About Jermaine

Since starting my companies with $70 in my grandma's one bedroom apartment in 2000, things have come a long way! I would have never thought taking a year-long voyage around the world with my family. But this speaks to the power of the internet, a simple idea, and marketing automation. Read this report to learn how to make your business work for you, instead of being prisoner to it.

A Funny Domain Name Experience & Lessons Learned

Having shared my "HearandPlay" story for the last 10 years doesn't come without complications. In fact, it's probably inspired more competition than I'd ever imagine over the years. That's okay --- because I have an abundance-based mindset (not a scarcity-based one) and I've always been blessed for giving rather than keeping to myself.

For a while now, I've been thinking about expanding the "Hear and Play" brand to other methods of learning. I've kept my eye on "SeeAndPlay.com" for the longest but it's never been available. Not that another name wouldn't work, but it fits nicely with my "& play" pattern.

So I revisited the idea the other day and found that the domain name, SeeAndPlay.com, had recently been registered on June 19, 2012. (Silly me for not backordering it but I was never really that serious about it in the past). Here's my e-mail to the new owner:

Here was the reply back:

Wow!

They saw our House Hunters episode and was inspired to finally start the website. They even borrowed part of the name structure "and play" (not reinventing the wheel right?). And rightfully so. If I was on the other side, I'd probably do the same thing. I respect this father and son to the utmost for "seeing" something on tv and taking action.

I have this saying:

"There are three types of people. Those that make things happen. Those that watch things happen. And those that are wondering what just happened."

This father and son didn't just want to "watch" someone else on tv make it happen. They got up and took action.

(All of this is not to say I don't want the domain name. I did reply and offer something mutually beneficial. But my point is - how many times have you heard an inspiring story, read a biography, heard a success story, and counted yourself out?

One of the lessons on my end is to be more prepared for opportunity. They say "luck" is when preparation meets opportunity. There are many things I could have done to be alerted of this domain name expiring. And if the owner doesn't accept my offer, I must take personal responsibility for my prior lackadaisicalness towards the situation.

Just for fun, here are some photos from the HGTV "House Hunters" episode they saw.

edward says:

Jermaine, this is very powerful.

I recently changed for imember360 to customerhub because it’s a lot faster to implement.

¿Do you think that your orbit and plugin will be fine to setup with customerhub?

So far I am loving how easy and fast it is to implemtent pages/partials/permissions, etc. in CH

Will I miss a lot of things using your system if I don’t have imember360?

Thanks for your answer.

edward says:

Hi Jermaine, I think that another way to complement that question is what specifically from your system will I miss if I don’t have imember?

Thanks,

J Griggs says:

Truth be told, the things I teach are really system independent. At the end of the day, you could send users to regular blank html page, as long as their contactId is appended (and that happens with automation links and when you choose to append data to the links they click on). With that, you could use my PAGE VIEW SCRIPT (which I’ll be releasing with course) that tags, runs actions, and starts follow up sequences. It even has delayed functionality where you can run actions after x seconds/minutes/hours. So truth be told, for free content, you really don’t need a membership platform.

WITH THAT SAID, it’s a lot easier to use one because it allows you to easily store and recall data about the customer. In both customerhub and imember, you can merge in details like contact id, name, e-mail, and practically every field you want (definitely with imember, not sure how far customerhub has come along with custom field merges). Infusionsoft, themselves, will tell you if you’re looking for advanced integrations and the ability to really customize your own pages, go with imember360. At the end of the day, imember attaches to wordpress so anything you can do with wordpress, you can do with imember360. Customerhub is its own closed platform. The benefit is fast, easy implementation. When speed is a must, you’re good with CH. When flexibility and customization is a must, you go with imember. I use both and I promote both for different situations.

P.S. – I guess with imember, you get the benefit of the vast wordpress plugin directory. There are plugins that allow you to create websites, squeezes pages, membership backends, and other things in a flash. There are also post-expiration plugins and even built in imember features that can expire pages after x amount of time. When all that isn’t needed, ch is kinda ready right out of the box. Make a page, upload your video, assign permissions based on tags/products bought, and you’re in business. But truth be told, I’m the type who really likes to customize and get everything I can out of something so I’m more inclined to imember360, if I have the time/resources to make it “sing.”

edward says:

Jermain, yeah, in term of speed, I was able to create pages/partials for audio infoproducts a lot faster than what I was able to do with imember.

My main blog in in wordpress already and that’s where I had imember as well.

I am creating a 14 steps ecourse series delivered via customerhub. The more I learn, the more I notice that noticing the patterns of the visitors, like pages visited and the time they stay, say, watching a video, is good to trigger future sequences according to their behaviour.

So if your plugins and scripts allow me to accomplish these things while maintaining CustomerHub, I will be a happy camper.

We already invested a lot of time and effort in putting it together, but REALLY, REALLY want to make sure that I will not be missing anything mayor by sticking to Customerhub while using your plugins and solutions.

Now that I am more specific, I wonder what your thoughts are.

Thanks!

Edward says:

Jermaine, to be even more specific, say, having a video in CH and being able to tell, with your scripts, if the visitor watched it or not, and also, in CH, being able to tell if the person actually logged in to the site.

This will help create follow ups, such as the one specified on this article you wrote about your daughter.

Thanks.

J Griggs says:

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Based on what you’ve said, you won’t miss out on anything. As you want to go further and show things to them based on a number of factors (more than tags), imember360 becomes very powerful. It can even compare two custom fields and show things based on their relationship (one field greater than another, vice versa). But for now, based on what you’ve described, fret not.

I actually have TWO plugins. One is straight off the press and works with WISTIA. If you host your videos with wistia, it will track down to the second/minute/hour and run multiple options at specified points. If the person pauses video and never gets to 5:15 (for example), the actions will never run (unlike the page view script, which measures time on page but not necessarily the video itself). This wistia plugin it right on the money. For example, this video right here will track with contact “123”:

-starts video
-gets passed 30 seconds
-gets to 2 minutes

It’s just a test but in real life, I’d track “started video,” “saw half,” “saw pitch,” “finished entire video” and my time points would reflect those actual moments. Plus wistia gives you a free account with 3 video and 5gb of transfer. I suppose you could have a few of those but I don’t mind paying the premium fees for sales videos that will allow me to TRACK what the user has seen and follow-up accordingly (that’s priceless).

And yes, it works with customerhub. You simply paste the customerhub merge code (as seen in the screenshot below), which is {{user.infusion_id}} and this places the users contactId in the video code. And once they pass the specified time points, the actions fire (either action set, tag applied, follow-up sequence, or ALL 3).

Infusionsoft users that get my program are going to have TONS of flexibility and optimization of sales process that’s never been available before… that’s my promise.

Sneak peak of one of the dozens of plugins/scripts:

Reply

edward says:

This looks sweet Jermaine.

I use evp (easy video player), but this wistia plugin is great.

I am happy you are saying we don’t have to give up CH. Since now they are owned by infusionsoft, the hope is they will keep up and add rich features such as the ones we have been discussing.

So you have the wistia plugin, the other one you have talked about for the click scoring, music preference, skill level, etc (which I guess is not dependant on imember to work), and the page view script.

The page view script, could it be used in Customer Hub?

Thanks Jermaine for all your help….looking forward to your home study course.

J Griggs says:

I actually have almost 20 scripts. Not sure which ones will make it in or if I’ll just cover all of them. But pretty much, I’ve tried to make it so that anyone who follows my advice has the tools to make it happen. There won’t be any “you need a programmer” for this. That’s my intent.

All of it is independent of a particular platform because Infusionsoft passes information via links in an e-mail and can perform http posts to my scripts. That’s all that’s really needed. And in the case of the page view script, we use a backup cookie so the next time they go to a page without their contactId added to the link, it notices their contactid in a cookie and the script still works. So you could technically take your top 20 pages, put my page view script on it, tag them, run actions, etc etc etc. Then they get sent to one of those pages via infusionsoft with ?Id=123 appended to link (which you do by clicking that option when making the link). If they then click on another page (“Consulting”), the script notices they have a prior cookie of “123” and it tags them or runs whatever actions you have on the Consulting page. It’s all pretty neat.

(Of course, if you have customerhub or imember, you can do this too because you can run actions when they click links but just demonstrating how you can do it outside of one of those systems).

Edward says:

Jermaine, this is great. I am glad that the way you are creating your Home Study Course + scripts is an all contained system and solution.

The only item where I remain a little bit confused is this.

When you say: ” If they then click on another page (“Consulting”), the script notices they have a prior cookie of “123” and it tags them or runs whatever actions you have on the Consulting page”

That page could be a customerhub page? In other words, could this page view script work inside customerhub?

CH has the action lnks, but as you know it works a little bit different because it needs a link to be clicked inside customerhub and it does not give you the time spent on a particular page.

This would clarify the whole thing for me.

Thanks Jermaine.

J Griggs says:

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Yes, the page view script works inside customerhub without the need of a cookie because customerhub always gives you access to their contactid at any time by merging it in. In the screenshot above, you will see an option to insert the customerhub or imember (or whatever system you’re using)’s merge code for contact id. As long as that’s there, you can place the merge code on ANY customerhub page and it will tag them if they visit the page, and of course, by time on page as well (based on whatever you specify in the plugin).

But to be honest, you don’t need the page view script if you don’t need delayed, time on page actions. If you just need to know what page someone has seen, you can use the customerhub action link in an iframe. This avoids them having to click it. It’s an invisible 1×1 iframe that basically opens the action link. Here are the steps:

1) Make a new BLANK page in customerhub. Don’t put anything on it.
2) Make an action link that forwards to this BLANK page.
3) Then just put the action link in a small, 1 width x 1 height invisible iframe at the very bottom of whatever page you’re tracking and you’re done. Something like this:

< iframe scroll="no" width="1" height="1" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" src="https://www.customerhubACTIONLINK.com" >

*Remove the spaces before and after the < and > (otherwise, the iframe would show up here as invisible just like I’m describing).

Hope this helps.

JG

Reply

edward says:

Excellent Jermaine.

I can see that as an info-marketer, there is a lot going on “under-the-hood” 😉

The only reason I was considering the page view script in customerhub is just in case I decided not to use wistia, since these are 14 free videos (the lead magnet) and maybe i can judge weather they watched it or not based on time on the page.

I really like the iframe trick to trigger the action link…..i don’t know how you come up with these things….that’s a good one.

I am glad that we will be able to use your page view script in customerhub to measure the “time on page” to judge if they watched the video or not, in case we decided not to use wistia for this purpose. Probably will use wistia for actual paid video content…we will have to decide.

This helps a lot Jermaine.

Thanks a million.

J Griggs says:

at

My pleasure.

Now buy my course!! 🙂

j/p – up to you!

Reply
- edward says:
  
  at
  
  Where is it????? Where is the buy me link???? 🙂
  
  Reply
  - J Griggs says:
    
    at
    
    haha :). I haven’t one yet. But VERY soon.
    
    Thanks for your support,
    JG
    
    Reply

edward says:

On the contrary Jermaine….thank you!!!

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