Why I Use InfusionSoft and Why You’ll Like It Too

Full disclosure: I am on the board of InfusionSoft and if you purchase InfusionSoft through my affiliate link they’ll pay me a commission. I have a very specific way that I have built my business and there’s only one tool that I’ve found that will do what I need it to do. In fact, some of Infusion’s most useful features came from my suggestions.

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

Reality: The #1 asset in your business is your relationship with your customer list.

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

The first time I fully understood this concept was on May 7, 1997. I was at the Peoria Illinois Civic Center and Dan Kennedy was the last in a string of speakers.

I consider this the first day of my marketing education and it changed the course of my life forever.

The promotional flyer had said he would explain how to replace cold calling with effective, low-cost advertising. Since cold calling was my #1 source of misery and frustration, I wasn’t about to leave early.

I wasn’t disappointed.

One of his examples was the “Giorgio Letters” – a restaurant owner named Giorgio mails out an invitation to romance-starved couples to come to his Italian Grotto for a lovely, intimate evening of linguini, red roses and chocolate for dessert.

A week later, those who don’t respond receive a follow up letter reminding them how they’ve tragically neglected their romance lately. Giorgio reminds them how many couples divorce for lack of romantic excitement in their lives.

Then a week later, all those who didn’t respond receive ANOTHER follow up letter from Giorgio with a penny glued to it.

Giorgio laments that he’s throwing a penny in his fountain, a sorrowful romance wish for a couple whose love has grown cold. He pleads with you one last time to come to his restaurant and save your marriage.

It’s OUTRAGEOUS.

By the third letter you’re saying, “Dang, this guy just doesn’t stop, doesn’t he?” You’re tempted to show the letter to your next door neighbor and say, “Did you get a letter like this too?”

The first thing that separates the winners from the losers is that most restaurants never send a letter in the first place. (How many letters have YOU gotten from a restaurant? Or even emails? Restaurant guys must not write letters all that much.)

And secondly, most people who send one letter, never send a second, let alone a third.

After Giorgio got letter #1 to generate a response, the big profits were actually in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th letters.

And furthermore if you poured on the gas to those who responded to any of it, you were on your way to cultivating a relationship with a responsive customer.

I didn’t know it at the time, but it was a perfect application of the 80/20 principle.

In marketing your #1 job is to SORT. Sort the interested from the disinterested, so you can start funneling your resources towards profitable customers.

What you and I can achieve today with Autoresponders is far more rewarding than those ancient Giorgio letters, but the concept is the same.

Consider the Grand Canyon. It would take hammers and trucks and dynamite and vast amounts of force to carve out that crevice, but water did it almost effortlessly over a long period of time. And water isn’t even hard!

I hope you can see the awesome power of this concept. An autoresponder sequence is THE heartbeat of a successful online business.

What I want to show you next is video from a live 2 day seminar I did in Chicago where I taught my clients everything I know about autoresponder marketing. Regardless of what tool you use to communicate with your list, my “Maze” concept will increase your relationship with your list when you put it in action.

Watch me explain the Maze concept of email marketing automation.

Perry Marshall