What Marketing Automation System/Payment Processor Do You Use?

[Rich Butterworth]

Hey Mike,

In my past roles I've used a bunch of different options - 1SC, Infusionsoft, our own in-house solution included. I also spent several months researching different platforms as part of my day job.

Short answer? It really depends on your needs (sorry if that's a cop-out.... I'll expand a little...).

Before I get onto some specifics, I feel compelled to share a particularly bad experience we had with one platform - Infusionsoft. This was a few years ago now, so perhaps they have radically changed their model (and software) but at the time we had no end of problems. And by 'problems' I mean business-threatening problems... for example, on one occasion (following an update to their platform) they automatically re-billed tens of thousands of dollars to our customers' cards without anyone's consent.

The platform was flakey, the reporting was dire, the support was lacking. I remember a well-know Australian marketer (who I'd warned about our own experiences) telling me "I know... you told me so..." on having had a similarly bad experience.

As I say, I appreciate things may have changed since then but I would strongly advise that anyone considering Infusionsoft look past the slick marketing and do plenty of search/research to find out what other marketers are saying right now.

Following our bad experience we developed our own platform, in-house. Great for flexibility, but expensive - and there was some lost sleep on occasion when the platform went down (our responsibility... a negative for any smaller operation).

Since striking out on my own last year, and as a smaller operation myself, I looked again at a bunch of platforms - 1SC, Nanacast and PWC included - I ended up choosing Ultracart, and I have to say I 100% recommend them.

The reason I went with them was a combination of things, including:

1. Feature-set - pretty much everything you want (or will want) to do is possible.
2. Digital-product friendly. 1SC makes it hard to sell software products, since you have to deliver the file via their platform, and there's a puny file-size limit. They ruled themselves out for me right then and there, and their pre-sales team were unable to figure out a solution - something I found disconcerting, as I know I'm not the first to query them about it.
3. Quality - on the surface, Nanacast sounds like it has a very comparable feature-set, but I found the interface clunky and uninspiring. In fact I found it so basic that I found myself questioning the platform, period. Note: I do know some marketers who rave about Nanacast, but my guess is that it's best suited to operations with a resident 'tech' rather than those of you who will be using it yourself.
4. Integration - not just payment platforms (I use a credit card merchant account and also Paypal) but also other extensions (I use AWeber and AMember for mailings/memberships with no problems at all... and there are plenty more options besides).
5. Customization - cart skins, urls, affiliate resources, secure URLs... everthing's easy to make your own.
6. Price - obvious, but UC is very affordable, and scalable.

What's more, despite being based in the UK, I have found the support to be knowledgable, prompt and efficient.

Sorry if these thoughts come across as some kind of promotion - I should note that I am in no way affiliated with UC at all - I guess I am just trying to share my experience in the hope that it might help fellow JVNP2 members avoid costly mistakes.

Happy to answer specific questions about the platforms mentioned if you message me.

Rich

[Steve Yakim]

Hey Guys,

I use my own software solution that I have been working on for over 5 years now. It's called Action Plus Marketing. It uses PayPal's Adaptive API with parallel payments. My API works differently that all others because it pays all money to the Admin's PayPal account and then is automatically dispursed to any other receivers from there.

This way the customer only sees the admin as the receiver.

You can do rotating payments and regular payments also and use mass pay to pay affiliates if you do not want to use the instant pay feature the Adaptive API offers. This is controlled per product and can handle unlimited products and membership levels.

You can have partners in a project and it will also pay the partners instantly in their PayPal accounts. It does have a 2nd tier option that can be used for brokers, affiliate managers or any one membership level. (example affiliate level) It does this for subscription payments and payment plans also.

You can centralize your business with one affiliate program and control unlimited domains, or you can control unlimited websites on one domain keeping everything separated. If you install the program on multiple domains the included Affiliate Program Module can link the affiliate programs together if desired.

It can incorporate any third party autoresponder system into the script, which gives the admin many advantages.

1. It allows the admin to build a buyers list in any autoresponder without violating PayPal's terms of service. This means the buyer does not have to fill out an optin form to be added to your autoresponder.

2. You can allow your partners in a project to build the same lists that you build in the project.

3. If you want, you can allow affiliates to build their list in their autoresponder when they send traffic to your squeeze page. The pdf that is given away from the pdf will automaticall be branded with the affiliate's links who sent the prospect to the squeeze page. This works so well that I created a site called ReadySqueeze.com that is a collection of almost 100 squeeze pages in almost 30 niches and the members can connect their autoresponder to each squeeze page they want to use and input the redirect url, which is the product they want to redirect to, and they are list building in less than 5 minutes.

The Squeeze Module along with the PDF Module can be used to create a great viral report tool for your affiliates to use because all the work is done for the affiliate. The System adds the visitor's info to affiliate's autoresponder(and your autoresponder), while the pdf is already branded with the affiliate's links automatically when the system delivers the pdf to the new subscriber.

This makes it much easier to get affiliates to promote your viral reports.

4. All the autoresponder form codes are stored in the Squeeze Module and are not actually on the squeeze pages. So if you need to make some kind of autoresponder change you don't have to go looking for the forms on your sites to make changes. That is why one squeeze page or form on a blog or even on someone elses website can have unlimited autoresponders connected to it and deliver the visitors information to the correct autoresponder.

The Action Plus Marketing script is so flexible that Gina Gaudio Graves and I will be launching a new bank similar to ClickBank, PayDotCom and JVZoo using PayPal's Adaptive API with chained payments. Vendors will be able to easily to upsells and downsells that are built into the system. It uses a more straight forward purchasing and delivery system so the buyer will probably not even know PayGoBank was involved in the purchase.

It will also be able to process ClickBank, PayDotCom and JVZoo products with one order link. So if you already use any of these other processing companies you can replace the order link with a PayGoBank order link and it will still process orders through these other companies. This way if you already have advertising and affiliate promoting through these companies, you will not lose any sales.

This may be open to the public in late May or early June. This is our goal.

We are still testing the Vendor Module for the script. The Action Plus Marketing System is written in a modular format so it is very easy to continue to add new modules.

There are at least a dozen module that are included that I haven't even mentioned here. So I hope you will be on the look out for PayGoBank and the Action Plus Marketing System in the near future.

Best regards,
Steve Yakim

P.S. I am accepting some case studies that I will give the software to for feed back and testimonials. If you have a working business and would like to try this new technology out, you should be able to get a hold of me through this forum.

[Andre Stoelinga]

I'm using mainly paypal. I'm not very fond of CB to be honest. I don't like the RAP principle...1st sale for me, 2nd sale for affiliate. I know affiliates like being paid instanf=t commission, but there are other options that DO split the payment.
Lately I've been using JVZoo and Digiresults...easy to use and instant commission payout option, although with JVZoo they recommend to delay affiliate payouts. I've also used PDC, but it's almost like managing your own affiliate program.

I've used Post Affiliate Pro, but I'll be "moving" my products to a 3rd party...just have't figured out which one would be the best option.

Andre

[Hans Vosloo]

I mainly use PayPal for international product sales, Clickbank for affiliate programs and AlertPay to pay freelancers or for own commission earnings; however I have one major obstacle and will appreciate some advice. Many payment processors do not accept my local currency (ZAR) or require a US bank account. I have several niche markets where I must deal in ZAR (eg. Classifieds), but PayPal does not accept ZAR and although AlertPay does, they require registration before accepting or allowing payments. This cause sales conversions to drop because potential clients don't want to go through another membership registration with email verification, FICA, etc and drop the transaction right there. So my only solution is to accept bank transfers, but that implies that I cannot automate my sales process. If someone knows a payment processor that accepts ZAR and other less popular currency payments via Credit Card (without FICA and membership requirements), it will be greatly appreciated.

Why other currencies? Because it is the only obstacle when you want to facilitate transactions in other countries using their local currency, ahile still being able to automate the payment process. People accept it when they have to pay in another currency when buying from a foreign supplier, but want prices in a local currency when trading locally.

[John Bair]

I use to use 1shoppingcart but they always have some sort of technical issue and their upgrades often times mess up your configurations and you have to go in and reprogram everything! I personally think iDev, Clickbank, Clicksure, and JV Zoo are about the best right now.. unless you have your own merchant account then that opens up many more options available out there

[Tom Denton]

I use DigiResults, it has some features that I happen to like.

[Haroon Ballim]

Paypal is about the best to use , especially with its universal acceptance .

[Azlan Rahman]

I use Paypal and Clickbank. Both are reliable and cheap.

[Amin lelieveld]

Hi Guy's,

has anyone used Productpay or heard about it. It seems a good one but would like to get some ideas about it.

Thanks guy's,
Amin

[Deon Lundy]

hey Guys ..... what is the process i should go through for my new product launch??