Infusionsoft Tips
Novak Solutions has created these tips as part of our weekly Tuesday’s Tip newsletter. Each week we give a new, absolutely free tip that you can use to get more out of your Infusionsoft app.
Tuesday’s Tip: Improve your site’s performance by changing your inf_contact_key setting
When you link to a website from an Infusionsoft email, Infusionsoft will (by default) add an inf_contact_key parameter to the end of the URL. This parameter is unique for each contact, and can only be used by official Infusionsoft pages (such as order forms and web forms). There is no benefit of having it added to non-Infusionsoft URLs, such as links to your company’s website. Worse, it makes every URL a unique URL. This can prevent your caching from working properly. Instead of loading a cached page, your web or proxy server will have to load the page from scratch. This makes your site load slower and hurts the overall experience for your users. Fortunately Infusionsoft provides an option to keep this from happening. In your Infusionsoft app, go to Marketing→Settings then click on Email Defaults. Scroll down and select Yes for “Only append inf_contact_key to links going to White Listed Domains?”. Make sure infusionsoft.com is listed in the White Listed Domains box. Don’t forget to hit Save! Once this option is set, Infusionsoft will only add the inf_contact_key parameter to links going to infusionsoft.com pages, such as your order forms and shopping carts. Thanks Joe Manna for this tip! Do you have an idea for a tip, or want to share a ninja trick with the Infusionsoft community? Let us...Tuesday’s Tip: Automatically track lead sources using the Infusionsoft tracking code
Do all of your Infusionsoft contacts have lead sources? If you don’t know where your contacts are coming from, then you’ll have a hard time gauging the success of your marketing efforts. Luckily for you, Infusionsoft makes it easy to automatically add a lead source as your contacts are added. All you have to do is make sure your website and landing pages have the appropriate tracking code. To get your tracking code, log into your Infusionsoft app and go to Marketing→Lead Generation. Click the Get Tracking Code for Your Websites button. Your tracking code will appear below the button, as shown in the screenshot. Adding it to your site is pretty easy. Simply copy and paste! If you are using WordPress, you can use the free Infusionsoft Analytics for WordPress plugin to automatically add your tracking code to your site. Configure the plugin with your API key. Your WordPress traffic will now be tracked by Infusionsoft. Be aware, this is an older plugin and there is a risk of compatibility issues. Fortunately, most modern WordPress themes have a setting to inject tracking codes/pixels onto the page. You can use this script from Infusionsoft in the same area(s) you would place a tracking pixel. If you use LeadPages, edit your lead page then go to Lead Page Options. Click Tracking Codes. Copy your tracking code into the End-of-Body-Tag Tracking Code box and click Done. Save your lead page. Your LeadPages traffic will now be tracked by Infusionsoft. You can use the tracking code with any platform that lets you add an HTML snippet. Keep in mind that Infusionsoft already adds the tracking code to all of your infusionsoft.com pages, such...Tuesday’s Tip: Use Infusionsoft merge fields to update your campaign in a single step
Campaign merge fields make it easy to update a field in more than one part of a campaign in just a single step. For example, you may want to update an event date or the name of the product you are currently promoting in several emails. With a campaign merge field, you can update multiple emails and sequences all at once. The first step is to open your campaign and create the merge field. Click the Actions button in the upper right of the page, then click Merge Fields. Click Add Merge Field. Give your field a label. This label isn’t used anywhere else. It is just for your own reference so you don’t forget what the field is used for. Give your field a value. Campaign merge fields are text-only. If you put HTML in the field, the HTML will not be processed; the HTML will be displayed as plain text in the email. Don’t forget to hit the save button (the picture of the floppy disk). To use the field, open one of your campaign emails. Click the Merge button and select Campaign Fields. Click the field you’d like to add to your email. The merge field will be added to your email as an awkward snippet that looks something like this: ~Campaign.MergeField_2~. As you can see, your label isn’t used here which can make it a bit confusing to keep track of which fields are which. The merge field text will be replaced with your merge field value when the email is sent. If you ever need to change the value of the field, go back to the Merge Fields… window, update the value, click save and re-publish the campaign....Tuesday’s Tip: Keep your Infusionsoft list clean with opt out automation
Having an accurate count of your newsletter subscribers is vital to tracking the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. Opted out subscribers won’t receive your newsletters or other mailings, but will show up in subscriber counts. One way to correct this is to automatically unsubscribe them from your list when they opt out of all email marketing. To do this, go to Marketing→Settings, then click on Email Defaults. Go down to the Email section, and click Actions next to When Someone Opts Out of All Email Marketing. This will allow to do a number of actions when someone opts out of your Infusionsoft email marketing, such as removing or adding a tag, changing the value of a field, or creating a task. If you use custom fields to track your subscriptions, then you can change the value of the field to unsubscribe them. If you use tags, you can remove the tag. This will remove the contact from subscriber counts so you can easily know the true size of your...Tuesday’s Tip: Should you add your Infusionsoft contact’s details to the end of the URL?
When you create a link in Infusionsoft’s Email Builder, you are given the option to “Place the person’s details at the end of the URL (for techies)”. But should you use this feature? The short answer: no, you shouldn’t. The intention of this feature is to make it easy for web developers, and even non-developers, to utilize their contact’s data to personalize a landing page. For example, you might want to show the contact’s name or pre-fill an address box using the contact’s details. When you use this feature, however, Infusionsoft will add several pieces of information to the end of the URL even if you don’t plan on using them, including the contact’s email address and password. Anyone who clicks that link will easily be able to look in the address bar and find your contact’s personal information. If your contact forwards the email to a friend, then the friend now has the contact’s password. Since most people re-use passwords, this can be a very serious security issue for your contact. Even if the email isn’t forwarded, the URL along with the contact’s personal information is transmitted in plain text unless the link is pointing to a site using HTTPS. This means your contact’s password could easily be stolen (for example, if the website publishes their logs or if the user is on an open WiFi connection). The solution to this problem is to include only the information you actually need in the URL. You can easily do this using merge fields. For example, if you wanted to link to https://novaksolutions.com/ and you wanted to include the contact’s first name, you should make sure...Tuesday’s Tip
