Scaling Personal Attention – AutomationClinic.com

Scaling Personal Attention

I’ve heard many definitions and philosophies of marketing automation, but mine is is simply, “Scaling Personal Attention.”

It is the act of using technology to scale what appears to be real, human interaction. What seems inherently robotic (the term “automation” doesn’t help) is actually quite the opposite with this philosophy. When done right, it accomplishes something a single person or team of people could NEVER manage offline.

What happens in a conversation if you’re always doing the talking and what you continue to blabber about has nothing to do with what the other person is saying back to you? I know someone like this. They’ve always got an agenda to talk about what they want to talk about. If I interject, they either act like they don’t hear me or continue talking about what they want to talk about. Know anyone like that?

Not surprisingly, I see this with 90% of follow-up marketing. We load a dozen messages into an autoresponders and when someone gets on our list, we start talking.

Talking, talking, talking. Like that person I described, what we say has nothing to do with what our prospects are doing, clicking on, showing interest, reading, watching, buying. The good news is, this can change.

With Infusionsoft, you already have the best system in the world for tracking and reacting to behavior, AUTOMATICALLY. If someone downloads your free report, you can tag them and use that tag to determine future messages. Unlike predetermined autoresponder messages, you can actually choreograph an experience that appears pretty real.

For example, I can track every page you’ve visited. Through an Infusionsoft plugin, [contentblock id=15 img=html.png], every time you click a link from an e-mail to return to my site, you’re logged in whether you know it or not. From there, I’ve used [contentblock id=15 img=html.png]’s shortcode system to run action sets on important pages. So everyone who visits the consulting page after being autologged in will get tagged, “visited consulting page.” Everyone who visits the strategy session or Infusionsoft sections, likewise. I could get as crazy as I want with this but have limited it to key areas.

I can then either create a [contentblock id=17 img=html.png] that sends them a message the next day, use the new campaign builder to send an e-mail within 20 minutes, or simply do nothing immediately but have future steps in my primary sequence that check if they’ve visited the consulting page, and if so, deliver appropriate messages.

Do you see how powerful this is? Right here in this post I’ve given you something worth at least thousands.

Scaling personal attention is about listening. In a fully automated system, while you can’t listen with your “real” ears, you can listen with Infusionsoft’s tagging system. Tags are virtual notes about your prospects and customers. They are your system’s ears and memory. And unlike humans, there are no filters or capacity issues. When someone behaves a certain way, they are tagged definitively. If you visit the consultation page after being autologged in, you’ll forever have the “visited consulting page” tag and I can forever know that you’ve shown enough interest to click to the page. Whether I react to that immediately or take a delayed sale approach, I have the data and that’s what’s important.

“Garbage in, garbage out.” Your [contentblock id=16 img=html.png] is only as good as your data collection. That data can be collected externally through web forms and surveys and internally through behavior tracking like the strategy explained here.

With the proper strategy and automation system, you can, indeed, scale personal attention.

 

  • Kavit says:

    Great post about tagging Jermainne.

    Quick question, if I may – with so many tags, and them firing off sequences, how do you monitor # of emails people are receiving and making sure they don’t receive multiple about different offerings?

    Thanks!!

  • J Griggs says:

    Great question.

    I was just talking to a private client about this.

    I go the route of putting everything into one MASSIVE sequence. So my lead generation sequence is 170 steps. And even when I start separate sequences (like at day 40 for the “4-day 50% off sale” for which I use a separate date-driven countdown sequence), I don’t have any steps around that same time in my massive sequence. So they still “work together” if you will.

    Very rarely do I start separate sequences. As I mentioned above, I may tag the ones who visit the consulting page and future steps will take care of them, if they are in the MASSIVE sequence. If they aren’t in the sequence, I can perhaps add them to a short term consulting-based sequence.

    When you have everything in a big sequence, you gain control. I know that you will rarely get more than one e-mail per day because even though I have, say, 6 steps at day 17, you should only be qualified to receive one because of my zero sum game “conditions.” That means either you have one tag or you don’t have it. Either you have the music style in question or you have another. Either you have the beginner skill tag or the advanced. You will only qualify for one of those 6 e-mails that day, guaranteed.

    Then when we add in leadscoring (an internal point system that gives user 10 points every time they take a favorable action), # of logins, # of clicks (all things that can be counted with my wordpress plugins I’m yet to release), and other factors, you can increase your frequency only to those users. So you have a BASE # of e-mails that go out to typical leads. Then in between those BASE e-mails, you have e-mails that go out only to people with leadscores over X points, or with over 10 logins, or maybe 10 clicks (when you know by day 40, there have been at least 20 opportunities to click). You meet frequency with their behavior. The ones who don’t qualify don’t get the more frequent e-mails.

    ANd as for your uber users (top 10% leadscore, top 10% clickers, top 10% logins, top 10% videos watched, top 10% customer value, etc), you can e-mail every day. THey will never get tired of you. They can never get enough. They have proven to be an uber fan. You’ll be hardpressed to overwhelm them (but of course, do what feels right).

    At the end of the day, having as few sequences and possible and making them work with each other (like setting a tag in one sequence at day X that says ACTIVE IN Y SEQUENCE… then at the end, you can remove that active tag. Meanwhile your other sequences should only be able to send out emails when no ACTIVE tag for other sequences are present. THis is one way I make sure when I’m running my 4-day 50% off sale or my reminders for an automated teleseminar that they get no other e-mails. I place a ‘4 DAY SALE PROMO ACTIVE’ tag and make all other e-mails conditioned upon this tag not being present. And if those other sequences are not time-sensitive, you can always have them set to repeat upon completion.

    As you can see, there are tons of possibilities. Five different infusionsoft users can literally come up with 5 different ways of doing things.

  • J Griggs says:

    Kavit, here’s an incredibly helpful document that walks through a method of capping how many e-mails a contact gets per day from multiple follow up sequences. It’s explained in detail in this report:

    https://automationclinic.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Managing-E-mail-Frequency-PDF.pdf

  • Bob says:

    Hi Jermaine,
    Great stuff. I saw another video you did where you were talking about measuring how much of a video the lead has watched. Then using this to decide whether they get to watch the next video, or if they need an email reminding them to watch that first one first. Are you using iMember360 to accomplish this as well?

    • J Griggs says:

      Yes, imember can be used to do it. Prior, I was using a regular script that basically loaded an invisible image that could fire action sets, tags, and follow up sequences. imember makes this drop dead simple with it’s short code:

      {i4w_actionset actid=’1,2,3′ tagid=’12,34,-56′ fupid=’78,-90′ redir=’#reload#’ autorun=1]

      actid is the action set(s) you want to run
      tagid are the tags you want to apply
      fupid is the follow up sequences you want to start

      putting – in front of a value removes tag or stops follow up sequence

      using autorun=1 loads these actions automatically.

      To get the delay however, you can use iframes that redirect to a page with this code on it after X seconds.

      So for me, I start with a blank page inside an iframe. I put metarefresh code at the top of this blank page (google that) which redirects to a new page (inside the iframe) after X seconds. May be 600 seconds… may be 800 seconds. The new page has the code above that runs action sets.

      I then have a meta refresh on that page which redirects after so many more seconds. Same concept. Next page has this code with different action sets.

      It’s my makeshift way to make it work.

      I’ve talked to Bob Keen about making this easier for a typical user. He is trying to figure out how to make the shortcode above run with a delay. If so, then it will literally be a one-click thing. You just include this code on your page, set the delay, and basically if the visitor has stayed on the page long enough to watch the video, you run an action set. It’s not perfect but for the purposes we need, it’s fine. Someone who does not stay on page long enough to watch video would get reminders.

      {i4w_actionset actid=’1,2,3′ tagid=’12,34,-56′ fupid=’78,-90′ redir=’#reload#’ autorun=’1′ delayseconds=’600′]

      I’m also working on a plugin that can run actions from youtube videos. So when youtube video reaches X seconds, it can fire unique action set. If that goes through, this will be another easy way to accomplish what I do.

      All the best,
      JG

      • Bob says:

        Wow, thanks for that detailed response! We’ll see if we can get it to work.

        • J Griggs says:

          My pleasure Bob.

          Also, I’m almost done with my own plugin that’s going to make this drop dead easy. You can install it on any wordpress site (I tend to make dummy wordpress installations just for my back end scripts. You don’t have to use wordpress to implement it… you can paste the code my plugin gives you ANYWHERE). Any way, here’s a screen shot of it. I’ll probably offer it here when done:

          https://automationclinic.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Screen-shot-2012-05-23-at-2.47.19-PM.png

  • Kavit says:

    Hey Jermaine,

    Thanks for sharing in the responses.

    The document you shared, unless I am wrong, is based on Legacy and the Follow Up Sequences system, correct? I am using the new Campaign Builder and seeing how to work it by using that.

    In any case, what you’ve said about the strategy makes sense if I’ve got the same giveaways to build my list at the top end of my funnel as this will be the only portal of entry.

    When you have different products (jazz, blues, gospel, etc) do you then set up each of the sequences within the same campaign builder. Each will have its own intricate path, I presume. For example, I offer a webinar. Then I’ll have quite a detailed campaign that tracks as much as I can about webinar registrations, attendees, attendance, response, sales follow up, 30 day offers, 90 day offers, etc. That will be a lot of sequences and processes. Would you have all of this inside the same one MASSIVE campaign set-up or will you run at is as a separate one and then just apply a tag from the massive one that goes out, runs the other campaign, and when that completes, tags back into the Massive one. I have multiple webinars that run so wondering what you would do as the best approach?

    Thanks, as always, for this healthy discussion and your insights.

    Kavit

  • J Griggs says:

    Kavit,

    Yes, most of my stuff is in the regular, classic follow-up sequence area. I have not dared to move my gargantuan sequence over to the campaign builder until it is developed more. Right now, it cannot compare to my regular follow up sequence as I need the ability to:

    -Make http posts (VERY IMPORTANT)
    -Send direct mail / post cards
    -Voice broadcasts
    -Integrate with my customized stats dashboard

    Basically, it takes away all my magic at the moment. So while everyone got excited about it, once I saw that it wasn’t ready for the aforementioned activities, I continued about my regular path. The possibilities definitely excite me and I look forward to it. Once it can do EVERYTHING the regular follow up sequences can do, I’ll stay back. However, I do play around with it and make fake sequences and it’s great. I love the delay timers. THat used to take me custom scripting and api (like to make an e-mail go out 30 mins after somenone logs in to tell them “thank you for being an action taker and getting started right away … or to send an e-mail at 11:57 saying that i’m about to go to lunch but wanted to check in.” The campaign builder makes this easy and you no longer need api, your own database to house action set id and times, or any of that.

    If I were to use it now, I would probably be inclined to do everything in ONE campaign. After all, it is ONE campaign… just different segments within it. You will never find me making several campaigns. You lose control and the person ends up in 12 sequences and you have no idea how many e-mails they’re going to get in one day (unless you do something like I described in the document above). The only things I launch in new sequences are my automated teleseminars/webinars (countdown-date-based)… 4-day 50% off sales sequences (which are also countdown-date-based). So I launch temporary “< 4 step" campaigns in new sequences but generally have no steps in my BIG sequence while these are running. So if I have a step at day 40 to launch the "4-day 50% off sale" to those who have watched all 4 videos, I try not to have any steps in my big sequence between day 40 and day 47 or so. I even acknowledge the other sequence by saying something in my big sequence like: [LAUNCH SEQ 123 - 4 DAY SALES MACHINE]. You can even put placeholders with no actions in them to mimic what the outside sequence will be doing. It helps to choreograph things better. Once again, this is all done in the regular follow up sequence section. I don't call it legacy. To me, the regular follow up sequences and action sets are what built my business this way. I was one of the ones saying you cannot get rid of those sections. I will get to the visual creator but quite frankly me, Britton, and many other expert users have not jumped ship on "legacy" yet. All the best, JG

  • Mike says:

    Hi Jermaine,

    I was interested to know whether you use wordpress with imember360 or customerhub as your method of hosting your membership content.

    If you use customerhub, how do you get imember360 to interact with customerhub?

    Thanks, Mike

    • J Griggs says:

      Here I use imember360. At hearandplay.com, I use customerhub.

  • […] when certain rules are met," is the heart of my follow-up strategy. Without this, my philosophy of "scaling personal attention" would be […]

  • […] If you're on the "other side," have built a list of thousands of prospects, and have added mass communication to your marketing mix, how do you "listen?" How do you know their "hot buttons" and what drives them? On a mass level, sure, you could send them surveys and figure out collectively what they want. But mass methods deliver mass conversion rates (1% at best). Fortunately, there is a way to do it on an individual, one-to-one basis, giving us some of the advantages of face-to-face selling — what I've coined as "Scaling Personal Attention." […]

  • […] — unorthodox ways of thinking about business and marketing that really resonate with people. "Scaling Personal Attention," "The Orbit," "Triangle Stack," and "Follow-Up Pyramid," are a […]

  • jim says:

    Hi Jermaine, thanks so much for your always “to the point” articles.

    I would like to ask you 2 questions regarding this subject:

    1) When you have your 40th day sale to your prospects/clients, how do you manage if they already purchased some of those products, say, during the previous 39th days as part of your promotions sequences? Do you only offer that 40th sale to those who did not buy during the previous 39 days?

    2) Since you already have your sequences pre-established allowing for customer triggered deviations, what would happen if someone is already on a path and say that tomorrow they are to receive a special as part of one of your sequences, and it so happens that you have your Columbus Day sale coming tomorrow as well.

    What do you do then to keep these 2 offers from “bumping into each other? One as automated, then, the other was spontaneous. They may even contradict each other in terms of the value of the offers.

    Thanks in advance Jermaine.

    By the way, I am looking forward to your home study course. When will it be available?

    • J Griggs says:

      Hi Jim,

      Thanks for your comment. Here are my answers:

      1) Every e-mail in my system is sent with a CONDITION. In legacy follow up sequences, instead of using the “SEND AN E-MAIL” option, you’d use the “RUN SOME ACTIONS,” which magically shows this option that allows you to “ONLY RUN ACTIONS WHEN THESE RULES/CONDITIONS ARE TRUE.”

      This is the engine behind sending them e-mails when only certain things are true (they watched the videos vs didn’t watch, they ordered something vs didn’t order, action/behavior is true vs false). In the new campaign builder, you can do the same thing by using a decision diamond. They allow you to assign rules/conditions similar to how I’ve described above. And in your case, making sure they do not already have the TAG that symbolizes they’ve purchased the course is one of the basic conditions (in addition to anything else).

      —–

      2) You could handle this a couple ways. I hardly ever send broadcasts because my automated sequences is so vast and takes into consideration holidays, promos, even preplanned launches that appear live. But we also tag people, “LIVE IN SEQUENCE,” “6 MONTHS IN SEQUENCE,” “1 YEAR IN SEQUENCE,” etc. Once they reach these time points, they’re tagged accordingly. That way, when you go to send broadcasts, you make sure to search for contacts who aren’t in the sequence or aren’t in a particular part of the sequence that would clash with what you’re doing live. You could even tag them (as we also do), “LIVE IN 4 DAY CASH MACHINE.” Once the automated sale is over, tag them COMPLETED 4 DAY CASH MACHINE and remove them from the “LIVE IN 4 DAY CASH MACHINE.” Additionally, if they haven’t bought, you have record of them completing the sequence but not buying. Tagging and storing the data gives you the flexibility to do whatever you want as it relates to broadcasts.

      Home study course coming soon!

      Thanks,
      JG

      • Jim says:

        Jermaine, your answers clarify a a lot for me…thank you!!!

        Just to make sure I understand one last thing, your 40th Day special,

        a) you did not send an offer for it before during the first 39 days, even at a regular price, right?

        b) I have a 10 steps ecourse as a freemium I will deliver via CustomerHub (one chapter every 3 days). Is about personal development.

        Depending I am planing to offer 3 “offers” during the course 30 days. One every 10 days +\-

        Does that sound fine or too much? I know you don’t have a lot of background info on these offers, but mostly they are audio programs about limiting beliefs and such and more than likely with your experience you may be able to give me a birds-perspective.

        Thanks again Jermaine!!!

        • J Griggs says:

          Great questions Jim.

          a) While I didn’t send a “hard offer,” they’ve had exposure to the product via soft post-script offers. So while the priority of the e-mail may be something else, I start dropping seeds for my “other resources” in my signature down below. And a percentage of folks will find them before the day-40 special (because they are tracked and tagged).

          I could offer the 300pg course at regular price before I drop the price but I’m not a huge fan of the “Down sell to same product” method. I feel that customers will begin to think: “Well, if I don’t buy at regular price, he’s sure to offer it at a lower price.” Sure, they can think that outright with my hefty discount at day 40 but at least it’s sporadic and unpredictable. With added assurance that “it will NEVER be this low again” coupled with real scarcity (expiration date), I can see conversions of 15% + of people as opposed to a typical 2-3%. And the bump in sales outweighs the discount. That’s not to say you shouldn’t try at full price. Everything is worth testing. If you do later offer same thing at discount, just make sure to take something out and make it very well known that it isn’t the same thing you offered before. No one wants to feel duped (or even feel like they could have gotten duped had they bought the first time). And marketers shouldn’t train their customers to wait instead of being rewarded for taking action the FIRST TIME. People who act fast and quick should be rewarded but many of us get in the habit of lowering price for the ones not following our desired actions (sometimes justifiable, sometimes destructible). Downsells for the sake of just offering same thing at cheaper price is destructible to me and sends the wrong message.

          2) I don’t think it’s too much to offer every 10 days. I would almost flip the model and give incentive for someone to take you up on it the FIRST TIME. Then the incentive expires. Then the second time, the incentive isn’t as great as the first time (and make sure to make it known that they’ve already missed out but there’s still chance to get a good deal). The last one is sort of a FINAL NOTICE attempt. Dan Kennedy does this well in promoting his events. There are incentives to be a fast-action taker. Those incentives end as event draws near.

          Another thing to do is NOT have pre-determined times to offer deals. I talk about this in my Infusionsoft webinar with Jordan Hatch (you can find it in my archives). With the campaign builder, there is no longer need for structure. Things don’t have to go in order. You can have a goal placed anywhere on your campaign that listens for a tag. That tag can be, “has clicked so many e-mails.” It could be “Has watched or listened to all samples.” It could be “has viewed the product page or clicked to it from an e-mail.” It could be any number of qualifiers. And once that tag happens, your promotion sequence is triggered to magically happen. That’s recency and “psychic selling” at it’s best. Amazon.com’s good at it. Customer does some qualifying action — you reply accordingly. It’s nothing more than a “tag goal” connected to a sequence in the campaign builder. Knowing what the goal/threshold should be is another conversation but I’ve given you some ideas here.

          Thanks,
          JG

  • Jim says:

    Wao Jermaine. Excellent answer. Thanks so much.

    I will follow your ideas.

    Want you to know that you have both, helped and inspired me.

    Again, thanks.

    Jim

  • jim says:

    Hi Jermaine.

    I am setting up my 10 step ecourse taking in consideration your suggestion.

    I am considering to integrate sendout cards to the process for new clients and probably, send a card to those that complete the 10 steps.

    I would like to ask you 2 questions:

    1) From your experience, what is the service that affordably integrates send-out cards with infusionsoft that you use?

    2) I notice you ship internationally (physical products). I just turned my digital personal development programs to physical form and would like to start selling them to overseas clients, but what bothers me is that a $37 cd program could be more expensive to ship than the cost of the program itself!

    Are you shipping those from your office or are you using a fulfillment house?

    I am wondering what your advise would be since you have a lot of experience on this subject.

    To be honest, this is one of the main pieces of the puzzle I have not being able to figure out yet.

    Your help on this would be greatly appreciated.

    Thanks in advance Jermaine!

    • J Griggs says:

      Jim, you have great questions and I think you’d be a great candidate for coaching or consulting.

      1) I use internetautomater.com and have been using them for the last few years. While the landscape may have changed and other better services may have even arisen, I’ve had no complaints about the way things are done at internetautomater.com. As long as my sendoutcards.com account is loaded up with funds (they don’t have an auto-replenish feature unfortunately, just a flat rate monthly amount you can opt for), things have been pretty smooth.

      2) Yes, I’ve shipped physically since DAY 1. We’re talking August 6, 2000. I only started allowing digital downloads in 2009. International clients pay $19 to $24 for shipping. So a $37 product plus shipping would cost $56 to $61 out the door for the client. I would speak to my fulfillment person, Lisa, at http://www.Fulfillyourproducts.com.

      All the best,
      JG

  • jim says:

    You are right Jermaine….I have so many things in my head.

    I have actually been considering that, but, especially your home study course.

    This helps a lot.

    Thanks!!!!

  • […] include: "Scaling Personal Attention," "The Orbit," "Triangle Stack," "Follow-Up Pyramid," "Ideal Purchase Path,"  and quotes like "The […]

  • […] method involves collecting lots of internal and external data to personalize marketing communications, custom-tailor offers, and deliver the right messages to […]

  • […] thing I've learned in developing my philosophy of "scaling personal attention" is you want to communicate as if you're speaking to one person. When you're doing "one size fits […]

  • Anonymous says:

    In follow up to Mike’s previous question, I’m wondering why you chose Customerhub for one product and iMember360 for the other. Are you testing one against the other for functionality? Did you decide you like iMember360 better and just didn’t want to take apart your product already on Customerhub?

    I ask because I have a product in CH now and I’m getting ready to build out another under a different brand. Now is the time to commit to one or the other.

    Any advice is much appreciated.

    • Jermaine Griggs says:

      Laura,

      Thanks for your question.

      I’ve been using customerhub since 2009. I actually looked at imember around that time but it didn’t work well with my rackspace (hearandplay) server (til this day it doesn’t). When I install it on my hearandplay server, it literally crawls. However, if I install it on my host gator server where this is hosted, it works fine. So, to get going fast, I went with customerhub and things work great over there for what I need it to do.

      I later revisited imember to see what would happen on another server and after finding out it worked well with hostgator, I chose to use it for automationclinic. There is no comparison when you look at features. Just looking at the imember shortcode list alone will convince you of that. The real question is whether you need all that and willing to go through the learning curve. Customerhub is much easier… point and click. iMember… you have to get a little technical but it’s not too bad.

      For me, it was just a matter of timing. Ideally, I could think of millions of ways to use imember with what I’m doing at hearandplay. But as it stands now, I’d have to use a different server (which is fine) and I’ve never brought myself to make all those changes for something that is working in its current state.

      Hope that clarifies!

      JG

  • Terri says:

    Hi Jermaine!

    You’ve got some great info here! Thank you for putting this out!

    I have a question that I hope doesn’t sound too remedial! I want to set up the “my account” page (using iMember360 integrated with Infusionsoft) to help upsell other similar products, and for some reason I’m having a difficult time wrapping my head around the short codes…

    Example:
    I’m using this to show their current level: [i4w_user_levels]

    Now I want to show, oh, two other similar products. Is there a way to do this using short codes? I’m guessing yes but it’s eluding me.

    Any help you can give is so much appreciated!

    Terri

  • Terri says:

    Hi Jermaine,

    My shortcode didn’t show up for you: i4w_user_levels

    Hope it does this time!

    Terri

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