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]

You’ve probably seen the settings to make this happen a hundred times and just didn’t know what to do with them. First, I’ll show you what they look like.  Check out the screenshots below and then I’ll explain what to do with them.

When setting up a Web Form, check the box that says “Pass Person’s info to ‘Thank You’ page url”

When setting up traditional Trackable links, check the box to pass the person’s details to the URL

When using the new Email Builder, show advanced options on automation links and check the box to “place the person’s details at the end of the URL”

When someone fills out a Web Form, an Order Form, or clicks a Trackable/Automation Link, you can “pass the person’s details to the URL” or success page. What this means is that Infusionsoft will append every field from the person’s contact record to the URL as a Query String.

What does that mean?

Let’s say you want to send people to http://www.mywebsite.com/success.php after they fill out a Web Form or click a link. If you check the box to pass their details, Infusionsoft will add their details to the URL in a format like this:

http://www.mywebsite.com/success.php?Id=1234&FirstName=Tyler&LastName=Garns&Email=tyler@emaildomain.com

Everything after the question mark in the URL is known as the Query String. It’s a list of all of the fields and their values from the person’s contact record.

Why is this cool and important?

Well, the fields that are in the query string are accessible to the page the person is on.  You can access these values in two different ways:

1. Client Side - This means that the person’s web browser accesses the values itself through Javascript.
2. Server Side - This means that the web server accesses the values as the page is loading.

I’ll give you some simple code to capture these value using Javascript (client-side) as well as PHP (server-side) and then I’ll show you some really cool stuff you can do with this data.

Here’s how you can do it with Javascript.

In the head section of your site, place this code:

<script>
function getQuerystring(key, default_)
{
if (default_==null) default_="";
key = key.replace(/[\[]/,"\\\[").replace(/[\]]/,"\\\]");
var regex = new RegExp("[\\?&]"+key+"=([^&#]*)");
var qs = regex.exec(window.location.href);
if(qs == null)
return default_;
else
return qs[1];
}
</script>

Next, place code like this in your HTML to insert the FirstName into the website content. Of course, you can replace “FirstName” with any of the other field names to pull in other contact fields.

<script>
var first = getQuerystring('FirstName');
document.write(first);
</script>

Pretty basic, right? It’s even easier with PHP. In PHP, all Query String values exist in an array called $_REQUEST.  To access the FirstName value, just use $_REQUEST['FirstName'], to access the Email, just use $_REQUEST['Email'].  Get the values onto the screen with code like this:

<?php echo $_REQUEST['FirstName']; ?>

So, pulling this data into a page can help you personalize the page for your visitors.  But, that’s not the most powerful part. Imagine a multi-step series of questions you’d like to ask prospects, like a survey.  We’ll now you can pre-fill all forms after the first form by using this feature. Or, when you send people to a form after they’ve already opted-in, you can pre-fill the information you already have.  This does two things: it makes the process of filling out forms easier for the prospects, and it also gives them an opportunity to correct any information that may not be right.

Also, one of the fields that is always passed is the ContactId. With the ContactId you can run actions and much more on the contact record using the API. I’m not going to go into the details of the API right now, but imagine being able to send emails, faxes, voice messages, start and stop follow-up sequences, tag, etc. when someone visits a website, or clicks a particular link on a site, or interacts with a site in any way.  That’s where it gets fun.

To wrap things up, here are a bunch of ideas you can do when you harness the power of the contact data being in the Query String from Infusionsoft:

1. Personalize the page by using the person’s name in the copy
2. Personalize the page by changing the copy based on what tags may or may not be present on the person’s contact record
3. Personalize the page by changing the copy based on the person’s geographic location or certain values in custom fields
4. Pre-fill webforms
5. Track website behavior and store in the contact record (know how many pages they visit, how long they stay, etc)
6. Display special offers for people tagged as customers and a standard offer for others
7. Use the info to do all kinds of awesome stuff with the API

These are just a few of the limitless ways you can use this feature. Comment below to let me know if you’ve come up with creative ways to use the data that can be passed.

[Image credit: ladydragonflyherworld]

As the VP of Marketing at Infusionsoft, I often want to see a high-level view of what’s going on with our website conversion in addition to our marketing and sales funnel. I also want to know at-a-glance how we’re doing with our advertising and its performance. I regularly provide a report to the executive team on how things are going in marketing (including the company as a whole). Mutually, we could be easily overwhelmed by this all the data and lose focus on what’s really important. That’s why I built a custom report.

A while back, I created a “Marketing Dashboard” report that displays relevant data see current trends in our marketing activity. Let me walk you step-by-step through the different sections of the report. At the end, you’ll know what other data is available and how to download the script for this report if you’re interested.

Click the images for a larger view.

• Google Analytics Mashup – The first thing I did was use the Google Analytics API to bring that data into my marketing funnel. To me, it’s important to start at the very top. The first part of the report shows the important stats about our website traffic. I created it to display 7 and 30 day trends with red and green arrows to indicate performance. That way you can tell at a glance if things are looking good or bad. Keep in mind, this is without logging in to Google Analytics – it pulls this data via the API in much the same way you’d pull data from Infusionsoft via the API.



• Traffic source and Keyword Data – I like to see where our traffic is coming from and what keywords people are using when they visit our site. In this chart the report displays the top 15 traffic sources and the top 15 keywords. It also displays whether the traffic is paid (cpc), organic, or referral traffic. This data combined with the pages/visit, bounce rate, and time on site can give you what you need to immediately make decisions about which paid traffic sources you should cease and which you should increase. You can also deduce which organic and referral sources and keywords you should target more heavily. This data comes out of Google Analytics, too.



• Marketing and Sales Funnel – The next part is where we visually display the marketing and sales funnel performance. Starting with website traffic volume, the funnel drills down to “Suspects” (opt-ins), “Prospects” (leads we give to sales), “New Units” (or new customers). These names are ones that we give for our insight and may vary depending on what kind of business you own. The top of the funnel shows us where we’re at in the month as a comparison to where we’re at with each of our goals. Conversion rates between steps are also calculated and shown. This saves a lot of time in breaking down the funnel and determining performance.



• Managing Marketing Budget – If you use lead source tracking within Infusionsoft, this chart is golden. You can track each advertising/marketing activity and make decision based on “cost-per-lead” (CPL) or “cost-per-sale”. (CPA)  The chart below shows data from many moons ago of our media buys and shows us what message what used, what medium was used, how much we spent and what the cost per lead was.

If you’d like to use this same report in your business, you can download the source code at http://bit.ly/customreport. You’ll need to upload it to a server that runs PHP and a moment or two to configure your API keys into a file — don’t worry, it has been commented to help.

Infusionsoft allows you to pull all kinds of extremely important data. You can create custom reports by pulling data from Contact Records, Tags, Order History, Opportunity Records, and many other database tables. If you’re interested in using the Infusionsoft API to create custom reports, please visit http://developers.infusionsoft.com to get API documentation.

Another thing to keep in mind is this isn’t ideal for novices. It may take time to experiment and get the results you desire. If you need additional help with the API, we have a number of partners who specialize in using the Infusionsoft API on our directory.

Finally, don’t forget that most of this type of reporting is available inside of Infusionsoft through your User Home Dashboard. You don’t have to be a programmer or a genius to setup reporting – but you can read this help article to get started. Effortlessly create Saved Searches for the data you want and then add those searches to your dashboard.  Personally, I like the “Little Box o’ Stats” the most.

[Image credit: Jason Dirks]

I had 30 minutes to speak consisting of 20 minutes presenting and 10 minutes of Q&A.  I talked about precisely how follow-up failure kills small businesses, multiple system chaos contributes to the problem, and how email marketing 2.0 is the solution. I tried to engage the audience by pushing on their small business pains a little bit. I also mentioned Clate & Scott’s new book Conquer the Chaos since we were on the same topic.

At the end of my presentation, I told the audience how to get a free copy of the book and request more information about Infusionsoft. All they had to do was text the word “chaos” followed by their email address to 411247. Of the approximate 51 people in the room, 48 of them texted in. They were automatically tagged (segmented) in Infusionsoft, received an email, immediate text response, and they were started on a follow-up sequence.

I was shocked! I knew SMS text messaging would provide an easy way to capture leads, but I had no idea it would be so successful.

How did I do it? I used a service called BoomText. BoomText is a text message platform that allows you to create keywords (e.g., “chaos”) and have people text those keywords in. It also allows you to send broadcast texts to a list of recipients. What it doesn’t have is a built in automatic follow-up engine like Infusionsoft.

That’s where InfusionSMS comes in. InfusionSMS is a web-based app that ties BoomText and Infusionsoft together. When people text in keywords, it creates a contact record in your Infusionsoft account (or updates an existing one). Then it will run an Action Set, which is a group of actions like, tagging, sending emails, starting follow-up sequences, notifying people, etc.

Once people are in your Infusionsoft CRM, you can send broadcast texts from Infusionsoft or even use text messages as part of follow-up sequence. It’s great for appointment and event reminders and just about anything else that could be accomplished with a text message.

Will you reap a 94% response rate? Maybe. I was lucky I attended an event focused on small business technology. These days, everyone has cell phones and texting is even bundled in their plans. It’s relevant to point out that texting is quite powerful as an inbound marketing medium alone if sending text messages isn’t your thing.

I also want to share my relationship with InfusionSMS. I created InfusionSMS under “Chunk Web Services LLC” — an entirely separate entity from Infusionsoft where I invested many late nights creating it. When you use InfusionSMS, I earn a few bucks. I’m pretty dang sure you’ll make more money than I will when you use it. Give it a try!

This example is among many that shows how you can take Email Marketing 2.0 to the next level in your business. It’s not just emails … it’s not just texting … it’s leveraging both platforms to accomplish the need to send the right message at the right time to the right people. When you think of Infusionsoft, think of it as the engine to your marketing machine – it can really do anything.

[Image credit: cazimiro]

As I boarded the plane, one of the in-flight crew members asked me where my seat was. I responded “18E.”  She gave me a funny look that I didn’t quite understand; I think she was actually trying to get my attention to tell me something.  However, being the socially inept person that I am, I kept walking.  When I arrived at my seat, I realized why she might have been trying to get my attention. My seat was a middle seat and next to me was a very large man.

Conservatively, he was sitting on about a third of my seat.  Since I’m a very small guy, I really didn’t mind. I got nestled into my seat and was ready for the flight.  I struck up a conversation with my seatmate and he was an excellent guy. I was about to ask him if I could put my head on his shoulder during the flight. It looked so comfy. (Ok, don’t think I’m a weirdo–  I genuinely liked the guy and figured he wouldn’t mind since we were practically sharing my seat.)

As I was about to ask him, another one of the in-flight crewmembers, Henry, asked me to come see him. I made a snide remark about getting in trouble and being sent to the principal’s office. I got up and followed him a few rows back. I already liked Henry because earlier he had carried my bag for me and stowed it in the overhead bin. Henry proceeded to tell me that they had another seat for me in the front if I wanted to be more comfortable — I gratefully accepted. I was moved to the second row known as an, “Even More Leg Room” type of seat. It was great.

The story doesn’t stop there. A few minutes before take-off, an in-flight crewmember came and talked to the young girl sitting next to me. It turns out she was flying alone for the first time. The crewmember spent a few minutes with her telling her exactly how things were going to happen.  She told her where the bathroom was, how to use it, that a crewmember would accompany her off the plane, and a bunch of other assurances to calm her and help her enjoy the flight.

What happened with ME during that conversation is what I want to talk discuss in this entry. A few minutes later, as we were moments from takeoff, I noticed that the girl was extremely nervous. She was tapping her feet and wringing her hands nervously. She rocked back and forth in her chair and looked out the window every few seconds. Normally I wouldn’t have noticed.  But, since I had heard the conversation with the crewmember, I was aware and I knew why she was nervous. I stepped out of my normal comfort zone (usually I ignore everyone and read or work on my laptop) and I struck up a conversation with her to distract her. I learned why she was traveling and who she was going to see. She was totally distracted during takeoff and her nervousness went away. I encouraged to do this because of the experience that I had with Henry and the experience I saw happen with the girl.

I believe Henry was the crewmember captain (or manager or whatever they call crewmember leaders). His staff was awesome. And, the story is not over yet!  Henry is not just a customer service expert; he understands business. Check this out.

As soon as we were in the air, Henry announced they were having reception trouble with the satellite TV signal. As a result, he offered all the movies free for everyone on the flight. By doing that, he instantly created some customer loyalty and probably some repeat customers.

Later, as we approached New York, Henry made this announcement (paraphrased):

“We’re now in our final descent to New York City.  Please take a minute to help our in-flight crew by handing us all trash. Please open up the seat-back pocket and grab all those gum wrappers, napkins, and anything else that shouldn’t be in there. As a side note, we’re arriving 30 minutes early.  So, next time JetBlue gets you somewhere 30 minutes late, let’s just call it even.”

He accomplished two very important objectives for the JetBlue business in those statements.

1. He improved JetBlue’s crew efficiency by having customers pick up their own trash. He did it in a tactful way that encouraged everyone to participate. I looked around and saw everyone digging deep into those seat-back pockets and pulling out all kinds of trash.
2. He also set appropriate expectations to maintain customer loyalty. He knows that occasionally, despite all efforts, JetBlue flights may become delayed. So, he took advantage of the fact that we were early to prevent bad feelings and increase loyalty the next time a JetBlue plane is late. Very smooth and helpful to earn tolerance from customers in the event they’re late.

Here’s what I learned from Henry:

• Be Aware Of Every Customer – You can’t help customers be happy if you don’t know they’re not. Put yourself in their shoes so you can empathize.
• Act – Do everything in your power to make customers happy.
• Set Expectations – Customers are more likely to be happy and remain happy if you set the right expectations.
• Happy Customers Help Breed More Happy Customers – I helped the girl next to me continue to have a good JetBlue experience because of what I experienced.

If anyone at JetBlue reads this, please give Henry a raise. (Flight #178 from PHX to JFK on 6/10/10).  Better yet, please put Henry in charge of in-flight crew staff training. He gets it.

For the rest of you, where’s your Henry?

Are you aware of your customers? If you don’t interact with them face-to-face like the JetBlue crew does, what are you doing to be aware of them? Are you leveraging the power of Infusionsoft to track your customer’s behavior, preferences and experiences so that you know better how to help them? Are you putting yourself in your customers’ shoes so you can empathize with them? Are you taking advantage of good experiences to guard against adverse experiences? Learning from Henry would do us all some good.  I hope you have a chance to meet him.