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Ah Bless you kind sir. This is what I was looking for to get a bit more organized and not have to do this manually. Thank you. I may have some questions in the future if that is okay.
I just finished creating a Direct Mail Campaign Manager in Podio and wanted to share it with everyone here. I put together a blog post laying out how I did it and what my general setup is. If you want a full blown tutorial on how I set it up, I also created that as well (just scroll to the bottom of the post..it's FREE). Let me know what you think.
When you are done with this Podio Tutorial you will have a complete working Direct Mail Management System. I recommend creating a dedicated Podio Workspace for this system. Workspaces are a great way to separate the different systems in your business. Since Direct Mail is different from my Lead Funnel System I broke them up into their own Workspaces.
To get a complete overview of this Podio direct mail system, go back and read my blog post about Podio Direct Mail Campaigns. Additionally if you want a deeper understanding on why I setup the apps the way I did then take a look at my blog post about The Proper Way to Setup Your Lead Flow in Podio.
Now it’s time to get at it. In this module I’m going to go over what you are going to be setting up in tutorials 2 through 11. Each section has a description, breakdown of the fields/actions that you will setup and finally a video that takes you through the entire setup.
Podio Apps
The Direct Mail System is broken up into 5 different Apps…
Letter Templates - Where all the Letters will be stored to be used in mailings
Mailings - Individual mailings of a campaign will be setup in this app
Campaign Templates - These templates will be where we organize the mailings
Campaigns - Your Direct Mailing Campaigns. Pulls together the leads and templates and runs the campaigns
Leads - Where your leads will be uploaded and stored
GlobiFlow Flows
Additionally there are 4 GlobiFlow process that are run against the Campaigns App that do the following tasks…
Campaign Setup - Assigns the Campaign Template and Schedules the First Mailing
Print Letters - Prints the current mailings letters by mail merging the assigned leads. Pdf file will be created and attached to the lead
Printing Mailings by Update Trigger - Triggered by a Category Field Change in the Campaigns App, this process calls the Print Letters Flow.
Automating the Printing Process - Checks each day if a mailing is schedule to go out and if so runs the printing process
The Podio side of this setup is very easy to do and shouldn’t be a problem for anyone. The GlobiFlow setup is where some people might get tripped up. I did my best to detail each step of the process so if you have copied everything I did then you should have no problem. Try not to make changes until you understand what is going on.
@Scott Costello thank you! I just started playing with the calculator on Podio thanks to your input! Much appreciated! One small snafu I ran into is that I seem to have too many fields that I've added where the "Repair" number is not available from the list when I use the @ symbol. Have you had this happen before to you?
Thanks again!
A couple things might help...
1) If you just added the "Repair" field then you'll have to save your template updates by clicking "Done" and then go back into editing your Template. The field isn't technically their until you save it.
2) Podio won't show you a complete list of fields if you just type in '@', it just shows a handful of options. Try typing in '@Repair' or something similar and it should show up. If not, keep typing out the name of the field.
3) If the "Repair" field you are trying to use was originally called a different name...say "Estimate"...then try looking for that name. In Podio, the name of the field that you originally used when adding the field is the name podio will use forever. Even if you change the description value, the name of the field will always be the original. This drove me crazy for a couple hours before I realized what was going on.
Dan really seems to know his stuff about Podio. I've interacted with him a couple times on his Podio Facebook group and I like him.
For me Podio is WELL worth the time investment figure out how to use it. Once you do You can pretty much setup any type of process you want. I've saved tones of time automating some of my processes with it.
I'm about to put the finishing touches on a Podio Direct Mail Campaign manager that I've been developing. It uses Globiflow to automate everything. Set some values in your Excel Import File (Campaign Name, Template to Use and Start Date) that has your leads in it, upload the list and Globiflow does the rest.
This is my basic setup..
Apps:
Letters App - Holds the Letter Templates Mailings App - Setup individual mailing Templates by assigning letter template and seq number Campaign Templates App - A template will have a list of Mailings and a name (I.E. Probate Mailing Template) Campaigns App - This is where you link the Template you want to use with the Leads. Has fields like Start Date, Next Mailing Date, Next Mailing Seq No. Leads App - You import your leads into this app. Property Address, Mailing Address, Owner Name, etc...
GlobiFlow:
Campaign Setup Flow - When a campaign gets created through the import of the leads process, it grabs the Template and sets up the Mailing Date and Sequence Number
Print Letters Flow - This flow mail merges the letters with the related leads, creates a PDF of the mailings letters, increments the Next Mailing Date & Seq Number and creates a task for the next mailing.
Automation Flow - This flow runs everyday and checks the Next Mailing Date of my Campaigns. If the date is equal to the current date, it will run the Print Letters Flow.
I haven't done this yet, but I plan on linking that last flow up to Lob or Click2Mail and have my letters get automatically mailed with out me doing anything. Pretty awesome stuff Podio can do!
Hope that outline helps people figure out how to setup there own Direct Mail Manager in Podio.
I use Podio because it's Free (they do have pay levels, but I don't need that) and I can customize it to exactly how I do business. It also can integrate with almost anything through services like Zapier. Also use a service like Globiflow to automate the heck out of it. Powerful stuff!
@Albert Arguelles To make Podio Calculate you would use a Calculation Field. Those fields are VERY POWERFUL but can be simple to use on a basic level. Say you have your MAO fields (ARV, Repair Costs, % of ARV and wholesale FEE). You can create a forumula in your calculation field that is...
I've heard of how podio has integrations. I can't picture what integrations woiuld be useful in REI automation. Might you share a picture of what tool touches what other tool? FWIW REI automation would be a useful blog post. But hand drawing a picture and posting here would be helpful to BPers.
A few examples would be this...
1) pulling in leads automatically from my website when leads submit a form. This can be done in a few different ways. I use Gravity Forms on my website to create all my forms, then use Zapier to connect Gravity Forms and Podio.
2) Automating the process of sending out offer letters through the mail. You can use Zapier to connect Podio to Lob.
3) I have a process setup that pulls my leads in from my website, looks up which county the property is in based off the zip code. I then use the County to do a lookup of my wholesale Partners and then automatically share the Podio Lead with my partner. This is all done with out my involvement what so ever.
4) You can integrate a service like GlobiMail that allows you to automatically record all your email correspondences with a seller right in the podio item.
5) You can setup podio, using globiflow to create an auto-responder to send a lead an email follow up after the fill out your form. You can even setup a series of emails to be sent to these people. I've even seen someone create a text message auto-responder series.
To be honest there is a way to anything you want for the most part. As Podio gets more popular, more and more extensions/integrations are becoming available.
I haven't used Zoho but here are my Podio Pros and Cons...
Pros
Very Flexible. You can customize it to fit your business model for sure
Very Powerful. Using workflows from Podio or Globiflow can really create some awesome automated processes that will save you a ton of time
Great API that allows other services to communicate with it. Using Zapier you can pretty much do anything you want.
Cons
There is a decent learning curve when you first get started. The downfall of flexible systems.
The more you extend it and use 3rd Party integrations the more tools you have to keep track of. Many of them are "set-it-and-forget-it" type of tools that just work, but you introduce more opportunity for failure.
Over all I LOVE Podio! I've completely automated some of my tasks that I hated doing manually. Now that I understand how it works, I can setup new Apps very quickly or even just add new fields to an existing app.
In what format are you getting the data in from the county records? If it's a CSV (comma separated values file) you can just open that in Excel, run through the wizard for choosing the deliminator (a comma ',') and then save it as an XLSX (or XLS depending on excel version) file. Then you can use it for mail merging into a word doc.
