If you want to win big, your business needs a powerful toolbox full of ideas, strategies and tech applications to keep all of your gears going in the same direction, especially in the startup stage.
Here are three technological tools you need to get the advantage over your competitors from the beginning:
- Shipping and order fulfillment software
With the technology available today, it doesn’t make sense to manually handle your shipping and order fulfillment process. These two aspects of running a business are vital and intricate to manage without automation. You don’t want just any software, though. You need software that combines tools and eliminates the need for multiple a-la-carte programs.
This shipping software offered by Sellbrite is a great option to streamline your order fulfillment process and get the best postage rates at the same time. Even if you’re just getting started in your business and aren’t selling in bulk yet, the sooner you setup automation, the better. This software pipes your sales directly into a single interface so you can quickly print your shipping labels. You can even send your orders straight to a variety of fulfillment centers like Fulfillment by Amazon.
Lowest USPS postage prices
Sellbrite also offers the lowest USPS postage rates around, so you don’t have to sign up for a separate postage account. If you do happen to have a UPS or FedEx account, Sellbrite integrates with those accounts as well as SmartPost and SurePost labels.
- A phenomenal CRM program
CRM stands for “customer relationship management” and using outstanding CRM software is a vital component to the success of every business. You don’t want to skimp on your choice of software in this department. One of the best CRM choices is Infusionsoft.
If you’re new to using software to manage your sales team, contacts, leads, product sales and marketing campaigns, and you don’t have a dedicated, experienced team to do it for you, then you might find yourself overwhelmed with the idea of using Infusionsoft. If so, this feeling is likely due to a lack of understanding regarding what this powerful program can do.
If you’re new to marketing, it can look complicated. At first glance, all of the options might even appear unnecessary. You might think you just need something simple. However, Infusionsoft was designed and developed to execute high-level marketing strategies – strategies that cannot be executed with simple, popular pieces of software like MailChimp and AWeber.
What you can accomplish with Infusionsoft
To demonstrate the power of Infusionsoft, let’s say you run a health and nutrition coaching business. Most people with this type of business just use basic programs to capture leads from a website by offering a free nutrition guide download, and then send subscribers a monthly health newsletter that contains upsells and opportunities to buy partner products.
On the back end, they can see how many new subscribers they get each week; plus, how many people opened their email and clicked on the links inside. They can use this data to determine which email subject lines got more attention, and which links were interesting to their subscribers.
With Infusionsoft, however, you can take personalization to a whole new level. You can collect leads from multiple landing pages with unique offers and deliver a sequence of emails specifically tailored to sell your product in a way that corresponds with the source of the lead. For example, you could create landing pages for every health issue you can think of, tag those leads, and send them a customized email campaign to appeal to that specific issue.
When someone clicks a link about vegetarian recipes in your email, you can automatically apply a tag that puts them in a group of contacts who are interested in vegetarian recipes, which allows you to market even more specifically to those people.
You can also keep track of your leads that don’t click on your links or who have not made any purchases, and put them in a special email sequence that is designed to guide them toward making a purchase.
Don’t be fooled by review articles
If you’re researching Infusionsoft online, you’re going to come across many articles that claim Infusionsoft isn’t as feature-rich as other platforms. These articles are basing this claim on the fact that many of the cheaper programs offer hundreds of free email templates you can use to make your emails look fancy, and other bells and whistles that are aesthetically rich but lack the functionality needed in a professional marketing campaign.
When it comes to driving home a heavy-hitting marketing campaign, the other programs can’t even compare.
- Learn from the pros
Marketing pros like Frank Kern have earned their status for a reason. They’re masters of their craft and they know how to get people to buy their stuff. If you want to learn from them, you need to do more than just buy their marketing guides in hopes of learning their secrets.
To learn the most from these pros, set aside the product you bought from them and pay more attention to the way they sold it to you. That’s where you’ll find gold.
