Business

From all of us at Infusionsoft, we wish you a safe and warm holiday as you spend time with those who matter to you. We’ll also spend time with our families and friends this time of year. Our offices will be closed December 24-25 and December 31 to January 1 in observance of Christmas and New Year’s. With that said, I thought I’d get a little crafty and share my own version of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas’, which was originally penned by Charles Clarke Moore.

Read more about this post, Happy Holidays from Infusionsoft! on The Infusionsoft Blog.

You know that big, daunting task you keep putting off even though you know once you do it, your life will be a lot less complicated? I do. That was me about three weeks ago, before I migrated our automated blog subscriptions from FeedBurner over to Infusionsoft. While it took a lot of work, it actually felt really good to get my hands dirty and the feeling of accomplishment that accompanied the final transfer made it all worth it.

If you’re comfortable using Infusionsoft, HTML and want to deliver blog posts automatically to your contacts, you’ll get a lot out of this tutorial.

1. Introduction – An explanation as to why we moved away from FeedBurner
2. Tutorial – Step-by-step guide explaining how to migrate to Infusionsoft
3. Results – A look at the performance, lessons and more.

Now that you’re ready to make the switch, let’s get started.

For your convenience, I have included an in-depth video tutorial at the bottom of this post.

Prerequisites

You will need full access to your FeedBurner account, Infusionsoft account and a paid subscription to Maven RSS to Email or FeedBolt. Also, be prepared to invest approximately 3-4 hours to complete the whole process that I describe below. I’ll walk you through how to migrate your blog email delivery from FeedBurner to Infusionsoft using Maven RSS to Email, but the steps are very similar to replicate for FeedBolt.

How to Switch from FeedBurner to Infusionsoft

STEP 1. Export your existing email subscribers from FeedBurner and download it as a CSV file. Do this by logging in and going to your Email Subscriptions section. Then download the list of subscribers by clicking ‘View Subscriber Details.’

STEP 2. Review the exported subscribers and familiarize yourself with the data structure. In particular, you’ll notice the “Subscribed” and the “Status” columns. ‘Subscribed’ refers to the date of initial opt-in and ‘Status’ refers to the state of the subscription.

STEP 3. You’ll now import these contacts into Infusionsoft. It may be preferable to create a Custom Field to store the “Subscribed” date for future reference and data analysis. If you’re not sure, appending this data to the Person Notes field will be fine. However, there are some important points to keep in mind about this data import:

–People did not grant you permission to market your products and services outside the scope of your blog.
–Many of the emails will be listed as ‘Active’ but are actually abandoned email addresses. We’ll talk about this later.
–Right now, it’s best to not send them anything yet. Simply focus on getting them imported into Infusionsoft.

STEP 4. Create a tag in Infusionsoft that will be used to identify your active subscribers. Right now, don’t do anything with it …  but know what this tag is; it comes into play later. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to apply this tag to the imported list of contacts, but you don’t have to do it yet. Also, create a “test” tag and add yourself to it so you can do testing later. For example, I used “Daily Blog Update” and “Blog Subscription Test” respectively.

STEP 5. Configure Maven RSS to Email to use your Infusionsoft API Key in the ‘Settings’ link at the top. Once you complete this, click the Products link and then click “Access Now” for the RSS product. Fill in the fields for your blog name and the RSS feed address. Finally, choose the tag used for blog post delivery.

IMPORTANT: Do not activate the blog delivery yet! At this point – for safety reasons – set up the delivery tag to use the test tag you created earlier. If you haven’t done so already, add this tag to your own Contact Record within Infusionsoft.

STEP 6. You can skip this step entirely if you wish to create a new email template from scratch! Create your email template used for blog updates. Maven RSS to Email gives you a blank slate, so it may be preferred to create your new template from within Infusionsoft. Simply mock up how you want it to look for blog subscribers. Once you create this template, you will want to view the raw HTML code for it so you can copy it over to Maven RSS to Email. When you paste your HTML code, paste it into the HTML input field of the template editor.

STEP 7. Now you need to update the template to use the Merge Fields found within Maven RSS to Email. It’s important to note the distinction between Infusionsoft’s ~Contact.FirstName~ and Maven’s {{title}}. What’s especially exciting about this is that you can use both sets of these merge fields within your template.

As an insider tip, you can include the Infusionsoft Merge Field ~Company.HTMLCanSpamAddressBlock~ so you can display postal address in a way that fits nicely in your design. If you don’t use this Merge Field, you will end up with an email displaying your mailing address twice.

Remember that Maven RSS to Email is a third-party application and your templates do not save automatically like it does in Infusionsoft. You will want to hit “Save Work” frequently as you’re working to prevent lost work if you accidentally close your browser tab (like I regrettably did).

STEP 8. You’re almost done, so hang in there! Test out your template by using the “Test it Out” section. Since you tagged yourself, you will receive a functional and readable email message.

STEP 9. You will want to send an email confirmation (formerly, double opt-in) to your newly imported contacts. There are a couple ways to do this, but you will want to use an Email Builder template and you will want to run an action when user clicks on the email confirmation link to add to your blog delivery tag that you created earlier in Step #4. For guidance on how to create email confirmation links so you can insert them into email templates, read this help article and this one, too.

–An email confirmation message is a great way to set and reinforce expectations with your contacts.
–Don’t use this as an opportunity to talk about your other products and services; the only call to action should be to confirm their interest.
–Consider including language that communicates how often you will publish new posts, what topics you write about and why you are asking them again to confirm their interest.

STEP 10. Finally, it’s time to tie up your loose ends. Be sure to deactivate your FeedBurner Email Delivery, verify your blog is not redirecting its feed to FeedBurner (ideally) and your delivery and test tags are configured correctly. This will make sure that your subscribers don’t accidentally get two copies of the same post in their inbox.

If you made it to this point, CONGRATULATIONS! You’ve completed all the necessary steps to automatically deliver future blog posts to your contacts with Infusionsoft.

To Double Opt-In or Not?

I want to take a moment to address why using a confirmed email (double opt-in) model will help you achieve great results. If you don’t confirm your old blog subscribers, you risk getting an unwanted call from our Email Compliance Team … and nobody wants that.

I only had about 15% of our blog subscribers confirm their interest when I sent our email confirmation request. This was interesting … why would only a margin of our list want to receive our blog posts? Well, I didn’t consider the fact that I emailed them right before Thanksgiving, along with every other major online retailer.

I decided to wait it out and sent an additional email confirmation request after Thanksgiving to those who did not open or click the link in my previous email and it resulted in another 25%! A week later, I sent a final broadcast to those who did not open and click previously and 10% confirmed their interest. The other fundamentals in these broadcasts performed well, but it was evident that performance was fading — I hit a performance ceiling and there wasn’t much need to do more of them. The period of time between these confirmations was about a month, so consider that as a safe “grace period” to confirm people’s interest again.

This confirmed the theory I had that FeedBurner subscribers were not necessarily as active as I thought. The bounce rate was consistently high (~7%), but wasn’t alarming and was expected. I correlated those who didn’t open and click the emails often had an opt-in date that was older than seven months. After going through this great length to confirm our subscribers, I’ve noticed they have become more engaged by their traffic behavior on our blog. I would venture to guess that you would likely see similar results, too.

You’re probably thinking, “Joe, you cut your list down by like half by adopting a confirmed opt-in model!” Look, list size is a vanity metric just like Twitter followers or Facebook Likes. I may have cut my list down by half, but those who stayed are active, engaged and interested in reading more blog posts from us in the future. If someone doesn’t open or click your emails, what business value do they provide you? Don’t let ego get in the way of making a sensible email marketing decision.

If you have questions about using Maven RSS to Email, be sure to read their documentation included throughout their application. If you’re still stumped, go ahead and ask below, I will be happy to help in whatever way I can.

Video

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Read more about this post, An Inside Look at Migrating from FeedBurner to Infusionsoft (Part 2) on The Infusionsoft Blog.

I want to share with you one of key changes we made with our blog. Specifically, we made a change to how we deliver updates to subscribers via email. We no longer use Google’s FeedBurner service to deliver our blog posts via email. When we made this change, I was asked by some of you why we did it. Well, I’ll help shed some light about why we made this change in this three-part blog series.

1. Introduction – An explanation as to why we moved away from FeedBurner
2. Tutorial – Step-by-step guide explaining how to migrate to Infusionsoft
3. Results – A look at the performance, lessons and more.

Don’t get me wrong — I love FeedBurner. For the past several years, it had become the de facto standard in managing (and delivering) blog-based RSS content on behalf of blog owners. However, since Google acquired the service, product development seems to have stalled and communication has been unusually light. The lack of frequent and transparent updates from the team has led publishers to become less trusting in the service. We have often relied on their popular (and free) email delivery feature, where subscribers would receive an email when a new post was published. In the recent months, a series of actions have occurred that would disconcert even the most loyal of users. Phil Hollows, founder and CEO of FeedBlitz, an alternative service to FeedBurner, offers a play-by-play analysis on these changes

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I’m not saying FeedBurner is dead or necessarily provides a bad service. For many years, it was the ideal solution for bloggers, but it’s no longer a service we can rely on for business purposes. I’ve also carried a bit of guilt that our own content was being delivered by a different email provider (Google). Our sales and marketing software is incredibly powerful, so why would we use another service?

I’m sure you can understand that the idea of having a reliable blog-to-email service was quite attractive. After some research, I didn’t have to look too far to find an alternative method of delivering blog updates to subscribers. My search resulted in discovering a great add-on developed by Marketing Mavens aptly named Maven RSS-to-Email: The Blogger’s Delight. Alternatively, you can use FeedBolt, too. They are both respectable solutions for publishers who want to deliver RSS content to subscribers through Infusionsoft.

Configuring this service was actually much easier than I thought! If you’re savvy with merge fields in Infusionsoft (you know, ~Contact.FirstName~), you’ll breeze right through the setup. All you need is your blog’s feed address, Infusionsoft API key and a tag in your application used to target recipients. After some testing, you’ll be ready to export subscribers and hit the kill-switch on FeedBurner email delivery.

In my next post, I’ll describe exactly how to complete this migration along with the results. As a teaser, I’ve encountered a number of (good) surprises and have slept easier at night since I’ve made the change. I’ll also detail a few risks to watch out for along the way.

What questions do you have about migrating away from FeedBurner? I would love to provide answers about this change in my next post. Leave me a comment below!

Image credit: violinha

Read more about this post, An Inside Look at Migrating from FeedBurner to Infusionsoft (Part 1) on The Infusionsoft Blog.

If you’re like most Infusionsoft users, this time of year you love to generate leads, close sales and have plenty of time to spend with family and friends. We learned that one of the biggest challenges you have is in developing marketing campaigns and to help you solve this problem, we have developed three ways to help you create and launch your next major marketing campaigns. 

This week, we hosted a webinar featuring Scott Martineau and Jordan Hatch that provided users with 10 different marketing campaign ideas. It was a huge success – we overloaded our webinar software and people were turned away! During the webinar, Scott and Jordan outlined these ideas in a very clear and organized way. If you missed the webinar, you can watch a replay here.

We know that your small business might not have all of the resources needed to produce a high-performing  marketing campaign, so now is a great time to take advantage of the software and app experts at Infusionsoft to help drive significant ROI for your business.

Look below to discover three ways that Infusionsoft can help you generate more revenue, more leads and more free time  next year.

Done-For-You Campaign Templates

Whether you need to capture more leads, generate more sales or upsell new customers, the experts at Infusionsoft have created pre-built templates that will get your campaigns up and running immediately. We provide you with fully built out campaigns, ready for use inside your application. These complete, end-to-end campaigns include all the sequences, goal methods, Web Forms and customizable content templates you need to implement a successful program. We’ll even help you tailor the content. All you have to do is hit ‘Publish’ to start the sequence. Click here to purchase Campaign Templates. 

Campaign Builder Bootcamp

Join Infusionsoft Marketing Automation Guru, Jordan Hatch at our first-ever Campaign Builder Bootcamp. This three-day online training class is designed to help you quickly become an expert with Infusionsoft’s Campaign Builder. Over the course of three engaging four-hour days, you’ll learn how to harness the power of the Campaign Builder to create powerful marketing campaigns to help your business grow in 2013. Our innovative classroom and group training methodology will enable you to get answers to your questions, learn from other Infusionsoft Users and most importantly, dramatically speed up the time it takes to implement campaigns into your application. Best of all, you’ll walk away from this special event with a total of five campaigns built out and ready to go. Click here to purchase access to the Campaign Builder Bootcamp. 

Implementation Accelerator

Nothing is more effective at getting you up and running fast than our intensive Implementation Accelerator event. Spend three days working one-on-one with our team to get your campaigns fully created, implemented and ready to make you money in 2013. You’ll have unprecedented access to the Infusionsoft team, Certified Consultants, API developers, copywriters, designers and video professionals all working to build and ship the next big sales and marketing campaign for you. Click here to learn more about the Implementation Accelerator.

We’ve helped thousands of small businesses obtain massive value from their sales and marketing efforts, and we’d love to help you rest a little easier knowing that you’ve got your marketing campaigns completed. Even if we don’t implement the campaigns for you, we hope these 14 marketing campaign ideas [PDF] get the creative juices flowing so you can make 2013 a great success.

Act fast because these event offers have limited spots available in order to provide a top-notch, premium grade experience that you‘ve come to expect from Infusionsoft. If you have questions about these options, contact us and we’ll be happy to put you in touch with your Account Manager.

Read more about this post, 3 Ways to Plan, Create and Launch Your 2013 Marketing Campaigns! on The Infusionsoft Blog.

Do you love the thrill from hitting ‘Publish’ on blog entries? Do you tend to think 140 characters at a time? Do you snap photos and share your creativity on the latest photo networks? If so, you’ll really love this sweet contest where you’ll have a chance to attend InfusionCon 2013 free (including travel and accommodations) and be our honorary Social Media VIP.

We selected our winners! Click here to see who won this contest.

Three Infusionsoft users will be able to win:

• An all-inclusive complimentary ticket to InfusionCon 2013
• Round-trip airfare to and from the event in Phoenix
• Three-night stay at the Westin Kierland Resort & Spa in Scottsdale
• Special recognition among the entire Infusionsoft community
• Reserved VIP seats up front in every session

Will you be one of our Social Media VIPs? I hope so. We’ve expanded the contest so it’s even easier for you to win. If you’re an Infusionsoft user and you’re active in social media, you should not miss this contest!

Selected winners will publish content live from InfusionCon, March 27-29, across our social media channels including our corporate blog, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. If you’re selected, you’ll be the voice of Infusionsoft and will report from the front lines on all the buzz and activities happening at InfusionCon.

If you think you got the chops, I urge you to enter the Social Media VIPs Contest! Hurry, the deadline to enter is December 17!

Some people have asked me why we do this contest. It’s simple. We want you to share your thoughts, reactions and takeaways of our sales and marketing conference from your eyes – not ours. InfusionCon is not about Infusionsoft; it’s about our users and we firmly believe that they have the brightest ideas, perspectives and stories to tell.

As with any amazing contest of ours, terms and conditions do apply. Once you agree to them, you’ll be in the running to become a Social Media VIP.

Read more about this post, Be a Social Media VIP at InfusionCon 2013! on The Infusionsoft Blog.