HoneyBook is one of the best (and our favorite) CRM tools on the market today. But that doesn’t mean it’s super simple and intuitive for
everyone. Like with any new tool, HoneyBook can come with a learning curve.
But that’s what we’re here for, right?
One thing we want to help you avoid? Setting up HoneyBook only to realize that the way you’ve set it up doesn’t work for you and your
business. We’ve seen this happen time and time again with clients.
They start using HoneyBook and they aren’t sure exactly how to use it. Soon, things get messy and they need a HoneyBook Pro to
come in and help them clean it up.
Not you, though. You’re here reading this to make sure you start your HoneyBook relationship off on the right foot. (Or to hopefully
prevent any mess from accumulating in your current account.)
We’re going to flag six of the most common HoneyBook mistakes we see people make, so you can avoid them.
When we talk about HoneyBook mistakes, you might expect us to say that you’re making a mistake if you’re not using HoneyBook
features — like the Scheduler or automations. But no.
The mistakes we’re talking about today are simple “setup” challenges that many users face — and that should be addressed before (or
shortly after) getting started). With that said, don’t worry if you’ve been using HoneyBook for years.
However, you’ve made HoneyBook work for you is great! We just hope this brings light to the ways you can use this CRM better and
make it work for you even more.
You want your HoneyBook emails to come from your business email, period. That requires you to integrate your email into your
HoneyBook account.
To do this, click your profile photo in the top right corner of your HoneyBook screen. Go to Company Settings > Integrations > Email Integration.
If you don’t integrate your email, it’s going to come from a weird-looking HoneyBook email — and most likely going to spam.
That’s not how you want to start your client experience!
Is HoneyBook randomly sending questionnaires, follow-ups, Smart Files, or “retiring” old proposals and invoices?
It’s not in your automations — but you might have something switched ON in your settings that you don’t want.
To fix this, go to your HoneyBook settings (click your picture in the top right corner).
From there, go to Preferences. You’ll see an Actions section, and this is where those random emails might be coming from.
The first 3 “toggles” you see are super important to turn off if you don’t want them. We have so many people say that HoneyBook is sending emails that they don’t want to send and they don’t know where they’re coming from.
This is usually where!
When we go in to clean up a client’s HoneyBook account, we’ve seen so many businesses “creating a new project” every time they have
something to deliver.
Let’s say you have a client and you deliver multiple files to them — like a website map, a website design mockup, and final website icon files. We’ve seen people “create a new project” for each deliverable, but really they should all go under 1 project, i.e. “CLIENT Web Project.”
What you want to do is have ONE project portal for every client, and drop individual files, invoices, communications, etc. under that one project.
Multiple projects can be created under one client portal in a few cases. The most common is if you’re a photographer. Let’s say You did
a family session for someone in 2022 and now in 2023, they want another one. That’s a separate project!
So often we see that people clutter their pipelines (or automations) with things like:
Really, only a few of those can be automated. For example, you can automate the welcome packet, contract, and invoice being sent when a client accepts the proposal. You can also automate your onboarding questionnaire, final gallery delivery, and feedback request.
However, for things like sending gifts, editing photos (or delivering your work), etc. you’ll want to just create a task in HoneyBook.
For example, to send a client gift, you can go to your Project Portal, scroll to the bottom right, hit “New Task” and add “Send client gift.” You can set a date and BOOM — all set.
Friends, templates are called templates for a reason. You don’t want to have to customize them every time you bring on a new client!
However, we often see people editing Smart File templates — and their proposals, invoices, and contracts — for each client. Instead of editing your templates, here’s a quick hack: Select the template you want to use, click "use template", attach it to an existing client project, and then customize it!
This way, you have one clean template you can use again and again, rather than having to delete everything you updated last time. Much easier, right?
Now we’re going to talk about some Smart File settings.
Smart Files are great because you can stack your automations and send everything you need in basically “one shot.” But there are a few things that aren’t easily “customized” when you’re creating a Smart File from a provided template.
For one, Honeybook will auto-populate an image if you don’t change it on your Smart Files. In most cases, your Smart File “image” will
look like this — not very on-brand for your business.
Fixing this is pretty easy, though. Simply go to Smart Files, hit Configure Settings, and then change the thumbnail image. Your logo works fine, or you may have some stock imagery you like to use.
Next, we want to make sure you edit your Smart File button settings. inside your Smart File proposal, click the three dots next to
Preview on the top right and hit Edit email settings.
We recommend that you change the buttons on your Smart Files. They will all default to GET STARTED and sometimes that doesn’t fit the deliverable.
If it’s a proposal, for example, write you might want to write PROPOSAL as the button. You get the idea!
Last but not least, we can’t avoid the all-important contact form. We know that you might have a contact form already built into your
site, whether it’s from your email tool or a website plugin.
However, the real power of HoneyBook is having the lead pipeline start at Square One — and your website is Square One!
To add your HoneyBook contact form to your website, simply go to Contact Forms > Default Contact Form > Publish. From there, you can take the code and embed it on your contact page. Most website-building tools have an embedding format “box” you can insert, so this is super easy.
From there, it’s just a matter of getting those leads to find your website, so they can enter your smooth new client pipeline!
Hopefully, this tutorial has helped you see some of the inner workings of HoneyBook — and maybe even shed light on a few things that
make you go, “How in the world??” We love HoneyBook and we want you to love it, too, so let us know if this was helpful.
Speaking of helpful… When you’re setting up your CRM and your systems, there’s a lot of trial and error. It’s just the nature of the beast!
But we also know that having a system that’s set up incorrectly can cost your business big time. That’s why we created our HoneyBook course.
HoneyBook has so many features and “hidden hacks” that it can come with a really big learning curve —but it’s SO valuable to your operations. We want you to get all the benefits of using HoneyBook, rather than the stress of learning a new system without guidance.
That’s why, inside our HoneyBook Course, you get:
✓50+ On-demand video lessons
✓Step-by-step walkthroughs with examples
✓Organized sections and streamlined videos
✓Tutorials on plug & play templates
✓ 3 months inside our Systems School community for additional support and training
✓And more
Want to use HoneyBook like a pro, avoid mistakes, and get back to work that matters? Grab the HoneyBook Course today for just $497.
