Infusionsoft Basic Settings: CRM Settings for Beginners – Part 1

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If you are new or a novice with Infusionsoft then this series is for you. In this blog article series, we hope to help you with the basic settings in Infusionsoft, the ones that matter and the ones that may not. After all, to start with a campaign build is not wise, might be what is wanted, but again a bad move.

When building a home, a solid plumb level and square foundation are important to a wallpaper hanger, that is the part of the house that helps the wallpaper align square with the window and door trim.

Infusionsoft basic settings are not sexy but you will be glad you spent some extra time on them so this piece of SaaS can do its magic when you need it most.

Infusionsoft Basic Settings under the CRM tab is where you will find all contact and company settings. This set of settings is used for Tasks, Notes, Tags, Contact Types, Titles, and Suffixes for addressing professionals and a whole host of items that may be important to your organization. In this article, we will discuss the General CRM settings options.

CRM > Settings > General

Representation of CRM configuration.

Company: Minimum Account # Length

This is where you enter a whole number before you ever add a company record it this establishes the numeric length of the company's account number, which is rarely used in Infusionsoft. Unless you are B2B, this can be skipped, and even then it is doubtful it will be needed since most searches are performed on the contact record even if searching for a company association.

Contact: Contact Types

These are used in the dropdown field “Person Type” of a contact detail record. This list comes with default information set as Prospect, Customer, Partner, Personal Contact, and Vendor. Take some time to think this through as this will be used in your reports, dashboard, and sorting process. Many users with a defined sales funnel use it, as do those who utilize Infusionsoft for internal communication and contact third-party vendors and suppliers. We commonly add the types “Suspect” and “Internal”.

Contact: Titles

This is used to address people in any merge field where formality is important. The defaults are Mr, Mrs, Dr, and Ms. We commonly add “Miss”, “Rev.”, “Sir”, and others. Punctuation is important as any future integrations with third-party forms can break these settings. Also, train your users to know if punctuation is included or not so that they do not duplicate that in prepared documents with merge fields. This feature shows up on the Contact Detail screen under the “Additional Info” tab.

Contact: Suffixes

is used to address people in any merge field where formality is important. The defaults are I, II, III, IV, Ph.D., Jr. We commonly add “Sr.”, “MBA.”, “Esq.”, “MD”, and others. We usually remove III and IV. We also sort them based on common use. Punctuation is important as any future integrations with third-party forms can break these settings. Also, train your users to know if punctuation is included or not so that they do not duplicate that in prepared documents with merge fields. This feature shows up on the Contact Detail screen under the “Additional Info” tab.

Contact: Phone Types and Fax Types

These are used as a visual aid when viewing the contact detail record and do not have any other use, such as reporting. Sorting by phone numbers in reports or filtering for those who have certain phone number fields with data is how you find those contacts. So these are again for the end-user to help identify what is contained in the field. It is critical that your CRM maintain discipline for which phone field contains what information. Only phone field one can be used for finding duplicate entries. Therefore here you have the defaults of Work, Home, Mobile, and Other. We use those and add Direct for B2B clients. We also reorder them based upon client need and common use as the top one is the default. These can also be changed with form submissions if so desired. Change these settings later and you might break the ones in use. In the contact detail record, these show up with every phone field, default or custom.

Contact: Address 1 Label (2 and 3 also)

This is a setting for reports and other lookups. Changing this setting does not change the bold heading on the contact detail record; that happens in another place we will show you later. It is more important at this stage to understand that Infusionsoft e-commerce uses the first field in the contact record for verifying the credit card billing address and likewise in B2B invoices. Again, database integrity is about discipline from day one and it is important for the vibrant organization to understand these factors.

Client Login

This, for the most part, is a legacy feature. Most Infusionsoft users utilize membership sites, internal forms, and email update/opt-out links to enable the contact to change or modify their record. This is not an important setting and we would leave it as the default software has it set.

Adding Contacts: Default Add-New Contact Form

is a very handy feature for those Infusionsoft users that have a back-office need for internal forms and other circumstances. Here you choose the default form desired when someone adds a contact manually. when you build internal forms in campaign builder they will show up here also and that is a great way to really help your back office people enter data as the leadership desires it to be. We almost always build custom internal forms that are set up and branded for back-office sales teams, traveling coaches/consultants, or call centers. The “Short Add Fields” section then helps limit the information being manually entered into the CRM to those fields highlighted but does not limit the fields after the record is manually created. The “Quick-Add Forms” and “Default Quick-Add Form” settings go along with have also been discussed here.

The information provided here is not intended to apply to every case. Infusionsoft is incredibly agile and therefore it can be complicated. Your basic settings in Infusionsoft need to take into account your type of business, your target market, your users, how you gather leads and sell your wares – just to name a few factors. Just like when you buy a new car and you need to learn where all the buttons and settings are, that is also true with Infusionsoft. We highly recommend you learn the subtle differences of each setting before you use the software to help your small business succeed. All information provided is based upon version 1.65 as of the date of this publication.

In our next article on Infusionsoft Basic Settings, we will go over the settings under CRM > Settings > Tasks Appt Note.

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Filed Under: Tools & Technology