This week we’re proud to release a new video series showcasing new ways that Memberium Certified Partners are using Memberium, along with how you can implement the same process for your membership site and Infusionsoft app.
In this first episode, Melodie Moore from Business Tech Ninjas shows us how she uses Memberium and Infusionsoft to automate client document submissions.
OK, we know this sounds pretty nerdy at first…but bear with us for a moment to explain how much time (and stress) this can save.
This is an excellent way to automate any document that you need to have your clients or members submit to you. WITHOUT having to manually follow up and chase each person down every time they don’t submit something.
The real impressive part is, if they don’t submit a required document (which seems to happen all too often…) Memberium allows you to use Infusionsoft to automatically follow up with them until they successfully submit the file to you.
Once they do submit the required file, Memberium allows you to trigger off other things automatically in Infusionsoft, such as notifying your team to review the doc, or notifying the member what the next step to take is.
This is a great way to automate things like…
- Submitting documents needed to pass a certification program or course.
- Requiring pre-event documents get submitted ahead of time (signed waivers, pre-event assignments, etc.).
- Requiring members or clients to submit legal documents, signed contracts, essays or assignments.
In a nutshell, this can be used for any interaction where you need to have clients or members submit a file to you, and you want to automate the reminders to submit a file, or automate what happens after they submit a file.
Since Melodie has implemented this automated process for her client, it’s saved them a ton of time, stress and headaches compared to how they were following up with their members before. Which was manually…
To say the least, this new automated document submission process Melodie set up for them has been like night and day compared to the manual follow up process that was in place before.
To get an in-depth look at how it works, watch the full video and discover the difference it made for their business.
If you’d like to have Melodie set something like this up for you, or you want to talk to Melodie about other ways she can help you achieve better results with your membership site and Infusionsoft, check out Businesstechninjas.com or reach out to Melodie directly by emailing Melodie@businesstechninjas.com and she’ll be happy to talk with you.
How Do Automated Document Submissions Work With Memberium and Infusionsoft?
Anyone Can Use the [memb_upload_filebox] Shortcode and Infusionsoft’s File Box Feature to Implement This
The great news is anyone who uses Memberium can potentially implement this same exact follow-up process with their membership site. The shortcode used in the video is the [memb_upload_filebox] shortcode that allows members to upload files to Infusionsoft’s file box area in their contact record.
The way it works is once the [memb_upload_filebox] shortcode is added to a page on your WordPress site, any of your members can go to this page, and upload any type of document (.doc, .xls, .pdf, .jpg, ,png, etc) to their “File Box” in their individual Infusionsoft contact record.
Any files uploaded are protected, with only that contact or any Infusionsoft admin user in your app can access the files. Once a file is uploaded successfully, you can configure the [memb_upload_filebox] shortcode to trigger off an actionset, campaign goal or apply an Infusionsoft tag. Which can be used to trigger off reminders to your team to review or process the submitted document, and send off emails to the contact about whatever comes next.
Additionally if they don’t submit a required document, you can set up different types of automated reminders for them to get it done, or prevent them from continuing on to the next step of your course, certification program or event, until they submit the document needed. Which is where the real magic happens.
There’s nothing worse than having to follow up manually with clients or members to submit documents like this. As demonstrated by Melodie, automating this process can save you from wasting an immense amount of time.
Again, if you’d like to have Melodie set something like this up for you or you want to talk to Melodie about ways she can help you achieve better results with your membership site and Infusionsoft, please visit Businesstechninjas.com or reach out to Melodie directly by emailing Melodie@businesstechninjas.com
Video Transcript
Automate Your Client Document Submissions: Save Time and Ensure Nothing Is Missed
Sarah: Hello everyone, this is Sarah Laws from Memberium and I am here today with our very first certified partner, Melodie Moore. Melodie is the founder of Business Tech Ninjas, and just as her company name says, she is definitely a ninja.
Melodie and I have known each other for several years and we are actually in the same certification class with Infusionsoft. But a funny side story is Melodie actually ignored me for several years. Even when I tried to network with her at an event and she just kind of brushed me off, but luckily we went to the first ever Memberium live event in Chicago couple of years ago and we really connected and became friends and Mastermind partners, and she is just awesome.
So, thanks Melodie for joining me today.
Melodie: I am happy to be here.
Sarah: Awesome. So, Melodie has some pretty cool ninja things to show us today for how to automate client document submissions. And I know it sounds super nerdy, but it’s awesome for things like certification programs, pre event documents and just interactions where your customer or client needs to submit something to you and things need to happen with your stuff and emails that they need to receive after and you don’t have to manually chase and follow them up.
So, I am really excited to see what she has got cooking, but Melodie before we jump in, I have a couple of lightening fast questions regarding membership sites in general and this was just about you and some of your preferences. So how many membership sites would you say that you build in a month?
Melodie: In a month, we do about three to five.
Sarah: Awesome. What’s your favorite theme to work with?
Melodie: We work with the Avada quite a lot, but we kind of talk to the client and see what the best fit is for them on Avada, little bit simpler and we have a lot more design freedom with how we can format it, but if someone is looking for more gamification and are looking for more of a social feeling to their membership sites, then we will put them over to a social learner which is what are those feature already built into it.
Sarah: Cool. And now the age-old question of who is your preferred web host?
Melodie: I feel like I have to like say that I want to marry someone now. I have this question all the time. We use SiteGround a lot and also liquidweb, They are both very good and one of the things we look forward is really good support, though its tech is sometimes kind of volatile and both of those hosts have fantastic support.
Sarah: That’s awesome. Cool. See, I told you pretty short and pretty famous. So let’s jump into some of your awesomely ninja things that you are doing and shows you have going on.
Melodie: Okay. You might have do you mind if I take you through the problem that this client had. This is a give you a little background,. This is a post natal exercise program that she offers in online program through her membership site using Memberium to help women who have just had a baby and she then decided to offer a certification program for people that work with postnatal women to help them understand her method because it has been incredibly successful and helped over a 30,000 women now to help them adopt what she has used in her strategies in order to help those with them.
So can walk you through with little bit of a problem that we had and then how we have solved it with this.
Sarah: Yeah, absolutely, that will be great.
Melodie: When she launched the certification, there were certain items that she needed from every one of the partici ants. They needed to sign a contract that you can see here, upload attendee info, upload an essay — two essays. They needed a proof of whatever certification that they had, she required that they do a physical therapist or personal trainer and they needed to have insurance.
Now, the first one that we ran, that was all manual and what that meant is that her team spent a lot of time chasing people around and being like, “Oh, hey, do you have that document” or “This isn’t quite right, it needed to be this.” And then people were submitting them through email and then the team would then have to organize that and put it all in a drop box and it wasn’t connected to their profile. And it was just a big hairy, hairy, hairy mess.
So, we said we have the power, we can fix this. So, using Memberium and Infusionsoft, they came up with using the membership site they have there, MutuPro dashboard as they like to call it where they can see all of the documents that need to submit and I’ll show you quickly what it looks like before they submit it.
So this is my test user here and the test user has not yet submitted their contract. So, this is the contract. They can go there and download it. Then they just scan it, upload it to the computer and then upload it here.
Now, the really cool thing with this and what Memberium allows it to do is that when they upload this string using the file upload, it will name it as their contract, it will name it with the date and it will put in there Infusionsoft contact record which is just so, I can’t tell you how much it is going to help us going forward because we now have a history of all the contracts and all other stuff on their contact record rather than having to go to like Dropbox and this place and that place to find it and all of their documents are uploaded like that with the name of it and then the date.
And then they can then go here and say, Okay, I know I still need to submit my contract and my attendee info. Okay, got essay number one, that’s great. Still need to do essay number two, oh, don’t remember what I am supposed to do for essay number two though. I will click here and I will go to the instructions for it, and then for these last two, the team actually has to go and look at them and say, oh, is this valid, is this is a valid certification because they got some pretty funny types of certifications, and it’s like, “We can’t really accept that as a legitimate certification and we needed to make sure it’s valid.”
So the team right now with this is they have a task in their inbox to say, okay, go and look at that and just approve it. And then they would go and fill out an internal form to say, “Yes, it has been approved,” which would update this and just have an approval notice here and also send a..you know….
Sarah: So, you want just me to go into a crystal shop and get certified in something and go ahead.
Melodie: Awesome. No, we wanted them — the business owner Wendy was very certain that she wanted to make sure that when people took the certification and then her clients the ones that had taken her program were actually looking for somebody to help them with the program that the people that she was saying, yes this person could help you, was legitimately qualified and very good and knowledgeable and she is really taking her time to create a really good certification program to ensure that and part of that was a lot of this just like work and few automation using Memberium and Infusionsoft we were able to make this a lot easier.
So, we have launched this during the last certification. She has run two of them now and it took a tenth of the time of what it did originally if not even a little bit less and it was just… and even going forward it’s going to save a lot of time and headaches because they have to resubmit every year proof of certification and insurance documents, and so we’ll have that automated as well.
Sarah: That’s awesome. Before I just wanted to plan out one thing if you can scroll up for me is that how the files go to the file box and it’s great to store than information inside of Infusionsoft because they do it multiple times whenever I think that would really work and it’s awesome for her process. But even if you are running a live event, you have to have someone sign up on it beforehand, you are going to have their signature each time when you have, I mean, you know, it’s easy to sell to the customer again.
So, we want to have the same people coming to all your events and buying all of your things. So, that’s an awesome point that works here and for, you know, a ton of other scenarios. Well, that’s super awesome.
Melodie: And you can use this file upload option anywhere within a membership, that we depend on quite a bit for this particular sequence, but you can put this on even on LearnDash necessarily you could because with the Memberium shortcode you can apply a tag based on them uploading the file. So, if it part of something that you had to do with the LearnDash, then they would have to upload the file and if they tried to go the next lesson with uploading the file the tag wouldn’t be on their profile. So, then LearnDash would help them to go back and upload their file.
So you can use some really ninja stuff with that file upload and it’s just so convenient having everything all on the Infusionsoft record as well.
Sarah: Yeah, that’s perfect.
Melodie: Would you like me to show you the backend meet, the Infusionsoft side of it. So, I will have a little bit of warning here for anyone who is not super technical this might seem a little bit complex for you, but I am going to walk you through step by step.
So just take a deep breath. This one is a little bit more complicated than what it needs to be. This is more complex because we also put in event confirmations and then follow up and she has six different documents that you have to upload, but you can create them yourself or we can create a much more simplified version of this which will automate your process as well. So, consider this like the Taj Mahal of what you can do, not necessarily what you have to do.
So don’t let it scare you away from using this process. So I am going to go back over here. So this is our our campaign and I will walk you through as a step-by-step for the process to alert them that they need to submit the documents they sign up for the events. They are then sent to confirmation email and then shortly thereafter they are sent the email saying hey we need these documents for you.
Now, we don’t actively start sending them the reminder emails until about a month and half away to the event and specifically because if the event is six months out and they have signed up, we are not really watching this all that much to make sure that we are reviewing the documents and everything. And so we are not having it on top of them and tell it’s pretty urgent that we need them to get their documents and think of giving them a month to get them the six documents is more than enough time.
So, they are sent, which is like, six emails. So, this starts 44 days out and then they are sent several lots and lots and lots of emails to remind them to submit their documents. If they don’t submit their documents in that period of at the time, then an email or task is created for the team to say, hey, at this point you need to follow up manually because they have received many, many emails and they are not responding to email anymore. So we need to follow up with them manually and get their documents.
If however they do submit all the documents and they are taken out of that sequence, then they are just given the pre event reminders to say, hey, here’s where we are going, here’s where you stay, all that jobs, but if you are familiar with doing events that you’ll need to know.
From that point, how we manage is the, actual the team updating all of the different tags is through an internal form and I will show you the internal forms front the frontend. If you are not familiar with the internal forms, just above the Form Submissions, there is a certain option, which usually says internal forms and you just go here and you can go fill out. Mine is called MuTuPro affiliate. And for this at a time, the team did go into one place to be able to update everything really, really easily. Make sure we title it so it’s clear what it’s use is.
Sometimes, as much as an automate person, I would love to think that, okay, people follow my automation all the time, but that doesn’t know what has happened.
Sometimes people will email things in and rather than trying to change people’s behavior, we build the systems from around people’s behavior to make it so that we just get them back to everyone to be and one of the instances in this particular one is that people sometimes email documents in, so if by the chance did they did email them, then the team has the ability just to check this off and update their record, so that in the backend we don’t know that it has been submitted, but they didn’t necessarily have to follow this and ideally they uploaded to the file box manually as well.
Again we hope and we want everyone to follow the system that we have in place but human behavior is what it is.
Sarah: Wow, I mean, as much and cool as awesome is the membership site as you are always going to have the people who just email into that, internal form is a great way to have your stuff updated. So that’s awesome and what I like to do with internal forms is even include directions. I mean this I know that your client has a team that she has had forever and they know exactly what to do. So you can step by step add information in here.
Melodie: You want actually something cool?
Sarah: Yeah.
Melodie: So for this particular client we use emails, which goes to their task. They use Help Scout, but this could also be in a task. We generally will use task for this sort of things so that people can go into MyDay and add everything, but when the team actually gets this, they get this email which says, their insurance document has been uploaded. There is a link directly to the contact record, has all the contacts name, and then it has screen shots exactly where to find the document. So if there is, here is the file box, here’s where you find the internal form.
Sarah: Well that’s where it’s great, so that it doesn’t matter who is going off. You can put a brand new person into this spot, almost step by step directions. If they forgot, if they haven’t done it for 6 months, they don’t have to go and miss any steps. This is perfect.
Melodie: Well that, and her team only runs — she only runs these certifications once, maybe twice a year and her team has got a lot going on and I am not going to expect them to remember every details of my awesome process all the time.
So again it comes back to that point of we are not trying to change human behavior. We are using technology to direct it, just get people to do what we want them to do and follow up process because I think often times what happens with automation is that we try to change human behavior with automation and it is made for failure because you are not going to get people to change the way they behave. But we can use technology to automate the way that they behave. Does that make sense?
Sarah: But sure. I mean it’s just a safeguard and a safety net. So, with our automation, the way it’s still slipping through the net, that’s horrible —
Melodie: Exactly and it’s — I mean – you know I am a big fan of automation, which is why I like Memberium and Infusionsoft so much, and it just, it takes the stress off the people because the form is little bit super — this is a very stressful process for the lead person that was taking care of this and I remember having phone calls with her – just like you just hear her anxiety in her ways and the second time around it was so much better.
So I’ll just go over two more things on this internal form. They have the ability to say if the insurance document, like if they needed something else on that insurance document. Then they would then just push the flow by, would send an email out to the client to say hey your insurance document is not valid. Please re-upload. If you have questions about why, just respond back, which would then go to their help, plus software in making to have that personal interaction with the client about time. If it’s approved, then it will apply the tag and say it’s approved.
So as background knowledge, all of these are just hide and show based on tag. So, we are using the Memberium shortcode, [memb_has_any_tag], to say if this tag showed us images, not those tag showed us image.
So it’s all that is and if you are going to use this process, just keep in mind that you are going to need to have, there is a shortcode within Memberium which will just update the tags on the contact record. And what that means is that if I log in, Memberium grabs my tags or Infusionsoft, but if I am already logged in and I get a new tag, it will sometimes update correctly, but sometimes will not. So there is a shortcode that I put on this page to make sure that these are always the most up-to-date.
Does that make sense? It’s just a little. It’s like one of those, it’s one of those technical tips where if you are not the technical person that has pulled in this out, you can just totally ignore what I just said. But if you are the technical person that is a key point that you are going to want to know.
Sarah: For sure. So, it’s a little check mark and a blue screen if they have done it and it’s great if it’s still waiting for them.
Melodie: Yeah, I can show you that, that screen again. So this is the one for if they have not submitted documents and once they have submitted it, I can make this disappear as well so they can’t upload anything. You won’t see it on my other page. Because I am in admin on this login, so it doesn’t show up correctly.
Okay, let’s walk through this process again. So, this is my lovely internal form right here. Whatever you name this internal form, it’s the name that you are going to see when you go to that drop down on the contact record. The final step on here is that once they had everything that they can check this box. However, I have put something in place which makes this, they don’t actually have to do that. The system is constantly checking anytime they submit any document to see if they have all documents.
Again, we’re just trying to make it so that people have to do the least amount of work if possible so they can focus on the high yield items like direct communication where people really need someone to talk to, but have someone put that has all documents thing like, we don’t need a person to do that.
So for each one of them there is tag triggers down here, which will send in a confirmation that yes we got your documents. People love to be reassured.
Sarah: Absolutely.
Melodie: They just love it. So we have two ways of them being reassured here, one is on the portal that they look at the portal and see all their statuses, and the other is getting that email confirmation..
Do all people get stuck there? No, but those five peoples that email incessantly into supports, they, “Oh, did you get my document?” They are really big time sucks, like they are just time vampires. So, we put these things in place as reassurance measures to – it’s like the garlic to the time sucking vampire — how they say, to use the vampire analogy.
So, they can go here if they are sent to the waiting an approval and then they get moved down here once their documents are approved. A lot of the other ones don’t require approval, so they will just go straight through.
At this point, we just look to see, okay, do they have all the documents? And the decision diamond looks for all of the correct tags that we need and if they have them all, then they are applied, that they have all other documents. And if they don’t then, you know, they just go back down here continuously, until they do. And then up here that’s where this “all documents submitted” option goes and they get funneled up into this top port here.
And then afterwards we have a specific sequence that’s specific to their kind of set up which I don’t think is super relevant to this build out. This is kind of the high level overview on it, and fantastic – the feedback on this has been amazing.
Sarah:Yeah, I can’t even imagine how many, like to quantify how many hours the team is saving with this process, is at the ridiculous, I mean, and just the peace of mind that knowing it’s all being handled and you are not going to show up to your live event — now you are scrambling to find the documents and this person doesn’t have this, like it’s all handled ahead of time.
One of my big, my big things and why I love membership sites is time. Time is so important. We can’t find more of it. We have a limited amount of it and the fact that this is all. They are saving your staff time and your people time and I mean that’s amazing.
Melodie: Well, it also freeze them up to focus on the actual event because that’s really where the rubber meets the road, is you are going to have, you know, she has got what 50 or 60 people that come to this and we want to make sure that event for them is amazing, is now paying for it.
Sarah: Right. That’s where – I am going to get all my documents submitted. Is there —
Melodie: Yeah.
Sarah: They need is an insurance document, I won’t have to rip me in. Yeah, this is, I mean –.
Melodie: Sarah, we are making the world a better place with automation — reducing stress and making lives better. I want to show you one more thing on that note. We have a dashboard item which shows them exactly where everyone is at .To clean this out, these are just random people that are in here right now, but they would see so at the end after the certification is completed you should have everyone these two numbers should notched down here, and this is from my perspective as technical person that’s in charge to make sure that all the tech is working.
I am looking for these numbers to notch, the business owner can log in or the event manager, whoever like they all had access to seeing as exactly where everyone is at any point in time too.
Sarah: That is awesome. That is, I mean, hey this is some ninja stuff you have gone on.
Melodie: I am just — I am the happiest by how effective it’s been.
Sarah: Yeah, that’s so, I mean, yeah, like I said time is my biggest thing and you are saving a lot of people a lot of time. So, very well done.
Melodie: Thank you.
Sarah: Cool. Say, thank you so much for sharing that with us and I can see it working for million different things. I know you showed us with a certification process, but, man, it can be applied to so many different businesses, so many different sites for a number of reasons. So —
Melodie: We are looking at doing it for a personal training company as well, where they have an initial session for the trainers and the trainer needs to have a health history form and the challenge right now is that people are showing up without that health history form 75 percent of the times although.
Sarah: Yikes.
Melodie: And now she is telling, it’s killing their conversion rate and it’s killing the trainers focus. So, now we will put something in place that if 48 hours before their session, they don’t have that form filled out and submitted, then sorry we are going to cancel your session. Because it’s a low by readiness. If they are not committed enough to fill out that form, then they are not committed enough to buy sessions and it’s a waste of the trainers time.
Sarah: That’s crazy and awesome that they can — I mean, even if they have the form and they show up with it, you are wasting time when you show up ready to work up if you haven’t handled your paperwork. So that’s —
Melodie: It kind of puts, I mean you really want people to be focused on getting the most of the session too.
Sarah: For sure.
Melodie: Rather than paperwork.
Sarah: Yeah, nobody likes the paperwork.
Melodie: No, no one likes the paperwork.
Sarah: So, thank you so much for sharing with us. If people want to get in touch with you, what is the best way to do that?
Melodie: So our website is businesstechninjas.com. There is a contact option there. You can reach out to me personally at melodie@businesstechninjas.com.
If you have any questions, I am happy to spend little time and respond back to you and let you know if you well thought this is going to save yourself or perhaps some of your client’s time, then I am happy to help.
We do offer it as a product as well that if you want us to develop itself for you, then we offer that as a service usually it takes about better week to do if you have a membership site already. If you don’t already have a membership site, then we could talk about what that looks like as well.
Sarah: Very cool, and of course you are on our Memberium Implementation partners page. So —
Melodie: I am.
Sarah: Thank you so much for all of this and for all of the awesome things you do in the implementation world and I hope everybody listening has an awesome day and goes, “This is –”
Melodie: I will see you at the Summit coming up just after ICON, right?
Sarah: Yeah, the Summit.
Melodie: All the cool kids are gone.
Sarah: All the cool kids will be at the summit. You want any details on that, Melodie, you think for that little plug as with you, Membership-Summit.com, and I will probably put the link in here, cool for you.
Melodie: I have been to every one of the summits and I mean, I membership sites almost exclusively, with Infusionsoft doing the Infusionsoft implementation stuff, and every time I go one of the Summits, I learn something new. So, it’s a highly, highly valuable event.
Sarah: Most awesome. All right, I look forward to see you there and helpfully everyone listening kinda attend, and we will see you there and say hi. Thanks so much.
