August 13

Episode 65: Zach Anderson on Website Lead Capture, Speed of Response, and Text Message Marketing

 

Ken: Hey everybody. This is Ken Tucker with Changescape Web. Welcome to this episode of the marketing guides for small businesses podcast. Today, I’m joined by Ian, Jen, Dan, and Paul, and we have a special guest with us today. we’re going to be talking to Zach Anderson of Molo media. I’m really excited to be able to talk to Zach. we’re going to be talking about website lead capture, speed of response, text message marketing, and why you need to text enable your website. So let’s get right into it. Hey Zach, I know you’ve been doing text message marketing for a very long time, and you’ve got some amazing apps, full disclosure. My company Changescape Web. We use, you know, your tools and, and you know, we find that they’re absolutely terrific. So I’m going to go ahead and get started and, you know, I think, so many businesses don’t realize this, but can you talk about what does it mean to text enable your website and why is it so simple 

 

Zach: Well, the way I look at it is, I look at your website as a storefront, right So imagine like a chiropractic office and you come into the chiropractic office and there’s no one at the front desk, but there are a bunch of people on background doing stuff, and no one ever comes up and helps you. The website’s kind of like the same thing. It’s just a virtual storefront. You know, you go to the website, you get there and maybe there’s a contact us form, or there’s a phone number. And a lot of people are hesitant to make phone calls. Now they could be at work and do all those different types of things. So you’re basically treating it like it’s a storefront, but there’s no one there to actually engage with you. So we came up with an idea to text enable, websites, by creating a widget that you can actually enter your information inside of the widget and immediately connect with the business over text messaging. 

 

Zach: And the reason why we chose text messaging is because it, the conversation continue after they leave the website. Whereas chat really is they have to be there to be able to respond. You know, you don’t ha you’re always fishing for information, all those different types of things. So we, and it’s amazing if you go out there and start searching on Google to all these different businesses, none of them are doing it. And so they’re losing out on a huge opportunity, not only to build a list, to be able to communicate back out to people, but to be able to give the people that are visiting the website a way to communicate on their own terms, because we know that pretty much everybody texts messages now. I mean, my mom who is 76 even has a phone and will text message me. So it’s just, it’s, it’s more, I know text message has been around forever, but it’s become so much more on the forefront. 

 

Zach: And the last couple of years, especially with what happened with COVID. I mean like a restaurant, for example, you know, they, when they were shutting down, there’s no way for them to communicate with their customers. And so this allows businesses to be able to communicate with their visitors in real time on their terms that they choose and be able to build a list and continue that conversation after they leave the website. So they’re not sit there waiting for someone to respond on the chat, which I’ve done it so many times where I pick up a chat, I’m asking these questions and I get distracted and I go do something else. And I come back and the chat windows closed, and I got to start the whole thing over again. So that was the whole concept behind creating this text enabled chat widget that you can implement on the website also in signatures, on advertising, on all these different types of things. So that was, that was kind of the reason behind building the, the text chat for, websites. 

 

Ken: Yeah. Awesome. And I know you, you know, you have the ability to create an autoresponder. So if you’re not able to take that text immediately, you can auto respond back to somebody to let them know that it was received and you’re, you know, expect a contact from them soon. and so that’s, I think that’s fantastic. Paul, it looks like, you have a question. 

 

Paul: Yeah. Zach, how you doing Good. Good. so let’s say you have this text widget on your website. Is it possible to configure it so you can call or text different departments or specific people within a company 

 

Zach: Yeah, so basically what we did was we actually created, so you could add locations and you could also add departments. And the reason why we did locations is for those types of businesses, for example, sometimes a dentist will have three different offices, but a single website. So you’ve got to be able to route it to the proper places. So like for example, you know, we could have a gig Harbor or a Seattle or a Tacoma location. And when the widget pops up, you can choose a location and then choose whether you want to call or text. And then it will automatically route to that location, be able to track it all back in the back office and you can even assign it to different users. So you’re really giving as much flexibility as you possibly can. and I know that, Ken touched on the autoresponder, what we also built into the platform, which is really, really beneficial, for example, like, let’s just say, it’s a hair salon or something like that. 

 

Zach: And somebody goes in there and types, you know, wants to talk to them. And they, you know, they ask a question and the autoresponder will write back and say, Hey, thanks for texting us. You know, if you have any questions about our pricing, just text back the word, you know, prices and our system will identify that word prices and then send them back out information. So you can create automation inside of the platform that actually takes away some of the human element, but still being able to have a two-way conversation in there. So by enabling departments, by enabling locations and by enabling autoresponders you really able to systematize and automate a lot of the things that are naturally happening, inside of the platform, the one thing that’s really interesting because my, the, the software will actually trigger phone calls or text messages, and we get seven text messages to every one phone call. 

 

Zach: So people really prefer text messaging over calling. And a lot of the times is, you know, you’re at the office and you can’t really pick up a phone, but you can sit there with your phone. I mean, anytime you go to a restaurant or a Starbucks, everyone’s got their phone in their back pocket. I mean, they still are, you know, and, and so, yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s really cool by enabling those department features, you know, even for like say a car dealership, you know, you could have parts, you could have service, you could have sales and it’s going to just route to that appropriate person. And you’re not having to go through that thing where you get on a chat bot and then like, oh, let me transfer you. Oh, let me transfer you. You know, you’re kind of going through that transfer things. So w we built it in a way that’s intelligent and it gives a better user experience for the customer. 

 

Ken: Yeah. Yeah. That’s awesome. I think a lot of people too, you know, they don’t want to start the conversation by talking to somebody because then that may pull them into a conversation. They’re not ready to have a much safer way to start ignite. See if, you know, just do that quick assessment, you know, as a, as a, somebody visiting a website to say, oh, this is a company that can help me. Okay, cool. 

 

Zach: Yeah. We found that text messaging, inside of the sales process can double the close ratio, for whatever you’re doing, just because it’s a different touch point. And a lot of times you don’t want to call, like, I mean, personally me, I’m, I’m not, if I’m in an early stage of buying something, I don’t really want to have a conversation with person. I just want to get some brief information before I pick up the phone and actually make that, that call, like, yeah, I’m really interested. What does this really mean Yeah. 

 

Dan: And, and on that note, Zach, I think, what I want to know is why is the speed of the response from the business, so important, no matter what phase, even in that early phase that you’re talking about, why is so important 

 

Zach: Well, there’s a, there’s an interesting thing. There was a study done by MIT that if you respond to someone within the first five minutes, you have a 900% more chance to engage with them. That is one major thing. And, you know, as time goes by the less likely you’re going to do, and then there’s this waterfall effect, you know, or it just goes down and down and down. And the other thing is, is generational. I mean, everyone expects to be texted back immediately. I mean, I think the stats are 98% of texts are open and responded to within the first three minutes. And so you’ve got to engage in the same fashion. And so that’s why we built a platform where you can respond on the desktop. You can respond, via a mobile app, you get notification. So it’s a, it’s just a way they expect the speed. And so you want to be able to communicate. And it’s also said the first person that communicates with that potential customer has like a 70% chance of actually closing them. So by utilizing text messaging, you will be able to engage with them quicker because it is the fastest means out there versus email calling all those different types of things. 

 

Jen: Of a basic question, but what’s the difference between SMS and MMS 

 

Zach: SMS is just texts. It’s literally just words and MMS is message is a, a picture. So it’s you go, you can send pictures and stuff like that back. And we enable that in the platform where it’s on the mobile app, that you can take pictures and send it and be able to communicate back and forth. And so about it from like an insurance agency or, or a mortgage broker or whatever it may be, you get in a car accident, right. You can literally just text, take a picture of it, send it to, you know, your insurance agent and be able to start the process. They’re taking pictures of deck pages, all those different types of things. So you can speed up the process of customer support and customer service by leveraging MMS, picture messaging. Basically, I don’t actually know what it stands for. I should probably look that up, but multimedia, multimedia sending or something like that. 

 

Zach: but yeah, you can do V cards. You can send pictures. we are actually looking into way of implementing it so that you can actually send like PDFs and things like that. It doesn’t actually work through the carriers, but we can upload and then send links that then open up an work on a browser and be able to save them that way. So really powerful if you’re utilizing it. And it’s like basically for customer experience and customer support type stuff, and being able to move things through faster versus having to go and scan, sends an email and do all those things. You can literally just take a picture and send it to people. I love it when companies actually have that capability because it makes life so much easier than having to go through the regular process of, you know, scanning something in emailing it to yourself, then email it to them, that type of thing. Yeah. 

 

Jen: It almost defeats the purpose of having this enabled if you can’t get the, the, the visual over there, because it’s just another time hurdle to scan and then you drop off and yeah, this is great. Yeah. Yeah. 

 

Ken: Speed. Speed. Absolutely. 

 

Ian: That’s awesome. And, and have you found, are there industries where this tends to work better and somewhere it doesn’t work at all Zach 

 

Zach: Well, the, the thing that’s really strange is it, I, because of what we do. So mainly what rainbow does is we white label our platform to marketing agencies and marketing agencies then go out and sell it to their customers. So I get this really high level view where I can see all of these different types of companies that are utilizing it. And what I’ve found is basically any website that has the higher the traffic, the better it works. And if you’re, and if you don’t have a website with high traffic, then you just have to implement it inside of your business, inside of your marketing and all those different types of areas. One of the places that I’ve found has been extremely successful is fitness gyms, just like really, really, really successful, because think about it this way, the more, the more traffic you have for your business, the more effective this is going to be because you’re having, like, for example, you know, a real estate agent may only have one customer a month, but a fitness gym could have thousands coming through. 

 

Zach: So it’s, it’s the higher throughput of the business. The more effective it is because they’re able to, more people want to communicate with the actual business itself. And so we found that car dealerships that works extremely well because people have all this pre-buying questions, dentists, you know, for appointments, chiropractor, for massages and appointments. So just think about anything that’s on-demand business. It seemed to be extremely effective for, and the ones that are like more of a, a high touch, low volume it’s it works, but it’s not like blows up highly effective because it’s, they’re already building it into their processes is anyways. But for example, for like a real estate agent, we still encourage them to use it because one of the things about the TCPA laws is that you’re not supposed to be texting people from your personal cell phone because you can’t opt out and it’s not encrypted at rest and in transit. So there’s a lot of laws and regulations out there that you gotta make sure you, you, you do the proper things. And that’s why I always suggest, even if you are a low volume person, still utilizing a platform like this, because you can store all the information in one place it’s encrypted, it’s at rest, they can opt out and your whole entire team can communicate via one phone number. 

 

Ken: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So Zach, what are some great ways to get people to opt into your text message marketing list What are the easiest ways to do that And before you answer that real quick, can you import an existing customer list you know, do you need to have any prior approval or do you need to send an initial text to say, are you willing to opt in to this 

 

Zach: Well, you you’re supposed to have the laws state that you’re supposed to have an explicit written consent or consent from the actual person that you have the capability of texting them. we don’t actually allow people to import into our platform unless they’ve like shown us the actual information that they, they have the explicit consent. And then even if you do do that, I would honestly suggest that the initial is text messages that goes out is, you know, reply back, yes. To be able to, you know, receive text messages back and forth, because one of the things is, you know, if you violate these laws, it’s between 500 and $1,500 per message. So if you go look on Google, you can see some of these losses during the 40 50 million range. And so you gotta be really, really careful about that type of stuff. You can’t. 

 

Zach: There are ways that you can get around that you can one-off text somebody. broadcasting is where it really becomes a little dicey that if you don’t have explicit written consent, then you can’t do that. And one ways that you can get people to opt in is by doing offers, you know, like for example, to get 10% off, you know, texting the word 10% off, and then you send that auto response back saying, thank you for, you know, texting in here’s your code to get 10% off. Also, we’re going to be sending you for two to four marketing messages a month. It’s really about making sure that you’re following the laws and telling their, your consumers what you’re going to be doing with their information. And also being able to forget their information. So that comes down to the California consumer privacy act and the GDRP that you have to have a system that you can actually go in and delete and forget the entire set of information. So we’ve built a whole platform that does all of that type of stuff. 

 

Ken: Okay. So, you know, we’re, we’re all a bunch of marketers. We do presentations and things like that. and Dan, I know you talk about this quite a bit. and, and I’ve done it as well. companies like ours, even though we don’t have the high volume kind of a throughput that, that you’re talking about when we do a presentation, having a text program where somebody can text ebook, you know, or presentation, to, to a number so that they can walk away from the presentation we just delivered can be super powerful. Right 

 

Zach: Yeah. Extremely powerful. I actually, I pretty much, I do a lot of webinars as well, and I I’ve built lists over time and I can send out an email and say, get a hundred registers and then send out a text blast that has a 10th of the size of the list and get the same amount of registers. But I use it in all of that type of stuff as well. Like for example, I’m doing some online marketing right now where I’m only requesting a phone number, not even an email and they get the actual information delivered to them over text messaging. So then I’m capturing them and being able to communicate with them on a one-on-one basis to kind of move them down the sales sales process. Awesome. 

 

Dan: Yeah. That is really a powerful way to, I think it, it just absolutely changes everything about your presentation and your, you know, your ability to, to capture people is, is just off the charts. And it, it’s amazing because you are getting people, I think that are fairly well-qualified at that point. I mean, yeah, there’s still some questions you may have to ask them one-on-one but they have interest. And if your offer is good enough, as we’ve talked about many times about offers, you know, that that’s a closer for you. It’s just, it changed. I think once I found text message, marketing in the form that you’re talking about, all my presentations after that changed, I mean, it was just nothing ever became about just putting a phone number up there anymore, or an email or anything like that. 

 

Zach: We call it, we call it conversions through conversations. 

 

Paul: Yeah. Yeah. So Zach, a lot of people, I think they look at text message. Marketing is just like sending out blasts for broadcast, but how, if you structure a well automated campaign, how would that work in regards to text message marketing 

 

Zach: Well, the way we build our campaigns and you can build a lot of automation and things like that. But what the automation is really trying to do is to find that moment when the conversation gets picked up and you actually are having a two-way conversation back and forth. So broadcasts are really designed to go out for offers, you know, or notifications or whatever it may be, or somehow to start a conversation. The automations are the same fashion. You know, it’s asking questions, it’s getting, trying to find that point in the sales process where the individual is going to communicate back to you, then you start to be able to engage with them. And then ultimately be able to pick up the phone if, if that’s the type of sales that you’re doing. So it’s really about the automation is designed to the conversation. And then the conversation is what actually closes the sales or does whatever, whatever goal you have in mind with those series of automations to get the engagement going through text messaging. Yeah. 

 

Dan: Oh, sorry. I, it was my question. I was going to ask, how important is it in your mind to use a text message marketing system to communicate with leads and customers you know, couldn’t their business just use their cell phone 

 

Zach: Now. And I know that I already talked about this and we brought love to bring this up again. again, there’s all these laws, you know, FCC, TCPA, CCPA, GDRP, and they’re designed to protect the consumers, right. so the consumers need to be able to opt out. they need to be able to, you know, have their information for God and all those different types of things. And when you use your own personal cell phone, what happens if you lose it You know, somebody else can get access to their information. it’s not encrypted at rest. It’s not encrypted in transit. You can delete it. But again, there’s no simple way of doing it, be able to track that information. And also, you know, that basically there’s no way for the individual opt out. They physically just can’t opt out because it’s, you know, like with our system, when you reply backstop or a multitude of things, it locks, it, it, you just can’t send another message and then you can’t opt them back in if it’s physically down at the carrier level. So we do a double layer at the carrier level and actually in our software as well, so that nobody gets in trouble. 

 

Jen: It seems like, kind of going back to the days when email marketing was first starting and folks would send out something and their lists would be BCC and it’s from your email address. Right. It’s something like that, right Yes. And then when the BCC was forgotten and you’re like, oh yeah, yeah. 

 

Zach: And it’s just this massive list I’ve seen those, I’ve seen that happen. That’s not a good 

 

Jen: Thing. Not a good thing. Absolutely. No. what about, tell, w what’s your opinion on, as some of these text message marketing, systems that were, are bundled into a point of sale or POS systems, is that a good sort of starting all the point If someone was thinking, oh, do I have another thing to subscribe to And, 

 

Zach: You know, that’s a really interesting thing because we look at a lot because I have another platform called customer engine outside of bring bought ring bot. The one we’ve been mainly talking about customer engine does the relatively similar thing, what a ring bot does, but ring is really designed for communication, improving customer experience, all that customer engine. What we do is we track revenue. And so we send out offers with very unique codes in there so that when they go back into the business and they spend money at the business, you put the track, the code in there, and it tracks revenue per user and different things like that. POS systems do have some form of that, but they’re very clunky because that’s not their primary focus. So, you know, our platform is designed only to do this type of thing and be able to track it. 

 

Zach: But we are in the process of doing some integrations with POS systems so that they, when they do come in, they simply just push a button on the POS and enter the code. It’s all tracked back to our platform as well. But our platform, the customer engine platform is designed really to be able to track that offer. And we also have two way text messages in there with all these different, crazy automations that we can do, like birthday clubs and anniversary clubs and all that type of stuff. That’s in date driven, blasts and all those things. So you can basically create a business, utilize one of our templates, like say for a restaurant and have an entire years of marketing done inside of like 10 minutes. And then they, that everything happens on its own. Like when somebody texts and, you know, 10 to get, you know, three pieces slice a pizza or whatever, when they actually redeem the code, it fires off all these automations asking when their birthday is, if they want to join the VIP club, all those types of things. And then also they can actually communicate back and forth to have a two-way conversation as well. So it’s really designed to capture the more customers and generate more revenue from your existing customers and bring in new customers. We’ve seen tremendous success with that particular platform, with small businesses being able to, you know, add five to $10,000, additional revenue to their bottom line every single month. 

 

Dan: And, well, I have a, I have a dumb question on this is, and maybe this is something that you you get from businesses is how much is too much in your opinion, when it comes to, you know, we often talk about the, the buyer’s journey and the marketing hourglass, and there’s a lot of different phases in this. What do you recommend I know every business is different, but you know, I, I’ve also seen some businesses really overdo it as well, where it just, every single phase, once you’re in, you’re just pounded all the time with, cracks and, you know, have you kind of advised there 

 

Zach: I it’s, it’s a hard thing to kind of go because there’s, it’s so different for every different business. Like, for example, if it’s a, if it’s a, a nightclub that has a lot of like, bands that come in, you’d want to notify people all the time. Right. there’s another one that I, I, I, I utilize as well, like a brewery when a new beer comes out. Right So there’s, there’s these different types of messages that you send out. But if you’re just like, out there and you’re trying to just sell, sell your own products, and it’s not like this new event thing, I would say max, once a week, like max, because you don’t want to overdo them. Cause then they’re just going to opt out. And it’s also about the offer. Like, is it a good offer Are you segmenting 

 

Zach: You’re segmenting your list properly. And that’s another thing that’s really important is with both of our applications, you have the ability, what we call tagging all the different users. So you can segment your list. So like, if, if you have certain people that are always coming in and just buying this, then you wouldn’t want to send them an for something else. And so by segmenting, you can actually send out more because you know, what your audience actually wants. Does that make sense But I personally, just from my own feeling, I wouldn’t want to get more than one text a week. And that would probably be too much. Like, for example, I subscribed to LG is text marketing campaign for some reason. And they send out, I think, every other week. And that’s, that’s fair, you know, because they never know when somebody is in a buying position to be a new TV or this or that or other things. So it kind of really depends on the actual industry and what you’re actually sending out and what you’re trying to achieve with those, those messages themselves. 

 

Dan: Got it. Got it. Good. Great. 

 

Dan: At all. No, no, no, I it’s. It is very dependent on that business it’s but it is interesting how, they do have to get a little strategic in this thing from the very beginning and think about the entire buyer’s journey in terms of, okay, well, how do we weave texts into this in a smart way, rather than turn people off before, you know, they really get to know us even as, even when they become a customer, you still want them to be a long time advocate of you. And so how do you, how do you kind of nurture that in a cool way 

 

Ken: Yeah. Yeah. I know. I know another great thing I think you can do too, is if you’re a restaurant or you’re a salon or something like that, and you’re having a slow day and it’s normally not slow for you, you can send out a broadcast to the, to, you know, to the right segments of your list, you know, and that can be a really effective thing. And I think you could work in those occasionally, you know, so you might creep in, you know, maybe two messages a week and those types of scenarios. And I don’t think people, most people probably wouldn’t, you know, freak out about that. But if you’re sending out something every day, when you really don’t need to be, that’s, that’s a path 

 

Zach: Opt-outs is what that is. And, and, you know, we track all of our opt-outs and things. So you can kind of see, like when you send a broadcast, you can see how many people opted out. So there’s, you can start gathering information on those types of things, you know, but again, you know, it depends on the thing, like, you know, if an appointment opens up, you know, being able to fill that appointment there, I’m sure people would want that. So, you know, you can always kind of do those different types of things without harming your list too bad. 

 

Ian: That’s cool. And, and you talked a little bit about revenue and tying this to revenue, on the metric side, how important is it to be able to track revenue by campaign or even by phone number, 

 

Zach: By phone number So we tracked, we tracked by campaign and by phone number so we can see how the campaign’s performing and then we can see the individual, how they’re performing. So we actually have like a leaderboard almost where the, you know, the people that spend the most of the actual thing, the, the company or the business, and then we can track by broadcast by campaign by because there’s all kinds of different things that we build inside of the platform that you can do. And we track the revenue across all those types of things. So you can see which one performs better, which one doesn’t, which lists is performing better, all those types of things. And it’s, it allows you to manipulate things and optimize things even more so that you, again, aren’t, you know, harming your list and you’re getting the right information out to the right people and the right offers converting the correct way, because there’s, I’ve seen things where people will send something out and they, it doesn’t perform well. 

 

Zach: And it’s something that, like, for example, you send out, you know, get, get, a free, you know, dessert with your large pizza or whatever. I don’t eat dessert. My family doesn’t eat dessert. We don’t, you know, and so that w I’m not going to use that. So you always have to like, do the offers in a way that reach the broadest audience when you’re doing a broadcast to be able to then track the revenue and see which one is most effective. And that’s, that’s how we’ve been able to identify when, when these are bad campaigns, right. When it doesn’t work, and then we go analyze the offer and like, oh, this is why it didn’t work. You you’re, you’re sending out a broadcast to everybody, but it’s really only to this little tiny segment over here, that’s going to even take you up on that. 

 

Ian: Right. Right. And, and you were talking about being able to set up custom tags. Are you also able to pull reports in your system related to those custom tags and see how effective that segment of your overall list is doing 

 

Zach: Yeah, so we, you can always see the amount of subscribers on each list. And so you can see, you know, the growth and the, the opt-out and all those types of things, and really the segmenting is really important to do so that you can send out more messages, if that makes sense. You know, because if there is somebody that’s on a VIP list and they are the, you know, the best customers you would send out specific offers around those versus somebody that’s just, you know, loves large pizzas, you know, so you can kind of like choose and pick and see where things are and see the performance on, on different types of things and see how well each list is performing based off of the offers that you’re sending. So we try and do the best we can in regards to metrics and drilling down as much as we can. And it’s a learning process. So we’re constantly improving these types of things and constantly saying, oh, well, we could do this. And we could identify even better opportunities. Like, oh, this person’s come in six times. You know So we made indeed build an automation for that typical particular person that maybe segments over to a different list over there. 

 

Ken: Yeah, yeah. It, it, it, your, your platforms are absolutely amazing, you know, and, and as I look at a lot of different businesses that are out there, especially so many of the businesses that were hit because of the COVID economy, where they had to shut down, you know, having a smart text message, marketing systems and, and starting the communication process in the way that people want to communicate the primary way that most people are saying they want to communicate today is one of the very first places. I think, you know, many of these businesses really need to be looking. So, you know, Zach, I mean, this has been amazing. You’re, you’ve given us a masterclass here and I really appreciate it. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s been incredible guys. Do you have any other questions for Zach 

 

Dan: Yeah, well, I, oh, I, no, no. You go ahead. I’ll ask. Well, it’s part question, part statement, maybe to reiterate here for folks that maybe you can speak to is that we talk a lot about, things in terms of a simple sale of this technology, which is retail restaurants, things like that, free dessert and whatnot, but I think it’s good for people to be reminded that there’s a good B2B, surface based, firm use of this technology too. Right. Where I think sometimes people tend to, kind of use things like this, and it’s got, well, we’re not doing, we’re not giving away free pizza. We’re not doing this. We’re not, but they’re still very much a, an application here for different types of service-based firms. 

 

Zach: Yeah. I mean, I only sell B2B, so, and I use it every single day, all day long. And it’s, it’s a way to communicate with customers. It’s a way to communicate with prospects. Like, for example, you know, I, I sell my software and it’s all automated, so I don’t want to have a sales team, but my widget sits on the order page. And so when people have questions, they just, they use the widget and I pick up my phone and I reply back to them and able to help them via text message without even having to pick up the phone. So I can literally have three or four conversations going on at once. And it wouldn’t affect me where I can’t have four phone calls going on at once. I’d need four salespeople. So it’s, it’s, it’s B2B. It works extremely well. I would say it probably more better than the consumer, because on a B2B level, it’s typically some kind of sales process. 

 

Zach: It’s not just a, I’m going into dinner. I’m not going to get my haircut. I’m not going to the dentist. There’s a process involved with B2B, a sales process that is an integrating some form of two-way text messaging into that. You’re going to drastically increase your close ratios and have a better customer experience. I mean, it’s, even to the point of like, just say, for example, an insurance agency, like if they, they have, you know, they could, they potentially sometimes have high turnover in certain positions. So utilizing text messaging in the hiring process allows them to actually improve and increase in the speed at which they can hire people. And then when they do need to hire another person, they can also reach back out to all those other people. So there’s all kinds of a variety of applications that you can utilize. This. Another one for the insurance agency would be like, if just a natural disaster hit, they could have a list of adjusters that are contract adjusters to be able to then text them out immediately and be able to help all their consumers or their, their customers itself. So there’s so many different varieties of application to two-way text messaging that helps in a B2B world versus just a, B to C world. 

 

Ian: Hey, one of the, one of the questions that popped into my head while we were talking here, Zach is, we, we serve, lots of different companies, but dentists are one of our favorite niches. And, just thinking through kind of how their teams are set up and that they have practice management software and lots of con constraints. I’m thinking of the, you know, the, the immediacy and some of the stats you shared about how quickly you need to respond, you know, like in the first five minutes, just thinking about those, those, teams, but I think it also applies to a lot of other types of businesses. If, how does, how can you make this type of system work when your team is responsible for being, say a front desk at a dental clinic where they’re handling, you know, patient inquiries on the phone, they’re, they’re responding to emails. they have patients standing in front of them that need to pay, how, how can you make this type of a system work Because it sounds like it’s fantastic and effective. Well, 

 

Zach: The, the one thing that’s really good about text messaging is not only the speed, but everyone expects it to only be a sentence, not a diatribe. So it’s, it’s a two way conversation where email’s not a two way conversation. Phone calls are two way conversations, but you’re physically taken. So you, you can literally, you can, it’s so much faster to respond and so much easier one, you can create templates. So like, if people are asking the same questions over and over again, and you get the text in, you literally go up, template, send you’re done, right. It tracks everything, HIPAA compliant. I mean, obviously we don’t store any personal health information or anything like that. Everything’s encrypted at rest. And in transit, you can’t control what the actual patient is sending in, but you’re not going to be sending out anything in that sense. And you know, so it’s really effective and it can speed things up because imagine being able to give an opportunity, instead of having to call to schedule an appointment, they can just text. 

 

Zach: So you’re not waiting on hold. You’re not doing any of those kinds of things. You can create automatic, automated reminders to be able to go out and send out later to remind them of their appointments. I mean, there’s just so much more flexibility and you can utilize that with all templates. So if someone’s always asking the same question, you write the text once, save it as a template. Now you’re done. so it’s, it’s all about speed as far as I’m concerned. And it’s really what I consider the digital voicemail of the world, right You’re, you’re just literally, instead of calling and leaving a voicemail, you’re just sending a text message. That’s stored that you can see that you can respond. Even if it’s five to 10 minutes later, you still can respond and you’re not going to the person’s not going to be too annoyed. Awesome. 

 

Ian: No, that’s super helpful. And just one point of clarity for me is, so do the people in the C say the, the, people at reception, do they have to have, like, are they on, an app on their computer doing the texting, or are they on their actual phone, in an app there that you guys provide Or, or how does that part it work Like where do they actually respond from Well, 

 

Zach: They can, we have a desktop app so they can be logged in and they get notified. Like they, if they have it open, they get notifications, they get email notifications, they get text alerts that they’ve got a text and we also have a mobile app. So like they can, for example, a perfect example for the why people use the mobile app. Like we have a lot of them fitness gyms that use it, and they’re not always sitting at their computer. So they’re just walking around with their phone in their back pocket. A text comes in, done, put it back in their phone, so they don’t have to actually sit down, whereas, you know, a receptionist they’re always sitting at the desk so they can just have it open, alert, pops up and they just literally go onto it. And so to have that conversation right there, so it’s, it’s completely, you know, wherever you need to be. Fantastic. Thank you. 

 

Ken: Yeah. Awesome. Any other questions Yep. All right. Awesome. Zach. So how can people learn more about ring bot customer engine And what else would you like for them to know about you and maybe how they can contact you Well, 

 

Zach: If they, they can always go to ring bot.io, to check out the software or customer engine.io to check out that software. If you want to get ahold of me directly, you can just email me at Zack eight, which is just Z a C H a@molomedia.com. That’s M O L O M E D I a.com. That’s my parent company that owns all the, the software platforms itself. And that’s the best way to actually get ahold of me. 

 

Ken: All right. And I think you mentioned this earlier, that ring bot and customer engine are only available for agencies. And we have, we have a mix of listeners here, w you know, we’re, maybe some are small businesses. others are going to be marketing professionals and agencies. So just keep that in mind, but, if you need any help, obviously I’m sure Zach can hook you up. We we’re, you know, we’re big advocates and users of these two platforms as well. Zach, I can’t thank you so much. enough, this has been really fantastic. And, just want to give you the last word. If you have anything else you want to say, 

 

Zach: I just think, you know, conversions through conversations and you should be, everybody should be text messaging, right That’s just, if you’re not, you need to start doing it. Yup. Doing it the proper way. That is 

 

Ken: Exactly. Exactly. Not on your cell phone. Thanks so much. Thank you. Take care. 


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