March 24, 2010

Victor Meldrew Should Get an InfusionSoft Account

I reported a bug, and asked InfusionSoft to look at fixing it. But now the problem seems worse.

You can no longer do email testing of Follow up Sequences and forms by using gmail addresses with the format fred.bloggs+abcde@gmail.com – ie. gmail addresses with plus signs.

Before it used to leave InfusionSoft with a conflict – but not so serious a conflict that you were prevented from testing. I should have kept my mouth shut – I could still be using this functionality. Now – you can’t use these emails addresses for testing at all. This message appears when you try.

fred.bloggs abcde@gmail.com
This person’s email address is invalid.
You will not be able to send any emails to this address. They would just bounce back as undeliverable, anyway.

No InfusionSoft, No

What is invalid is your take on what constitutes a valid email address. Please refer to the RFC specification for email addresses. Half of InfusionSoft accepts the plus sign, the other half strips it out, and then reports that the email address would never have worked.

Yes it would, you took the plus sign out. Not me.

Filed Under: Web Technical 5 Comments
March 4, 2010

How To Create an InfusionSoft Specific Weekday FuS

You want to set up an InfusionSoft FuS (Follow Up Sequence) that goes out on a particular weekday, every week.

I have chosen to deliver my FuS emails every  Saturday. I also want the first step in the FuS to go out immediately my site visitor sign up to my list. I then want the next email step to go out to him on the following Saturday, even if he signs up on a Friday. In that case he would receive his first email on the Friday, and the next email the following day.

In the case where the person happens to sign up on a Saturday, I’d like the next email to go out on the following Saturday – in other words I don’t want him to get the first two emails in the FuS on the same day.

You do it like this for a ten step Follow Up Sequence (FuS)

  1. Step 1 : Immediate
  2. Step 2: Wait 0 days, always run on a Saturday, and check round forward
  3. Step 3: Wait 7 days, always run on a Saturday, and check round forward
  4. Step 4: Wait 14 days, always run on a Saturday, and check round forward
  5. Step 5: Wait 21 days, always run on a Saturday, and check round forward
  6. Step 6: Wait 28 days, always run on a Saturday, and check round forward
  7. Step 7 : Wait 35 days, always run on a Saturday, and check round forward
  8. Step 8: Wait 42 days, always run on a Saturday, and check round forward
  9. Step 9: Wait 49 days, always run on a Saturday, and check round forward
  10. Step 10: Wait 56 days, always run on a Saturday, and check round forward
Filed Under: InfusionSoft Tagged With: Leave a Comment
March 3, 2010

FuS – InfusionSoft – Rounding Forward Display Problem

When setting up an InfusionSoft Follow Up Sequence (FuS), you can choose to round the days forward if you say, for example decide to run a step on a certain day of the week.

You are faced with a display like this :

Rounding Forward in InfusionSoft

The thing is, that InfusionSoft is going to round whether you click that option or not. If you don’t click it, it will round backwards or forwards, and if you do click it, it will round forwards.

Having not clicked it, you save and the summary screen shows you this :

Rounding forward anyway - InfusionSoft

You get that display indicating that the step is rounded forward whether or not you click the round forward button. I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say “well it is rounded forward”. Fine, but please could we have another indicator on that screen to say this is “really, really rounded forward” if we also check the “round forward” option box.

The thing is, InfusionSoft, it’s easy to forget to click that button when you’re creating step after step, after step in a FuS.

It would save users’ time if you indicated on that summary screen whether we’d rounded forward deliberately or not. It would save us having to re-enter each step (which can load slowly) just to check.

Filed Under: Web Technical Tagged With: , Leave a Comment
March 1, 2010

How To Add Actions to InfusionSoft Follow Up Sequences

I’m not sure if what I’m about to write here is correct, but it is what I’ve been able to work out from experimentation and help from Blake at InfusionSoft support.  I called them today and he gave me a different answer to the last time I called support.

I wanted to add steps to a Follow Up Sequence (FuS), and I wanted those steps to have multiple parts. So I set each step up to be an action. Having pre-prepared the actions by creating them from the Setup menu, I was disappointed to see that they were not available when later I needed them in the Follow Up Sequence.

Blake said this was because you needed an Actions Template when specifying a step in a FuS, but what I had created were Action Sets. Which is why they didn’t show up.

Well, that was a different answer to the last time I called support.   I wish I could find it somewhere in the documentation.   It seems Action Templates can be steps in another FuS, or Actions in another FuS. But not Action Sets that have no relationship to other Follow Up Sequences.

I am now  trying to figure out the best way to set one up based on this new, understanding. This stuff is not intuitive.

Since my plan to create separate Action Sets that I could then refer to, only works if I use them in the context of chained Actions Sets, I am now looking at creating, long hand, a 12 step FuS, which I then clone whenever I want a new FuS.   The logic here being that it is slightly less tedious and therefore less error prone than creating each FuS from scratch.

I am convinced most people don’t really know how to use this product.   I just can’t start using it until it starts to make some sort of logical sense.

Filed Under: Web Technical Tagged With: , 7 Comments
March 1, 2010

InfusionSoft Follow-Up-Sequence Steps Bugette

I don’t want to give up on InfusionSoft. I’d just like it to work and be less complicated.

Here is a bug that I think can be reproduced.

  1. Set up a Follow Up Sequence
  2. Add 4 steps scheduled a couple of days apart, each
  3. Delete steps 2 and 3
  4. Add the Follow Sequence to a person and check what is scheduled
  5. You’ll find that the deleted steps are not scheduled (as you would expect)

Next do this :

  1. Have user A set up a Follow Up Sequence
  2. Have user A add 4 steps scheduled a couple of days apart, each
  3. Have user B add two steps scheduled to run somewhere in the middle of the the existing steps
  4. Have user A delete the steps added by user B
  5. Add the Follow Sequence to a person and check what is scheduled
  6. You’ll find that the deleted steps are scheduled (not as you would expect)
  7. When they run they error – see below

InfusionSoft Ghost Steps

As it’s quite a bit of work to set up Follow Up Sequences, I tried cloning this one, containing the errors hoping the copy procedure would be robust enough to clear out the bad database links.

Unfortunately the cloning procedure crashed the application. When I logged back in there was a half completed clone containing a number of steps, but not all of them.  I deleted it.

InfusionSoft support said I shouldn’t worry about Follow Up Sequences containing errors like those shown above, as they would not execute anyway.  I feel differently about that. Deleted ghost steps are there because the database has lost some integrity.  It may be cosmetic in this instance, but does not bode well.

For example I wrote just an hour or so ago about another InfusionSoft Follow Up Sequence problem.

Filed Under: Bugs, Web Technical Tagged With: Leave a Comment
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