Copyblogger Media has another useful tool, ScribeSEO, on sale (50% off!) but sale ends Wednesday, April 25, 2012. We don’t see sales from CopyBlogger very often, and we’ve never seen anything discounted like this!

ScribeSEO helps you easily improve the SEO of each article/post you write. Find out more here and enter promo code “smart” to get the discount.

Happy ranking!

Thanks for your support, and we look forward to seeing you at Infusioncon 2012 in just a few short days.

If you ordered one of our Fusetastic t-shirts, don’t forget to check your email, twitter, etc. for the time and place to pick up your shirts.

See ‘ya there!

Last year at InfusionCon, many of you were jealous of our cool t-shirts. So this year, we’re giving you–our fellow fanatics and friends– the opportunity to join in the fun.

If you want one of our free t-shirts, request one below, and we’ll have it ready for you at InfusionCon. For some extra fun, if one of our “undercover agents” spots you wearing your shirt, you’ll get some extra “tastic love” with goodies we’ll be giving out. If you order a shirt, we simply ask that you wear it at least once at InfusionCon . . . even though it’ll be so cool, you may never want to take it off! Oh, and by the way, it’s not recommended to wear it more than one day at InfusionCon (unless you want to sit it alone.)

We’ll email, text, and tweet you where you can pick up your shirt at InfusionCon, so be sure we’ve got all your info below. Be sure and submit your t-shirt order by Wednesday, March 14th at 11:59 p.m.

And good news. If you want a chance to be enlightened and edified by one of our wiz guys, now you’ve got a chance at InfusionCon. We’ll be presenting at InfusionCon during the Add-On Product Showcase, currently planned during the 2nd day, morning break-out sessions, with moderator Marc Chesley, Infusionsoft’s VP of Development and Technology.

Reserve Wiztastic’s FREE InfusionCon T-shirt

(We’ll email, tweet, and/or text you where you can pick it up.)

(WARNING! If you’re an introvert and the idea of total strangers stopping you and asking you where you got such a cool shirt terrifies you, then we DON’T recommend that you order a shirt.)

Re-branding has taught us some fun little gems of knowledge. Perhaps you can learn something from our experience. . . . .

1) To get some new name ideas rolling, we hosted a “Name Us & Win a Geek” giveaway. This helped us get the word out that our name was changing and have some fun. Granted, our new name ended up being an internal creation, but we decided to give some love to those who helped contribute to the idea bank. If you participated in the “Name Us & Win a Geek” giveaway, you will receive a “consolation prize” of $100 WizBucks.*  Use your WizBucks to:

- Get a free copy of Sizzle
- Get $100 off Forminator
- Get $100 off  jvJuice
- Apply it towards API scripting or any other service that we do.

2) Perhaps the biggest challenge for us was to come up with a name that had an available domain. Ideas for names were plentiful, but we wanted a matching domain name to go with it. The site we used most to check for available domains was www.bustaname.com.

3) A few Marketing 101 “rules of thumb” we wanted to implement:

- an easy-to-remember name
- an easy-to-spell name
- an easy-to-pronounce name with 4 syllables or less
- an easy-to-read font
- a name that conveyed the essence of what we do
- a simple “iconic” logo to emphasize the essence of what we do

4) One thing we discovered from our contest was that most of you out there identify us with “tastic,” so we decided to make it stick.

6) Because we were re-branding, we wanted to keep the “flame” theme or something similar to have some semblance to our old name.

We appreciate your love and support as we make the change to our new name. If you contributed ideas to our contest and haven’t already been contacted about winning $100 WizBucks*, please contact us.

*WizBucks valid thru April 15th. If redeeming for services, scheduling is subject to availability.

You may have heard that Infusionsoft has recently updated their trademark policy. Many service providers, including us, have to change our names to stay in compliance.

Sure, we already have some ideas up our sleeves. But we wanted a way to connect with the brainpower of other intelligent people out there. So we thought, “Why not crowdsource to our own customers?”

So here’s your chance. Be immortalized at our company and name us. Give us a new identity.

Our top pick will win a geek for a day! Translation: the winner will receive an Infusionsoft makeover with eight (8) man-hours of us doing whatever!

Here’s a few Infusionsoft-friendly things we could do for you if you win:

• Amazing marketing analytics
• Web 2.0 design
• Infusionsoft process mapping
• Killer checkout processes
• Crank up your Affiliate system
• Custom API scripting
• Membership sites, and more

And here’s a few things to think about before you start brainstorming:

• We can not use words like “infusion”, “infuse”, “fuse”, “fusion” in our new company name.
• We may not use misspellings, abbreviations, phonetic equivalents, or trademarks that rhyme with or sound like the Infusionsoft Trademarks.
• We may not use abbreviations or foreign language translations of the Infusionsoft Trademarks.

Here’s a few tools we’ve used to help us in our search for a new company identity:

http://www.dotomator.com/
http://companynamegenerator.com/
http://www.nameboy.com/
http://wordoid.com/

One last thing: you can submit as many ideas as you’d like. The more names you submit, the more likely you’ll come up with a gem of a name and win!

To enter your ideas, Tweet your name suggestion to @fusetastic or simply leave your suggestion in a comment below or you can always email us.

Happy brainstorming!

Day 1: Circa 11 p.m. as things were winding down

$10,000 bucks for two days of work on your business.

Most small businesses I know would shy away from spending 10k for two days of consulting on their business. After all, that’s a pretty big investment and commitment. If you would have asked me before Infusionsoft’s 48 Hour Implementation Accelerator Event held last week, will you get your money’s worth? I would have responded, “Probably not.” While I was sure it would be helpful, no way it would be “$10,000 dollars worth” helpful.

(Spoiler Alert: What I saw and experienced the last two days at Infusionsoft’s headquarters was nothing shy of jaw-droppingly amazing.)

Both Juan and myself, were invited to attend the event and serve as project managers assigned to a particular Infusionsoft customer. We received some background information on the business (provided previously by the customer in the form of a questionnaire) to review the night before.

The morning we got started, I could sense the nervous tension by Marty, my assigned client. While he didn’t come out and say it, I could sense that he was excited to get going, but a bit nervous about whether his time and money invested would be worthwhile. This was a large investment for his company and a big sacrifice for him– he needed it to pay off. I’m sure he was wondering as we got started, “Is this going to end in another half implemented project, which never pans out? Did I just blow 10k– and my valuable time?”

What I experienced by the end of that first day was awe-inspiring. At the end of those first 15 hours (yes, it was a long day), I started hearing comments like “If I left now, it would have been worth every penny.” “This is awesome, I’ve never had such a clear plan of action.” Everyone was a bit star struck, and brains were getting loopy, but there was a sense of, “This is awesome and tomorrow will get even better.”

The next day, the “fun” continued. As the project manager to my assigned Infusionsoft client, I dug deep, flushed out all the things that needed to get done, and enlisted the talent that Infusionsoft had also invited to the event to gett’r done. That talent included: copywriters, photographers, videographers, designers, business map coaches, gliffy pros, social media experts, API programmers and an army of Infusionsoft’s Done-For-You-Services crew. Between all of us, we were busy fixing up Infusionsoft dashboards with relevant metrics, writing up follow-up sequences, adding Infusionsoft setups and customizations, and all-things small-business marketing-related.

I’m not shy about admitting it: Juan and I are amazingly talented with the Infusionsoft app. But with the larger team we had at our disposal to help implement, things happened at breath-taking speed and with top-notch quality.

The event ended with dinner and a bus ride back to the hotel. Only clients and other Infusionsoft certified consultants were together on the bus ride back to the hotel. No Infusionsoft employees or personnel were there, so I’m not sure if anyone over at Infusionsoft has heard this story . . . yet.

Here’s what happened on the bus: One of the clients shouted out, “Was that amazing or what? Does anybody else totally think this was worth it?” Others on the bus shouted, “Yes, totally!” Someone instigated a quick survey, “Raise your hands if this was totally worth the 10k?” Hands shot up and cheers yelled out. Someone pulled out a video camera and started recording impromptu “testimonials” about the event and interviewing folks. If you get a bus-load of fanatics after two, long 15-hour days of business implementation, then I think you can call it a success.

Was it a success? Absolutely!

Everybody worked super hard the entire two days. I personally invested all the talents at my disposal to make this event worthwhile to Marty, my assigned client. I confided to Marty, that I had selfish reasons in helping implement some awesome Infusionsoft-ness on his business: my goal was to see him on stage next year as a finalist at Infusionsoft’s Ultimate Marketer Competition.

So get your “GAME ON” other project managers and participants in Infusionsoft’s Accelerator event! Let’s see what you got!

In my next post, I’ll detail out exactly what we did for one of the client businesses I was assigned to: Fitness Edge.

"Right-y tighty. Left-y loosy." Seemed good advice now.

Ever had an “Oops moment?” You know, the kind of thing that makes you cringe? Cower in shame? Hopelessly relent?

RadioLab (one of my favorite NPR shows/podcasts) devoted a whole episode to “Oops” moments. . . . stories of unintended consequences. . . . and the making of the Unabomber. (Now that’s a big Oops.)

Most recently, I was humbled by an Oops moment while attending the Infusionsoft Customer Tour in Dallas. As we were discussing Infusionsoft checkout options in a class setting, one member of the audience said, “I’ve used that script from Fusetastic (Sizzle), and it increased our checkout conversion by 90%.”

Jordan, the presenter, pointed at me, “Tim from Fusetastic is sitting right here.” I waved to the audience, thinking this to be a proud moment. Then, the same audience member announced, “I tried to contact you, and you never returned my call.” My proud moment, quickly turned to embarrassment. (Frown. Big frown.)

And obviously a big Oops. An Infusionsoft specialist that failed to FOLLOW UP?! (Umm . . . that IS what Infusionsoft’s platform is all about, right?)

Well, I’m not sure how or why that person slipped through the cracks, but we are on a mission to make amends.

Surely, we have happy customers out there. But we want to know: Can you tell us how we’ve treated you? Share a few thoughts on your experience with one of our products or services?

We are so serious about this, we are even willing to bribe you. Simply “Leave a Reply” at the bottom of this blog post. If you respond before January 15, 2012, we’ll send you a special gift. Be sure to include your full name (the one we SHOULD have in our database) if you’d like to get our “thank you” gift.

If you aren’t a customer yet, tell us what we can do to convince you otherwise! You’ll need to include your name and email address to add to our database– that is if you’d like to get our “thank you” gift, too.

Thanks for helping us turn over a new leaf.

I suppose it’s OK to toot your own horn if it’s good news you want to share. And so . . . here we are, tooting our own horn because we have good news to celebrate!

(Drum roll, please. . . .) Fusetastic is now official. We are Infusionsoft Certified Consultants! (This is Infusionsoft’s new program, replacing what used to be called CMAC or Infusionsoft Certified Marketing Automation Coach).

While we have had over 3 years experience from the outside looking in, (and often breaking Infusionsoft barriers) we have now been officially trained and tested by Infusionsoft at implementing effective marketing systems for small business.

We applaud Infusionsoft for their work, for their dream of helping small business succeed in automated marketing. And we look forward to providing Infusionsoft Certified Marketing services to you.

Ryan Hartman's Winning Face

Congratulations to Ryan Hartman, Fusetastic’s iPad 2 Giveaway winner. He was pretty stoked when we notified him the other day.

When April 1st came up, we sat there moaning, “Who is going to print out all those entries and put them into a hat for the drawing?” Being techy, we knew the paper-in-the-hat wasn’t going to happen, and so we thought maybe we should integrate a computer algorithm to randomly select the winner. But even that seemed boring.

Then it hit us: We’re Infusionsoft experts! Let’s have our Infusionsoft app help us choose the winner. Using Brad Martineau’s nifty idea, we figured out we could use Infusionsoft to select the winner.

Here’s how it worked:

1) Of course, everyone who registered for the giveaway was given a special “iPad 2 giveaway” tag on Infusionsoft

2) We pulled a report, de-duped and cleaned it up

3) We designated two Infusionsoft users and created a Round Robin ratio assignment with random selection. We found it amusing that Infusionsoft refers to this feature like “picking a piece of paper out of a hat.” (I guess we couldn’t get away from the hat after all.)

4) We distributed all of our iPad 2 Giveaway entries into our virtual, Round Robin hat.

5) For extra fun, we approached the selection like a March Madness tournament, with several rounds of winners and losers. Each round dropped half the contestants out of the winning pool.

6) After five rounds of giddiness and play, we had randomly selected our winner!

While you’re probably rolling your eyes at our nerdy-ness, we take pride in loving Infusionsoft and making it do things that it wasn’t necessarily meant to do. This stuff is what floats our boat!

While winning an iPad 2 is definitely a cool thing, we can all be winners when we turn our Infusionsoft app into an automated revenue-building machine. Are you ready to win?

But first . . . why giveaways? Because they work! A giveaway is a powerful magnet, giving your leads immediate gratification (i.e. the dream of winning a new iPad2) at very little cost and inconvenience to them (the time it takes to register.)

We started off wanting to simply capture leads that were coming to our website. We were getting a fair share of traffic from pay-per-click and word-of-mouth advertising, but we needed a better way to capture their information and funnel them through the Perfect Customer Lifecycle . . . you know . . . attract traffic, capture leads, nurture prospects, convert sales, etc.

To get started, we created a “Footer” on our site with a short, enter-to-win form. The footer would prominently slide-up from the bottom of EVERY page on our website as users navigated through our site. The slider-footer didn’t overshadow the content of our site, and yet, it “shouted” at them until the user minimized it or entered to win. The user could also request not to see the slider-footer again.  The slider-footer worked well for our pay-per-click and other web visitors, generating hundreds of “double-opted-in” leads in a few short weeks. (Would you like to have a slider-footer, too?)

Then InfusionCon hit our radar. InfusionCon, an annual event for Infusionsoft customers, is a rich source of potential customers for us. There would be dozens (and dozens and dozens) of high-pressure vendors screaming and vying for your attention, so we needed to be crafty and quick; cool enough to generate interest and fast enough to get your information before getting distracted with something else.

Our biggest challenge, however, was to convert collateral advertising (i.e. postcards and t-shirts) into trackable leads. Or rather, our challenge was to bridge the gap between print and mobile media. Using the iPad2 giveaway to generate interest, we planned to use a combination of QR codes and inbound text/SMS marketing to capture and track our leads.

Before InfusionCon, we . . .

1) Got our mobile site up and running. People now-a-days live by their smart phones. We eat with them, work with them, play with them, sleep next to them, and exercise with them. In just a matter of a few short years, this mode of basic communication has turned into a marketing mecca, and we knew everyone at InfusionCon would have their smart phones with them. We needed to make our site mobile-friendly with a simple, seamless way to connect with you and get your information at the VERY moment we had your attention. We finished our mobile site in a matter of a few hours with this awesome WordPress plugin.

2) Got up to speed on QR codes. QR codes were the perfect link between print and mobile media. Plus, they’re hip and fun! We wanted you to see our QR code, scan it, land on our mobile friendly site and be prompted to enter our iPad2 Giveaway. Check out our blog on Cracking the QR Code and discover how to make your very own QR codes.

3) Developed FuseText. QR codes hadn’t yet reached “mainstream” (or so we thought), so the next best thing was inbound text marketing. We wanted you to see our printed materials and follow instructions to text-to-enter our iPad2 Giveaway. As soon as you texted us, we followed a fun little series of automated prompts to get your information and get you registered:

• Upon your initial text to us, your mobile phone # was entered into our Infusiosoft app, and a new record was created.
• We replied to your text, requesting your email address.
• You gave us your email address via text, then we replied, telling you to check your email to confirm your entry.
• When you checked your email, you clicked a link to confirm your entry, and we took you to a standard Infusionsoft double opt-in page.
• We customized the opt-in page, requesting your first and last name.
• Of course, you were tagged through the whole process so we could easily track where you came from.

4) Designed our marketing collateral. We wanted our team to be a bunch of walking billboards. So . . . we got t-shirts. Our shirts had a giant-sized QR code on the back for scanning. The QR code took you to a squeeze page where you could read about our services and sign up for our iPad2 Giveaway. We also printed a postcard with two sides. Side one had an offer to enter our iPad2 Giveaway via text or trackable QR code. On side two, we had a catchy image, some great copy, and a different trackable QR code. We’re glad we were tracking those QR codes, because, come to find out–only 6% of all responses came from side two of the postcard. Bottom line: The rest of you (about 91%) don’t care what we do; you just wanted the iPad2.

What were our overall results and lessons learned? We captured almost 20% of all InfusionCon attendees by handing out our postcards and wearing our shirts. Not bad. Of those 20% . . .

• 52% scanned the QR code on the postcard for the iPad2 Giveaway
• 39% did text messaging from the postcard for the iPad2 Giveaway
• 4% scanned the QR code on side two of the postcard to check out our products and services
• 3% scanned the QR code from our shirts to check out our products and services
• 2% typed in the URL on side two of the postcard to check out our products and services

A few more lessons learned:

• It’s painfully obvious that without our giveaway, the response rate would have been dismal.
• We thought text messaging would have trumped the QR codes by a long shot. But we were wrong! It appears QR codes have arrived. (At least in the sometimes-techie world of entrepreneurs who attend InfusionCon.)
• You can have different QR codes for everything. We had a different code on each side of our postcard, and a different code on the back of our shirts. We did this to track which media worked best, and we’re all the better for it.
• The least productive marketing was our shirts, dollar for dollar. While our shirts were a fun and novel idea, not many of you were brave enough to stop us so you could scan our shirt. But it did serve as a great conversation starter. And we ended up helping dozens of you install QR readers on your own smart phones.  Chalk it up to good PR!

The iPad2 Giveaway is coming up in just a few more days. We hope you’re the winner. But even if you don’t win the iPad2, you have a lot to gain by tripping out your Infusionsoft, getting your systems in place, and automating your business. And of course, Fusetastic is here to help you all along the way.

Have you used QR codes and/or text messaging in your marketing? If so, tell us about it in the comments below.