3 Species of Pipeline and How To Leverage Automated Experiences

3 Species of Pipeline and How To Leverage Automated Experiences

Guest Posts, Keap, Small Business, Tips and Tricks

Paul Sokol, Data Scientist, Infusionsoft

Paul Sokol, Data Scientist, Infusionsoft

The original Campaign Builder Mad Scientist is back again to drop some knowledge on us all. You guys may know Paul from past hits such as Infusionsoft for Non-profits, 5 Massively Underused Infusionsoft Features or as the author of the IS Cookbook. Regardless, he’s back, and has pulled some more wisdom out from under his glorious hair. Enjoy.

3 Species of Pipeline and How To Leverage Automated Experiences

Ahoy hoy Monkeypodders! Its your favorite mad scientist and automated experience authority Paul Sokol with another guest post that, hopefully, you’ll be able to use in your business somehow. Infusionsoft user or not.

So here’s the scoop: in most businesses there is usually a long drawn out process of some kind. Now, this process may not be technically difficult but rather it simply takes time. For example, if you are providing construction services it takes time to get permits and inspections and such. To ensure smooth operations and governance over the process’ integrity, a pipeline can keep everything organized like a well-oiled machine. More on that in a second though.

A process that would warrant a pipeline can exist during the customer acquisition phase, during post-sale fulfillment or the product itself can warrant its own pipeline. In this blog post, my goal is to share more insight into these three kinds of pipelines I’ve seen in the wild (and personally used) and how you might be able to leverage humanized automation to intentionally create a delightful customer experience.

This is not to say that more species of pipeline don’t exist. To say that would be ignorant. Even in the real world we are discovering new species of life at exponential rates. Who knows, maybe in the future if I encounter a fourth distinct type of pipeline you’ll get another guest post 😉

PipelineBefore we begin I need to briefly explain the notion of a pipeline because there are some different definitions out there. I personally use the word (and thus how it should be interpreted when reading this post) as a way to describe a manual accountability tool whereas someone can track an individual customer relationship through a clearly defined process with a defined outcome.

I know that sounds wordy. Let me clarify a bit.

A process is nothing more than a series of steps in a specific order to achieve some outcome.

Steps and Order. There are certain steps you take when getting out of the shower in a specific order to prepare yourself for public appearance. You don’t get out of the shower, get dressed, and then dry off. Process = Steps in a specific Order.

A pipeline is a mechanism to track a process at a scale. The lone solopreneur might be able to keep 3 or so sales leads together in their head, but good luck juggling 50 active leads. The process only works in their head to a point.

Lastly, for a pipeline to work the process it is scaling has to be clearly defined. You can’t build a pipeline for a process that doesn’t exist.

Species #1: Sales Pipeline

For Sale SignSelling a house takes time. Selling someone a $25K mastermind might take a long conversation with multiple touch points. Selling someone a $5k/month consulting retainer absolutely takes a longer more involved conversation.

When it comes to offers that have either a high ticket price (with respect to the target market’s perception of price) or something that has a long buying cycle, a sales pipeline can be very handy.

As far as the sales process, the pipeline is tracking the key milestones in the relationship. Here are the recommended pipeline stages for the beginning of any sales process.

New Opportunity – The contact has been identified as someone we should call, that’s it. No action has actually occurred.
Contacting – The sales rep has made at least one attempt to get a voice-to-voice conversation and has not reached them yet.
Engaging – The sales rep has made contact but has not yet identified if the lead is qualified to proceed further down the sales process.
Qualified – The sales rep has verified the contact has a real problem, budget and the authority to spend the budget.

Once someone is qualified, there are usually only a few milestones after that, based on how you sell. They usually happen in pairs too. For example, “Demo Scheduled” and “Demo Completed”. Or “Proposal Sent” and “Proposal Accepted”.

As a general guideline, your sales pipeline should only have 6-8 distinct stages besides the Won/Loss stages at the end of the process. This also ensures that your people will be able to easily use the pipeline without getting confused.

Regarding automation, you’ll want to use it to supplement what the sales rep should already be doing anyway.

For example, if a lead is in the Contacting milestone, there can be a series of emails from the sales rep that basically says “Hey I’m still trying to reach you”. Or, if you have a “Proposal Sent” milestone that might be a series of emails that says “Hey what’d you think?”

Bonus Super Ninja Tactic: “Invisible Sales Manager”
The “Invisible Sales Manager” is an excellent way to keep track of sales reps and their performance. It also really begins to paint the picture for how powerful good automation can actually be.

Here is how it works: For each sales milestone, have a timer that waits until long after the next milestone should have happened. For example, someone shouldn’t be in Contacting for more than about a week. You can set a timer for one month and, if they are still at that point in the process, have the system apply some note and notify the sales manager that the lead has been stale for a month. Now, there is documentation of the occurrence (in case this is a recurring problem with a particular rep; you now have hard evidence) and the sales manager knows they need to have a conversation.

This post got a little longer than expected, so we’ll bring you the 2nd and 3rd species in a day or two.

LeadSources: Simplifying for Sanity

LeadSources: Simplifying for Sanity

Keap, Tips and Tricks

Mike HiltonToday’s blog post on Keap Leadsources comes to us from Mike Hilton – current member of Keap’s product team, and former member of the Keap Customer Experience team. That means that his focus was improving the experience Keap creates for their customers – and that’s something I can get behind 100%.

Turns out that Mike isn’t just a Customer Experience advocate; he’s also a pretty sharp Keap user with a mastery of a number of tools and tie-ins that help stretch Keap. Well, today’s post doesn’t require any extra integrations; and it should resonate clearly with any Keap user who has ever struggled with tracking multiple leadsources through the same opt-in form. Take it away Mike!

Simplifying for Sanity

Why do some people freak out and start to sweat when they see:

  • a² + b² = c²
  • Microsoft Excel™
  • “?firstname=~Contact.FirstName~&lastname=~Contact.LastName~&…”

The answer could be that each of the above examples is tied to discomfort and painful memories, but more than likely it is because they haven’t felt they could benefit from understanding how they work in the real world. Today, I am not going to focus on using the pythagorean theorem, or Microsoft Excel™, but I want to demystify the junk that comes after a URL

My goal is to teach you how to use Keap LeadSources to track contacts from multiple channels without having to duplicate the same webform over and over and over again.

To understand that junk (also known as the Query String) you need to understand 3 simple characters and how they work to make your life easier:

  • ? – Question Mark: tells the page that you have some important information to pass along with the URL (ie – contact information, id numbers, lead sources, etc).
  • = – Equal Sign: tells the page that there is a “value pair” in the URL. The value to the left is the variable name, and the value to the right is what that variable equals. For instance, firstname=Mike would be read as “For the variable named ‘firstname’ assign the value of ‘Mike’ to it.
  • & – Ampersand: tells the page that there is more than one value pair in this URL

Here’s an article from Keap’s help center that expands on this a bit more. Let’s look at how you can use the query string and make your own “junk” after the URL actually do what you want it to do…

Assigning LeadSources in Keap:

You’ll need to do 4 things:

  1. Create a lead source
  2. Capture the Lead Source Id
  3. Drag a hidden field to your webform and copy the hosted URL
  4. Create a link that has the leadsource variable in the Query String

1) Creating a lead source –
From your dashboard:

  • Click Lead Generation
  • Click Create Lead Source
  • Complete form & save

2) View the Lead Source ID-
From your dashboard:

  • Click Lead Generation
  • Click Edit/View Lead Source
  • Identify the ID of your Lead Source

3) Drag a Hidden Field onto your Webform then copy the Pretty URL-
From within the Automation Builder: 

  • Create a webform
  • Drag out a hidden field
  • Select the Lead Source option
  • Rename & Copy the pretty URL from the code tab.
  • Publish the Form

4) Create a link to point to the webform and attach the variables to the URL-

  • Paste the URL:
    https://jr207.infusionsoft.com/app/form/something-meaningful
  • Add your ? to let the page know there are variables in the URL:
    https://jr207.infusionsoft.com/app/form/something-meaningful?
  • Add your variable and assign its value:
    https://jr207.infusionsoft.com/app/form/something-meaningful?LeadSourceId=40

Paste this URL into your ad copy (feel free to shorten or customize it as needed):
Customized: Click Here
Shortened: https://bit.ly/my_Link

That’s it! Run a few tests on the lead sources. Change up the ID’s to other sources in your LeadSource table and verify that it is assigning them appropriately (TIP: Use a new test lead each time…as this process will not overwrite an existing lead source).

The first few times, it may take you more time to set up as you commit the steps to memory.

IMPORTANT TO NOTE: For every traffic source or marketing campaign (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc) you will want to have a SPECIFIC lead source so that you can tell where the leads are coming in from. Simply repeat the steps above to make sure that you create and capture the correct LeadSourceId.

If all of your traffic initially comes through the same lead capture webform, your URL will stay the same. Only the LeadSourceId will change.

Here’s an example for how you can track ROI from a Facebook Ad using Keap LeadSource tracking.

Dear ~Contact.FirstName~

Dear ~Contact.FirstName~

Keap, Tips and Tricks

I know that sometimes I can be a little long-winded when I write my blog posts, so today I’m going to get right to the point.

One way or another you may have wound up with contacts in your Keap database who don’t have a first name.

This can pose a challenge if you are using the first name merge field in your email content.

This video shows you how to find those contacts, how to manually fix a few of them – and how to set up a default for situations where the merge field doesn’t have a name on file it can use.

Enjoy:

Integrating WebinarJam and Keap

Integrating WebinarJam and Keap

Keap, Small Business, Tips and Tricks, Tools

Update 2023: Nathan Householder did a deep dive into WebinarJam’s updated features and settings and was kind enough to record this demo showing Keap users how to connect with WebinarJam. Enjoy.

Note: The article below was last updated in August of 2018 with a contribution from Chad DeLaura covering how to integrate when you’re doing a webinar series. (See Update)

I no longer use WebinarJam and so have not kept up with the various changes and updates they’ve made – the instructions and suggestions below may work just fine, but it’s also possible that they are no longer current.

For a complete list of tools that I use and recommend check out the Monkeypod Toolbox Ebook.

So, in case you haven’t heard, WebinarJam is a tool that allows you to run a Google Hangout like a full scale webinar. It’s basically a plugin, or an overlay, that gives you a suite of tools to use during your Hangout. And, it’s pretty darn solid.

I have done my share of webinars in the past, but I hadn’t done any since starting Monkeypod, and that was bothering me. I mean, webinars are a proven way for to disseminate information, provide value, and engage with your audience. So, I decided to get back into it, and I started researching Webinar platforms and I kept coming back to WebinarJam as the best mixture of tools that I need while still being affordable. (It’s about $2000 less per year than GoToWebinar, I think.)

If you’re new to webinars, WebinarJam is great because it has a step-by-step wizard that allows you to easily create your webinar (see the wizard steps highlighted in yellow).

WebinarJam_Wizard

This wizard walks you through the normal steps you’d nee to set up to host your webinar (like presenter details, webinar schedule, the registration page design, etc), but because this tool was designed by marketers, they also included steps in the wizard that are a little more advanced (like integrating with your email marketing platform, and prompting you to create polls and offers ahead of time that you can deploy during your webinar).

The integration with Infusionsoft is really pretty straightforward, in fact, there are two. The simple integration simply passes their information back to your Infusionsoft account, and the deep integration is a little more robust. The deep integration requires that you add your Infusionsoft account name, and API key to authenticate.

WebinarJam_Infusionsoft_Integration

And once you’ve done that, you can then select tags (by ID number) that you’d like to have applied when someone registers, attends, doesn’t attend, leaves earlier, arrives late, watches the replay or buys. Yup, this means that you can design a campaign with very specific follow up based on any of those circumstances. Not bad, eh?

WebinarJam_Infusionsoft_Tags

So, the tool itself it pretty slick. It does pretty much everything that I would want it to do. And it’s pretty intuitive to get set up. So far so good, right? Well, with one little hitch – WebinarJam has its own registration pages, and they’re….okay. They’re not bad, but they’re not great either. And they’re hosted on WebinarJam’s domain. Here’s an example of one registration page:

WebinarJam_RegistrationPage

Not bad, right? Yeah, the pages themselves are actually okay. But the registration box that pops out is kind of ugly. And, if you want to bypass their registration page and use your own you can, but, you still have to use their pop-out box. Which looks like this:

WebinarJam_Reg_Box

So, I didn’t want to use their registration pages. I’ve gotten pretty formidable (if I do say so myself) at creating my own LeadPages pages, so I thought ‘Alright, I’ll just use that”

At first I tried to use LeadPages to pass the info to WebinarJam and then pass the info from WebinarJam to Infusionsoft; but in order to do that I had to embed the WebinarJam box on my LeadPage, and it wasn’t exactly “on brand”, so I decided to go from LeadPages to Infusionsoft, and then post the information from Infusionsoft back to WebinarJam using an HTTP post.

WebinarJam DOES give you one-click registration links that you can you can use for registering people who are already on their list, you know, so they don’t have to type in their information that they’ve likely already given you. And I fancy myself a fairly technical guy, so I figured I could probably deconstruct this auto-registration link and create an HTTP post that would register people.

Well, I’ll save us all some time and let’s just say “It wasn’t as easy as I would have liked.” But in the end, I did figure out a way to configure an HTTP post to register contacts from Infusionsoft to WebinarJam. And this gave me the best of both worlds. I could use the one-click registration link for my existing folks, and new people would come through my sexy LeadPages page and then be registered via HTTP post.

Here’s what you need to know:

(Note: Due to WebinarJam updates, you may have a different version of their software – if your account doesn’t match up with the screenshots below check the update on the bottom of this post for instructions on the newer version)

When you get to step 5 in the WebinarJam wizard, you have to enable the API Custom Integrations setting. This will give you your API Key, WEBICODE, and MEMBERID. You only need the second two:

WebinarJam_API_Key

Once you have those two pieces of information, you can set up your HTTP post in Infusionsoft. You can add it in your campaign in whichever sequence makes sense, but usually it would be following your own registration form. Here’s how you configure the HTTP post:

HTTP_Post

The names in the left hand column of the HTTP post don’t change. The URL that you’re posting to doesn’t change, that always will be this URL: https://app.webinarjam.com/api/v2/register

(EDIT: For EverWebinar, you’ll use a slightly different URL: https://app.webinarjam.com/api/v2/ever/register)

If you want their complete API documentation you can check it out here, I used the information from page 6 for this particular piece. (EverWebinar API documentation here)

You’ll probably want to set up the name and email value pairs just as I’ve done above, using the Infusionsoft merge codes. And the bottom bit, schedule, that designates which webinar you want to register them for (leave it as 0 unless this is a webinar series).

The parts that will change are the API key that you copied from WebinarJam, and the Webinar_id that you copied from WebinarJam – though it is worth pointing out that WebinarJam calls this Webicode on the API integrations tab you’ll be copying from.

So, that’s it. It took me 5+ hours to figure out how to have WebinarJam, LeadPages and Infusionsoft all making sweet music together, and in approximately 7 minutes of reading, you can now benefit from my research and testing.

NOTE: The one drawback to register guests this way is that you have to enable the registration notifications from WebinarJam, because that’s how their registration link is distributed. Because we’re registering them through an HTTP post, the isn’t an easy way to deliver their registration link to them through Infusionsoft. Though I have it on pretty good authority that there is an app being developed that will solve for just such an occasion. Update: Here’s the app, EverJam that I was describing.

Now, executing the live webinar was a whole different story, and one that probably deserves a blog post of its own. For tips on running your own live webinar, check out this blog post. I would love to hear about your own experience with WebinarJam or another tool you like!

Worth noting: Yes, my links to WebinarJam are affiliate links. But hey, they’ve got an awesome product and an affiliate program. If you think you’re going to recommend WebinarJam, I’d recommend signing up too. Sign up here.

Update: August 2017

WebinarJam has had a few updates since this post was originally created, and now some folks are on the new version which doesn’t match up with the screenshots or instructions above. Here’s the updates steps for registering attendees to your WebinarJam webinars via an HTTP post in Infusionsoft.

Step One: First you’ll want to select Advanced Settings from your list of webinars.

Step Two: Then you’ll need to enable API Custom Integations (look for the blue check mark to indicate it’s enabled). This will reveal three fields for you, Member Id, Webicode, and API Key. You won’t need the Member Id, but you will need the other two.

Webinar Jam Advanced Integrations

Step Three: Now use that information to configure an HTTP post in whatever sequence you choose (usually this would be in the Infusionsoft campaign builder, immediately following the registration form your contacts are submitting).

New HTTP Post

Note: The webinar_id is the Webicode from the previous step.

Here is the Post URL for WebinarJam: https://webinarjam.genndi.com/api/register
Here is the Post URL for EverWebinar: https://webinarjam.genndi.com/api/everwebinar/register

(Here is the updated complete API documentation for WebinarJam and EverWebinar, where most of this information is from.)

How to integrate for multiple WebinarJam or Everwebinar Webinars

Contributed by Chad Delaura

Step 1: Login here: https://account.genndi.com/login

Step 2: Once logged into either WebinarJam or Everwebinar go in and click the green button labeled “Your Links” at the top right of the specific webinar you want to setup

Step 3: Do this after following Greg’s instructions above on setting up the initial HTTP post:

You need to find the proper Schedule ID, so after clicking “Your Links” go to the button on the right named “Replay Recording” and in the dropdown select the proper session you’re setting up and look for the ID (NOTE: the ID is the second to last number in the URL in between two slashes(/1/) such as the “1” listed in this example URL (ALSO: See image below for example):
 

So, if you create an Infusionsoft opt in form with Greg’s instructions above you can now create multiple radio button or dropdown options for different times/dates of a webinar to register for…

Then, you can tie the opt in form into a campaign with a decision diamond to fire off specifically configured HTTP post’s sequences (Based on Greg’s instructions) for people to get registered for multiple webinars

(NOTE: The only variable that changes from Greg’s instructions to setup one is the schedule ID everything else stays the same)

Confessions of a Campaign Expert: Compartmentalized Campaigns

Confessions of a Campaign Expert: Compartmentalized Campaigns

Campaign Builder, Guest Posts, Keap, Tips and Tricks

Mike Harris, the author of today’s blog post, is someone for whom I have a tremendous amount of respect. Actually, our career paths with Keap haven’t been all that different. We were hired around the same time, we’ve both run Infusionsoft University, and we both have logged the hours to call ourselves campaign experts. Mike has helped a lot of small businesses and I’m pumped that he’s taken the time to share some of his insight.

Confessions of a Campaign Expert: Compartmentalized Campaigns

Throughout my Keap career (going on 4 years) I’ve learned a lot about the campaign builder.  It was a new tool when I was hired so I simultaneously learned the old legacy Follow-Up Sequences as well and the brand new Campaign Builder.  I learned what worked well, and what didn’t, through my own experimentation as well as the experience of other customers.

One thing I noticed was that people seemed to try to cram as much as they could into a single campaign.  I understood the reasoning behind it (to keep everything related in one spot) but what they ended up with was a giant spider web that looked more like a mess than a business process.  Did they work? Sometimes.  Did they break? Yes, quite often, and with a huge campaign it’s harder to find a breaking point.

So the solution: Compartmentalize Your Campaigns

Side note about myself: I have ADD and I get distracted easily. If there’s too much going on all at once, I find it hard to focus.  This actually worked to my advantage when building campaigns or helping customers build theirs.  I tried to keep things in smaller, intuitive chunks or compartments and found that it not only worked for me but for my customers as well.

When processes are separated at natural breaking points a couple things happen.  The first is that things just tend to work better. Fewer moving pieces in a campaign usually leads to a more reliable and efficient campaign. So, try to exercise some restraint when you get a big idea.  I’ll lay out how to break that campaign up a little later.

Another benefit of breaking campaigns up into more manageable chunks is that you start to see multiple uses for certain pieces.  This means you won’t have to keep duplicating your work.  You can just piggy-back off the work you’ve already done which not only saves you time but keeps your messaging and processes consistent.

So, how do you compartmentalize your campaigns, Mike? Well, I’m glad you asked.

  1. Look for natural points of separation.
    • For instance, if you have a web form offering a free report and then guiding them towards a purchase, the purchase is a natural point of separation.  The contact goes from prospect to client at that point.  Our relationship has changed and, with it, communication should change, as well.
    • Another point of separation is where a handoff occurs.  Whether you are handing a task off to another employee or having a third-party plugin run an action, those can be good points to consider a separation of process.
    • Just remember, if it feels like you shouldn’t be starting a new campaign at a certain point, don’t do it. Make sure the separation make sense to you and those you work with.
  2. Link the campaigns together
    • There are only a couple campaign goal types that can link one campaign to another: tags and purchases are the two biggest ones.  If you are not using Infusionsoft’s Ecommerce or integrating another solution, then tags become your primary option.
    • Linking campaigns is easy.  The first campaign will have an end goal of “Tag A” being applied.  This will conclude that first campaign for the contact.  Then, the second campaign will start with a tag applied goal that also looks for “Tag A” to be applied.  So when a contact has “Tag A” applied to their record it will end the first campaign and start them in the second campaign.
  3. Recycle
    • The key with this approach is not just to break everything up but to be able to reuse pieces of different processes.  For instance, if you have a process that captures information then sends out a series of reminders, you may be able to reuse those reminders for another event.  When you start to involve merging in custom fields, it really becomes easy to reuse these smaller campaigns. (Ex. “Don’t forget about your ~Contact.EventName~ on ~Event.Date~ at ~Event.Time~.”) Using a custom field to populate an event name turns it from a single-use campaign to a multi-use campaign.
    • Another example of recycling a campaign is for fulfillment after a purchase. If you have ten lead capture campaigns all driving toward the purchase of a product, you wouldn’t want to build the fulfillment into each one of those campaigns; but if you conclude them all with the purchase of Product A, then you can trigger a single campaign that starts with purchasing Product A and consolidate all those different channels into one, streamlined process.

How about a demo? Here’s a campaign that needs to be broken up into smaller campaigns.
And here’s the plan for breaking that campaign up, using the Purchase Goal (blue) as the natural point of separation. The section highlighted in yellow will be the first campaign, and the orange section will become a second stand-alone campaign.
Once we’ve made the break, here is how our first new campaign looks:
And here’s the second half of that campaign, broken out on its own as well. Notice how the “Register for Event” purchase goal concludes the first campaign AND is the trigger to start this new one.

These steps may not feel particularly groundbreaking but it really helps to consider them when we get lost in the myopia of building the “perfect campaign”. We all tend to roll our eyes when someone mentions the phrase “work smarter not harder” but, in some cases, it really rings true.

Remember, Infusionsoft gets easier each time you log in. And hopefully these tips simplify things even further. Questions, comments, drop them below!

Have your own questions?

If you would benefit from a place to ask automation questions when you get stuck, and get ideas and inspiration from other businesses, you can join us in the Monkeypod Membership.

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The Story of a Broken Link

The Story of a Broken Link

Keap, Marketing, Tips and Tricks

Update: As of 2019 this tactic no longer works, it was broken as Infusionsoft updated the way their links redirected – when I (and others) asked them to restore this functionality they indicated that they a) didn’t know it was working that way, and b) had never intended this to be a feature. I still have my fingers crossed that maybe they’ll enable this ability again, but I’m not holding my breath. *sad trombone*

This is the story of how a broken link was able to fight against all odds, and scrape it’s way into becoming a learning lesson, a training video, and ultimately a blog post.

If you send a lot of emails, this story might sound familiar. It starts off embarrassing for me, and then hopefully ends up putting a new ninja trick on your tool belt (Jump to the video if you can’t wait).

You see, I’ve been a little busy lately. The usual work stuff, yes, but also some travel (three national parks in 14 days), and then most recently Sara and I moved. We’re still in San Diego, but we moved from an apartment to a house.IMG_1444

The truth, as you’ve probably noticed, is that between all this commotion I haven’t focused on my blog as much as I usually like to. Yeah, that’s an excuse, but as I’m sure many of you can attest, creating unique content is exhausting.

And sometimes, like when you’re hiking in Death Valley without wifi, it’s just plain impossible.

So, between unpacking boxes and mounting TVs late on Sunday night, I found a few minutes to edit and format a blog post that my good friend Paul Sokol had written for me. I created the tracking links with all my google UTM parameterKatrina_Emails, and I scheduled up an email for Monday morning, and various social posts for the week (this is what I use to create my links).

Then, Monday morning rolls around, and I head off to a Chiropractic appointment, and sure enough, by the time I check into my inbox at 10:00 am I have a dozen people kindly informing me that my email that went out is littered with broken links. (By the way, thanks to everyone who helped point it out, I appreciate you for taking the time!)

Chimp FacepalmSo now I’ve got a predicament. I’ve sent an email to all my blog subscribers and I’m driving them/you to a broken link – a 404 page. That’s a real #facepalm moment. And I certainly didn’t do Paul, or his charity, and favors by making it hard for people to get to his link (sorry Paul).

(Silver lining: At least my 404 page is a lead capture. Proof.)

So, I’ve got a few options.

Option A: I can send a follow-up “oops” email with the right link. You know, they say “oops” style emails have dramatically higher open rates because people wanna see what you messed up…

Option B: Or, I can bust open my bag of ninja tricks and go fix the broken link. Did you know that you can change the URL a link is pointing to, even if it’s already in their inbox?

Being the marketing nerd that I am, I chose option B. I fixed the link. I recorded a video of me doing it. I created a “learning moment”. And now I’ve turned the whole dang thing into a blog post.

Almost like I planned it.

[The video was removed because this tactic was broken by a 2019 Infusionsoft update.]