This week, we’ll be sharing interesting stories behind the Battle of the Apps Finalists, so you can get a feel for who is behind innovative solutions in the Marketplace.
The Battle of the Apps Finalists have put in a lot of work to help make your experience with Infusionsoft even better. Learn more about what apps made it to the finals in our blog post here.
Meet Jarrod Morris, co-founder of Parsey (formerly, Maven Email to CRM) and Marketing Mavens. Jarrod credits a lot of the work behind their solutions to his co-founder, Dustin Lunt. Both of them are family-focused entrepreneurs based out of Mesa, Arizona. For fun, they love wake boarding, playing wallyball and disc golf.
You might not know this, but they both once worked at Infusionsoft and I’ve grown to love their presence in the office as well as their achievements along the way. When they left the company, they ventured to become entrepreneurs focused on helping other small businesses. In addition to earning their Infusionsoft Certified Partner and Certified Developer accreditation, they have published five applications in the Infusionsoft Marketplace.
Discovering Infusionsoft
Like I mentioned, their roots came from Infusionsoft when they joined the company when it was very young. They could tell you stories about the time when our servers lost power because we had the microwave and toaster oven, true startup life.
But it wasn’t just the high-growth startup life that attracted them. It was the Core Philosophy, which includes our core values, vision, mission and purpose. It was real and it could be quantified. Infusionsoft was after something big and they loved the challenges that came their way.
When they left the company, Infusionsoft Partner Programs were in their infancy, and were still being formed. Inspired by the needs of small businesses and entrepreneurs, they leveraged Infusionsoft to help their customers achieve business results. They founded Marketing Mavens and have been quite active with their services and software development business.
Customer Demand
They frequently conduct surveys to understand the needs of Infusionsoft users. They’ve also discovered opportunities for their clients of their service business and have validated ideas that fit their target customer.
While they enjoy going after custom projects, they felt frustrated that they have to go back to square one every time their clients. By testing out ideas with customers, getting their reaction and feedback to fulfill on their needs, they created products that Infusionsoft users would pay for. It stands to reason why 95 percent of their customers are Infusionsoft users.
Love of Small Business
Jarrod told me that he loves small business because it allows one to pursue a dream regardless of background, education or other social statuses. A lot of his influences in life have been entrepreneurs who achieved their goals. “I admire entrepreneurship and people who take risk—measured risk—not going to Vegas kind of risk – but those who put it all on the line, call their shot and go out and make it happen,” said Jarrod, “I’m really glad that’s the customer base get to serve and work with.”
More about Parsey
In a nutshell, Parsey automates data entry into Infusionsoft. It’s been around for about two years on the Marketplace. It started out pretty simple and has evolved to accept ‘inputs’ from numerous well-known lead generation or e-commerce systems. User can configure the app to accept data from other apps by way of email to easily and reliably add to your Infusionsoft account.
Some platforms out there don’t have APIs or users don’t wish to always hire a developer for a large-scale development project. Parsey helps small businesses automate the data entry into Infusionsoft with an intuitive user interface.
A real-world example on how to benefit from Parsey is for real estate agents who receive notifications from Zillow so leads can be added into Infusionsoft. Likewise, you can fire two different campaigns depending on whether the contact was a potential buyer or seller. Because this process happens so quick, you could be the first to respond beating out your rivals.
For $97 per month, users can quickly configure various data sources to start entering leads into Infusionsoft and kicking off the automation.
Customer Response
Customers often choose Maven Email to CRM when they have needs for automatic data entry of leads, third-party order notifications or online appointment scheduling. They offer a handful of useful templates that users can quickly use out of the box as well as a custom editor for virtually any other email-based data sources.
Another interesting point to consider is that Jarrod and Dustin haven’t advertised or made any other investments to increase adoption of their app except to add it to the Marketplace. Over time, users have enjoyed it so much, they kept referring others, so this product has grown truly organically.
If you’ve used Parsey, leave a review on the Marketplace!
What’s Next?
I asked Jarrod to share what’s on the horizon with Parsey. They undergone a significant re-brand – Parsey is the new name and a new look. They have big plans for the product as well. They plan to expand more of their unique capabilities into other well-known applications beyond just Infusionsoft. A bright future indeed.
If you’re interested in learning more, find Parsey on the Marketplace.
Read more about the 2014 Battle of the Apps Finalists:
Revenue Conduit | Tactical Shipping | Parsey | Event Awesome | HipDash
Read more about this post, Behind the App: Parsey on The Infusionsoft Blog.