It’s no secret that I love Infusionsoft.
And while I do believe that Infusionsoft is the most powerful small business marketing automation tool on the planet, I also, like most of us, always have a list of things that I wish it would do differently, or better.
I love Infusionsoft, of course, but I wanted to share a list of my current frustrations for a few reasons.
- My hope is that it will help raise awareness of some issues, and help you avoid them before they become problems for you.
- If you’re frustrated with Infusionsoft, I want you to know that you’re not alone. Yes, I love Infusionsoft. But by my count, I’ve raised 70 support tickets with Infusionsoft since I left in May of 2015. It’s not perfect.
- My goal is to model a transparent and productive way to highlight concerns, issues, and feature requests with the hope that it may help Infusionsoft address them.
Dear Infusionsoft, thanks for all you do. But also, please…
1. Give us an “Any Time” option for timers.
This, to me, feels like a really easy win for Infusionsoft. Right now if I want to set a delay of a few hours or minutes, I need to also choose a time or time range. If I don’t care what time it happens, and I just want to let it run after X hours, then I have to configure “Between 12:00 am and 11:45 pm”, which is just plain clumsy.
2. Give us conditional snippets in emails.
This one is a little more of an ask, but I’d really love the ability to add a snippet to the email builder, and then choose conditions under which that content appears. This would give us as marketers the ability to send one message, but include different call-to-actions for different segments of our audience.
3. Add an HTML snippet to the new builder.
This one is straightforward. Please bring back the ability to add an HTML block to our emails. This was available with the legacy builder, and the functionality hasn’t yet been added to the new email builder. If it’s easier, I’d also accept more widgets that simulate the some of the common reasons for needing an HTML snippet (e.g. Adding a tracking pixel, embedding a table, coding untracked links, etc).
4. Stop clearing out my search results when I leave that page. Preserve them (like it used to) for when I return.
Again, I’m not asking for anything new on this one, I just want the old functionality back. Up until a few months ago my search results would stick around until I clicked “Start Over”. Sometimes that’s not a big deal, but if you’re having to rerun the same search multiple times because the system keeps dumping your criteria, then it can cost you time, and increases the opportunity for human error.
5. Let us adjust the width of our columns in emails.
The ability to easily have two and three columns is one of the best features about the new email builder. But the problem is that it always splits your columns into 1:1 or 1:1:1 ratios. It’s be nice to be able to manually adjust the width for each snippet to form our own custom layouts.
6. Let me use campaign merge fields on web forms and landing pages.
I’ll be honest, I have no idea what it would take to make this real, but it feels like it should be possible. To be clear – I’m not asking to be able to use contact merge fields, but rather I want to be able to use campaign merge fields. Here’s why: Let’s say I’m hosting an event, and I have a series of emails promoting the event, and I’m driving my prospects to a landing page so they can RSVP. Well, I’m likely going to use Campaign Merge Fields to save myself time in building the campaign. That way if I need to update the date, I can just change it in one location and it updates the whole campaign. It’d be great if that updated my landing page in addition to the emails.
7. When I use a merge field in a subject line, don’t push it to the end of the subject line.
This is probably the most minor annoyance on this list, but for some reason any merge fields you are adding to your subject line get pushed to the end of the subject line, then you need to copy and paste them to where they go, or just learn to add them as you write.
8. Let me add tags to a category when I create them from within the email builder.
When I create a tag in the campaign builder, on a goal or in a sequence, it prompts me to categorize that tag as I go. But, if I create a tag from within the email builder (on a link or a button), it does not prompt me to categorize that tag. Tag categories are important, and usually more important than new users realize, so emphasizing best practices as users are creating tags can save a lot of headache down the road.
9. Allow, or prompt even, us to categorize our campaigns as we name them. (The way you can with tags.)
The campaign builder was introduced roughly 5 years ago, and since then, I’ve been telling people “Don’t worry. They’ll build in folders, or categories, at some point. It’s logical. Just be patient.” And boom, I’m thrilled we’ve finally got them. But it shouldn’t be so laborious to categorize my campaigns. If this is going to be a best practice, it makes sense to me that we’d be prompted to categorize our campaigns as we create them. Something like this:
10. When I go from a list back to the campaign, don’t default to the edit tab, return me back to the reporting tab.
This one drives me nuts. You’re working along, checking up on your campaigns and running reports, let’s say you’re several layers deep looking for the group of contacts who have received an email in the last 30 days, and then you click into the report, and when you click “back to campaign” you’re defaulted all back out to the edit tab of the campaign. Just take me back to the reporting tab, like it used to do, pleeeeeease.
11. Give me an option to dismiss this, and not be prompted again.
I love that tag goals can retroactively find contacts who would have been added to this campaign, and that you can choose whether or not you want to add them. So, well done, and thanks for that. But, it gets a little annoying for the campaign builder to ask me every single time I publish. Seems like maybe it’d work to give me a “dismiss” option so that it doesn’t ask again? Like so:
———-
Okay, as I said previously, this isn’t a comprehensive list. It’s just a few things off the top of my head that feel like they’re worth addressing. I love Infusionsoft, and I have a number of friends who work directly on making product improvements; so I hope this blog post is received in the constructive manner in which it was intended. Don’t worry, once they’ve tackled this list I’ll be doing my best to prep another one!
For anyone wondering, I used Loom for the brief video recordings in this post. Loom is a Chrome plugin, it’s free, and it’s great. I recommend downloading some sort of free screen capture tool, it makes it easier to communicate with technical support if you’re able to document bugs or issues as you see them.
If any of these jump out at you as being important, I’d love to hear about it in the comments below! Or, if you want to share your own list, I’d love to hear that too! Thanks for reading.
To be able to have a ANY click trigger a tag to be added instead of having to add a tag to every link. This is already happening if you want to use the flames. You can have a click add a flame or two but I want to be able to add a tag instead of a flame.
Ooooh, interesting. So, would that be a setting for the email? Or a setting for the sequence? What do you envision?
I vote for 2, 11, 4, and 10 — in that order! I love Infusionsoft too but those are my top frustrations right now.
Thanks for reading Bonnie!
Your points are excellent. Is it just me or doesn’t it drive you nuts that when you go from reporting to editing that your workspace gets the view reset back to the left rather than where you were.
Thanks Liam, yes, that always throws people off too. Good point!
Greg, Awesome stuff as usual!
Just a few more to add to the list
1. Make recurring live events easier to set up: Create a “Campaign Date Timer” so that I don’t have to use a custom field and a field timer, I can just push people thru the campaign and neve have to worry about where that date is going to get set. (The campaign date timer would have CRAZY options like “Every Thursday” or maybe even let me pick the dates for the next 12 months. That way we could merge the date right into the email and never have to come back and reset the campaign or change the date every week, etc. THIS IS A HUGE ONE FOR ME!
2. Don’t make the Merge Field picker go away after I select the merge field I want. I often times, need more than one!
3. Allow Email thank you pages.
4. Holy Crap – Allow me to Copy a rule inside of a decision diamond. I often have one rules that are very similar and just need to change one little piece. I would love to just copy and then change the one piece.
5. I HATE THIS ONE – when you look at a saved search and hit “Edit Criteria/Columns…” there should be a list of the criteria that are currently making up this search. If you’re not the one who created the search and it’s not named well… It could take a Long time to figure it out and super easy to miss a bit of criterion. that could make a huge difference when you’re trying to make decisions.
To comment on your #6 – that should totally be possible. You can merge whatever Infusionsoft info you want onto a landing page in MOBIT.
Rock on Good sir!
Awesome contributions Kev, and thanks for reading.
1. I love this idea. I’ve definitely asked about this one too, but for some reason I didn’t remember it for this list. Great idea.
2. Yup. Like it does when I’m merging into a Task or Note. Agreed.
3. Haha, you miss those, eh? Personally I’ve just taken to using ones I build on my site, or with LeadPages. It’s much more flexible and infinitely sexier than the previous ones that we could create. But, yeah, it’s be nice if it was built it. This is my go to: https://www.monkeypodmarketing.com/generic-ty
4. Haha, yeah, rule building is a little laborious. It’d be also nice to have a “else” rule. Like, “if they don’t meet any of the other rules, send em here”.
5. That’s brilliant. That one has never occurred to me. Great idea.
HA! I like the generic TY page – You’re hilarious!
I am SO with you. Especially around the inability to create Tag Categories inside the builder. That’s just cray-zay-zee.
I used to have a lovely set of Naming Conventions and now my tags are like a jumbled old sock drawer.
My other HUGE peeve is that I have to create Every.Single.Link.And.Tag. in an email each time. I can’t copy and paste it. I can’t save it and use it again. It seems insane to me that I have to
– highlight
– add url
– search for tag
– add tag
for multiple applications of the same link in the same email.
Is it just me? Doesn’t this drive everyone nuts?
And again – it’s old functionality that we used to have (oh how I miss you, underlining, highlighting and ability to make a bit of text a different size…..) that for some reason got taken away.
My heart bleeds Infusionsoft Green, but jeez…some days….
Thanks as always, Greg. You’re the bomb and the diggity.
The bomb AND the diggity! Man oh man, my ego is peacock proud today.
But yeah, we’re on the same page. Something you said gave me an idea – what if we could assign actions to CAMPAIGN links – that way all you’d need to do is set up the links you’re going to be using most frequently, and assign default tags/actions to it, then select that link wherever you wanna use it and it would automatically use the campaign level actions to set for it. That could be a good solution. Of course we’d need the ability to add extra actions for some links, and not others, etc. But I like that a lot.
And yeah, they trimmed some of the functionality available in the new builder (though they DID bring back underlining, finally). But we can’t highlight text, or easily manipulate the size of a few words, etc. I still like the new builder better, but it’s like seven steps forward, and then three steps back.
Thanks for reading Sam!
This has inspired me to write an article of my own – great idea and really good list, Greg.
My top 3 requests as of today would be:
1. Reporting update for campaign builder with trending visuals and conversion rates from goal to goal over time. Last 24 hours and 30 days is okay, but seems half-baked.
2. Split testing…For a leader in marketing automation, this should have been done years ago.
3. CRM UI update. It’s pretty clunky and requires way too many clicks to do basic things. Included here would be an easy to read timeline attached to every record (similar to Active Campaign), that shows emails sent/opened, notes applied, website visited (with referring URL), products purchased….essentially everything in an easy-to-read timeline.
Related: The power behind opportunities is huge, but using them on a day-to-day basis for salesreps is very painful. I’ve been using Infusionsoft for more than 6 years and I don’t think they’ve ever made any significant changes to opportunities (and it’s easy to tell). Again, UI/UX update needed for salesreps to actually want to use them. Personally, I love the idea of drag-n-drop stage moves like Trello.
Brilliant, across the board.
1. Yes, campaign reporting NEEDS to be enhanced. I know this is something they were working on a few months back, and I actually attended a few meetings to give feedback on the design concepts they were building. But, all the people I know who were working on this are no longer with Infusionsoft. So, I don’t know where the project stands.
2. Duh. I don’t know how I missed that on this list.
3. Great idea. I haven’t played with Active Campaign much, but from what you’re describing, it sounds like a “activity trail”, so we can easily see how they’ve been interacted with, and the results it generated. Love it.
Looking forward to your list man!
Awesome stuff Bret – I like the activity feed and the Trello style Opportunity staging! I set up opportunities for people but as you said, it’s just painful to watch them use it. Good stuff! We should probably add all of these to the VOP
Great article, Greg! #10 is such a thorn…I’m not a “sigh-er” but every time I head to the Reporting tab, I feel the sighs starting to rear their heads.
And HTML snippets are #1 on my wish-list.
This is a nit-picky one, but have you noticed that if you add a link into the campaign links and append the link with contact parameters, they don’t wrap…it stretches the field out as far as it needs to go? So not really possible.
Thanks for reading Cheryl. I’m not sure I understand the campaign links wrapping one. I’ll have to toy around and see if I can figure out the issue there.
What about a button or icon on the sequence blocks in the reporting mode of CB that says “show me queued contacts” instead of having to go through the edit criteria, scroll down, select queued, then scroll down, another button click?
Great idea!
#2 was the coolest discovery as I started using Marketo. We use it on every email so that the banner is relevant to the lead’s location.
I keep forgetting about campaign categories. I oughta start categorizing my shtuff.