Christmas time is all but here what automation tools can help bring good cheer?

​Don't you hate it when you opt into a website over the holidays and get no reply.

Then you email and find out that they are away having a wonderful time?

​Follow below for 3 simple steps to get yourself set up for an automated holiday season, and help your customers being annoyed by the above.

And while I have you, wishing you and your family a happy holiday season!!

Cheers and see you next year!

_{Hey folks, Jason Burkner here from Automation made easy.}

_{It’s the week before Christmas and just want to talk to you about a few things that I want you to make sure you do over the holiday period.}

_{Three things actually. The first one is have a absolutely fabulous holiday season and make sure you come back refreshed and ready and raring to go in your business next year. Very, very important.}

_{The second thing is make sure you turn on the auto replies in your email if your going off on holidays, closing the business down to the holiday season, or anything like that. Turn on your auto reply and we'll have a look at how we did that a little bit later if you are unsure.}

_{And the third thing is pretty important one of the things that most of us forget over the holiday season, or when we going into holidays. If you've got a contact us form on the website or any sort of campaign running on the website that suggests you're going to get back in contact with your customers. Just go in there and change the email so that you can make sure that your notifying your customers that you closed over the holiday, but you will be back in contact with them when you get back, or you'll be checking your emails while you're away, or something along those lines.}

_{Three simple things. Number one, have a great time. Number two, look at your auto replies and number 3, make sure you change that contact us, so you communicating with your customers automatically while you're away so they know what to expect from you.}

_{Thank you and from all of us at Automation Made Easy I wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy Holiday season. Will see you in the New Year.}

_{Your first instruction was to have a good time and I hope everyone has a great time over the holidays, and a couple of simple things that we can do. The other two simple things that we can do to set up and make sure that we are automating our business while we’re away, or automating some of our processes at least while we’re away.}

_{First one, I think everyone should know how to do this already but I'm just double checking if you don't know how then this is how to we do it. If you’re using Gmail for your email we’re going to the settings here in Gmail, and then just scroll down on this first page here, and in here and in here what we need to do is out of office auto reply. Pretty simple stuff and we just go and we get our auto reply details, whatever it is they were going to send.}

_{Get the details of what you’re going to send and pasted in of course, Automation Made Easy will be closed from midday on Thursday 25th of December. We’ll reply to you email on our return  to the Automation office on Tuesday, the 3rd of January. Happy Holidays.}

_{Third I think that should read actually and here Happy Holidays. We will start this on the 21st which is when we close and the last day for this will be on January. We come back on the 2nd so I’ll make the last day for this the 1st of January, and that will sort that so it will automatically turns off there.}

_{If you’re using Gmail in there. Tells me my messages too long message is too long we need to use a shorter message .In which case let's see if that makes any difference. That’s now done.}

_{Then to do our other emails if you've got your own hosted email I can never work out a way to go in to do, so I always going through the Cpanel of my website and we click in auto responders here. And I can choose the email addresses that I'm going to do an auto responder for so we'll do all domains. We’ll do an auto responder in here and the interval – the number of hours to wait between responses to the same email address – I usually put four or something like that in here.}

_{And in here is And the from will be just left as it is. Subject will be Happy Holidays. This we will paste in there again the same thing and we're going to start it on the 21st at midday of course, so 12/24 12:00 o’clock we’ll start that on the 21st of December and will stop it on the 1st of January at let's go 11: 24 PM. So that’s ready for the holidays. And I just create and that’s ones done.}

_{The next thing we need to think about is when we're in Infusion Soft and we have got our contact us campaigns that say we're going to contact people within 24 to 48 hours in an actual fact we're on holidays. Let's go in and have a quick look at how we can change that up for the holiday season.}

_{I’ve got a few contact us campaigns that I would change it over and each one of these. Let’s going to the first one here so we can have a look and see how they run. I’ve got a few different opt-in forms on my website where people can request information. They fill out the form as usual then we put in into our email here. What we’re  going to do in here is change that email, so I’m going to hold ctrl and click and drag that email. I've got a copy of the original email down here. And I'll put post-Christmas email, so that I can come back and make this one active again later, and then I’ll go into this one. And inside here Hi, contact first name, thanks for reaching out  to us we’ll be in contact with you  within two business days or sooner to help you with your inquiry. That’s a bit silly to say two business days  or sooner when we’re closed over the holidays seasons, so I’ll put something in here as well – Automation Made Easy  will be closed from then to then we’ll  reply to your email or reply to your enquiry on our return to the Automation Made Easy office on Tuesday the 3rd of January. Happy Holidays.}

_{Perfect so now when communicating with the customers as they coming through and what I would do it here is I would just go out and published this campaign. Just publish that. Now anyone that opts in through the website will automatically be given that new email over the holiday period. Of course, at the end of the holiday period remember to log back in and change the email back over to the previous versions, and publish again. Just so that anyone who's interacting with your website over the holidays can be aware of what's going on in that first interaction with you.}

_{We want to make it very clear to our customers exactly what's going on, so they know whether to  jump up and down or not regardless of the case.}

_{Once again Happy Holidays. Have a fantastic holiday season and I'll see you all in the New Year. Have a great all time}

I had so many questions when i first started out with Infusionsoft, trying to work out the best way to go. Infusionsoft subscriptions or payment plans?

One is good for invoicing, the other good for affiliates.  When should i use it?

Which one is it?  Which one is going to be best for you, and best for your customer?

Watch now for the reasons why you would each, the problems with each, 

So you don't make the big mistakes I made with them when i was starting out.

_{Hey folks, Jason Buckner here from Automation Made Easy.}

_{Today I want to follow on a little bit from last week and talk to you about Infusionsoft subscriptions or payment plans.... And when you should use either one, and what are the benefits for each one.}

_{Let's dive on into Infusion soft and have a look at the best scenarios for using Infusionsoft subscriptions or payment plans.}

_{When should we use a subscription or when should we use a payment plan? That’s what we need to determine. There are a couple of different ways of doing things between subscriptions and payment plans and let’s go through the options.}

_{A subscription is individual payments, so whether it be weekly, whether it be monthly, whether it be yearly. A subscription is an individual payment and an individual invoice that goes on with the payment. They’re grouped together in the respect that they are individual payments for something a greater good or a greater goal.}

_{Their individual transactions and with an individual transaction that means you get an individual invoice, okay? Individual invoices. Now a payment plan is based on one payment for one product. It’s just split in two a few different payments. It’s split over many smaller payments to make it easier for the purchase out, for example, a subscription might be a monthly membership to a gym. Whereas a payment plan might be purchasing one product - $3000 product split over three payments to make it easier for you.}

_{We have one invoice when it comes to a payment plan, so you have an invoice. It lists that all of the payments that are due on the invoice and it also lists each payment on there as each payment comes through it sends an updated invoice.}

_{For a subscription you have an invoice for every payment - two very separate things there. It incorporates interest, if you've got a product - $3000 for a pay in full – and you were going to do a  payment plan of their  and  you’re adding $500 of interest, for example, you’re add in the interest component. And then the payment plan will automatically calculate out what the payments will be over that period for you. Whereas, the subscription, is a regular installment of a fixed amount.}

_{Comparison between the two a subscription we would use for a monthly recurring membership or something like that. Something where someone is going to continue on it might be a monthly recurring for 12 months, 12 weeks, something along the lines of that. Whereas for a payment plan we would use a full product like you’re buy something all at once and you’re just slitting that into a few payments. That's where I would generally use the two or I would use a payment plan when I wanted to show the whole purchase as one invoice. That’s one of the most important reasons why I do it that way or if I wanted to show like last week's lesson. If I wanted to show both of them on one order form – pay in full and the payment plan – on one order form.}

_{Now, we just need to make some special attention here for the payment plans and subscriptions in the referral programs in the Infusion Soft referral program there’s two different ways they dealt with. Subscriptions are dealt with basically when each payment comes through because their individual payments or towards group towards a common good.} 

_{When each payment comes through, or each invoice is paid the affiliate or referral partner is allocated the income. With a payment plan however, that a little bit different because it one product all grouped together just split into a few payments. Either when one payment is made or when the whole thing is paid  that’s when we pay our affiliates, so it would be when the first payment comes through or when the last payment comes through that's when the affiliate gets paid in the referral partner tracking.}

_{Important to know that if you're running a referral program. Traditionally what you would do is use a subscription for anything that are you paying affiliate on, or referrals partners on because it gets paid every single or allocated every single time a payment comes through. Whereas the payment plan only allocates when either the order is started, or the order is completed in all the payments come through.}

_{Let's have a quick look in infusion Soft and how we set each one of those up.  Hover over the Infusion Soft logo and  go to E-commerce setup. I always go in this way rather than from the short links at the top. And then we go to products first. Let's add a product in here we'll go through the whole process and we'll go Automation Made Easy we’ll say and we’ll save that product.}

_{Let's just give it a new name actually just so that it doesn’t sit there and I’m not sure which one’s the right one when it comes to using my product later. Let’s say for this particular one we're going to have a full payment price of $2,997 and then we can save that particular product. Now we can add a subscription plan in for this product as well. This might be 12 months worth of membership in here. A subscription plan we could bill every 30 days, and it could go for 12 cycles, and the price might be 497 per cycle or something like that.}

_{That's how we would set up the subscription and in fact, we can just have a subscription on a product we don't need to have a pay in full plan on the product as well. 12 at 497 is this particular one and that's how we would set up the subscription. And to put it onto an order form, we go back to our ecommerce setup, and we go to our order forms, we create an order form, and then we choose that product. Automation Made Easy-- just want to get the right one Subs test-- there we go. We’ll prop that one in.}

_{You can see here, we can either choose this as a one-time-only product, so that would be the pay in full price, or we can choose this subscription. This one were going to choose this subscription at the product and then click on save.}

_{Now, if we go to preview this on the order form you can see here it details it's $497 per 30 days for 360 days. Now, of course, instead of 30 days I could have done this per month and done up  for 12 months in here would have made a little bit more sense in there. But you can see it’s the only option I have here is to buy on subscription.}

_{Let's take a look at payment plan. If we were doing a payment plan say on the original product which was the $2,997 product-- where is the product? There we go $2,997.  We would go to ecommerce set up, and then we go down payment plans over here. Sorry payment plans down here, and we would add a payment plan in.}

_{In here, we’ve got a finance charge. This is the key difference between the subscription and the payment plan. In here, we can add in a finance charge so say 2,997 and we wanted to have a say $300 finance charge for someone to pay over 3 months for example. Number of payments is 3 days between payments is 30 days and we’re going to start this straight away. We click on save.}

_{This has setup. The payment plan for this particular product is setup. The payment plan for any product that we allocate it to, but now we need to allocate to the product. So we go product quantity criteria—down the bottom here and we choose Automation Made Easy tests – Subs test - and minimum quantity is one in this case, and maximum quantity only want people to buy one at a time, so we can choose save there.}

_{If one product is purchased of Automation Made Easy tests which is the products that we created without paying full price earlier. It's going to have a $300 finance charge and it’s going to split the payments over 30 days by three payments. Let’s have a look at that in an order form, so we'll go and put that one in an order form, ecommerce setup, and then order forms. And then we’ll go in here payment plan test just so that  I know which one’s for our recording and which one’s not.}

_{And then we’re going to put that product in so subs Automation Made Easy Subs test. This time we’re just going to choose the sales one-time product only, and then click on save, and if we have a look at the preview here we can see here that there’s the a test the single payment of $2,997 in this case, or the three payments of 1,099. It’s automatically calculated those and you can see here today's payment would be 1,099, then next month's 1,099, the final one 1,099, and includes the finance charge details on there.}

_{This would be a payment plan whereas a subscription we would just have the regular recurring payments until the end of the subscription. And wouldn't get those details on here of the payment plan}

_{Thanks guys see you all next week.}

​One of my customers, a gym on the gold coast was selling a 12 week Challenge recently.

However on the Infusionsoft order form, wanted the option for a pay in full price, or a payment plan, on the order form at the time of purchase.

If you use a subscription, it has to be a separate order form, and its a subscription, ongoing charges until it ends.

If you use a payment plan however the invoice goes out for the full 12 weeks of payments, and it appears to be contacted, rather than a subscription that always gives the appearance that you can end it when you like.

Quick video today showing you how to get that payment plan onto the order form, and showing at the time of purchase.

_{Hey folks, Jason Burkner here from Automation made easy.}

_{This week I had a question from one of my customers about how to add a payment plan as well as a pay-in for option on one of the Infusion Soft order forms. What I'm going to do for you today is show you directly how to do that so you can add that option rather than having two different buttons on your webpage.}

_{They click to go through to order and then they have the option - the two options – pay in full or payment plan. Let’s go straight on in and have a look at how we do that.}

_{This customer was a personal training gym and they’re in the Gold coast actually and they run a 12 week challenge. It’s a 12 week get-your-body-back for a summer challenge and the problem was they had two different options.}

_{The first option was 12 week challenge at $650, and then the second option was a 12 week challenge at $65 per week for 12 weeks. What we wanted to do was show both of them on the order form. If you have a look at the order form traditionally we go to Infusion Soft logo here, go to ecommerce setup.}

_{The order forms traditionally, would have just the one product on there.}

_{When we create our order form we have on there 12 week challenge and we add that product on and then we save. And then we have a look at that. We can have a look here. We’ve got our 12 week challenge on there. We could absolutely have one product and a second product, and a third product and they can choose different numbers in there or different quantities in here.}

_{That gets a little bit difficult when it comes to the customer filling out their details - too many hoops to jump through - and they won't jump through them. What we do is we go back to our ecommerce set up. And we set up what’s called payment plan, and then we can list the payment plan on the order form with the product.}

_{Now the payment plan in this case would be 12 weeks at $65 a week, so we would set up our payment plan there. Payment plan is a little bit different to a subscription. A payment plan is a payment plan on a full price product and we add some interesting in. A subscription is a recurring monthly or weekly charge that are runs a little bit differently.}

_{We go down here to payment plans, and we create a payment plan. Let’s say it’s for 12 week challenge. Weekly for 12 weeks at $65 weekly. Then we go to the finance charge.}

_{Now, this is the difference between the payment in full amount and the weekly payment amount. Payment in full in this case is 650. It’s basically 10 weeks of payment, however, the payment plan amount is 12 weeks  a payment, so there’s  two extra payments at $65 is $130 in here.}

_{We go 130 in here and there’s 12 payments that they’re going to make. The payment in this case, is going to be every seven days and they start straight away. And so we click on save. That’s setting up the payment plan.}

_{Now we have to add some criteria for this payment plan to allocate it to the product, so then what would you do on the bottom here is we go to add criteria, and we’re going to go product quantity criteria. And in here, the 12 week challenge is a product that I'm going to choose, and I'm going to choose the minimum quantity one.}

_{The maximum quantity - I might choose five in there - five might be unrealistic, but if a husband and wife might join up and they might be two in there, and we want to give them the option to be able to pay both of them together. But both of them together on the payment plan as well. Maximum quantity two might be sensible to in there. Click on save.}

_{Now, what we’ve just set up is a payment plan of 12 weeks payments. 12 weeks of payments at $65 a week because I know it will automatically calculate out to $65 a week over the 12 weeks, so by adding in the interest amount to the original product price which was 650.}

_{Now if we go to that order form now. Let's go back to the order form and we'll go ecommerce setup,  and then we’ll click on to order forms, and then if we go to that 12 week challenge order form. And if we preview that now you can see here there’s the 12 week challenge which is in the shopping cart. However, there's a single payment of 650 or 12 payments of $65. Now if we click on the 12 payments, it sends us through to the fill in our details page and it gives us details of all those payments, but we have the option to choose which one we want on the order form.}

_{If we use a say a subscription and a pay-in full price using those two options you’ve got to have two buttons - to different order forms - one for each one. Whereas this one to get the option to be single payment in full or the 12 payments of $65 for that period. And it even details the dates of the payments and then also details the amount of the finance charge in there as well.}

_{Simple one today, but just a way to be able to give your customers that option. To have a single payment or the 12 payment option.}

_{See you guys next week.}

My Accountant Dianne, bless her for all the wonderful things she does for me, is always at me to make sure my transactions in Xero match my transactions in Infusionsoft. 

Complete transparency!

Its not ok these days to just put totals in at the end of the month, nor why would we want to in this digital age?

It just takes up so much time though to manually do it, and the Syncs between Infusionsoft and Xero are just so expensive…. 

Here's a simple solution using Zapier to get the orders across!

If there is a repetitive task, I try and Automate it.

Imagine a fast paced sales or customer service environment. Every time you leave a voicemail for a customer, you create a note, type a follow up email, send it, add the follow up date into your calendar.....

How long does all of that take? 2-3 minutes if you are a quick typer?

What if you are doing 20 or 30 of these a day?

Do you get every detail right, every time?

Imagine automating that task down to 10-15 seconds, so you can set and forget and move on to more important things?

Here's how to do it: