Every once in a while, we try to leave our desks and mingle in the local community. We’re also very bold and courageous when we do, which is why we couldn’t turn down the opportunity to play a corporate softball tournament with Avnet a couple weeks ago. With our office taking over a gym, we have many athletes among us.

We joined Avnet for the B2B Softball Desert Classic, where they had an intimidating four year streak that no other business could beat. Like any other day here at Infusionsoft, we’re up to the challenge. Fanster has a recap of the tournament, including the different games, photos and comments.

It was awesome for us to have fun and play against Avnet, they really had us work for it. I’ve included photos of the event and my rather descriptive highlights below.

Pre-game

The final game was played against Avnet Warehouse — the tournament host team and tournament champs four years in a row. We watched the competition as they finished up their third game, and let me tell ya, this team looked fierce and mean out there on the field. We were thinking there is no way we’re gonna win this game, in fact we were all still a bit shocked that we made it past the first game.

At this point, we’ve been at the fields since 1:30p.m. and the championship game is scheduled to start at 6:30, but we are playing the winner of the game that is running behind schedule…this put’s the final game at a start time around 7:00p.m. Jordan Hatch and Jordan Hodges after hearing this tell us that they may need to leave because one has a date and the other a friend’s birthday party and a limo waiting. After just a little bit of pleading, begging and idol threats Jordan Hatch calls his date and pushes it back an hour and Jordan Hodges calls his friends and tells them that he will be there as soon as possible. Jordan Hodges is adamant at this point that he has to leave the game by 7:30 – so we ask Brie’s friend to suit up just in case we need an extra body.

First Pitch!

The game starts about 7:00p.m. and the Infusionsoft team is hustling on and off the field to make sure we move as fast as possible so that we can keep the two Jordans playing before either one has to leave. The game is close from the first inning, one team either ahead or trailing by one run through most of the game. And the Avnet pitcher, looking like one of the characters in Prison Break, gives each Infusionsoft batter the evil eye as he pitches the ball over the plate.

The Game

Near catastrophe strikes when Brian Luckey and Brie Kelly collide while both go for a fly ball landing in front of the left field line. It looks like their playing football out there as Brian Luckey practically tackles Brie taking her to the ground. Brie is not getting up and moaning in agony as Sneed rushes to make sure she’s OK. Her knee is in pain and it’s taking a few minutes to stand up. She pulls herself up and limps back to third base. I’m concerned thinking that we may need to pull Brie out if her knee gets any worse, but she’s a trooper and continues to play the rest the game like 50 cent (now I walk with a limp). The game is too close to switch out any players and we definitely can’t lose Brie at this point. It’s close to 7:45p.m. and neither one of the Jordan’s is thinking about leaving now, they’re in it to win it – everyone has their game face on!

Seventh Inning, Tied.

The highlight of the day was bottom of the 7th inning – this is it, Infusionsoft needs one run to tie and two to win the game … Jared Kimball first to bat hits a fly ball to left field caught by the left fielder, first out. Then Donna Sneed up to bat hits a hard ground ball down the third base line, but despite the hustle is thrown out at first base. We are still two runs down for a win and two outs in the bottom of the 7th inning, but we kept hope alive as Jordan (J-Train) Hodges approached the plate. And BAM, Jordan hits a rocket shot past the short stop for a double. With Hodges on 2nd base, we all take a deep breath as our Female MVP (Brie Kelly) walks up to the plate. Some of the guys are telling her to take the walk, but Brie gives them that defiant look as she knows she can smack the ball better than most men on the field. And she doesn’t disappoint! Brie knocks the ball right in the center field pocket and hustles to first base. Meanwhile Jordan Hodges is already rounding third and heading home when the Avnet outfielder throws the ball home trying to prevent Jordan from tying the game. The throw to home gives Brie time to advance to second base putting her in a nice scoring position … we are now tied with two outs and one run from winning the game.

Infusionsoft, For the Win!

Now Mike Hobbs is up to bat. We needed to score a winning run badly. Brie was on 2nd and could potentially score the winning point, but everything was riding on Hobbs shoulders. He needed to hit a perfect ball that would get both of them safely to their bases. The pitcher tossed the ball and Hobbs stared it down. STRIKE!!! One more strike or foul ball would mean we lose the game (because you start at bat with 1 ball and 1 strike with none to waste). Hobbs had one more chance to swing and it had to be perfect. The pitcher tosses the ball and CRACK! The ground ball rips past the 3rd baseman, barely out of reach. Hobbs runs safely to first, while Brie dashes from 2nd base to third, but she’s not stopping there as Brian Luckey waves is arm frantically to head for home. Brie turns on the wheels and hustles toward victory as the Avnet outfielder scoops up the ball and launches the ball with everything he has towards home, but the ball arrives at the plate just milliseconds after Brie hammers her foot down on the plate.

Many of the Infusionsoft team members hesitated for a moment as we registered what just happened — then the team roars with cheers and in disbelief as we realize that we just won the tournament. Everyone runs out to meet Brie and Hobbs, before you know it the entire Infusionsoft team is jumping, hugging and high fiving each other…the adrenaline was flowing and the pride I felt for Infusionsoft and this team was indescribable.. I can’t remember feeling like this since high school when we won the softball state championship.

Post-game Thoughts

In the end, I was surprised at how well the 12 individuals from Infusionsoft, who never played a game of softball together, were able to come together and figure out how to work as a well-oiled machine (well something like that) and upset the tournament champions. I think that says a lot about these Infusionites and how amazing it is that we work for a company that develops a culture of teamwork and dedication. Big High Fives to everyone on the team – you all rocked it on Saturday!

Infusionsoft Tournament MVPs: Mike Hobbs and Brie Kelly

The Line Up

• Donna Sneed – Left Center
• Jordan Hodges – Right Center
• Brie Kelly – 3rd Base
• Mike Hobbs – Short Stop
• Erin Hopkins – 2nd Base
• Brian Luckey – Left Field
• Marsella McCarver – Catcher
• Jordan Hatch – First Base
• Nina Limmer – Right Field
• Jared Kimball – Pitcher
• Brett Samurin – First Base
• Brian Tolman – Out field
• Kirk Masters – Right Center
• Gina Sciara – Child Care

Things you missed:

• Brett Samurin’s Face Dive into First Base (covered in dirt from his face down to his feet)
• Jordan Hatch – Two Home runs in the Tournament
• The collision between Brian Luckey and Brie Kelly
• Marsella McCarver being robbed of her hit in the 5th inning of the championship game. Home plate ump said she was safe second base ump called her out. Think the second base ump was paid off by the Avnet team 
• Brie Kelly – a guy from the other team slides into third (where Brie was playing) and lands in somewhat of a provocative position under her legs. Brie says “You look good there, I’m not moving”
• Jared Kimball’s flawless pitching
• Donna Sneed – Calling Scott Martineau right after the win and being rushed off the phone for the team picture the conversation went something like this and with a highly excited adrenaline laden tone: “Hey Scott, OMG we won the tournament I can’t believe it – OK I gotta go – they want me to put the phone down for the pictures – talk to you later Love Ya…no I mean..I take that back – OK bye” I’m not sure if Scott got a word in or not. Then Brian Luckey said, ”Did you just tell Scott you loved him?” You had to be there! Anyway I can say that I have much love for all my Infusionsoft peeps!

Again, thanks to everyone that came out and played on Saturday – it was a lot of fun to getting to know all of you a little bit better! We’d like to also thank Avnet for hosting and inviting us to play. We look forward to future games and events like this.

–Donna

We’re very excited and proud to roll our next feature release to all Infusionsoft customers Tuesday evening, August 4th. In this update, you can expect many new features and enhancements, as well as a new User Home that allows you to centralize the data and information you need in one easy to access location. We also improved the data import process and the creation of follow-up sequences.

Several awesome features have been included in this release, so keep reading…

Customizable User Home

To kick off the new features, you’ll notice that we significantly improved and reworked how the User Home is presented. Infusionsoft users can now build their own customized dashboard with a series of stats, lists and other crucial data that helps you in your daily decision making process.

Infusionsoft Outlook Sidebar (Integration)

For a limited time, Infusionsoft users are able to download and use the Infusionsoft Sidebar, making their life much easier when working with  Infusionsoft from within Microsoft Outlook. This new sidebar comes in the form of an update and allows you to interact with contacts directly from Outlook. To access the the New Outlook  Sidebar installation link you will need to be an administator for your application. If you have Admin access, then from within Infusionsoft go to the “My Account” page, then click on the “Plug-In” box located on the bottom right of the My Account page…then just following the instructions from there. To read more about this update specifically, check out this blog entry.

Infusionsoft & CompanionLink Sync-up

One of our partners, CompanionLink,  just released CompanionLink for Infusionsoft.  Use this to sync Infusionsoft tasks, calendar and contacts with your mobile device, Microsoft Outlook, or your Google account.  Two-way synchronization lets you update your data from anywhere. To learn more about this solution offering check out CompanionLink for Infusionsoft product page.

Improved Follow-up Sequences

Probably the most critical element of our software is the mighty follow-up sequence. Veterans of marketing campaigns and novices alike will greatly benefit from this leaner interface for creating follow-up sequences. In a nutshell, if you don’t need to set a preference, it won’t show up. Likewise, if a preference is available to change, you can do it on a per-item basis.

Revamped Import Wizard

Many users of Infusionsoft need to be able to manage their own imports, especially during their initial setup of the application. We completely revamped how users complete imports. Now imports are segmented by People, Businesses, Tags, Products, Subscription Programs, and no longer require last name on imported records.

Google Maps

Yes, we got maps! In an instant, you’ll be able to access a Google Map of a contact’s address. Go ahead and try it out in the Actions menu, under “Show using Google Maps.”

General Enhancements

These enhancements improve the overall experience of the software but might be minor in nature. It’s a good idea to check these out so you can become familiar with them.

• Fax/Voice Broadcast steps in Follow-up Sequences – When adding a voice or fax broadcast step to a sequence, you will receive a notification to contact support to get everything configured. If you have never configured fax or voice broadcasting, first fill out this document and fax it to the number listed.
• Support PIN – To improve the privacy and security of all customers who use Infusionsoft, users will now be able to set a PIN number for discussing sensitive inquiries with our team such as billing. We strongly recommend you set a unique four digit PIN that you can remember.



• Improved Spam Complaint Visibility – As we’re in the process of building several enhancements to our mail delivery system, we now present the actual spam complaints per broadcast message. You can also see the overall average spam complaints, but this is improved so users can monitor ISP feedback per broadcast and modify their campaigns accordingly.

We made a total of 40 enhancements to the software; you can see what has changed with the article we published on the Fusebox. By making these changes, we’re helping entrepreneurs fix their follow-up and double their sales one feature and improvement at a time.

Another stroke of good news is in a few months or so, we plan to roll another release incorporating some ideas from our Infusionsoft Ideas areas, usability feedback and other customer feedback. If you have suggestions for what we can include in a future releases, don’t hesitate to let us know. We build the software for you, small businesses.

For customers who need help with any of the new features or want to report a problem with it, visit the Fusebox by accessing the Help » Take me to my Support Center link, and you will be able to post questions, connect with fellow users and get help quickly.

I have good news for all our users who use Outlook with Infusionsoft! On Wednesday, August 5, 2009, we will deploy an update that will deliver new features, functionality and efficiency for Outlook Integration. It has several new features, performance enhancements and is something we’re very proud to release to you. Entrepreneurs never had it so easy with Infusionsoft!

Since my previous Outlook update announcement, we improved the Outlook Integration for users who interact with their prospects and customers from the Outlook application.

Added functionality comes in the form of a handy sidebar that searches for Infusionsoft Contacts as you switch between emails in your Inbox.  This means if a prospect or customer emails you, you’ll automatically see information about them that is stored in Infusionsoft from directly inside of Outlook! From there, you can manage that Contact’s Tasks, Notes, Follow-up Sequences, and Tags.  All without ever leaving Outlook! Oh, did we mention Google Maps integration? Yeah, we got that, too!

The best part is for users – seamless upgrade! No downloading, installing, etc. On Wednesday, we’ll push an update out and all you need to do is click the “Update Available” button when it’s presented.

The new Infusionsoft Sidebar for Outlook will be available 8/5 through Infusionsoft’s new Plug-in Management feature. Click Here to learn more about the Infusionsoft Sidebar for Outlook. If you haven’t used Outlook before and you want to get started, you probably need to see how to download the Outlook Integration. For first-time users, it will require administrative privileges to install.

Along with this update, we’ve updated all our documentation and support for the plug-in. We know that Outlook can be a but frustrating to use to organize prospects and customers, this add-on makes that process much easier because contacts can be instantly uploaded to Infusionsoft; mail can be synched with their contact records and you can drill down into all the details about whoever you’re reading or sending an email.

Product manager of the Outlook plugin, Patrick Sullivan Jr., made a short video with Joseph Manna showcasing Patrick’s favorite features. Check it out below. Don’t be fazed by the bug in the video, Patrick was on a development build, this released has been improved and squashed a ton of bugs:

Infusionsoft Outlook Integration Sidebar Demo Video from Joseph Manna on Vimeo.

This is a free add-on for all Infusionsoft users. Free as in speech. Eventually, the sidebar may become a premium feature, so try it now to check it out.

The goal of this Outlook Integration is to improve the lives of entrepreneurs so they can enjoy doing business, better. Patrick said, “It’s been so long for our users to use Outlook with our software, now they finally have something that is interesting, useful and saves them time. That’s why I am very proud of this new release.” When asked about future development, he continued, “We’ll continue to listen to our users and implement their feedback along the way; without them, the Infusionsoft Outlook Integration wouldn’t be here today.”

Patrick and team would love if you shared your feedback and suggestions. Let us know how we’re doing in the comments below or by submitting and voting on new ideas.

Trademark Notice: The “Outlook” logo and the software, “Microsoft Outlook,” are registered trademarks of the Microsoft Corporation. Microsoft makes Outlook, we make sweet marketing automation software. Learn more about Microsoft Outlook.

Some of you may have noticed that we recently implemented a size limit for attachments in email broadcasts and follow-up sequence emails.  A few customers have made us aware of the fact that we didn’t inform you of this change effectively and that we failed to analyze the impact on your business and user experience. As someone who is charged with discussing product management with customers,  I’d like to address this for  you in this entry.

First, we apologize for making such a change without giving you sufficient time to make changes. To redeem ourselves and to help entrepreneurs grow their business,  we are temporarily removing the limitation for 30 days so that you can make the appropriate adjustments to handle the attachment file size limit of 100k.

You might wonder why we would make such a decision that seems to limit our users’ ability to effectively market their business. The reason is actually twofold: Increased Deliverability and Performance Reliability.

One of the primary reasons for not sending attachments via email is because the existence of the attachment is likely to trigger the spam filtering, virus detection programs on the other end or your email would most likely land in the SPAM or JUNK Mail folder instead of the INBOX. You will actually increase your deliverability by hosting your files on your own server or through a 3^rd party file hosting application, then inserting links to the file(s) into your email templates.  If you don’t know how to upload files to your server, it’s OK. Here are a couple free online hosting applications you can use to host and share your files: YouSendIt (100MB), QuickFiles (300MB) or TransferBigFiles (1GB).

An additional reason we limited the size limits on attachments is recipients may not open them. In fact, arguably they shouldn’t, for fear their computer could be compromised and that instead of you sending them a file, it’s a virus that is sending itself out in your name.

Ultimately, if customers conduct a large email campaign, large attachments eat up a lot of system resources. Imagine it now, you send to a list size of 5000 people a 5MB attachment, the system is now strained by more than 2500GB of ‘dead’ bandwidth, memory and CPU cycles. You don’t want that, you want to be efficient, quick and clean.

In addition to the excellent reasons already stated, the recipient email clients also do not like to process large attachments. It is better to link to a file for download to save system resources for both the sender and the recipient. For large attachments where performance matters, you might want to consider Amazon S3, to take advantage of a global CDN.

In the end, we had the right intentions; unfortunately, the flaw was in our lack of communication and education as to how you can continue to provide your prospects and customers with the information they need and access to large files. I can tell you that’s a lesson well learned!

Check out the article on our Fusebox to learn more about how to host your own files, using a hosting & sharing application and how to place file links in your email.

The Infusionsoft Outlook Integration just got a whole lot sweeter. We didn’t kid around when we said there was more to come! And, the nice thing is if you are already using the Microsoft Outlook® Integration you don’t have to do any thing – we’ll update the plugin automatically. I’ll tell you a bit about the features and the progress we’re making.

We rolled out the new Outlook Integration features internally and to our Beta user group over a week ago and the response has been so incredibly positive that we decided that our Outlook Integration is ready for everyone.

We know why you want the Outlook integration: Productivity. You will be able to seamlessly connect your existing Outlook usage with Infusionsoft. Here is what one successful marketer said about it:

It is SWEET!  Thank you, Thank you, Thank you to all!

Adding more daily functionality stuff like this just makes all the difference in saving time and money. I’d estimate having to go look-up e-mail addresses in Infusion, to then send from Infusion or Outlook, costs us 15 min/day X 5 days/week = 1.25 hrs/week = 5 hours/month = 60 hours per year!

You just gave us a whole extra week back in 2009 all the way around the office.

You guys rock!

– Sean Greeley – NPE, LLC

(Also, a congratulations goes out to Sean Greeley for being a finalist in the Ultimate Marketer contest at InfusionCon!)

We listened and incorporated the top suggestions from our Beta users. We added four new features that make this integration even better:

• Add Person to Infusionsoft
  When clicking the “Go to Person” button in Outlook, previously there were only two options: “Search for person in Infusionsoft” and “Cancel.” A new option has been added to also add the person that sent the e-mail to Infusionsoft.

  This is an attractive feature so you can document every email with every contact you have with your Outlook into Infusionsoft. This also lets you search for contacts and update their email addresses in the same process.

• Attachment Support
  Infusionsoft Outlook Integration now includes support for attachments when recording e-mails to Infusionsoft. When this feature is used, any attached files on the e-mail will be placed in the File Box under the person in Infusionsoft. The “Settings” dialog now has a new section that defines options for recording attachments with e-mails. The File Box is a great place to store files related to a contact. To learn more, see this article.This includes emails sent to and from you. You also get to pick which attachments to keep. It’s sweet!
• Infusionsoft Address Book
  You now have instant access to any contact in your Infusionsoft from Outlook. Our Beta users requested this feature, and we did it. With the Infusionsoft Outlook Integration, users are able to address an e-mail to any person listed in their Infusionsoft application.This feature is called the “Infusionsoft Address Book.” You simply search for the person using one of the search options provided and click the buttons to add the person’s address to one of the address fields. It’s that easy!
• Updates Available Notification
  Whenever we introduce new features and changes, you will be able to easily update the integration. When an update is available a simple “Update Available” message is displayed, click it once and you’re done. It’s really that easy!

We have more details about the new features we added on the Fusebox. To take advantage of this new feature, click “Hi, First Name,” (your profile) and select the Outlook Plugin to get started.

Now Available to Infusionsoft Users!

The entire Infusionsoft team is excited to deliver time-saving, feature-rich integrations that add to your daily productivity so that you can concentrate on growing your business. We’re proud to be making this innovation available to Infusionsoft users.

This wouldn’t be possible without the support from passionate users like you. We’re still working on the integration and would love if you told us what you wanted. Submit and vote on suggestions only for this project on Infusionsoft Ideas. We’ll be reviewing and responding to them… but we need your help to vote on them and prioritize them for us.

Trademark Notice: The “Outlook” logo and the software, “Microsoft Outlook,” are registered trademarks of the Microsoft Corporation. Microsoft makes Outlook, we make sweet marketing automation software. Learn more about Microsoft Outlook.