“It’s something that people really enjoy, especially if you do it correctly.”
Matt Morfopoulos is the Co-Founder & Head of Marketing at Respond Flow. Matt talks with Anthony about why text message conversations lead to sales and how you can implement this in your marketing strategy.
Why Text Messages?
Matt: “We’ve all grown up texting our whole lives. Even though we have so many alternatives like iMessage, WhatsApp, Telegraph or whatever you’re using, people still use text messages in their day-to-day lives. Whether it’s texting your parents or your friends. So what’s weird is that for a lot of customers nowadays, that’s still a big deal.”
Matt: “They’ve been texting for years, but now there’s this opportunity for a lot of businesses to start texting their customers. What’s really scary about it is that it’s really effective. It’s something that people really enjoy, especially if you do it correctly. So if you know the right software and you know the right tactics to use then yeah, texting is making a serious comeback when it comes to business marketing.”
Converting Texts To Sales
Matt: “We don’t believe automation is going to automate the connection or that relationship that you have with your customers. Whether you’re B2C or B2B it doesn’t really matter. At the end of the day, some human is talking to another human and building a connection that leads to a relationship. So what we’ve designed Respond Flow around is not to automate the entire experience. It’s to streamline the experience for the customer, so they get on the phone with the right person at the right time.”
Implementing This Strategy
Matt: “There’s no such thing as a one size fits all approach. It really depends on what your business is, what you’re doing, what your needs are, and what you’re really trying to use text message marketing for. If you’re just trying to send a notification or maybe you have a built in text blast feature built into one of your CRMs, that’s great. If you want just a one way conversation. “
Matt: “If you want to use something like Respond Flow or something similar, then you want to actually engage with your customers and have conversations. Our whole hypothesis is that we’re validating each customer and that they want to actually talk to you. Some industries require specific types of text message solutions just because of the industry they’re in. So high risk industries like gambling, cannabis, any liquor stores, anything that’s a little bit more controversial, you’re going to need a software that’s going to be able to deliver.“
Matt: “These phone providers will actually detect that for spam and try and filter you. That’s why something that we’ve done at Respond Flow is actually build out an algorithm to sound like you’re a human. You could send a text message campaign to a thousand people and maybe only 50% of them got them just because the phone providers wouldn’t allow you to send that text. So it goes past those spam filters. If you’re a sales rep, what we’ve been able to do is add drip campaigns or automated follow-ups to those texts.“
