CRM - March 2009 - (Page 46)

SECRET OF MY SUCCESS Automating the Personal Touch A small direct-marketing business extends its operations with Infusionsoft CRM Tell us about your organization. We do handwritten direct in setting it up, but Infusionsoft’s consultants are excellent. We use it three ways: One, sales management. All the leads and marketing for businesses—we send handwritten letters, highclients are in there and tasks and follow-up notes. It shows light parts of letters, and circle things. We make sure the matewhen to follow up and why, and gives a reminder pop-up. Secrial gets opened and gets read. The people you’re mailing to feel ond, invoicing and billing and credit-card payments. Third, all there’s a company that knows who they are and treats them as of our Web forms. When someone fills out the form, it goes [individuals] and not just a segment. We don’t use ink-jet printdirectly into the system and we then set up ers. It’s really handwritten. From that, we find any follow-up actions that apply. that clients get 10 to 20 percent, sometimes 30 percent, higher sales. When you get a hand-addressed envelope with a real stamp, What results have you seen? Getting a lot you open it. You know it’s from a person. You more organized with the sales process and think it could be from a friend because knowing who to follow up with and what’s someone took the time to send this to you. happened. It’s also helpful when one of my I’ve been in marketing for 10 years, and salespeople wants to pull me in as an expert. there’s always a challenge of how to get I can prep for the call just by looking at their through to people—especially B2B, but even notes and know what’s gone on to date. Also, with B2C. We get so much junk. Some real esit’s great to follow up with education: You Jeff Fenigstein, tate investors taught me that, to get homeownmight previously have had a 45-minute phone FOUNDER AND CEO, DIRECT MAIL ers to talk to you, it helps to hand-write an call to walk a customer through. Knowing BY HAND | as told to Lauren McKay envelope and letter. I started just working with that, as we get more set up with follow-on a handful of real estate investors. I didn’t have sequencing, I don’t have to make sure I’m callto sell them on anything. I was providing a service they needed. ing so-and-so once a month. I can have something with new People get this. Companies can’t keep up with it. Soon my busiinformation go out to them. When they’re ready, they call me. ness spread to other industries. It’s nice as a small business to have one tool that does so many things and surprisingly does them pretty well. You don’t What challenges were you facing? Keeping up with all the expect the all-in-one tool to be the best at each thing, but it’s been really nice to have good tools and then to have something leads. You end up trying to do it in Outlook or Act! and it’s where you have an idea and say, “Wow, I actually can do that really not efficient. We needed something to keep up with all because I have this tool already.” the conversations we’d been having with customers. I’d been looking at autoresponders, looking for a new one to do an automated email follow-up. With Infusionsoft, I was attracted to the fact that everything’s in one place. It’s one tool for salespeople. HOW OLD IS THE IMPLEMENTATION? We implemented in Anything that comes in from our site—people asking for inforAugust 2008. mation or for a follow-up—all that information gets into InfuWHO WAS INVOLVED IN THE DECISION PROCESS? It was me and the head of business development. sionsoft. I don’t have to do anything. I know when a given person went to the site and I can bolster the right result series. WHAT’S BEEN THE BEST CRM IDEA? Being able to do initial education for a prospect through an automated follow-up I know when I called that person and when she got the newsletsequence. It saves time and lets them come to us if interested. ter. Since I’ve signed on with Infusionsoft, I’ve found I can do BIGGEST SURPRISE? I thought, “When I go out and start selling to things that I didn’t realize I needed. Invoicing is so much easier other industries, I’m going to need case studies and control because it’s integrated with the credit-card payments. I take groups and statistics to show, ‘Hey, this is better and this is why you need it.’“ That totally wasn’t the case. Talking to people, they payments and it’s all in Infusionsoft. For a small business, havimmediately got it. At some point, they were doing handwritten ing a tool to allow me to do so much makes life easier. five fastfacts 5 marketing and never knew a company could do it for them. Let’s talk about the implementation process. I’m pretty good with HTML and understand applications. The consultant I worked with was excellent and talked through the strategy for my company, which is what I wanted. It was, “Let’s talk about your business and tell me what I should do.” We invested time 46 CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | MARCH 2009 BIGGEST MISTAKE? One mistake I see from a lot of people—and we were guilty of this to some extent—is that we needed to create more materials and were not doing multiple mailings or really keeping in touch with clients and prospects. Most people think marketing is sending one letter: “If they don’t [respond], we’ll go to the next list.” You need to recognize you’re building relationships with each touch point. www.destinationCRM.com http://www.destinationCRM.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - March 2009

CRM - March 2009 Contents Front Office Reality Check Customer Centricity The Tipping Point Stay Tuned Stimulating Citizen Experience CRM on Twitter Retailers Face Reality Making Relationships Matter Required Reading We the People Innovation Nation CRM and the iPhone Looking to Score The Virtual Welcome Mat A Tough Transition Made Easier A Training Regimen Gets Rigorous A Battle Fought from Afar Secret of My Success Re:Tooling Connect Pint of View

CRM - March 2009

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