An all too common issue faced by many business owners is the hours taken up with time-consuming admin processes. Without a doubt, invoicing is one of these tasks for most businesses.

Invoice automation is most definitely a step in the right direction and will free up so much time for even the smallest practice. But how exactly do you do this?

First things first, we recommend Keap as your invoice automation solution. There’s no question that this software is the best in its class and it has so many tools and features designed to help streamline your business processes. For the purpose of this article, we’re focusing on Keap’s invoicing capabilities.

While automated invoice processing and doing some follow-up around the invoicing is important, the easiest way to control the payments coming through is not to actually use an invoicing feature. Instead, get the credit card details from your customer and process the card automatically, rather than creating invoiced or recurring invoices.

But if you have to create an invoice, then following are the key things to do when invoicing.

Invoicing Basics:

The first thing you need to do as an urgency is to set up a merchant facility. I recommend just using the Stripe merchant facility.

To do that, first go to SETTINGS > then go to PAYMENT PROCESSING AND CURRENCY and make sure that you choose your currency that you’re processing in there.

Then I recommend setting up Stripe – it’s the quickest and easiest to get started with accepting payments. Otherwise there are some other options in the payment processing settings as well. All of the other options work fine too if you prefer to use one of those.

I recommend setting that up first, even if you’re not processing customers’ credit cards. We do that so that we have a credit card processing facility available on our invoices.

Then the next thing to do is to go to the profile of a customer who you want to invoice and you are just literally going to send them an invoice, via the system.

So we go to the PAYMENT section and we go to ADD PAYMENT INVOICE OR QUOTE and we’re going to add an invoice inside here.

The logo is already in here, from our profile. The BILLS TO section containing the customer’s details is automatically inserted in there too, directly from the customer’s contact record.

We add an item in here – and you can actually create an item on the fly and invoice them from inside here, which is very useful. I’m going to create Automation Monthly Mentor. The price for this is $297 a month. You can do a single, once-off product or you can do it for a recurring product, which will create recurring invoices.

The thing we can see here though is that this invoice is automatically going to have a link in it for where customers can process their payment on credit card.

We can change the payment method here if necessary. I recommend you always have that turned on so you can get paid almost straight away. Customers can simply click the link in the invoice, enter their credit card details and the payment is processed.

Then we can put some NOTES in here if we need to. If you’re going to do a bank transfer or routing transfer you can put the details into the NOTES section.

Then we click on NEXT.

The really cool thing is that you can send an email from directly inside Keap to the customer. But then you can also copy the link to the invoice and you can use it in any communications that you need, whether that be within your campaign communications or whether that be at your desktop. You can send the invoice as simply as that.

Or if your customer calls you back and asks to process it on credit card, you can enter their card details on the invoice.

Now, the really super-cool thing is that when someone pays for the invoice, if they pay by bank transfer or check, for example, you can just click through on the invoice and then we go to MORE ACTIONS > then ADD A PAYMENT on the invoice.

We enter whatever the payment type is – let’s say they pay by check – then we select ADD. And by processing the payment on the invoice that payment will trigger whatever campaign is required for after the payment has been applied to that invoice.

That’s really, really super-cool!

Automated invoice processing means that once you have it connected in the background, all you have to do is one thing to get the process started and then everything just happens automatically.

An important note to add here is that we can create an invoice automation based on the payment going through. So if a customer makes a payment manually then you manually apply that. But if they pay directly by credit card on the invoice that you’ve sent, then the automation is triggered automatically. You don’t need to do anything there to make that happen.

Taking It To The Next Level:

So, all that is pretty cool so far, but we can take our invoice automation even further.

The next thing we can do here is that we can automatically create invoices within our campaign based on an action.

For example, if you have a lead generation campaign and somebody opts in for something, and then after they’ve completed a specific action you want to send out the invoice – rather than sending them to a link to buy online – we can set that up in a campaign as well.

That way it’s automatically being created based on the action that the customer has gone through. Then we can create this order and automatically send it out in a campaign.

Invoicing After Quotes Are Accepted:

Let’s take a quick look now at quotes. While quotes aren’t necessarily part of automated invoice processing, they can be.

The really good thing here is that we can create a quote and then when the quote status becomes accepted we can automatically create a trigger for a task for you to know that it’s been accepted.

That way you can simply convert that to an invoice and send it through to the customer. This makes the whole process super-easy and then you can accept the payment online or via bank transfer.

While invoicing is cool and easy, there’s still a manual part to this process. Whereas automating the payments wherever we can to accept the credit card upfront, whether that be via a checkout link – and we can do checkout links easily as well – rather than sending a quote, means that you’re in control but are spending less time on manual processes.

This is especially so if this is for a recurring setup. After all, you don’t want to be doing those manually every month and chasing customers for payments every month. That’s way too time-consuming (not to mention stressful) and you’ve got far more important things you could be doing instead.

So let’s automate them. And we can do that so easily from within Keap either from an invoice or from a checkout link.

Syncing With Bookkeeping Platforms:

One final note here is that while Keap is already an ideal invoice automation solution, the fact that the invoicing within Keap can sync with Quickbooks makes it an even better solution.

This means that if you’re using Quickbooks as well as Keap, then your invoicing that you create within Keap will automatically sync to your bookkeeping software, saving you even more time. It can also sync to Xero with the use of another plug-in to integrate the two platforms.

The key takeaway here though is that you actually don’t want to create an invoice… you want to automate the process. (But if you do want to do an invoice, it’s super-easy.)

I just wanted to reach out to you because I see this really big mistake happening in small business.

It's an issue that so many business owners make and not only is it costing a lot in lost sales, but it's so easy to overcome.

Watch the content-only video below where I explain what this mistake is and, better still, how you can fix it:

At the moment, a lot of small businesses I've seen are doing some lead generation campaigns. You know, they might be using an eBook or a free report or a checklist or something like that to generate leads, to pay and generate leads for people to opt into their database.

Now it's a really good idea to grow your database and to be able to have a bigger audience. But the big mistake that I see people making is they are getting people to opt in to download this free report or checklist or whatever it might be, whatever the lead generation tool is. And all they're doing is sending one email straight afterwards, which is the delivery of the report.

And they're losing this opportunity to engage with that audience and to get those newcomers to the database, to know like, and trust you.

See it takes five to seven interactions with a customer or with a potential customer – a lead –for them to become a customer on average. Let me repeat that… five to seven interactions.

Now, if you're paying for an ad and maybe that's one interaction.

And then they opt in, that's maybe a second interaction.

Then you deliver the email. That's potentially a third interaction.

Is there enough value in those three interactions to get someone to become a customer?

Maybe, at that one complete end of the scale. But at the other end of the scale, potentially, we're not doing ourselves justice here. We're not doing our business justice.

And as a result, these leads are coming in, we're sending them one email and we're not getting the results that we would like.

We're spending all of this money on marketing and it's kind of going nowhere. And what we need to do is have a follow-up series that sends them somewhere.

There should be some sort of focus, after they opt in, to get them to do the things we want them to do. Okay?

So I want you to no longer have one email. We're going to have five emails as a minimum, and we're going to break it down – whatever the report is… if it's an eBook, if it's a report, if it's a checklist – we're going to break it down into three emails that are training emails.

The first email is going to be to deliver the report.

The second, third and fourth emails – so three emails there – they are all going to be emails, breaking it down and giving some value, giving some extra value, some extra content.

Now the way I like it best is video content. You’re going to send a video. You're going to break down the eBook, breakdown the free report, breakdown whatever it is into three parts and have a video of you teaching them exactly how to get more out of each of those three parts.

Then the last two emails are going to be drive emails. I call them either drive emails or conversion emails. We're going to get them to take the next step, whatever that is, whether that's registering for our webinar, booking in for a sales call, and buying our product – whatever that might be – we've got to have some sort of focus.

See this time, when someone opts into your database, is the most important time to start getting them engaged… to start getting them to know, like and trust you, because they're engaged already.

They're opting in for something and we've got to take advantage of that. We've got to make sure that we have the best relationship we possibly can by engaging with them all the way through as well. Then we need that focus at the end. Okay?

So just to recap: NO MORE ONE EMAIL. We're going to have SIX emails.

1. We're going to deliver whatever it is in the first email.
2. Then we're going to break it down into three items of content. So that’s three videos, preferably breaking down whatever is in the report.
3. And then we're going to have two emails that are driving them to do the next thing in the process, whether that is booking in for a consult, buying our product or registering for our webinar.

Now six emails is the minimum that I want you to think about, but you can even go more than that too. A two-week engagement series is super cool as well. Five or six emails is the minimum, but you can go further than that as well.

So you've got people booking in appointments with you, or your team, so that you can help them and then try to convert them to become customers. Great.

They're booking it in either for a telephone call… they're booking in for a Zoom meeting… or they're booking in for some sort of strategy session or some sort of sales call with you so that you can take them to the next level.

They're committing to spending some time with you so that you can create a plan so that they can either become a customer where you can help them in their business or their life or whatever your business might be about.

That’s great. Well done!

Now, it doesn't matter if you're a service-based business, if you're trying to sell a high ticket product… it doesn't matter what sort of business it is. The fact is, you're going to be facing the same problem.

And that is that a lot of the people who are booking in for these calls - or these sessions or this time with you - they're just not turning up. It’s frustrating, right?

Would you like to know how to change this?

If so, watch the content-filled video below for an explanation on why this is happening and, more importantly, what you can do to encourage people to attend the appointments, as scheduled:

Now there's two parts to the problem.

1. The first part to the problem is the reminders that we're sending out.

2. And then the second part of the problem is maybe they don't have enough trust in us yet to spend that time with us. They have enough trust to commit to it, and then they don't have the trust for them to spend time with us.

The thing I want to talk about today is the follow-up and reminders for it at this point in time. We'll come to the trust building phase and the trust building component of that later.

See, we rely on emails at the moment. Traditionally, we rely on emails to be the reminders for us.

Emails have a 19% to 20% open rate and a 2% click through rate on average. And yet we're relying on emails to send the reminders to get people to turn up to our appointments.

What's the problem here?

Yeah… it's pretty low stats isn’t it?

I'm going to suggest that you introduce SMS into your appointment follow-up, okay?

SMS has a 98% open rate and 90% of those are read in the first 30 seconds.

Plus SMS has a 29% click-through rate.

And in actual fact, we probably don't need to worry about the click through rate for SMS’s for appointments, unless they're clicking through to get onto a Zoom call or something like that with you.

So email is 19 to 20% and a 2% click through rate. SMS is 98% open rate with 90% of those in the first 30 seconds and a 29% click-through rate.

So it makes sense, doesn't it, to use SMS in our follow-up process to get people to turn up to their appointments?

Here are some more stats for you from voicesage.com:

• On average, 158 minutes a day are spent on someone's smartphone. So people are more likely to be committing to the reminders on their smartphone or tablet.

• 64% of people prefer text over voice as a customer service channel. So text is a good way to follow up with them… 100%.

• 91% of Australians find the SMS appointment reminders useful and helpful to get them to where they need to be.

• And then introducing SMS to this appointment follow-up process can reduce missed appointments by up to 80%... if you do them properly.

So what do you think you need to do?

You need to introduce SMS into your appointment process.

So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to send an SMS confirmation.

When someone books, an SMS goes out straight away. If you have the facility to do so, have an “Add to Calendar” button inside the SMS.

The next thing we're going to do is we're going to do a one day reminder – a 24-hour reminder before the appointment.

Then we're going to do a one hour reminder before the appointment.

And a 15-minute reminder.

The 15-minute reminder is especially if we want them to click through on a link to come along to the appointment.

So to recap, we're going to do a confirmation, then reminders one day before, one hour before and 15 minutes before to increase the attendance at your appointments and get more people coming along so that you can either deliver to them what you need to or try and convert them into being customers.

It’s as simple as that.

One of the big problems I see people having right now – and one of those big topics that’s out there right now in using a CRM like Keap for your email marketing and for connecting with your customers – is email deliverability.

This isn’t just with Keap (previously Infusionsoft). It’s across the board.

One of the key things we need to get people to do is to open our emails so our email open rate goes up from the average, which is about 20%, to up into the 30’s, 40’s and 50%’s, so that we can continually have a good reputation with the email providers. This way, when we send an email, it’s more likely to get into our reader’s inbox.

So… how do we make sure people are opening our emails?

The first thing is don’t send crap. Send good quality emails all the time.  

But then the second thing is to make sure you’ve got a good, engaging subject line so that people are engaged with your subject and then they open your email and go through the rest of the process.

Now the big problem many people have in writing their own email copy – which is perfectly fine if you want to do that – is that the subject line almost always gets forgotten. And it’s actually the most important bit.

If we don’t get the subject line right then we’re not going to get people to open the email and engage in the rest of our copy.

So there’s a super-cool new tool which Keap has just put out which is an email subject line generator.

Watch this quick video now where I show you how simple it is to use this tool:

To improve your email deliverabilty, focus on your email subject lines starting from right now. You can access this free email subject line generator tool from the following link:

https://keap.com/tools/email-subject-line-generator