As a new feature on our blog, we’ll highlight our best, brightest and coolest business owners and entrepreneurs who choose Infusionsoft for their sales and marketing software. Pam Slim is one such entrepreneur who benefits from choosing Infusionsoft so she can scale her business, get ‘out of the weeds’ and leverage automation to provide personalized experiences for her current and prospective clients.

We recently visited Pam’s office to discuss how we helped her business. Pam is a respected business coach, author and public speaker. She operates a premium membership program, hits the road with speaking gigs (including InfusionCon 2012) and puts on training courses that complement hit book, Escape from Cubicle Nation.

In the video below, you can listen to Pam explain how Infusionsoft helped her scale various parts of her business and provide personalized experiences for her clients.

We are proud to have customers like Pam using Infusionsoft to run her business efficiently and confidently. To see Infusionsoft in action and to pick up helpful advice for thriving entrepreneurs, sign up for her free newsletter.

Would you like to be featured for accomplishing amazing feats with Infusionsoft? Tell us your story about how we have helped your business and you could be featured on the blog next!

Now’s the time for spring cleaning and technology is no exception. In partnership with the Arizona Technology Council and Westech Recyclers, our office is one of the locations that you can conveniently drop off any retired tech gadgets for Technology Recycling Day. The donations will be refurbished and reused or safely recycled in a responsible and environmentally-friendly manner.

This makes a great opportunity to clear out your closets of old keyboards, outdated computers, unused monitors, lonely USB cables, unwanted printers or other tech equipment that you’re not using (see the list of acceptable items below). You can donate equipment even if it’s no longer functioning.

Our offices are located in Gilbert, just a few minutes south of the US-60 on Country Club Dr. Here is a map of our office. Donations will be accepted between 8AM and 3PM on Saturday, January 21, 2012.

Acceptable equipment includes:

Computer Equipment – Personal Computers, Laptops,  CRT Monitors, Flat Panel Monitors, Modems, Switches, Hubs and Routers, Storage Devices, Main Frames, Servers, Power Supplies, Tape Libraries, Circuit Boards, Power Cords, Printers, Wire and Cabling, Surplus Metals, Mice, Keyboards, Hard Drives, Floppy, DVD and CD Drives, etc.

Point of Sale Equipment – Credit Card Machines, Printers, Scanners, etc.

Telecom Equipment – Telephones, Cell Phones, Switches, CSU/DSU Multiplexing Equipment, Phone Systems, Answering Systems, etc.

Printing Equipment – Printers, Fax Machines and Copiers, Calculators, Typewriters and Printer Cartridges

Audio/Visual Equipment – Stereos, Radios, Amplifiers, Projectors, Satellite and Cable Equipment, Video Equipment, Video Game Equipment, Surveillance Equipment, Cameras, etc.

Electronic Components – Capacitors, Diodes, Resistors, Transistors and Integrated Circuits, etc.

Miscellaneous Electronic Items – Televisions, Test Equipment, Lab Equipment, Medical Equipment, Cables and Wire, Connectors, Ballasts, Batteries, Power Strips, etc.

Surplus Metals and Wire and Cable – Aluminum, Copper Wire, etc.

For more information on this event as well as a list of additional statewide drop-off locations, visit the AZTechCouncil.org.

We are hosting an event in the Denver area on Jan. 27^th helping small businesses build their strategic marketing plans. Travis Campbell, our Regional Development Manager and small business expert, will lead the first event of its kind in Colorado.

At this event, entrepreneurs will learn from other successful small businesses, create their marketing automation roadmap and apply current small business trends happening in Denver into their business. In short, this event will jumpstart the marketing plans of small businesses – it’s an event you can’t miss – register now!

Here is a video from Travis inviting Denver business owners to attend Your Strategic Marketing Blueprint in Denver.

The Strategic Marketing Blueprint is on January 27, 9AM to 1PM. The event is free to attend and a complimentary lunch will be provided. If you know any consultants, freelancers, service providers, online marketers or coaches who should attend, forward them this link and be sure they register to get on the list!

Travis Campbell is Infusionsoft’s Colorado Regional Development Manager. He specializes in working with local entrepreneurs, small business owners and sales and marketing specialists who have small business clients. Travis has helped hundreds of businesses realize their greater potential from online marketing. You can catch him blogging regularly at marketingprofessor.com.

As I sit here four days into 2012 and look back on our blog, our stories and accomplishments during last year, I am proud of what we did on our blog. I’ll recap the best blog posts from 2011 and thank our outside contributors who helped make our blog a success last year.

We expanded our editorial focus in 2011 to include more stories about specific users, non-Infusionsoft related marketing tutorials, social media resources and industry news. We also had even greater focus on email marketing and marketing automation and CRM for small businesses.

Infusionsoft’s Top 11 Posts of 2011

1. 25 Email Marketing Tips and Tactics [164 shares]
2. Two Ways to Triple Your Open Rates [141 shares]
3. 9 Ways to Optimize Your Blog for Lead Generation [381 shares]
4. Infusionsoft Acquires CustomerHub [175 shares]
5. Google Plus Pages: The Why & What for Small Business [401 shares]
6. Marketing Automation & Inbound Marketing Can Get Along [335 shares]
7. 5 Email Marketing Tips Inspired from Groupon [417 shares]
8. 7 Email Marketing Campaigns to Generate More Leads [337 shares]
9. 3 Steps to Convert Facebook Fans Into Customers [375 shares]
10. A Small Business Owner’s Guide to Using QR Codes [343 shares]
11. 5 Common Myths about Marketing Automation, Busted! [78 shares]

The top blog posts among the 170 we published have been sorted by their overall traffic. To indicate how popular each post was, I included the total number of shares across social media.

As an interesting observation, we confirmed the theory that numbers in headlines often results in higher traffic. We’ve seen it last year and we saw it again this year. However, it should be noted that just because social sharing is up, it doesn’t always result in more traffic. I’ll share more insights on what you can make of it in an upcoming post.

Special Acknowledgments

I would also like to thank the following contributors who helped make our blog even more interesting and useful from their individual perspectives. I know that authoring guest blog posts isn’t an easy task because of everyone’s overwhelming schedules, so they deserve some additional kudos to helping make the blog even better.

Travis Campbell, MarketingProfessor (Now, Infusionsoft)
Derek Halpern, Social Triggers
Jeremy Moskowitz, Group Policy Answers
Dan Bischoff, Lendio
Tim Chen, NerdWallet
Jeff Molander, Off The Hook Marketing

If you would like to submit a guest post, email community@infusionsoft.com with a short pitch about your post, and we’ll consider it for publication. Only posts with a focus on small business, marketing advice or Infusionsoft will be accepted.

Thanks again for subscribing, reading, commenting and sharing content from our blog. I look forward to expanding on many topic areas, inviting new contributors to our blog and making it even more amazing during 2012. Without your interest and support of our blog, this wouldn’t be possible. Thank you!

What was your favorite blog post from the past year? Let us know by sharing it within the comments below.

Since the creation of the Internet, marketers have fallen in love with landing pages simply because they convert traffic into leads. However, not all landing pages are created equal, so I wanted to share helpful tips for your next landing page.

What is a landing page? A landing page is a page where you drive targeted traffic in order to convey a message with a specific action in mind. Calls to action would include writing a letter to Congress, donating to a cause, requesting more information or a quote.

No landing page is perfect, but there are a number of ways to improve the effectiveness and performance of your landing page so it builds trust and gets conversions.

A Powerful & Consistent Headline

Visually speaking, the headline should grab people’s attention, lure them to the content on the page and be interesting. Using a consistent headline that closely supports the copy and is closely related to ad-copy (if you’re advertising) is critical if you want to achieve high conversion rates. Google has a few tips on writing landing page headlines.

Build Trust with Social Proof

Nowadays, if you don’t show social proof to support your offer or message, a landing page is simply an advertisement. Let others build trust in your offer by showcasing their quotes, videos or even comments in social media. This post from Ion Interactive shows how you can use social proof in landing pages.

Put Your Copy on a Leash

If there’s one thing I love about Twitter, it forces one’s ideas to be conveyed concisely. The copy on the landing page should support the headline, outline benefits and address common objections. Keep it short and to the point – you can explain more details later after people opt-in. The debate between short and long copy is hot, but the point is to aim to keep your landing page visible above the fold. Google has a free tool to visualize if your page is above the fold.

Use a Direct Call to Action

A call to action should be direct and be compelling and rewarding for people to complete. The word “submit” is so dry; liven it up with powerful, actionable words. Additionally, the fewer fields the landing page requires, the higher the conversions will be. Here are several ideas to help you choose the wording of your form submission button.

Optimize the Page for Fast Loading & Mobile

Not only does website speed factor into search engine rankings, it matters to people who visit the landing page. These days, people use mobile phones more frequently, so always test that your page is usable even on mobile phones. Utilize the best practices offered by Yahoo! and Google for optimal website performance and use WebPageTest.org for benchmarking.

Measure & Optimize Conversions with Analytics

It’s vital to measure how people interact and use your landing page. Google Analytics offers goal tracking and can be combined with split-testing from their Website Optimizer.  The lessons learned from even a few slight variations can be the difference in an average campaign and a killer campaign. Six Revisions breaks down how to use Goal Tracking in Google Analytics from A-to-Z.

Keep it Simple

It may be tempting to address each and every question and concern visitors could have about your offer. Keep your page relatively simple, easy on the eyes and quick to consume. For some inspiration, here are some landing pages we’ve done: The Edge of Success, Strategic Marketing Blueprint – Denver and Infusionsoft Holiday Discount.

Employing these techniques on your landing pages will help you capitalize on your inbound traffic effectively. Landing pages are a great way to help you collect leads and convey a very clear message to those who visit.

Within our sales and marketing software for small business, it’s so easy to deploy a landing page that meets all these ingredients. Using Hosted Web Forms, users can build landing pages quickly and easily with practically no technical knowledge.

Have you created a sweet landing page recently? Drop a link in the comments and tell us about it. I’d love to feature it on the blog!