by Jacob Allred | Apr 21, 2015 | Tips
Did you know that Infusionsoft has the built-in ability to copy contacts between Infusionsoft apps, based on any criteria you specify, without having to manually use the API? There are many situations where this could be useful. For example, you may want your UK contacts to go to one app and your US contacts to another. This would allow you to show region-specific pricing options to your contacts. Or maybe you’ve partnered with a business in a related field. Using this technique you can automatically send them any contacts that don’t qualify for your services but do qualify for your partner’s services. To accomplish this we are going to use the relatively unknown and undocumented lead distribution feature. Configuration and usage is fairly simple once you know what you are doing, so I’ll walk you through it. For this tip to be useful you’ll need at least two Infusionsoft apps. For this example we’ll call our apps Washington (to represent an app targeting US contacts) and George (to represent an app targeting UK contacts). Establish a relationship between the apps Open the primary Infusionsoft app. For our example, all of our contacts will be coming into Washington and will be copied to George if they live in the UK, so we need to open the Washington app. Go to Admin→Settings, then choose Relationships in the Collaboration Settings section. This feature uses the API key from the second app, so enter your second app name and API key. For this example, the second app name is George. Click Save. Create a lead distribution rule table Next we need to tell Infusionsoft what our criteria is for copying...
by Jacob Allred | Apr 14, 2015 | Tips
Infusionsoft makes it easy to track any kind of relationship between contacts. For example, your business may want to track which contacts are business partners. Or maybe your business needs to keep track of which contacts are family members, such as husband and wife. Infusionsoft calls this a “relationship link” and gives you the flexibility to configure them in whichever way makes the most sense for your business. To setup a relationship link, pull up a contact in Infusionsoft, and then click the Linked Contacts tab. If you haven’t created any link types yet, you’ll need to click Manage Link Types, then New Link Type. Give your link a name (such as “Spouse”). You can also limit how many contacts can be linked together with this link type. For example, a spouse link type should probably have a limit of 1 because you can only have 1 spouse. Click Save. Next, create the relationship link. To do this, go back to the Linked Contacts tab and search for a contact. Select the type of link and click Save Link. That is it! Once you have a relationship link established, you can merge a linked contact’s details into your email. For example, you might include a reference to a contact’s spouse, or cc a business partner. This will show up in your list of available merge fields under the name of the type of link (such as...
by Jacob Allred | Apr 7, 2015 | Tips
Today we have five tips to help you keep your Infusionsoft data secure. There are many threats to your data: hackers that want to steal your customer data, employees that make mistakes, poorly coded integrations, and software vulnerabilities. These simple steps will help protect your business and your data. Keep your software up-to-date There are many plugins for WordPress and other platforms that make it easier to interact with your Infusionsoft app. Whether you are using free or paid plugins, it is vital that you keep them up-to-date. New versions frequently fix security issues that can leave you at risk to hackers, nosy customers, or unscrupulous competitors. This also applies to your web hosting and server software. It sometimes feels like a major security threat is being discovered every other day. Regularly updating your server software will protect you from these serious vulnerabilities. Use Infusionsoft’s user permissions feature Infusionsoft provides a method of controlling what a user can do inside of your Infusionsoft app. For example, you can restrict your employees so they aren’t able to delete contacts, or even limit what contacts they are allowed to see. In general, a user should only be given the permissions required for them to perform their job function. This limits your risk of data loss or theft by your employees. You may want to consider disabling access altogether for employees that don’t have a genuine need to interact with Infusionsoft. If you have several users that are only using Infusionsoft for viewing data (such as reporting), it may be cost effective to deactivate their Infusionsoft accounts and instead set up reports using a tool like Data Warehouse. Be...
by Jacob Allred | Mar 31, 2015 | Tips
Have you ever wondered how changes to a live campaign might affect your contacts currently in the sequence? Adjustments sometimes need to be made to campaigns that already have contacts in them. How does Infusionsoft decide whether a new sequence item applies to a contact? Today we clarify what happens to a contact’s position in the sequence as new sequence items are added. When an item is added and the campaign is published, Infusionsoft will recalculate each contact’s position in the sequence based on past steps accomplished. The recalculation retraces the steps of emails, timers, and other actions from the beginning to determine the contact’s current position. The rule of thumb for an additions to a sequence is seven days. If the new step will be accomplished in the future, then it will occur at the appropriate time. If, instead, the step was set to happen in the past seven days, then it will proceed immediately. However, when the step was set to happen longer than seven days ago, the action will be skipped and the contact will be pushed along in the sequence. To make this easier to understand, let’s look at an example. Our imaginary live campaign is set to deliver two emails: email #1, wait five days, email #2. The sequence is readjusted to include a third email, #1.5, only two days after the first email is sent. Adam entered the original sequence. He received Email #1. After three days, you decide to add an additional email, Email #1.5. You add the email, adjust the timers, and publish the changes. Infusionsoft recalculates Adam’s position in the campaign and concludes that Email #1.5 should...
by Jacob Allred | Mar 24, 2015 | Tips
Have you ever wanted to run a certain campaign sequence but only if the contact enters a campaign during a specific time period? Perhaps not, but there are some interesting things you could do with this capability. For example, you may want to email a new lead to let them know that your office is closed for the day, and they can expect to hear from you on the next business day. This email should only go out if the contact requests information after your office is closed for the day. Postponing the sequence won’t work, because that will just guarantee that every contact will eventually get an after hours email. Instead, we only want to send the email if the contact enters a campaign during a specific time period. If they enter the campaign during business hours, we never want the email to get sent. If you are handling support for your products through your Infusionsoft app, you could do something similar. If someone fills out your support web form after hours, you could send them an email letting them know not only that you got their request but also an estimate of when it will be handled. Follow below for instructions on how to set this up. Get the free script I haven’t been able to figure out a way to accomplish this without using the API. If you know how, please let me know! It’d be great to cut the API out of this process. Until a better way is discovered, I’ve written a simple script and included it with the examples in the Novak Solutions Infusionsoft SDK. Get a copy of the...
