In this episode, Jim and Tyson interview Jason Oesterly, owner of Washmo Media LLC an Infusionsoft certified partner, and he will explain us how systems and infusionsoft can help our business.
Jason has helped us start Maximum Lawyer and he is our go to guy when we have questions about Infusionsoft, our Client Marketing System. https://www.infusionsoft.com/
Great episode. Full awesome and really useful tips.
“Whatever system you are going to take a look at, being Infusionsoft or any other, you should focus on what are your needs today, where do you want to go, and make sure that you are not gonna be put on a corner stuck with a system that won’t grow with you. A system needs to scale as you need you scale”
Hacking’s Hack: Upwork! https://www.upwork.com
I’ve just found an immigration paralegal on Upwork! Great employee, simple, fast, cheap!
Tyson’s Tip: Create blog posts through WordPress from your phone whenever and wherever you want. Use your time! Create content!
Jason’s Tip: Test your site. https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/intl/en-gb/tools/test-my-site.html
Test My Site is an easy way for businesses to measure their site’s performance across devices, from mobile to desktop, providing them with a list of specific fixes that can help their business connect more quickly with people online. Businesses just need to type in their web address and within moments they’ll see how their site scores. They can also get a detailed report with tips on what to do next, and where to go for help at no charge.
Thanks so much for listening to the show this week! If you want to know more about this and keeo on maximizing your firm, please join our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/403473303374386/ or like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MaximumLawyerPodcast/ and comment.
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Transcripts: Infusionsoft and Systems 101 ft. Jason Oesterly
Jason Oesterly
Bottom line, whatever system you’re going to take a look at the computer software, any other you want to focus on, what are my needs today? What where do I want to go and make sure that you’re not going to get put in a corner basically stuck with a system that won’t grow with you.
Unknown Speaker
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum liar, podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm.
Unknown Speaker
Welcome to the show. You’re back on the maximum lawyer Podcast. I’m Jim hacking.
Tyson Mutrux
And I’m tasting mutex agent and we’ve got a pretty awesome guest today, man.
Jim Hacking
Our guest today is Jason Oh, surly. He’s the owner of wash mo media LLC, even a certified partner. And he’s here today to talk to us about systems and how we can use system to improve our firm’s efficiency. Jason, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me. For listeners who don’t know Jason has helped Tyson and I start maximum lawyer he helped us get the website up and running. He’s a certified Infusionsoft partner. He’s our go to guy wouldn’t have questions about Infusionsoft which is our client marketing system, our software that we use, and we really enjoy working with Jason. We wanted to have him on the show, because you’ve helped Tyson and I really build out some of our Infusionsoft systems. You helped me with my website, you did an amazing job. And I know that you spend a lot of time working with integrations within Infusionsoft, why don’t you just tell our listeners a little bit about your business?
Jason Oesterly
Sure. So the main part of our business is helping businesses to integrate systems type systems together that they’re currently using, and then also guide them towards systems that might help fit some specific needs. As an example, Infusionsoft is a customer management system that a lot of business, I work with us. And that system is great. But a lot of times it doesn’t do some specific tasks. For instance, registering people for webinars that may not be able to do that the way you need to do, or maybe some e commerce functionality that it doesn’t do. So what I help those businesses do is bring the data from other systems into Infusionsoft. So as it might relate to an attorney. If you’re using Clio or my case, there may be data in those systems, that it would be beneficial to get into Infusionsoft. And that’s the type of help I provide my clients.
Tyson Mutrux
Jason, we talk a lot about Infusionsoft and things like that. We Jim and I both use it, we both really like it. But what are some other tools that people might use that could help them automate and really connect their systems to their firm’s to increase their efficiency?
Jason Oesterly
Well, yeah, Infusionsoft is a great system, it has some costs associated with it that someone may not be able to take on immediately. There’s definitely similar platforms, for instance, you know, even MailChimp today has added some functionality that helps with a bit of segmentation and automation of of email marketing, Active Campaign is one I’m not as familiar with, it does some of that same functionality as well. But bottom line, whatever system, you’re going to take a look at the computer software, any other you want to focus on, what are my needs today? What where do I want to go and make sure that you’re not going to get put in a corner basically stuck with a system that won’t grow with you. So I think the big thing would be as you’re selecting a system, to make sure that it will scale as you need to scale. I would also say, you know, how I help clients out with tying systems together, a big part of selecting the system is making sure it can do the integrations, because any system you pick is probably not going to be all encompassing and all capable. So one thing to look for when you’re selecting a system is does it have API availability, and API stands for Application Programming Interface, that’s getting a little technical. But basically, when there’s an API available for a specific system, it makes it possible for people like myself, to help tie those systems together to make a larger tool possible for you.
Jim Hacking
They can let’s pretend that we are at a dinner party. And we’ve just met, I’m a relatively new lawyer, I’ve been out two or three years, I have a collection of email addresses and phone numbers from people that have been contacting my firm over the last six months. And I’m thinking about the value of having a CRM like entities and stuff, what is email automation? Why would I think about it? What kind of tips would you have for someone in that boat? Sure. So
Jason Oesterly
with that list, hopefully, hopefully, you’ve got it segmented a little bit. So and by segmentation, I mean, you know, these people are potential clients. These people are just leads, they don’t have any needs right now. But ultimately, they could become clients. These people are attorneys you met at some association meeting. So having that list segmented is a great thing. And certainly you can go back and do that to an extent after the fact. But it’s great to having segmented from the beginning. So getting that into marketing automation tool, lets you start sending messaging to those different segments based on what you know about them. So for instance, the lead segment that maybe it’s people It have an interest or have a need for your services, you might talk to them a little bit differently than you might talk to some fellow attorneys that either perhaps practice in your same practice areas or practice in different practice areas. So by having a audience in your marketing automation system that is segmented, you can start sending again, the right message to the right person. And on top of that, at the right time, that’s the big power of marketing automation systems is being able to do those three things. Because by doing that, you’re sending a message that will be received by the customer, not just as a not, there won’t just be an email that just sent to them. And they think, why did I send this or oh, I’m on their mailing list, maybe it will have more meaning more value to them that makes it look like you know, and you care about what their specific situation is.
Tyson Mutrux
Jason, I want to keep this sort of as surface level as possible. But can you describe just to the listeners what the sales funnel isn’t, because the reason why I want to make sure people know why this is all important, but just can you describe what the sales funnel is and how to sort of set it up?
Jason Oesterly
Sure. So where there’s there’s a lot of ways to look at that if we’re talking specifically, maybe about attorneys, you’re going to have your website out there collecting leads that have to go somewhere. So basically, many CRMs are going to have a tool that let you put a form on your website. At that point, they come into your CRM or your system, whatever it is, as a potential customer a lead from there, there’s some amount of nurturing that might need to happen to convert that lead into a customer, that could be tied to perhaps some phone calls that automatically go out by you or your staff, some print material that gets mailed to the person, or definitely just emails that get sent out. Those emails can be both educational providing specific information about the type of practice area that that you’re focusing on with that client, or they can talk a little bit about your firm. But the point here isn’t to try to promote yourself or try to promote your services, it’s trying to educate them build rapport with that specific lead. So at some point, you’re going to hopefully, get a conversion there, make that sale. And from there, the next step is going to be continuing to educate them on the process. Again, speaking with an attorney at the point that you’ve got them to sign a letter, there’s a whole lot more a whole lot more work to be done. To continue through this process. It’s not a typical retail business, you sell the product and the customer is gone. So from that point, you’re going to be educating them on next steps of your of your process. If it’s a personal injury case, maybe sending out letters to medical providers to get information on medical history, that type of thing. But there’s so much going on, on that next stage. As far as emails going out, or other types of notifications happening.
Jim Hacking
We’re talking with Jason Oh, surly. He’s the owner of Washington media, LLC. He’s a Infusionsoft certified partner. And, Jason, let’s talk about the automation piece of all that let’s talk about some on a spectrum. If you had very, very low level automation, email marketing to the complex, what kinds of things can you do with Infusionsoft? Sure, so
Jason Oesterly
with Infusionsoft, there’s a number of different ways that you can automate processes. From the point that a lead comes into your website, you can automate a follow up email that either provides generic information to that customer or that potential lead, or provide specific information about the type of case Now certainly, there’s a limit to what you as an attorney can provide prior to a person actually speaking with you. But you can provide some details on you know, top five things, mistakes you might make, when you’re an auto accident, something along those lines. So you can automate that immediate email going out to that potential lead to help show them that you’re an expert in your field that you know what this practice area means and what types of services you can provide. So that’s the easy sort of auto responder sort of functionality that’s available there. A next step in automation would be specifically with within Infusionsoft is to apply a task or assign a task to someone in your office to either do a manual follow up or do some sort of manual check in with this person. And that can be a personalized email that gets sent, it could be a letter that gets mailed, or it could be a phone call that’s made. So that’s certainly an option to do that if it makes sense in your flow of automation for specific practice areas. Aside from that, within Infusionsoft, you can set some delays to hold off on sending emails for a specific amount of time. So what that lets you do is repeatedly check in with this person regarding their specific case type, provide some additional information, continue to just keep your name in front of them as they’re going through the process of determining if you’re the right person for their case, a lot of emails that can be scheduled in advance for a specific practice area that makes sense for every person that comes through that practice area. So once you figured out hey, these are the emails I want to send to this person every time because they’re the person with email, they educate, they answer the right questions. They make the person understand why I’m the best person for this job, you might as well automate that and put every customer for that practice area, every lead for that practice area through that sequence. So that’s the big thing is if you know if you understand what is the perfect solution for a specific lead type, why would you not want to do that every time that the type comes into your system?
Tyson Mutrux
Hey, Jason. So not everybody’s going to use Infusionsoft. It’s not for everybody. There are a ton of CRMs out there. What are some questions that the listeners need to ask, when selecting a CRM and automation system, whatever it may be? What are some of the questions they should ask before they purchase? Sure. So
Jason Oesterly
the big one I mentioned a little bit earlier was does it integrate with my other systems? Because, yeah, Infusionsoft, maybe it’s the right person for you now may not be ever, just because of the way your firm works. And that’s perfectly fine. But you want to make sure that wherever you start, you’ve got somewhere to go from there get finding a system that is too closed off, that doesn’t let it connect with other systems ends up putting you in a pretty tight spot when you’re ready to step it up a little bit, when you’re ready to do go a little bit beyond. So looking for what other systems, your CRM that you’re looking at integrates with is a big thing. So a lot of times the marketing pages are going to talk about integrations, whether it ties into you know, GoToMeeting or WebEx or something along those lines, or if it ties into a scheduling package, or you know, any number of other systems. If those tools are important to you, you want to make sure they tie in because if they’re not, if they don’t tie in, it’s going to create some manual steps for you every time you need to schedule a meeting or do any other number of things. So that’s the big thing. So look for API integrations, look for the Term API listed there or look for a list of integrations that hopefully includes the other products that you’re using, you know, aside from that, there’s minor things such as you know, how many contacts Can I can I bring into the system? And and how many emails can I send out? One thing I mentioned earlier, is segmentation, you really, really need to be able to segment your audiences, most systems are going to do that. But if you’re starting on the super low end on pricing, you may have a challenge segmenting your audiences in an efficient way. And again, by segmentation, I’m saying, you know, are these people, just people I’ve met? Are they people that definitely have a legal need? And if so, which legal need? Is it? Is it a criminal case? Is it family law? You know, what is it? Are these people attorneys? And you know, if so, are they in my practice areas where they may be people I might refer business to or look for referrals from, by having a tool that will let you segment, you’re going to be able to send the right message to those folks at the right time. So you don’t want to send email soliciting referrals to other attorneys that are doing your, well, maybe you don’t but in all likelihood, you don’t want to be sending referral requests to people who are in your practice area. And won’t make as much sense as if you’re sending it to two attorneys that are in totally different practice areas. Same thing with with a person who is needing a criminal lawyer, you want to send emails to them that are relevant to criminal law, not relevant to you know, business law, or immigration or anything else. They want to know that you know, their business, and not that you’re just some you know, all around great lawyer, you want those emails to come to them. So they’ll think this was meant for me not, I’m on their newsletter list.
Jim Hacking
I thought that was a great point. And, you know, there’s an old podcast by a guy named Joshua Miller, who used to do an Infusionsoft podcast specifically about Infusionsoft. And he talked about automating the human touch. And I think that’s, that’s really important, because the nice thing about email sequences is you can really build some personality into it. It doesn’t have to be like a bland broadcast, you know, email to everybody where you’re saying the same thing to everybody. It really allows you to inject some personality into it. I think one of the people that has really taken this to a whole nother level is Greg Jenkins, with monkeypod marketing. He has really use the automation in a way that makes you over time, get to know him and get to know what his company is all about. And I think it really gives us that chance. Jason, I wanted to ask you about a year ago, you and Tyson and I started working with two different attorneys and we don’t have to use anybody’s names or anything. But right around the same time, two different attorneys signed up for Infusionsoft and one has had great success. And one sort of close up shop with Infusionsoft after about six months. And I’m wondering, since you had the most hands on experience with both of those attorneys, what do you think led to one person succeeding and one person sort of deciding not to use it? How do you think about that?
Jason Oesterly
Sure. So I’ll say I think both of them had the opportunity to make it succeed. One just wasn’t in the right place, possibly the right commitment level at that time to do it. The one that’s succeeding using Infusionsoft is really engaged sends out a fair number of, of emails coming out of the system, brought in a nice sized list of contacts, leads, past clients associates that type of thing, and has really, really engaged in in using the system. So I think that’s what can make you successful as either you as the main user of a few stuff, getting in there doing it or having someone get in there and do it for you. But you have to really get it engaged. I think there wasn’t as much engagement. And you know, I think they’ve probably had some other things going on, it was distracting them a little bit. It wasn’t, I don’t think as much of a priority. And one last thing I believe, whether or not this is the case or not, they didn’t believe that they could capture as many email addresses for their specific segments for their specific practice areas, segments, that somewhat focused on a audience that maybe doesn’t use email as much. And I guess, to an extent, that could be true. But there’s other ways to communicate. And there’s other ways to try to encourage those folks to provide or otherwise have an email address that you can use to communicate with. But definitely, there’s a commitment level that has to be there to say, I’m going to make this work, I’m gonna get in there and get engaged and see it pay off.
Tyson Mutrux
Jason, can you go through some of the ways that people can collect emails, some of the creative ways you can get email, and then also, if the person cannot collect email, what else you can send out to people and how using automation?
Jason Oesterly
Sure, so the easy one, of course, is putting forms on your website, it goes beyond that, though, in that someone’s not just going to come and say, Here’s my email address, there’s got to be some value proposition there. So you need to be providing them offering them something that’s, that’s going to be meaningful to their specific situation. And this gets back to, you know, providing five tips for someone who’s been in a car accident, you know, five mistakes you make following a car accident, that’s one way to collect email addresses is putting a forum on your site. But again, you need to focus on providing some sort of value that makes a person really wants to do that. And that serves as a couple of purposes. One, obviously, you’re getting their email address, but to you know, hey, this person was interested enough in immigration law, or, or family law, whatever this practice area is to provide me their email address. So instantly, you’ve segmented them, at least to a degree on what their interests are. That’s definitely one way. Depending on the type of audience you have and how you interact with them, there’s the opportunity to collect email addresses or contact information through I’ve worked with a client that’s not in the law field that holds regular, let’s call them seminars, meetings of a pretty decent size. And those folks come in and listen to him, talk with him and listen to other guests talk. And he started, you know, promoting a way to text in to get some additional information or to opt in for some certain things. What we did there was basically he had a shortcode that he people can text to and with the person texting, and immediately would say, Hey, what’s your email address, so I can send this information over to you. And at that point, he has both their email address and a phone number, that he can reach out to them in the future. And because he knew, hey, they text the specific word to my texted number. I know they’re interested in this certain topic. And so again, instantly, you’re segmenting, you’re not just collecting an email address for the purpose of collecting email addresses, there’s a focus on you know, how I can market to this person or communicate with this person in the future. Obviously, there’s other other ways depending on the type of interactions you have with folks, if you ever operate in booths, or anything along those lines, there’s there’s ways to draw people in. But those are a little bit harder to come by, I think and getting people to stop by your booth and sign up. But the two biggest are either going to be web forms on your site, which just kind of the old standby and then texting, allowing people to opt in for specific communications, in particular when you’re at events that you have potential clients and
Jim Hacking
Jason I think we got time for sort of one more topic and and I’m gonna finish up with this and then we’ll get to our tips and hacks of the week. Tyson does a really good job of automation within his during in and within his providing legal services and sort of what kinds of things do you think lawyers do too often themselves or have their staff do that they really could automate with a system like Infusionsoft, you know, like the automation of the, you know, tasks or secretaries tasks, prepare legal tasks for attorneys, you know, the time between when they sign up to be your client until the time you deliver the legal service.
Jason Oesterly
Okay, so I would say within your office, there are going to be manual touches, no doubt about it. And that doesn’t mean you can’t use automation, it just means you need to have the your staff take a handoff, basically to complete these tasks. So within the during unit, there’s likely and forgive me if I’m not hitting on this exactly right, but there’s likely some personal follow ups might be needed if you’ve never received the medical records back. So you’ve requested them maybe requested them twice via an automated system, you may need to say, hey, office assistant, please contact this person and request the records. Or if a person isn’t able to receive emails for whatever purpose, you may need your office assistant to take a hand off to do some specific tasks that you might have been trying to complete an automated system like Infusionsoft. So you could be using DocuSign, or another system to automatically collect signatures for specific forms. If that person doesn’t, or can’t, or chooses to opt out of doing online signing, there might be a need for handoff there to have your assistant help out with those tasks, then that could you know, just amount to pay print off the form and mail it to the specific address. So definitely tasks there. But it’s pretty much going to be along the lines of hey, we need to send something more physical or custom, or we need to take the time to make a specific phone call to this person. And you know, it doesn’t have to be something that you absolutely have to do in your process. It could be something that you want to do to change up the touches that you have during the during cycle. So you know, it could be, Hey, have the office assistant, give this person a call, let’s say, you know, hey, this is Tyson’s office, we just wanted to check in and make sure everything was going okay, make sure you didn’t have any questions that we could take for you here don’t have to do that. But that’s a super personal touch that is going to make them understand that you’re paying attention to them, even if they have a sense that hey, those last three emails I got were somewhat automated or appear to be automated or weren’t exactly written for me. They are paying attention they did just give me a call to check in, you know, outside that that system
Tyson Mutrux
is a great response. Jason has a lot of good information. I think we are at a time though, Jimmy, you’re ready for your hack of the week.
Jim Hacking
My hack of the week is up work. So we as you know, I’ve been getting pretty busy with the immigration changes that are coming down the bank. And we I was talking to my buddy Brent cheeley, who is big on Upwork. His wife has a kinder music franchise up in Minnesota. And then he’s up works for a lot of different things. And he said to me that he thought I could find an immigration paralegal on Upwork. And I thought he was crazy. And about three months ago, we did find a lady, she’s an older lady, who has a paralegal certificate and and an immigration paralegal certificate, she lives on a farm in Tennessee. And so when our clients hire us to prepare the immigration forms, we just send off the intake form to her. And within 12 hours, we have all the forms back for us. And she charges us like $45 to knock those out. So it’s been a real bargain for us. And I think you can find just about anybody on up works. And so it’s been a great tool for us.
Tyson Mutrux
Man, Jimmy, I’m glad you finally came around. I’ve been using that for geez, five years, and it has been amazing. He used to be oDesk. And now it’s up work it is it is really a great tool helps you get a lot of things done. I mean, it’s not just about saving money either. With up work, I needed something last week, done within 24 hours. And what I did was is I posted something on that work, and it was done within 24 hours. It was super quick. And so it’s for efficiency, it’s for getting things done faster, too. So I’m glad you came around. My tip of the week is I am always looking to find ways to get more things done. And one of the problems I have is I sit in court for hours at a time. And I’m just waiting there waiting for a judge waiting for a client, whatever it may be, there’s a lot of waiting. And so what was doing is I was on my phone, I was like you know what, I wonder if I can create a blog post. And so what it is I went to WordPress from my from Chrome, and I was able to add content, I started typing in content. And so it’s a really easy way to just log into your WordPress site and just add a blog post, you’re telling me that just the other day, you’re able to add a photograph from your phone, everything. So it is really easy way of adding content. I think I added a quick 500 word post, I was just typing. It was just typed out like like I was texting someone, I wanted to go back after it back to the office. I looked at it to make sure that it was it looked okay on the actual web page. But it’s a really easy way of adding content. So in this day and age, there’s really no excuse for not having content created on a daily basis.
Jason Oesterly
Jason, I know that you have a tip for our listeners. So make sure that we’ll wrap up show. Sure, it’s kind of switching gears a little bit but something I’ve been hitting with a fair number of my clients here lately. When you look at your site day in and day out, you kind of become immune to what’s going on on the site. You don’t pay as much attention to it, I think. And there’s a pretty cool tool for doing a little bit more thorough analysis, particularly around speed and performance of both mobile and desktop. And I think it’s worth everyone checking out to get a score, get a rating on on what your site looks like. And then if it makes sense, contact your support phone looks to help you make some tweaks to your site to help improve it. So the site is a pretty painful address is test my site, dot, think with google.com. Again, it’s test my site, dot think with google.com. And what you do, you go there, enter your URL, enter your homepage and run the test, it’s going to give you a report that tells you, you know, hey, you can optimize these ways, these ways, and so on. And certainly, there’s some low hanging fruit that your support person your web guy can help out with, to help speed things up and help make it a little bit more mobile friendly. That’s going to help you a with just the individual users view of how they see your site doesn’t come up quickly and that type of thing. But then also search engines take that into consideration. As far as is this a site we should be sending people to? Because it’s performing? Well, from a technical perspective? Does it load fast or not? If it’s not going to load fast, and that will affect your search rankings. So it’s something to take a look at.
Tyson Mutrux
That’s a good one. It’s just extremely important. So that’s a great, great tip. Guys, we’re gonna wrap it up. Anything else you want to add? No, that’s
Unknown Speaker
a good show. Thanks, Jason.
Jason Oesterly
Thanks for having me.
Tyson Mutrux
Guys. Have a great week. And for any other listeners that want to check in with us get our Facebook page, we have a lot of questions that people asked there. We have a lot of interaction. So make sure you engage with us there. Check us out. We don’t have Twitter yet, but we’re gonna have Twitter. And then also if you have any questions, just feel free to email us but have a great week, guys and talk to you soon. Thanks, guys.
