Photo contribution by Thomas Hawthorne
Cold Play’s Sky Full of Stars lyrics filled the Phoenix Convention Center as CEO and co-founder Clate Mask of Infusionsoft made his way to center stage and kicked off ICON15 to a crowd of over 3,000 attendees.
“Small business has changed, and the world is finally starting to notice it,” including investors, Mask stated.
Mask shared how he is seeing investors starting to put big dollars into small businesses and “…when investors are backing small businesses, there is more power and resources to help small businesses succeed-and it helps local communities.”
When consumers spend money at local businesses, “it’s five to seven times more likely that the money will circulate in the community and create more jobs,” Mask said.
So to those small businesses out there in the world, Mask said, “Thank you for never quitting. Your success matters, not just to customers and employees, it matters to your family, economy and world. That is a very exciting thing – the world is ‘getting’ small businesses.”
Later Mask shared some lessons learned and universal truths to building a small business:
- Invest in your marketing – investments are not just money, it’s time as well, invest in reaching your customers
- Follow-up works – stay on top of the follow-up, sales and relationships happen this way. Make it a part of your routine.
- Automation is the great game changer – get back some of your time by automating the things you are currently doing manually.
READ: Phoenix Children’s Hospital patients give Infusionsoft two thumbs up
Today, Infusionsoft announced new products designed to help small businesses succeed.
Infusionsoft Help Center – Their help center was totally redesigned with mobile in mind and the company will have their Customer Delight Team available 24/7 to help their customers find answers faster.
Infusionsoft E-mail Builder: Apparently Infusionsoft customers love emails as they’ve sent 5.6 billion emails in 2014 through their email marketing services. Builder will help Infusionsoft’s clients simplify the email process and help them create beautiful and effective communications to their customer base. Builder will debut later this year and will include responsive, mobile-friendly templates, with editing capabilities and photo selections. The next email you receive from an Infusionsoft user might look like a Pinterest board or a clean, aesthetically pleasing blog post.
Infusionsoft Payments: Infusionsoft is bringing their mobile merchant service Payments to the market this summer. Payments will include a mobile merchant card reader, and through the app, customers will have the ability to integrate all the information into their Infusionsoft CRM, email and ecommerce service. Initial pricing is a flat rate of 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction with no set up fee.
READ: Infusionsoft raises $55M led by Bain Capital
ICON will host a plethora of local to national speakers including author and entrepreneur Sally Hogshead, and Johnny Earle, founder of Johnny Cupcakes and Americas #1 Young Entrepreneur by BusinessWeek. In addition, Winners of the 2015 Small Business ICON competition will be announced April 1 at the conference.
In 2014 Infusionsoft was ranked by Fortune as one of the top 25 workplaces, appointed a new CFO, and raised $55 million led by Bain Capital.
For Mask, watching small businesses succeed is his “Sky Full of Stars,” and such a heavenly view indeed. “Small businesses matter,” he said.
Learn more about Infusionsoft here.