The #1 asset in your business is your customer list.

Therefore your #1 business tool is the software you use to manage and talk to your customer list.

Choosing a platform for this job is no trivial decision. The importance of this cannot be overstated. The ease and profitability of everything you do in your business over the next few years rides on it.

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is a huge industry: SAP, PeopleSoft, Goldmine, SalesLogix, ACT!, Oracle, Salesforce.com, SAS. Big companies.

Online, there is the whole issue of sending emails out to customers. Managing and delivering email is a whole world unto itself. That’s why companies like Constant Contact and Aweber exist. Those companies are email-only CRM and they’re growing like crazy.

Why? Because keeping yourself off spam blacklists and getting your email delivered is a full time job.

Now if you have a web-centric business, you have a unique set of problems, which is:

The big CRM companies like Oracle don’t solve the email problem for you.

And the email companies like Constant Contact don’t solve the CRM problem for you.

I can assure you, trying to maintain 2 databases – one in the office, another on the web – is a huge pain in the posterior quadrant. I mucked around like that for years. Glad I don’t do that anymore.

And there’s another problem that makes it even worse:

Managing affiliates.

Few, if any, of the CRM software companies have modules for affiliate marketing. So if your product is affiliate driven, you have even more headaches.

There is only ONE company in the world that provides a Shopping Cart, an Email / Autoresponder service, and Affiliate Tracking, all in one integrated package. They are the only game in town.

Infusion is what I use to manage my entire online business.

Infusion has another feature that most CRM software doesn’t have. I’d like to explain how I use this powerful tool… and why it is that Infusion is the only company that knows how to do this properly.

Infusion has something called “Action Sequences” which allows you to build multi-step marketing sequences for different products and promotions.

Let’s say you get a sales lead on Monday. Infusion sends a file to your fulfillment house to mail out a DVD to that guy. And they send a confirmation email.

On Tuesday Infusion sends him a follow-up message and on Thursday sends him a follow-up FAX. It puts him on an autoresponder sequence that continues to follow up for the next three months.

Six weeks later he buys. Infusion automatically removes him from Action Sequence A and puts him on new Action Sequence B that takes him through the steps of being a new customer.

It also puts him on an upsell sequence that invites gives him more opportunities to do business with you.

It schedules your sales person to give him a Welcome Call the next day and sends her a reminder the morning her call is supposed to take place.

ALL of this is completely automated.

You can build a 35-step follow-up sequence that runs like a machine, 24/7/365.

As a CRM system, Infusion does a lot of work for you.

I’ve turned Infusion’s Autoresponder system into an art form. Infusion tracks people clicking on links and the amount of email they get automatically adjusts to their level of interest. No two people receiving this very email today are treated exactly the same!

Infusion uniquely caters to the needs of direct marketers and there’s a story behind that.

Several years ago Infusion was just a custom software shop. One of Dan Kennedy’s customers, Reed Hoisington, hired them to build him a CRM system that would market to customers the way Dan always taught – with multi-step sequences and plenty of follow-up. Through multiple channels: Teleseminars, emails, phone calls, postcards, etc.

I went to a conference and Reed was RAVING about how it put his whole business on hyperdrive.

The software they built for Reed has evolved into Infusion’s current software product. Finally, 3 years ago I switched to Infusion. It allows me to do everything I just explained, plus run a completely virtual company because my employees can log in from anywhere in the world.

INFUSION HAS A SPECIAL OFFER FOR MY SUBSCRIBERS….

* Typical setup fee of $2,000 is WAIVED
* Instead of $399 per month, it’s $199 per month
* Double your sales guarantee: “If you use Infusionsoft for 1 year and don’t double your sales, Infusionsoft will give you $1,000 back when you cancel.”
* Used by Dan Kennedy, Frank Kern, Rich Shefren, Michael Gerber… and me
* I’m on the InfusionSoft board of directors – obviously I believe in it.
* No contract

http://www.perrymarshall.com/infusion-june-2009-special

A word about Aweber…

I LOVE Aweber. Great company. Friendly service. Superb email delivery. I am a VERY active Aweber user, it’s the tool I use for an unrelated business that doesn’t use a shopping cart. I hope to meet Aweber president Tom Kulzer someday.

But Aweber doesn’t do what Infusion does. Also, if you have a big list, Aweber is not cheap.

* Aweber pricing ramps up fast:
See http://www.aweber.com/pricing.htm
** If I were on Aweber’s system, I be paying more than this InfusionSoft offer AND I wouldn’t have an affiliate program AND I wouldn’t have an ecommerce system.

Trying to manage two databases at once is jinky, to say the least.

Stop horsing around and get all of it – ecommerce, email, autoresponders and affiliate management, on one platform:

http://www.perrymarshall.com/infusion-june-2009-special

Perry Marshall

About the Author

Perry Marshall has launched two revolutions in sales and marketing. In Pay-Per-Click advertising, he pioneered best practices and wrote the world's best selling book on Google advertising. And he's driven the 80/20 Principle deeper than any other author, creating a new movement in business.

He is referenced across the Internet and by Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, INC and Forbes Magazine.