Lead(ing) the Revolution

NEW YORK – All leads are not created equal – and therefore, should not be treated equally, reminded Brad Martineau, product manager at Infusionsoft. The small business marketing automation provider held a 22-city Marketing Revolution Tour, informing potential customers of its product and helping existing customers with concerns and growth issues. Martineau, in an intimate presentation at the New York Crowne Plaza hotel, shared with attendees the problems most small businesses haves with converting leads into sales.

With a diagram representation, he demonstrated that leads fall into two buckets: window shoppers and prospective customers. Although you don’t want to cut off all ties for window shoppers, it’s important – especially for a small business – to devote precious time, money, and resource on the right bucket, the prospective customers. However, don’t forget about those window shoppers. Just because they aren’t ready to buy now, doesn’t mean they won’t be ready down the road. Keep them around as “Friends Forever,” Martineau advised.

The biggest problem customers face, Martineau said, is with organization. He often hears businesses say of their prospect organization, “We’ve got some people in Outlook, some in an Excel spreadsheet, some customers in QuickBooks, and some in opportunity tracking. It’s like trying to get a bill through Congress to get them together to do a marketing strategy.” Martineau went into the idea of tagging prospective customers, so that a business can send the right message to the right recipient. Users have more control over this functionality than before with Infusionsoft’s newest release of its marketing automation software.

The upgrades, which the company has now begun to roll out to its existing customers, feature a simplified and easy way to do follow-up sequencing with leads. The software gives users templates and sequence samples to show them how to follow up with customers – and hopefully, increase sales.

“The theme of this new release is that, for small businesses, it is critical that they get value in a day. This is our sort of mantra,” said Scott Martineau, brother to Brad, and Infusionsoft founder and vice president of product. “That might mean a week or five days, but it doesn’t mean value in two years.” He quickly added that small businesses don’t have that kind of time frame to work with.

New features with the Infusionsoft software include:

• A “Getting Started” progress meter shows users how far along users are with lead follow-up sequencing.
• Simplified Broadcast tools make the sending of batch emails quicker and more intuitive.
• Users can now customized their navigation options.
• Makers of email marketing campaigns have extensive preloaded content (more sequences and templates) to choose from.
• The “Fuse Box” destination serves as a help center of sorts, providing videos, how-tos, guides, and a knowledge base.

Scott Martineau added that focus on integrating with other commonly used programs remains a goal. Brad Martineau talked about the concept of seeing the whole product. “The whole product is knowing what your customers need in addition to your product to be successful,” he said. Integrating with applications such as QuickBooks and Microsoft Outlook, and potentially smart phones, is also a goal and the company is moving in that direction.

Earlier this summer, Infusionsoft held a contest called “Edge of Success.” The stakes were high – a free year of Infusionsoft’s marketing software with the bet that Infusionsoft would double the company’s sales within three months. Based on an entry submission conveying a thriving entrepreneurial spirit, Wisconsin-based All About Spelling, a home-schooling materials supplier, was named the winner in early August. Sales results are not yet known, though Martineau said All About Spelling is on the right track to revolutionizing its business.

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