March 2016 Update
I don’t know if you had the same relationship I had with NBA Jam, but if you did, you probably remember that if your player made two shots consecutively, you’d hear the announcer say “He’s heating up…” and once they made their third in a row, you’d get the booming “HE’S ON FIRE!”
Then for the next few possessions you’d just chuck up three pointers from wherever you wanted, dunk from half-court, etc. You were basically unstoppable, right?
Anyway, I’m getting off-track.
When the January release came out, and you could easily add and remove people from campaigns, clone order forms, and a few other things – I remember thinking “Hey, this isn’t bad at all.”
Then, when the February Release rolled, and we got inventory management, mobile responsive landing pages and the new email builder, I thought “Man, that’s two in a row, they’re heating up!”
And then boom, here comes today, the March 2016 release rolled and I thought “HE’S ON FIRE!”
This latest release isn’t all that big, it only has a few updates in it, but man, they’re really, really meaningful.
The two updates I’m most excited about are the ability for your customers to make a payment when you send them a quote, and the ability to easily see open rates and click-through percentages on all your campaign emails.
You guys, I’m not crazy. I fully acknowledge that both of these features are pretty standard. And yes, you could make the argument that these features should have been included in the software all along, but guess what – I don’t care. Call me a homer, or an optimist, or whatever. Yup. It sucks that we didn’t have them before, but we have them now. That’s it, let’s move on.
Update #1: Pay a Quote Online and View Status
What it does: It allows you to send a quote to a customer, and allows them to apply a payment once they’ve accepted it.
Why it matters: Infusionsoft introduced the ability to generate quotes a few years back, and people were pretty excited about it. Well, that excitement quelled pretty quickly when we realized that once a customer accepted a quote, it created an order in Infusionsoft but didn’t allow them to make a payment. You had to manually go collect the billing information, and apply the payment yourself. Not very automated, right? So, because of that, quotes were quietly set aside for most users, and never revisited again.
Well, not anymore. Now, when you generate a quote – you’ll also be able to select from three options.
Send quote with no payment options: This means the recipient will be able to accept or decline the quote.
Send quote and allow payment later: This means that the recipient will be able to choose whether they want to pay it then, or defer payment until later.
Send quote and require online payment: This means that the recipient will be required to make a payment online once they’ve accepted the quote.
Yes, once they’ve accepted the quote you’ll get a notification. If they have also paid the quote, you’ll be notified of that as well. You can customize the language in the email that delivers the quote, but the page which they’ll use to make their payment isn’t something you can design (right now). It will have your logo on it though, and in my opinion, it’s pretty sleek looking.
NOTE: An online customer payment of a quote WILL trigger campaigns, purchase actions and billing automation triggers. Say what? I don’t know about you, but to me, that’s amazing.
Update #2: Email Reporting for Campaign Emails
What it does: This allows you to see historical open rates and click-through percentages for your campaign builder emails.
Why it matters: This is HUGE. In the past, if you wanted to see this data you’d have to use some sort of workaround, or export your info and do some excel wizardry. But now, you can easily see email open rates and click-through percentages from the performance tab of the campaign builder. This will empower Infusionsoft users to figure out what is working and what isn’t, so that they can optimize their campaigns and therefore their customer’s experience. Like I said, HUGE.
A few things to note on this one:
To view your email statistics, you’ll have to switch to the performance tab, click into a specific sequence, and then switch to the historical view.
Okay, so that’s about the size of it for this release. Like I said, it’s not a huge release in terms of tons of new features, but it’s a huge release in terms of the direction they’re going, and the momentum they have.
Now, to be fair, I think both of these features still have a few things that need to be added – but just as your marketing campaigns are constantly evolving, so too is the software. In the future, I’d love to see them include the ability to compare emails across sequences, or across campaigns. I’d love to see my highest performing emails (by click % and by open %) for specific time periods, and not just limited to 24 hour or 30 day windows.
With regards to the quoting feature, I’d love to be able to design the interface that the recipient experiences when they’re interacting with the quote, and to me it makes sense to be able to change some of that language. For example, is “quote” always the best term? But, truth be told, I don’t use quotes as heavily in my own business – if you do, I’ve love to hear your opinion.
If you love either of these features, have questions about them, or think I missed something, please go ahead and comment below! Enjoy thanks for reading.
