In my experience, most Infusionsoft™ users struggle with managing custom fields. They primarily fall into one of the following categories.

Infusionsoft™ Users:

  1. underuse them or not at all.
  2. overuse and abuse them.
  3. use them and exhaust all 100 (they run out) .

If you fall into the first category and don’t use them at all, check out our blog on setting up an Re-usable seasonal sales funnel with deadlines.

If you underuse them, overuse them or have run out, check out the following guide to removing unused custom fields, consolidating custom fields.

Before we move on let’s take a look at a typical list of “Over used and Abused” custom fields: Example of Overused and Abused Custom Fields.

#1 – The first question I ask is are any of the fields doing the same thing? In other words do we have any redundancies. This can happen when a client uses the custom fields like a questionnaire. They ask for text area explanations of far too many items, and create a new set of questions each time the create a new optin, even though they may have asked the same question before, just worded in a slightly or drastically different way. It doesn’t matter if the response is the same for each question.

#2 What just isn’t necessary?
Often we setup an integration and it just doesn’t work out. For example, a client asked us to set up a Parsy/Docusign integration. It just never worked out. A good support team will clear out unused tags, campaigns, emails, etc. But often I see customers that come to us, and they have unused items from ideas or integrations that never panned out. Yet the clutter remains. So what just isn’t being used? To find out export your contact list with all data to an excel sheet or google doc. Then start sorting by the custom fields. You will probably find that only a small number of people even have the data you are looking for. Also, ask yourself am I using this info or did I think it would be useful, but just didn’t end up being practical. Consider what could be done away with and or focus on using the information and getting the numbers of contacts that have the info complete up.

#3 What should actually just be a “Profile” tag.

Examples: Gender, Budget Range, Committed?, Are goals a priority?, Are you clear about your Goals? Do you feel good about yourself?

These could become a tag “Profile -> Committed to Success”, ” Profile -> Male”, “Profile -> Prioritizes Goals”, or “Profile -> Feels Good About Self”

This will dramatically decrease the number of custom fields being used.

Custom fields can be awesome, but because you often need them for third party integrations, keep them clean and useful so you won’t be in a panic next time you need one for a setup.

Let us know if you have any questions at support@insightfulautomation.com


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