AP 0644: Have You Used Infusionsoft?

AskPat 644 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody. Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 644 of AskPat. Thanks so much, for joining me today. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions, five days a week. We have a great question today from Jen.

Real quick, today, I'd like to tell you about today's sponsor, which is Designcrowd.com, it's D-E-S-I-G-N-C-R-O-W-D.com. Designcrowd.com helps entrepreneurs and small businesses outsource, or what's called crowdsource, custom graphic logo and web design, from designers all around the world. Design Crowd has over a half a million designers from over 100 countries ready to help you with any design projects you might have. Check out designcrowd.com to learn more and get started at designcrowd.com/askpat for a special VIP offer, just for our listeners, again, that's designcrowd.com/askpat. Here we go.

Jen: Hey Pat, this is Jen and I just had a quick question about Infusionsoft, if you have heard of it, I'm sure you've heard of it, if you've used it, I was just looking at some of the programs that you use to do different things on your resources page and I was just curious if you had any knowledge about Infusionsoft and if you use it or if the other programs you have take the place of that. That's all, thanks.

Pat Flynn: Hey Jen, what's up, hope you're doing well. Thank you so much for the question today. I do have experience with Infusionsoft, I no longer use it, I'm using another tool in its place, but it doesn't necessarily replace it. Let me tell you exactly what that means because that might sound confusing.

Well, here's the quick story. I wrote a post about this actually, about my transition from, it was called AWeber, which is an email service provider, to Infusionsoft and why I left Infusionsoft to go to ConvertKit. I still recommend Infusionsoft for a lot of people, but its not for everybody and its not for me, which is why I left. I'm going to link to that post in the show notes of this episode on AskPat.com, again this is episode 644. Look through the show notes, look for that link. It just goes through, literally, 8,000 to 10,000 words of the story if you're interested.

Just to give you the quick rundown, AWeber was serving me very well as an email service provider. However, there were some things I wanted to do, in order to segment my list and tag that, they just didn't have the capability of doing. I heard that Infusionsoft was great, a number of people who I respect, who I'm friends with, recommend it to me, I wound up getting on board with it. I used it for a while and I found out that as powerful as it is, personally, with what I was trying to do, I was only utilizing about 10 percent of its power, its capability. Additionally, I found that it was very, very hard for me to wrap my head around exactly how it all worked. And there are companies out there that exist, that are built to help people figure out Infusionsoft.

Now, that there's a couple angles to that. The first one is, well, that's a sign that this isn't push-button easy software, so if you're looking for something that's push-button easy, I would not recommend Infusionsoft. However, that being said, because there are companies out there serving these people who need help with Infusionsoft, I mean man, you know there's something powerful going on there. So, this software is really, really, really, really amazing once you learn how to use it and some of my favorite online marketers use it. Ramit Sethi, he just has, probably, the most, or one of the best email campaigns and ways of segmenting and just delivering email content that seems so to matter just to me and based off of products they get, shows other things, just amazing.

Those are some of the powerful things you can do with something like Infusionsoft and I found that after a lot of struggle, trial and error and even hiring other companies to help me with my Infusionsoft campaign. It didn't make sense for me and my team and we found another solution that was better for what we were doing. And in this moment in time, I didn't have any product to sell and I think that if you have products to sell, especially if you have multiple products, and you have different up sales and down sales and things that happen when people purchase one product that has to happen to promote another product and all those kinds of things, then Infusionsoft would work. And it would be worth working with another company out there who could potentially help you.

I know you're probably like, “Well, what's one of those companies, if you are indeed going to be interested in Infusionsoft?” My good friend, Greg Hickman, he has a company at system.ly. So systemly: System, L-Y. He has a company that helps you with your campaigns, so you can check that out. There's a number of other ones out there too. Some very very expensive. Some on the lower end. But that was my experience with Infusionsoft and I moved over to ConvertKit. And ConvertKit is an email service provider. It's much more than, lets say, AWeber is, or MailChimp, or Constant Contact, or GetResponse. They have some amazing tagging and sequencing capabilities and that was exactly what I wanted. It allows me to segment my audience with stuff that I do, with my email list, but also my audience can cell segment into certain different sequences based on what forms they get or what downloads they have, and that allows me to better deliver content that matters to them, and I've seen a massive increase. A massive increase in my open rates.

It's switched from, when I had just one list on AWeber, and even in Infusionsoft, when I'd send an email out to everybody, it was about a 20 percent open rate. And now when people are in a specific sequence based on the actions that they take or the downloads that they download or the content that they read and take action with and subscribe on, I'm seeing upwards of 65 to 70 percent open rate. And clickthroughs went to about 2.5 percent all the way up to 8 and 10 percent on emails. Now, of course, there's a lot of other factors involved, such as the copy of the subject line, the copy in and around the call to actions and that sort of thing. So, of course, those come to play but that's such a significant increase than what it was before. It is because I'm sequencing and tagging and doing all these different things to learn more about who my subscribers are so I can better serve them stuff.

Now, I will say ConvertKit is just perfect for where I'm at and perfect for those who are just starting out with the email marketing who want to learn more about their audience and self segment and that sort of stuff. But if you have multiple products, e-commerce, that sort of thing, that's not a capability, at least in this moment in time, ConvertKit has. I'm also, just full disclosure, am an advisor for ConvertKit. And its actually, personally I think, not trying to be an Infusionsoft. They're just trying really to own the email service provider space for people who have blogs, who want to build their subscriber base. That's really what they're doing. It's just an amazing piece of software. So, my affiliate link for ConvertKit, if you're interested in it, Jen this isn't for you, its just for everyone out there who's listening, who might resonate with what I just said, askpat.com/convertkit again at askpat.com/convertkit.

Now, I will say, I was actually invited to speak at Partner Con which is a conference that Infusionsoft puts on for their partners and it was an amazing event. Absolutely amazing, I got to meet a lot of the team members over there that are based out of Arizona, and they are some of the nicest people I know. And I heard directly from the CEO of the company that they're doing things to improve the user experience. Make it easier for people. That was a couple years ago but it really resonated with me, but even though I had that message, I needed something quicker, in terms of a solution that worked for me and where I'm at. So, I would highly recommend talking to other people, Jen, about their experience with it too. Because I only scratched the surface with it and it depends on what you're doing and what your goals are, and how that aligns with the people that you talked to too, and what they have to share as well. So, that's my experience and it's not something that I would not recommend, but for me and for those who are just starting out with blogging, building an email list, I recommend maybe going with something like ConvertKit.

So, thank you so much Jen, I appreciate you. We're going to send you an AskPat the-shirt for having your question featured here on the show. And for those of you listening, if you have a question you'd like potentially featured on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com, you can ask right there on that page.

Thank you so much, I appreciate you, and here's a quote to finish off the day, as always, by David Ogilvy. He says, “Don't bunt. Aim out of the park. Aim for the company of immortals.”

Cheers, take care, and I'll see you next week in the next episode of AskPat, thanks so much. Bye. Oh and if you have a sec, if you haven't done so yet, head on over to iTunes and leave a review for AskPat. That'd be super helpful. It helps out so, so much. I appreciate you. Thank you. Bye.