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Infusion CRM - The Cheapest & Best 24/7 Marketing Department Money Can Buy

A Review of a Web Based Customer Relations Management Solution that Will Add $$ to Your Bottom Line

by Richard Keyt, Arizona attorney & law office technology guru

I will explain Infusion's CRM in more detail below and explain how it has revolutionized my firm's marketing, generated more clients and substantially increased our revenue.  Before I get into the details, however, here are the important facts I want you to get from this review:

1. Like me pre Infusion CRM, you are not really marketing.

2. You get leads, but do not have the time to follow up to try to capture the business.

3. A prospective business lead who contacts you today, but does not hire you is likely to need your service or product in the future, but will probably not remember your name or contact information when the lead is ready to purchase.

4. If you follow up regularly with a prospective lead over a period of time, the lead will probably purchase from you when the lead is ready to buy.

5. Following up with leads will not happen unless:

   A.  You dedicate an employee to actually do the follow up (a very expensive solution), or

   B.  You use an automatic system like Infusion CRM to do the follow up.

6. Infusion CRM will do a better job of marketing and following up with leads than any marketing person you could hire and it will cost only a small fraction ($4,997 plus $299/month for a 5 user license as of the date of this review) of what you would pay an employee to market.

7. If you buy and use Infusion CRM properly, you will get more business and make more money and the cost of the program will be peanuts compared to the money you will make from the CRM.

8. Buy Infusion CRM now.  It's a no brainer.

The primary reason I bought Infusion CRM is I have over a million visitors entering my store (that's what I call my website) every year and I'm not taking advantage of it.  In the past (pre-CRM), I did not collect visitor information or market to website visitors.  Infusion CRM is now collecting prospect information automatically and doing automatic follow up marketing over an extended period of time.

My Technology Credentials

Because this review is about a high tech cutting edge product, you might ask what experience do I have that makes my statements about Infusion CRM worth considering?  I am one of the most technology savvy attorneys in the United States.  Here's a few reasons why I can make that claim:

1. My small firm generates over 1,000 documents a month, but we are truly 100% paperless.  See my article on how you too can become paperless.  I can view on my computer monitor in a matter of a few seconds any document that pertains to a client's matter.

2. I am the sole creator of this website.  It had over 1,000,000 visitors in 2006 and 2007 will surpass last years record number of visitors.

3. I am a search engine optimization expert.  For example, go to Google and search for:  domain name law - my page will be the first free link out of millions of hits (40,900,000 today, 11/17/07).  Many of pages on my website are the first free links in Google even though there are millions of hits for the key words.  I get high Google rankings because I understand search engine optimization.

4. Most of my business comes from my website.  Since I left my former big law firm in 2001, I have added over 2,000 new clients.  I have formed over 1,400 limited liability companies in Arizona since 2001 mostly because of my website.

5. I produce legal documents for a living, but not the old fashioned lawyer way.  My firm uses automatic document assembly systems.  In 2001 I started using software called Hot Docs to automate my firm's document production process.  I am a graduate of the three day basic and the three day advanced Hot Docs programming courses.  I am an excellent Hot Docs programmer, but I have also spent over $30,000 for custom Hot Docs programming so that my firm can automatically assemble the documents that we routinely create for our clients.  In a 15 minute data entry session my legal assistant can create 10 documents consisting of 150+ pages for LLCs that we create.

6. I purchased and use WealthCounsel's wonderful estate planning document assembly system called "WealthDocs."  It allows me to create 30+ documents for a client in an hour of data entry.  It is the best estate planning software that money can buy and the best products for lawyers I have found in 27 years of practicing law.  It's pricey - $9,500 for the first year and $425/month after the first year for the updates, but I would not practice estate planning without it.

7. For five years I flew the F-4 Phantom supersonic fighter-bomber in the U.S. Air Force.  The multi-million dollar F-4 was my first high tech experience.  It had many black boxes such as the radar that locked on to a target and automatically tracked it, the weapons release computer system, the inertial navigation system, the radar homing and warning system, UHF radio, rocket powered ejection seat, AIM-7 sparrow radar guided missiles, electronic jamming pods and the B-61 tactical nuclear bomb.   See my F-4 biography.

9. I could ramble on, but for those who want more details on my law office technology experience since 1983 see my article called "Rick Keyt's Law Office Technology Biography."

Infusion CRM

I have only been using the Infusion CRM for about a month, but it has paid off big time and I can see how it will generate tremendous additional revenue for me in the future as I use it to automate more and more of my law firm's marketing.

The CRM is a web-based automatic marketing system.  Here's how Infusion Software describes its CRM:

Infusion CRM is an "Active" web-based CRM solution designed to help true small businesses double their revenues by automating and improving marketing, sales, and customer management.

Our flagship CRM product revolutionizes how small businesses run from end-to-end. With a heavy dose of marketing automation and additional tools to manage customer service, sales force automation, e-commerce, billing, and a lot more, Infusion CRM replaces the disparate, incompatible systems currently in place and leaves you with more time to strategically grow your business instead of managing fire after fire.

Infusion CRM is a full time UNPAID automatic marketing robot that doesn't forget to send an email, letter, fax, or voice blast to a client or prospect.  It also notifies your staff when they need to contact a client or prospect.  It does it all automatically based on the campaigns you create.

My First Infusion CRM Campaign

The best way I can illustrate how Infusion CRM has and will increase my revenue is to explain my first campaign.  One of the primary marketing tools of the CRM is called a "campaign."  A campaign is a series of marketing steps that you create for a particular purpose. 

Pre-CRM Marketing

In the old days (pre-CRM a month ago), I did NO follow up marketing.  For example, a lot of people who are interested in forming an Arizona limited liability company call or send me an email every day.  Pre-CRM, I talked to the prospect on the phone and then sent the prospect a marketing email message that said why they should hire me and that had a link to my online LLC formation agreement.  That's it. I never contacted the prospect again.  No follow up and tons of lost business.  I'm too busy to follow up with prospects. 

I know from studying marketing guru's that if you keep you name in front of prospects then more often than not over time the prospect will become a client or customer.  Unfortunately my day job of being a lawyer interferes with follow up marketing to prospects.

I checked my Time Matters database today and found that I have sent and received over 1,400 email messages since March 4, 2006, the subject of which is forming an Arizona LLC.  I never followed up and pursued the prospects for either LLC formation services or LLC operational related legal services.  I've lost a lot of business by not being able to follow up with prospects.

Usually the hardest part of the sales puzzle is getting contact information from a prospect who is interested in your specific product or service.  When you find that kind of prospect, you need to do follow up marketing.  Now, thanks to Infusion CRM, it does the automatic follow up marketing for me.

Post-CRM Marketing

One month ago I started my first Infusion CRM marketing campaign.  Here's how it works.  Now while I am on the phone talking to somebody who is interested in forming an Arizona limited liability company, I open a new contact record in the CRM and enter the prospect's name, email address and phone number.  I save the new contact information then tell the CRM to add the contact to a campaign called "LLC Formation Prospect."  If I get an email message from a prospect interested in forming an LLC, I do the same thing.

Now the CRM takes over the marketing and the magic begins.  The CRM automatically does the following:

1. It immediately sends the prospect a marketing email message about why the prospect should hire me to form the prospect's new Arizona LLC and that has a link to my online formation agreement.

2. The CRM adds the prospect to a category called "LLC Prospect."  I can click on a favorites button in the CRM and it will list all LLC prospects.  By tracking these LLC prospects, I can use the CRM to do various types of follow up marketing to them.

3. The CRM follows up with a second email marketing message that has an attachment that is an Adobe .pdf LLC marketing article I wrote called "10 Critical Facts Every LLC Owner Must Know."

4. The next day the CRM sends the prospect an email message inviting the prospect to join my email newsletter list on the subject of operating Arizona LLCs.  If the prospect clicks on the add to newsletter link in the message, the prospect is automatically added to my LLC newsletter list and the CRM will then automatically send the prospect a weekly message about Arizona LLCs.  P.S.  The newsletter list is part of a different CRM campaign that automatically sends newsletter subscribers an email message on an LLC operational topic every week.

5. Three, 7, 14, 30, 60 and 90 days after the first email was sent, the CRM sends another marketing email message reminding the prospect that the prospect should hire me to form the prospect's new Arizona LLC.

Opting In and Out

A very nice feature of the CRM is the ability to require new prospects to double opt-in before being added to a campaign.  The double opt-in process greatly increases deliverability of emails and also prevents people from entering somebody else's email address into the CRM's database.

Every email message the CRM sends contains an unsubscribe link.  If the recipient of the message clicks on the opt-out link, the recipient is taken to a web page where the recipient has the option to opt out from all lists and campaigns or the recipient may opt-out of only some of the available lists and campaigns.

When a Prospect Purchases a Product or Service

You might say what happens if a prospect purchases an LLC?  Does the prospect continue to get marketing messages from me suggesting that the prospect should hire me to form an LLC?  NO!  When the prospect purchases the LLC from my online store using the CRM's shopping basket, the CRM automatically removes the LLC purchaser from the "LLC Formation Prospect" campaign and adds the purchaser to another campaign called "LLC Purchased from RK."  Now the CRM starts sending non-LLC related marketing emails to the prospect such as an email that invites the recent LLC purchaser to join my estate planning email newsletter list.

One of the automatic email messages that the CRM sends to people who purchase my LLC formation service contains a link that asks the person to use to check and update the person's contact information in the CRM.  When the person clicks on the link, the person is taken to a web page that displays the person's contact information in the CRM and the person may correct any errors or add missing contact information.  This is a fantastic feature.  I will probably have the CRM send all of my clients a please update your contact information email message every two months so we can always keep our clients' contact information current by having them update their own information for us.

The CRM has reduced the number of calls from new LLC purchasers.  Pre-CRM, new LLC purchasers frequently called me to ask questions about when various steps in the LLC formation process would occur.  Now I rarely have people call because immediately on being added to the LLC Purchased from RK campaign, the CRM sends the new client an email message thanking the client for hiring me to form the LLC and that sets out the time table and sequence of events in the LLC formation process.

The CRM Creates New Marketing Opportunities

My website gets thousands of visitors who are interested in forming a new Arizona LLC.  Pre-CRM, I was not able to capture any useful information about a visitor to my website.  Post-CRM, I now capture and then automatically market to LLC formation prospects who visit my website.  In the first month since I started using the CRM, I have captured the names and email addresses of 100 people who are interested in forming an Arizona LLC.  At this rate, in the first year Post-CRM I will capture contact information and market to 1,200 people who are interested in or who have formed Arizona LLCs.  If I can get 5% (60), 10% (120) or even 20% (240) of these prospects to become clients in the next year that will be fabulous?  Those new clients will be people who in the past I would never have had any contact with or have been able to convert to clients.

Here's how I used the CRM to capture the contact information for 100 prospective LLC purchasers in the last month I've used the CRM.

1. I wrote an article called "10 Critical Facts Every LLC Owner Must Know."  It's an LLC formation sales tool in pdf document with lots of links to web pages.  Marketing experts call this article a "Free Report."  The sole purpose of the free report is to capture the name and email address of a prospect.

2. I created a CRM campaign called "10 Critical Facts."

3. I created a CRM category called "10 Critical Facts."

4. I used a CRM feature called "web forms" to create a custom HTML form to paste into a landing page on my website.  The CRM's web form creation feature lets you pick and chose which information fields from the CRM database you want to appear on your web page.  It also builds a submit button (you can change the text) that when clicked sends the information entered into the form by the prospect to the CRM, which then takes the action you've set up for the campaign.

5. I created a landing page on my website to collect the prospect information.  See the landing page for 10 Critical Facts Every LLC Owner Must Know.

6. Note that one of the required questions a prospect must answer on the landing page asks where the prospect heard about me.  This question allows me to track lead sources for the first time ever. Pre-CRM, I have never been able to determine if my print advertising brings in more money than the cost of the ads.  Post-CRM, I now collect information on where my prospects are coming from so I can determine which of my print ads are not worth the money I'm spending.  I spend over $15,000 a year on print ads so if I can determine that just one of the ads is not worth the cost of the ad, the savings from cancelling the ad will pay for the CRM.

7. When a prospect enters the prospect's name and email address and selects the lead source, the CRM immediately adds the prospect to its database and sends the prospect an opt-in email message.

8. When the prospect clicks on the op-in link in the first email message, the CRM immediately sends the prospect a second email that has the 10 Critical Facts article attached as an Adobe .pdf file.  The CRM also adds the prospect to the 10 Critical Facts campaign.

9. Over the next several weeks the CRM sends the prospect additional email marketing messages that are part of the 10 Critical Facts marketing campaign and that are designed to get the prospect to purchase an LLC, sign up for the LLC newsletter, sign up for the EP newsletter or hire me for other legal services I provide.

Impressions of the CRM After One Month of Use

After one month of actually using the CRM, I know that it has helped me capture new clients that I would not have gotten pre-CRM.  I also know that I will turn a great many of the prospects now being captured by the CRM into paying clients in the future.  By using the CRM, I am now doing the following marketing tasks that I never did before:

1. Capturing prospect information from phone calls, email messages and website visitors.

2. Sending follow up emails to prospects using well-designed marketing campaigns that extend over an extended period of time.

3. Capturing lead sources to determine if ad expenses are bringing in enough business to pay for the ads.

I also know that because of the CRM, I have obtained many paying clients that I would not have obtained pre-CRM.  I know that my bottom line will substantially increase because of the CRM.  Consider the possibilities for selling my legal services to the 1,200, 2,400, 3,600 etc. LLC prospects who request my 10 Critical Facts article in the next one, two and three years, respectively.  Once I get somebody to double opt-in to one of my lists, I will be marketing to that person indefinitely until the person opts-out.

CRM Features

The CRM has way too many features to describe in detail in this article, but here is a list of some of the things the CRM does:

1. Marketing Templates

Create and store various types of Marketing Templates that can be used and re-used as often as you like

Marketing Template types include e-mail, fax, direct mail, voice broadcast, scripts/phone calls, and tasks

Automatically send personalized marketing templates to your prospects and customers

Assign dollar amounts to individual Marketing Templates for ROI reporting

My Gripes About Infusion CRM

The CRM is wonderful and I love it and I know it has made and will continue to make a lot of money for me, but it isn't perfect.  It has a big flaw - a very steep learning curve.  Setting up and configuring the CRM to do its automatic marketing thing is very complex and time consuming.  I spent many hours learning the CRM and trying to figure out how to make it work.  I also spent many hours on the phone with tech support getting help setting up and configuring my CRM.

Important Note:  Although the CRM is difficult to set up and configure, it is easy for staff to use.  Using the CRM is a piece of cake, especially if an experience CRM user shows a new staff person how to use the CRM.

The reasons the CRM is so difficult to set up and configure are:

1. There is no user manual.  I've bought a lot of software since 1983, including Hot Docs Server, which retailed for $25,000 when I bought, but I do not recall every buying a productivity program that did not have a user manual.  Most productivity programs that cost a lot of money today come with a demo version.  My CRM did not have a demo.

2. The online knowledge base is virtually worthless.  It's just a series of articles that explain a small part of the big picture, but don't give a clue about how a particular article relates to the big picture.  Here's the best analogy I can think of.  Say you wanted to build a car.  You know it needs an engine and the engine needs a piston.  You search the knowledgebase for "engine" and find an article that tells you all about the engine, but it never tells you it needs a piston or a spark plug or a carburetor or a radiator or that it's connected to the car.  Another problem with the knowledgebase is that there are many CRM features that are not discussed anywhere.  For example, there is a CRM feature called "Opportunity Fields."  I can go into it and see there are various choices to be made, but I have no clue what an Opportunity Field is or when or how I would use it.

3. The CRM is very complex.  There are many parts that go into a finished marketing tool.  Infusion doesn't tell users how to accomplish a task from start to finish so a user must spend hours searching for informational clues and trying various CRM features and talking to tech support.  I don't know how may steps are required to create a newsletter campaign, but let's say there are 30 steps.  Infusion does not tell us that there are 30 steps and the first one is A, the second step is B, etc.  The user has to figure out all the steps on his own and hope he can remember all of the steps the next time he wants to set up the same CRM feature.  An email newsletter is a very common form on marketing so you would think how to set up a newsletter in the CRM would be discussed in the knowledgebase.  It's not.

4. Infusion does not have video tutorials that show users how to accomplish common CRM set up and configuration tasks.  I believe that video tutorials will eliminate objections 1, 2 and 3 above.  If I could watch a video tutorial and pause it and replay it, setting up the CRM would be a piece of cake.  My understanding is that Infusion is making video tutorials to solve the high learning curve problem.

My CRM purchase came with two days of one on one set up help with an Infusion CRM expert.  The implementation assistance helped, but I still spent many hours learning how to set up and configure the CRM.

Infusion offers CRM training classes at its offices in Gilbert, Arizona.  I could not afford to take the time off to go to the classes, which I am sure would have helped.  For anyone who buys the CRM, I think it would be money will spent to send the person responsible for your CRM to the classes at Infusion University.

How Much Does it Cost?

My firm consists of two lawyers, two legal assistants and two secretaries.  We are small, but I felt that the CRM was essential to attracting more clients and making more money.  Since buying the CRM, I am certain I will achieve both of those goals beyond my wildest dreams.  The CRM was a large investment for me, but it is definitely worth the cost.  I believe in technology and I believe that good software allows me to make me money and be more efficient while making more money.

When I bought the CRM in June of 2007, I could have purchased it for $4,997, but I opted to pay $5,995 in five monthly installments of $1,199.  In addition, I must pay $299 a month indefinitely. The monthly fee entitles me to free unlimited tech support and all upgrades.  The tech support is excellent, but I usually have to wait on hold for 10 - 20 minutes.  There are also frequent updates to the CRM.  I believe the $299 a month is worth getting free tech support and the upgrades.

My CRM came with a five user license, which means that as many as five people in my firm can access and use the CRM.  That's plenty for my small firm, but if you have a bigger staff, you can purchase additional licenses.

Free Online Demonstration of Infusion CRM

The number of tasks you can automate with Infusion CRM boggles the mind.  You have to see it in action to really understand how powerful it is and how it can make money for your business.  If you would like a free online demonstration of the Infusion CRM, click here.  I'll send your contact information to Infusion and a sales representative will contact you to arrange for a live demonstration of the CRM and answer any questions you may have about it.

This review was written on November 18, 2007.

About the Author

Richard Keyt, J.D., LL.M. (income taxation New York University Law School) is a business, real estate, transactions, contracts and estate planning attorney licensed to practice law in Arizona.  He has formed over 1,500+ Arizona limited liability companies in the last few years because his low cost high quality LLC package is second to none and it only costs $599 for everything.  Rick has practiced law in Arizona since 1980.  Rick can be reached by telephone at 602-906-4953, ext. 101.  Email at  rickkeyt@keytlaw.com and fax at 602-297-6890.  Rick's web site located at www.keytlaw.com had over 1,000,000 visitors in 2006 and 2007.  Rick does not accept matters involving landlord / tenant disputes or litigation of any kind (other than tax lien foreclosures).  Communicating with Richard Keyt via email or otherwise does not cause you to become a client or cause your communications to be confidential or subject to the attorney client privilege.

Testimonials

Marketing guru Dan Kennedy says "my answer to any and all questions about software for list and marketing management is: called Infusion CRM."  His Glazer/Kennedy Inner Circle uses Infusion CRM.

Michael Gerber, author of the best selling book, "The E-Myth," endorses Infusion CRM.

Sign up for an online demonstration of Infusion CRM.

This page was last modified on December 15, 2007.

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