I’m a huge fan of Infusionsoft and what it means for small business. Over the past few years I have been implementing Infusionsoft techniques into all of my client’s websites. If you are unaware of what Infusionsoft is please take the time to read this blog, I’ll explain everything and if you have any questions at the end please feel free to contact me. If you are into increasing your conversion rates, then this is for you.
The story started a few years ago for me when I was working part time as an SEO consultant for a laser eye specialist in Sydney Australia. The way they would communicate with their customers was to send them all the same generic newsletter once a month. This was their technique for marketing to their customers. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with this but if I could go back in time and tell them what I know now, this is what I would tell them.
I would tell them to stop using mailchimp and pay the extra $300 a month for Infusionsoft. You’ll make thousands more per month, the investment will be well worth it.
Infusionsoft is an automated online service that executes e-mails using the parameters that you give it. For example when a new customer makes the decision to get laser eye surgery, you would log into Infusionsoft and enter them into the system. You would tag them in the database as being a new patient. You can create as many tags as you like. If a “new patient” is too general you can have “cataract patient”, “Keratotomy patient” tags etc. From there you can map out the lifecycle of all future customers containing these tags. When I say “lifecycle” I mean you have full control of what personalised e-mails they get and when they get it. The whole process is automated. The only work you do is in the beginning when you are creating the lifecycle & e-mails with the merge fields.
Using the laser eye surgery example this is how I would map it out using the Infusionsoft campaign builder.
We start at the far left of the screen. See the shopping cart representing “new patient”? That represents the lifecycle when a new patient has been entered into the system. The first thing that would happen is Infusionsoft would check if they are already in the system. That’s what that first decision diamond is doing. From there it will determine if the new patient is a returning customer or a new customer. I created this because we always want returning customers to be treated a little differently to new customers.
If it is determined that the patient is returning then the contact will be automatically passed to the “returning customer” sequence. If we double click the “returning customer” sequence then we can see what will happen next.
The returning customer will get the “we appreciate your business” e-mail. This is all automatic by the way. The we appreciate your business e-mail will have the person’s name in the e-mail, for example “Hi Bob”, “Hi Margaret”, it will appear very personalised. The e-mail will be something along the lines of thanking them for choosing our Laser vision centre!
We would then set the timer to wait 1 day. This can be changed by double clicking it. If you want to wait 2 or 3 days that’s fine. At 8am the next day they will automatically be e-mails the “Thanks for coming back e-mail”. This is very powerful! They automated e-mail to be sent at 8am the next day after they were entered into the system will thank them for coming back and how we appreciate their business. We are finally communicating with the customers the way we want, but without having to sit down and do this individually, which on a large scale is impossible.
What happens if it’s the patients first time? Then they are entered into the “new customer sequence”.
This is how I would have the new customer nurturing sequence.
They would get the “we appreciate your business” e-mail. Then after 1 day they get the pre surgery tips e-mail. The pre surgery tips e-mail would be something along the lines of “Hey Michael, we know your surgery is not far off now, here are some things you should know about…. Etc”. You could have 10 e-mails, 1 for every day leading up to the surgery if you like.
Something I learned over the past few years is that the more touches you can have with the customer, the higher percentage chance you have of them recommending you to a friend. Imagine the power of sending these personalised/ automated e-mails. As I said before, the only time you spend on this is creating these sequences, once the person is entered into the system it takes care of the rest.
Going back to the lifecycle overview (so we don’t lose track).
See the image of the person holding their hand in the air with the “had surgery” text. Ok this means that when we tag the customer as having had the surgery, they are pulled out of the returning and new customer sequence. If we don’t tag them as having had the surgery then they’ll just lay dormant.
After the patient has been tagged in the system as having had the surgery they are then automatically sent to the customer follow up nurture sequence.
This is how I would make the follow up sequence look like.
I set the sequence to wait 2 weeks as it will give them ample time to heal. We can make it longer or shorter; you would literally double click the clock image and set the date delay.
The e-mail would be something along the lines of “can you believe it was 2 weeks ago that you had your [insert surgery tag]. We just wanted to check in with you and find out how you are feeling etc etc. Here is where it gets even better! At the bottom of the e-mail you would embed a form asking them to tell us how they are feeling and If they were satisfied with how the surgery went. One of the fields would be a rating out of 10. Depending on what number they select will determine what path they take next in Infusionsoft.
For example if they scored a 7 or above then we adjust the settings on the decision diamond to send them to the “happy customer” sequence.. 6 or below we have them sent to the unhappy customer follow up sequence. If you want you could create 10 different follow sequences based on the score they gave us in the embedded feedback form. Powerful stuff! As you can see from the sequence above I also created a “never responded” sequence. These are for the people that never responded.
Time for some more magic! If someone gave us an awesome rating of 10/10 then we send them to the happy customer sequence. Want to see how I would make this sequence look?
I set it to wait for 2 days. After 2 days they get the “thanks so much e-mail”, in that it would say how changing people’s lives through sight means the world to us. So happy to have made a positive impact in your life! I don’t have this sent out straight away otherwise it will make it seem too robotic. A 2 day buffer from when they gave us the awesome rating gives them the feeling like we read what they had to say, then sent the “thanks so much” e-mail out. In the thanks so much e-mail you don’t sell anything other than trust.
A day later we send them the e-mail asking for a referral. You can even provide an incentive for referrals that they give. The most powerful marketing is word of mouth. The good thing about Infusionsoft is we only ever ask our satisfied customers to provide referrals. Can you imagine asking someone that gave a feedback rating of 3 for a referral? Not cool at all.
At the end of the sequence they are automatically applied a tag. You could call it the happy customer tag. At the end of the day you can pull up all customer from whichever you you wish that have the “happy customer tag”. Very powerful.
You might be wondering what happens if someone does give us a feedback of 3 out of 10. They get sent to the unhappy customer sequence. Hopefully this never happens, but here is how I would have it look.
After 1 day of negative feedback they get sent the “sorry to hear!” e-mail. “Hey John so sorry to hear etc etc”. The e-mail will contain our phone number so they can call to discuss what went wrong. Gives us a chance to diffuse the situation. 2 days later Infusionsoft then sends your sales rep an e-mail telling them to follow up with that particular customer. This is called a task. When the sales rep follows up with the unhappy customer they then mark the task as being complete. Managers can log into infusionsoft and see who has tasks outstanding and get on their case to follow up. Managers now have full control on who is following up and who isn’t. You can also set reminders to follow up if the task hasn’t been marked as complete after the first day.
After the feedback phase satisfied and never responded customers will be sent eye tips for the next 5 years. You can have them be 1 month apart using the timer.
You can also set anniversary dates so after the year mark from having surgery they are sent a “Hey Margaret, can you believe this day a year ago you went in for surgery!” etc etc. You now have the power to communicate with your customers like never before.
I hope this helps some people out there. I have spoken to and helped business owners get as high as 150% increases in sales the year after implementing Infusionsoft customer lifecycle campaigns.