This post is written by Greg Jenkins (more info at the bottom of this post). Greg is a good friend and an Infusionsoft wizard. I completely admire his small business knowledge, work ethic and frinedly personality. You can learn more about him and his business in the bio found below.
If you have ever moved, you’ve probably figured out how important it can be to label your boxes with the contents. Arriving at your new home and having everything you own packaged up in mysterious identical boxes can be quite confusing.
And then, to make things even more complicated, you now have a foreign new home with empty drawers and closets in which to store all these things. So, you start putting things away and unpacking without really feeling confident in where you’re putting things.
And then, almost without fail, you start to rearrange things as you are living in your new home, and as you figure out what your day-to-day life looks like, and where the most convenient spot is for each specific knick-knack.
It’d be great if you knew exactly where things were going to go in your new home without having to guess, and without having to test it out for a few months to figure out how things are going to be. But, it doesn’t work that way.
It doesn’t work that way with Infusionsoft either. When you buy Infusionsoft you’re motivated to start using it so you can start seeing a return on your investment. But, unfortunately, when you first buy Infusionsoft you’re probably not all that familiar with all of the nooks and crannies of the application. And that makes it really unlikely that you’re going to set everything up properly as you get going.
(Don’t currently use Infusionsoft? Check out this Infusionsoft review to learn more.)
This on its own means it’s easy for your application to end up cluttered. If that wasn’t bad enough, consider these two facts:
- Small businesses grow and evolve rapidly. Your business today might look dramatically different than it did the day you bought Infusionsoft.
- For each outcome you want to achieve with Infusionsoft, there are between two and ten ways to get there. Each with their own set of pros and cons.
All of these together mean that keeping your application neat and tidy is a real challenge. But having an organized Infusionsoft application can be the difference between using Infusionsoft, and giving up on it.
Once a year, or once a quarter even, carve out a half-day to run through this checklist and clean out old or errant data:
- Check User Addresses
- Check Company Address
- Check Email Address Block
- Review Tag Categories
- Check for Duplicate Contacts
- Remove Unnecessary Test Contacts
- Audit Custom Fields
- Check for Erroneous Saved Searches/Reports
- Update Branding Center Defaults
- Remove Unnecessary Dashboard Widgets
- Company Files and Images (Clean up, Rename, etc)
- Review Templates
- Update Template Categories
- Review Tags
- Delete Test Products
- Mark Discontinued Products as Inactive
- Remove Extra Order Forms
- Extra Merchant Accounts (Do you have more than you need?)
- Referral partner links, resources, commission programs
- Delete Unused or Unnecessary Campaigns
- Rename Campaigns with Consistent Naming Convention
You could spend days combing through a really active Infusionsoft application, and I’m sure there are plenty of Infusionsoft partners out there who offer an application audit as one of their services; but the bottom line is that making this a priority will pay dividends no matter how you get it done.
The top three benefits of a clean and organized Infusionsoft application:
- It’s literally easier for you and your users. You’ll find the information you are looking for more quickly and you’ll have fewer questions.
- The application will run more smoothly. That’s right, it’ll be faster simply by keeping your app clean.
- It’ll help your business scale. By auditing your application regularly, it forces you to look at what is working and what isn’t. It reminds you to close the loop on things you may have left open-ended. And, if you ever need to hand the reins to someone, it makes that transition much smoother as well.
If you’d like an explanation of any of the items on the audit checklist I outlined above, you can download the complete Application Audit in detail here.
Direct link: http://www.monkeypodmarketing.com/infusionsoft-audit
About the author
Greg Jenkins is the founder of Monkeypod Marketing, where they focus on providing empowering entrepreneurs through educational events and online courses. Prior to starting Monkeypod Marketing, Greg worked at Infusionsoft as a curriculum developer and lead trainer for Infusionsoft University. Greg lives in San Diego and loves hiking, traveling, binging netflix and enjoying craft beer. But you could probably switch those last two verbs too.
