Streamline Sales & Marketing with Keap

Juggling leads, managing customer relationships, sending follow-up emails, and tracking sales can feel like a constant battle for small business owners and entrepreneurs. What if you could automate many of these repetitive tasks, freeing up your time to focus on growth? That’s where Keap, the platform formerly known as the legendary Infusionsoft, steps in. Keap aims to be a comprehensive CRM and marketing automation solution specifically designed to help small businesses streamline operations, capture more leads, and nurture customer relationships effectively.

This post dives into what Keap offers, who it’s best suited for, its key features, and the potential pros and cons to consider.

What is Keap (Formerly Infusionsoft)?

Keap is an integrated platform combining Customer Relationship Management (CRM), sales automation, and marketing automation tools into a single interface. Its core purpose is to help small businesses, particularly service-based ones, organize their contacts, automate follow-up processes, manage their sales pipeline, and handle tasks like invoicing and appointments without needing to piece together multiple different software tools.

It addresses the common small business pain points of lost leads, inconsistent follow-up, and the time drain associated with manual administrative work. By automating repetitive tasks in marketing, sales, and even operations, Keap aims to improve efficiency, enhance the customer experience, and ultimately drive growth.

What Can Keap Do?

Keap packs a lot of functionality designed for small business workflows:

• CRM & Contact Management: A central place to store and organize all customer and lead information, tracking interactions like emails, calls, and appointments.
• Sales Pipeline Management: Visually track leads as they move through different stages of your sales process, helping you identify bottlenecks and forecast revenue.
• Marketing Automation (Email & SMS): Build automated campaigns to nurture leads and engage customers. This includes sending targeted emails and text messages based on triggers or contact behavior. Think automated welcome sequences, follow-ups, and long-term nurture campaigns.
• Sales Automation: Automate tasks related to the sales process, like follow-up reminders for your team, appointment scheduling, and sending quotes or offers.
• Landing Pages & Forms: Create landing pages and web forms to capture leads directly into your Keap CRM.
• Appointment Scheduling: An integrated tool allowing clients to book appointments online, syncing with your calendar and potentially triggering automated reminders.
• Invoicing & Payments: Create and send invoices directly from Keap, and process payments through integrations, streamlining the billing process.
• Reporting & Analytics: Track key metrics related to marketing performance (email open rates, clicks) and sales activities to understand what’s working.
• Integrations: Connect Keap with hundreds of other business tools (natively or via platforms like Zapier) to extend its functionality.

How Does Keap Work?

Imagine a potential customer fills out a contact form on your website (built with Keap). Keap automatically captures that lead into the CRM, tags them appropriately, and triggers an automated welcome email sequence. As the lead engages (or doesn’t engage) with emails, further automated actions can occur – perhaps notifying a salesperson to call, or sending a special offer via email or SMS.

When the lead expresses interest, a salesperson can use Keap’s pipeline to manage the deal stages. Appointments can be booked through Keap’s scheduler. Once a deal is won, Keap can be used to send the invoice and collect payment. Post-sale, automated campaigns can ask for reviews or offer complementary services, fostering long-term relationships.

Who is Keap For?

Keap is specifically tailored for small businesses and entrepreneurs. It resonates particularly well with:

• Service-based businesses: Consultants, coaches, agencies, real estate professionals, accountants, and other service providers who need strong client management and follow-up systems.
• Businesses needing automation: Companies looking to automate repetitive marketing and sales tasks to save time and scale efficiently.
• Established small businesses: Often targets businesses with some existing revenue (e.g., over $100k annually, as suggested by some sources) that are ready to invest in a more robust, integrated system.

It’s designed as an all-in-one solution, appealing to owners who prefer managing core sales and marketing functions within a single platform rather than juggling multiple specialized tools.

Pricing & Availability

It’s worth noting that pricing can increase significantly as your contact list grows. Some sources also mention potential one-time onboarding or implementation fees, especially for new customers. Keap generally offers a free trial (e.g., 14 days) for potential users to test the platform. It’s accessible as a web application, and mobile apps are available for iOS and Android.

Pros and Cons of Keap

Based on its features and user feedback, here’s a balanced look at Keap’s potential strengths and weaknesses:

Pros:

• All-in-One Platform: Combines CRM, sales, and marketing automation, reducing the need for multiple tools.
• Powerful Automation: Offers robust automation capabilities (both simple ‘when-then’ and more advanced visual campaign building) to streamline workflows across sales and marketing.
• Small Business Focus: Features and support are tailored to the needs and challenges of small business owners and entrepreneurs.
• Ease of Use (Improved): While Infusionsoft had a reputation for complexity, Keap has focused on improving user-friendliness, particularly in its newer interfaces, though a learning curve can still exist.
• Integrated Features: Built-in tools for appointments, invoicing, and payments add significant value.
• Good Support: Often praised for its customer support, including access to customer success managers and various support channels.

Cons:

• Cost: Can be perceived as expensive, especially for very small businesses or startups, compared to simpler or more specialized tools. Pricing increases with contact list size, and potential onboarding fees add to the initial investment.
• Learning Curve: Despite improvements, the platform’s power means there can still be a learning curve to master all its features, particularly the advanced automation builder.
• Complexity Overkill?: For businesses with very simple needs, the breadth of features might be more than required.
• Limited Free Migration: The free data migration service offered might have limitations on what’s included.
• Integration Costs: While many integrations exist, some may require additional paid subscriptions (e.g., Zapier for certain connections).

Keap Demands Investment, Delivers Control

Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) presents a compelling proposition for established small businesses seeking a powerful, integrated platform to manage customer relationships and automate sales and marketing processes. Its strength lies in consolidating core functions – CRM, email/SMS marketing, sales pipeline, appointments, and invoicing – under one roof, driven by robust automation capabilities.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by manual tasks, struggling with lead follow-up, and ready to invest in a system designed to help you scale, Keap is definitely worth exploring. However, be mindful of the potential cost and the learning curve involved. For businesses with very basic needs or tight budgets, simpler or more specialized tools might be a better starting point.

Automate Smarter with Keap

Ready to see if Keap can simplify growth for your business?

Visit the official Keap website to learn more and explore their free trial.