If you heard criticism in the past regarding our API support, we’re facing it head on and have consolidated all our online support around the API into developers.infusionsoft.com. We’ve only begun and it will become our thriving developer community where coders connect and share tips and advice on the API, access code examples and all the documentation to build apps that rock.

The Infusionsoft API is important to us because it enables our users to leverage other solutions seamlessly with ours. Popular integrations include synchronizing Infusionsoft with other databases, shopping carts, content management systems, membership sites and more. While this traditionally goes against the grain of our “all-in-one” approach, it’s valuable to our users so they get the maximum impact from the app and benefit from our proprietary automation engine and segmentation capabilities.

At the outset, when you go to the Infusionsoft API Developers Center, you’ll be presented with six choices:

• Services and Methods – If you want to see the different services and major functions of the API, we’ve got that covered.
• iSDK – To aid in rapid development of API integrations, we’ve built a powerful PHP-based SDK to help developers create excellent integrations with Infusionsoft.
• API Usage Guidelines – We have a few basic guidelines that will keep third-party API integrations stable, fast and reliable.
• Developer Forum – This will likely become one the biggest areas on the site. Justin Gourley moderates this forum where developers go for asking specific questions on the Infusionsoft API and sharing their tips and advice.
• Database Tables and Fields – A detailed description of how to interact with various database tables and fields throughout Infusionsoft backend.
• Find an API Expert – Infusionsoft users have a quick link over to our Directory to where they can find qualified Infusionsoft API experts if they want to build an Infusionsoft API integration.

This is one of the recent examples of how we take care of our customers and work hard to earn their satisfaction. We invite you to let your API developer (if you have one) know about this new site if they haven’t heard of it because we’ve built it for them so they can take care of you with your API needs.

We’re looking for your feedback on this. What would make our API documentation and support better? Are there any resources you need that we can provide to make our API better? Please let us know in the comments or head over to the Developer Forum to share your comments.

So, what’s the difference between these layouts? Pictured below are the three different kind of Infusionsoft layouts you can use. (Click to view them larger.)

Agenda View

Day View

Customizable User Home

We recommend that all users use the Customizable User Home for consistency and access to new widgets that are available. I’ll show you around in this quick demo video of it:

To change your User Home in Infusionsoft, it takes only seconds. Log into your application and click the link named “Switch to the new User Home.” From there you can add and customize your new widgets. If you don’t have it already, you can also add your Infusionsoft Success Path widget, too so you can build a great campaign from within the application.

It’s helpful to remember you can customize and keep adding those Little Box o’ Stats to your heart’s content and track as many numbers within each box. Those stats can count the number of items, sum, average, min and max of a given search. This means you can create customizable at-a-glance reports that show every time you log into Infusionsoft.

You might already be familiar with this if you’re a newer customer in the past year. If not, you can switch and go back anytime. If you desperately want to go back to the legacy User Home, you can – go to Setup > My Profile > Preferences (tab) and choose the view you want for your User Home. A quick video shows how this is done:

Think you got a cool dashboard? Tell us in the comments what you got on yours so users like you think about what to track on their User Home.

[Image credit: st3f4n]

Here are some questions I hear frequently:

How do you map out marketing sequences?

How do you know the best way to set up your marketing & sales funnel?

What tools do you use for tracking, testing, mapping sequences, etc?

What does your marketing fulfillment process look like?

And the questions go on, and on and on …

It’s time for me to share. We’ve developed some very cool processes and methods for efficiency, creativity, and effectiveness and it’s high-time I share them with the world.

So, today’s post will be the first of a “How We Do It” series. Today’s topic is Project Planning. If you’ve ever planned a marketing project, you’ll know that it can get a little hairy.  It’s easy to get overwhelmed with ideas and stall. Below is our project planning process.  Don’t get it confused with project management.  That will be the next post.

I adopted some aspects of Scrum-Agile philosophy from our development team, added our own twists and creativity for a marketing team, and out popped our “E2 Process.”  E2 stands for efficiency and effectiveness. I’ve noticed in the past we’ve driven hard on efficiency and lost effectiveness. At the same time, focusing on effectiveness can slow down efficiency. The E2 Process helps us stay focused on both. The motto of the process is, “Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.” It’s a phrase used to teach snipers and other military personnel how to focus and get the job done despite distractions and imminent death.

Infusionsoft Marketing Team’s E2 Process:

Project Request

All marketing requests needs to be made through the Director of Marketing.  No request may be made directly to any member of the creative team.

Project Evaluation & Prioritization (PrEP Meeting)

The Director of Marketing, the Project Manager, and the requester will meet within 24 hours of the request to evaluate and prioritize the project. Marketing may reject the project, suggest it be outsourced, suggest the requester’s department execute and Marketing reviews or accepts it. If accepted, the project will be prioritized against the backlog and an estimated delivery date will be given. This is called a PrEP Meeting (estimated time: 10-15 minutes). During the meeting three questions are asked and answered:

1. Why this? How does this fit with our strategy? How does this move the needle?
2. Why now? Is this a current priority?
3. What else? Is there something that this replaces, or could this project be part of another effort that marketing is already working on?

Marketing will randomly choose one person from another department to help on this project. A project is also created in our project management tool. A description of the project is added and all involved people are notified and invited to the F3 Creative Meeting.

F3 Creative Meeting

Fill the Funnel & Filter

The requester and all marketing people that will be involved in the project must be at this meeting. The purpose is to fill the “funnel” with big ideas and then filter to what’s best. This is called an F³ Creative Meeting. The critical components of this meeting are: Define The Goals, Define The Audience, IdeaStorm, and Survival Of The Fittest. On average, it will require 30-60 minutes depending on the scope of project.

Define The Goals

The goals of the project must be clear before moving forward. The goals and the audience are immovable guideposts for the project. The audience and the goals are added as a message to the project management tool. Everyone involved is notified.

Define The Audience

The requester and the marketing team will define the target audience for the project. They will choose from predefined personas of prospects or customers. If the audience is outside of our predefined personas, the discussion needs to be elevated to the VP of Marketing.

IdeaStorm

This section starts with a review of previous IdeaStorms to capture good ideas that weren’t chosen. Then the meeting moves to a review of comparative products, campaigns from other companies, lots of zigs, how can we zag? These are generated from looking at the audience and the goals. The next piece is the storm. No bad ideas. Fill the funnel. Be creative. Don’t let budget or dead brain cells restrict thinking. Go big or go home. All ideas are captured on a whiteboard and notes are added to the project in our project management tool.

Survival Of The Fittest

During this section we beat up the ideas until the best one wins. Reality helps us narrow the choices, but strong minds should figure out ways to achieve the “impossible”. A detailed description of the project is written and added as a message to the project. A date is set for the Trashing Meeting and everyone involved is notified and invited.

Thrashing Meeting

“Thrash early, thrash hard, thrash right” is the motto of this meeting. The purpose is to set the project plan in stone so that the team can work as efficiently as possible. All options and details must be explored so we can eliminate rework and addition of stuff of to the project after the fact. The project requester, project manager, all creative and technical personnel on the project are required for this part. This meeting will determine the timeline and the firm deadline for the project. All responsible parties will commit to the deadline before the end of the meeting. After the trashing meeting the project manager will enter all necessary tasks into the project management tool. Copy, design and web areas will be explored separately to ensure we’re being creative and pushing the envelope in each area. On average, this can vary between 1-3 hours to complete.

Daily Huddles

During project execution there will be a required daily huddle with the project manager, the requester, and the members of the marketing team involved. The project manager leads the meeting and no one speaks unless called upon by the project manager. The meeting is ten minutes long, no matter what. If issues arise they are taken offline by the people involved. Progress is tracked daily in the project management tool.

Final Review

Before launching the final project all stakeholders meet for a final review. Often, this should be a 10-15 minute meeting to confirm that we’re good to launch. There should be no surprises and no additional requests. Those things should have come out in the thrashing meeting and occasionally in the daily huddles. Its important at this point to review the goals and audience of the project to ensure that everything is still in line. Project owner has final say. VP of Marketing has veto rights.

Launch

Put on your party hats and push the ship button!

Post-Mortem

After launching, the entire team gets together for a 15 minute discussion of what we learned, how can we do it better next time, results (if available). Notes are added to the project and everyone is copied. The project is “archived”. A blog post may be written on our blog to showcase the campaign/project.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that we don’t follow this process perfectly yet.  But we’re getting there and I see great improvements because of it. I know this could appear overwhelming, machine-like and even a little micro-managed. It isn’t. It’s efficient and effective.

I’m going to venture that not everyone has a rockstar team like I do. So, I invite you to extract the most helpful pieces in this and apply it to how you operate your marketing projects. Let me know what’s helpful or any questions you have about it.

[Image credit: Will Scullin]

Here’s the chart I’m referring to, published by MarketingSherpa (I love their newsletters, so check them out):

I am shocked that 49% of B2B organizations don’t use a CRM to manage the progression of leads in their business. Maybe it’s my ignorance, but I don’t know how this can be done without a CRM, you can’t grow and touch every lead without a powerful CRM solution. I have an idea … manually … but that’s not fun.

An equally disturbing statistic is that 56% of B2Bs don’t measure lead-generation contributions to revenue. I don’t know about you, I like to think every lead generation source is under as much scrutiny as your sales guys to hit numbers. This can result in more cash burn on under-performing lead sources and suffocated growth. Nobody wants that, do they?

It doesn’t end there. Only 39% of B2B companies have a process to nurture leads when they’re not prime for sales. That means, prospects would receive no follow-up, no education and will defect to competitors when they follow-up. Think about it: what if your company had the ability to educate and follow-up with leads automatically when they moved (or didn’t) in the pipeline? Not in a barrage of emails, either – you can leverage a direct mail piece, a bi-monthly email check-in and perhaps a quick phone call temperature check on prospects.

I’m bothered that only 30% of B2Bs are unable to track the source to conclusion of a sale. Really? How can you identify better sources if you can’t track how they are closed? In our business, we track everything as much as we can so we can analyze and improve our marketing and sales from it. Lead sources, affiliates, in-person contacts, emails sent, PPC ads, referring sites … you name it, we probably track it and make decisions from it.  If you want, fill out a demo, talk to a sales person and they can show you around the app to see this in action.

I’ll be honest; one statistic is encouraging in this chart. Most B2Bs have some type of lead scoring and measurement in place. This helps sales teams talk with only the most qualified people and save both prospects and their own time. However, the process has become increasingly complex resulting in less confidence in them between sales and marketing staff. I expect this aspect of software and applications for B2Bs to tighten up on this in the future.

If you’re a B2B, I’d love to hear your thoughts about what solutions and practices work for you. We know this isn’t a one-size-fits-all economy so any practical insight or advice you can share, that would be great.

[Image credit: shaymus22]

Here are several things that stood out to me during the day at the Revolution Tour:

• One of our customers builds her follow-up campaigns in Infusionsoft during the hours of 9-11pm … because that’s when her kids are asleep and she’s got some time on her hands. She’s been with us for one year. During that time, she has put 97 follow-up campaigns into place. Wow! In her own words, “I got addicted to the automation and now I’m building follow-up campaigns left and right. I love Infusionsoft!”
• Another customer joined us nearly a year ago because his combination of Salesforce.com and ExactTarget was costing him four times what he’s paying with Infusionsoft. And the best part, as he put it, is “I didn’t even know all of the automation I can do with Infusionsoft that I couldn’t do with my old system.”
• Customers love our new Infusionsoft Success Path that helps them send their first Email Marketing 2.0 broadcast, followed by the Key 3 Follow-up Campaigns: The New Lead Campaign; The New Customer Campaign and The Long-Term Nurture Campaign.
• Our drag-and-drop Email Builder is a crowd favorite.  Oh, and by the way, I got the sneak peak earlier this week at some enhancements our product team is making. It’s getting even better!
• Our Certified Marketing Automation Coaches (CMACs) are doing a bang-up job in Southern California.  In particular, Craig Jacobson and Wes Schaeffer are providing a great service in the form of “User Groups” to our Infusionsoft customers.  It was fantastic to hear all the great customer stories while in San Diego… and several of those customer successes had something to do with the good work of our CMACs and their User Groups.
• The biggest ovation I received during the day was when I announced to the crowd (at about 3pm) that I was leaving to catch a flight to see my two oldest daughters in their piano recital. That was fun to get the support of the crowd.  The look on my daughters’ faces when I showed up with roses at their recital was, well, priceless. Truly one of the best nights of my life as a dad.

These Revolution Tour stops are a blast for us to connect with customers. And for our customers it’s a chance to rev up their use of Infusionsoft and learn valuable business-building tips from our small business growth experts.. If you haven’t been to one, check the link here and be sure to attend a future Tour stop. On September 17, we’ll pull into Austin, TX for the Revolution Tour, so be sure to RSVP now – it’s going to be a great event. I look forward to seeing you there.