s resolutions yet? I hope you’ll take a minute to look ahead to 2011 and set a few goals. There’s nothing stopping you from making it your best year ever.

Happy New Year!

Clate Mask