Latest / The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson / Mobile Marketing the Right Way with Barbara Casey

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Mobile Marketing the Right Way with Barbara Casey · The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson

• 0:00
  You can do sweepstakes where you can do a monthly giveaway.
• 0:03
  You can do surveys.
• 0:04
  If you're thinking of a product line extension, you wanna know if your customer base would be
• 0:08
  open to it.
• 0:09
  Asked them.
• 0:11
  I did this for a for a customer that was thinking of do adding a subscription box.
• 0:14
  She she made like soap.
• 0:16
  And she was thinking of doing a subscription box.
• 0:19
  So we just sent out a text saying, hey.
• 0:21
  We're thinking of doing a subscription box.
• 0:23
  Good idea or bad idea.
• 0:25
  Reply good or bad.
• 0:27
  And within 2 hours, she had her answer.
• 0:29
  Interesting.
• 0:30
  Gamification.
• 0:31
  Choose your offer between door a, b, or c, reply a, b, or c.
• 0:36
  And depending on how they reply, they get a different offer.
• 0:39
  3, 2, 4, 0, ignition.
• 0:45
  Lift off.
• 0:47
  Ending small business failure.
• 0:50
  Welcome to the Small Biz Chat podcast with a number 1 small business expert Melinda Emerson.
• 0:56
  Melinda's goal is to end small business failure, and she'll give you the information
• 1:00
  you need to succeed and live the life you dream of.
• 1:04
  Now here's the small Biz lady herself.
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  Melinda Everson.
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  Hi, everybody.
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  I'm Melinda merces small biz lady.
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  America's number one small business expert, and I'm so excited to welcome you to another
• 1:18
  episode of the small business chat podcast, we have an amazing show for you tonight.
• 1:25
  The small business chat podcast is a peer to peer interview show.
• 1:30
  We're really focused on getting you information to take your business to the next level, which
• 1:35
  is why we bring in several guests.
• 1:37
  So you you can learn from multiple different angles.
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  The mission of the small biz chef podcast is to end small business failure.
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  And we've been doing it for a lot of years, and we're not gonna stop.
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  So now at this time, let me introduce my guest.
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  Her name is Barbara Casey, and she's a customer engagement and text marketing expert.
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  And she has over 30 years of marketing experience.
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  She was a member of the team, which launched the very 1st freaking buyer program when she
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  was at AT and T.
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  She is now the CEO of mobile highfive, which provides full service SMS text marketing
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  solutions.
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  So for more information, you can go to mobile high 5, which is the number 5.com.
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  Barbara, welcome to the small fish chat podcast.
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  Thank you.
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  Thank you for having me.
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  I I'm looking forward to it.
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  Alright.
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  So let's talk because, you know, are we in a mobile first world to small business marketing?
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  Is it all about these these little cell phones we have in front of us?
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  It it absolutely is, and it became accelerated during the pandemic and also with the new Apple
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  privacy landscape that has been rolled out and will be extended once Google joins the party in
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  20 23.
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  I think it is.
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  It will be universally everybody.
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  Right now, it's about it affects about 50% of your customer base.
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  But it's coming soon where you will find significantly less engagement through your
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  traditional channels of email marketing as well as, you know, your ability to retarget that
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  customer that visits visit your website because Apple is screening all of that data and not
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  passing it on.
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  So Really, your best bet is to develop what's called 1st party data, which is is your email
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  list.
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  But as we all know, Email is filled with spam.
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  And on a good day, you might see a 20% read rate, whereas texts see a 90% read rate within
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  5 minutes, 90% of which are read within 90 seconds.
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  So it's really powerful.
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  Alright.
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  So let's stop right there, though.
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  I don't know about you, but I don't like it when people, I don't know, text me, especially
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  if you call me something.
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  So I know that you're saying the text marketing is needs to be part of your marketing mix.
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  But what other rules of the road with texting?
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  Because I gotta tell you, I say the word stop almost 90% of the time when I get a text,
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  especially from a business.
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  Unless it's confirming an appointment I've already made These ones that are like, oh, you
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  know, get 10% off or people that I've never heard of businesses.
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  I've never heard of texting me.
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  That is crazy to me.
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  How does that even happen?
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  So, surprisingly, only 1% of the content traveling on the mobile super highway is spam
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  compared with email, which is I don't even know.
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  It's double digits.
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  It's not a completely spam free channel, but I encourage anyone who gets a text from from a
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  business that they did not subscribe to that business to forward that message to the number
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  7726 and report it to the carrier.
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  Because in order to do any sort of text marketing program, it is a strictly opt in
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  only.
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  You to have literally written explicit permission from that handset before you're
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  legally able to text.
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  So it's virtually impossible to annoy your customers because they have asked, you know, to
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  hear from you this way.
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  And in fact, 75% of people today would prefer to hear from their favorite businesses by text
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  and by email.
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  That's interesting.
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  So wait.
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  Say that number again.
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  Who do I have to contact when I
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  get 7726.
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  Okay.
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  7726.
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  Yeah.
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  And the carrier will basically investigate company, and they'll they'll block any numbers
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  in the future.
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  But you can also reply stop to anything.
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  And here's the thing.
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  If you don't get an automatic reply after you reply stop that says you have been unenrolled
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  to reenroll, do blah blah blah, then you know it's truly spam.
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  And then then you can report that.
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  I would try first just replying stop, because it could be that you did enroll, like, a while
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  ago, and you just don't remember.
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  And so it's really easy to get yourself out of these lists when you no longer are interested,
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  and that's why there's so much trust in this channel because it actually works to opt out.
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  Whereas email, have you ever tried to uninstagram?
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  Do you remember?
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  Felt like I needed to send a letter asking you to describe because every time I hit the was
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  still getting
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  You still get the emails.
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  Yeah.
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  It doesn't work that way because I mean, I don't wanna go too much in the weeds, but
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  there's a lot of players involved in text marketing.
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  And my business, we just send the messages to an aggregator.
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  And then the aggregator delivers it to the carriers like AT and T Verizon, etcetera.
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  They are the ultimate arbiter of whether that message goes to your handset.
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  So you have to follow not only the federal regulations, but the carrier regulations
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  Interesting.
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  Yeah.
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  But we'll talk about the right way to do text marketing.
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  Right?
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  So we've talked about the bad stuff people do and how to report them, and thank you for that
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  because I didn't know that.
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  But what do we if I want to build a text marketing program, what is step number 1, 2,
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  and 3?
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  Like, what do I need
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  to do?
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  So you need to find a provider who has the technology to be able to do that for you and
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  also the an understanding of how to do it.
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  There are a lot of DIY existing platforms out there that you can get involved in on the super
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  cheap, you know, $29 a month, and you get a bazillion messages.
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  The problem with those DIY platforms is in order to make them DIY, they're really still
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  they're they don't do much.
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  Honestly.
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  They're they can send a text with a link back to your website, and and they probably can
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  track how many people clicked on that link, but that's where it ends.
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  That's not mobile marketing.
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  That's just throwing a bunch of noodles on the wall and seeing, you know, what sticks, getting
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  your megaphone out and shouting to the world.
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  That's not mobile marketing.
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  Mobile marketing is very strategic.
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  It includes I mean, one of the one of the things that we try to do what we've tried to do
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  is really disrupt the industry.
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  We're bringing the same robust mobile marketing tools that you know, historically, we're only
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  available to very large brands because of the amount of oversight needed for the program, the
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  amount of technical tools that you have small and medium sized business owner because we are
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  full service.
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  So we not only excel in program design and putting all of those pieces together so that
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  the program actually works, but then we manage it for you.
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  So you don't have to know damn thing.
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  I mean, you don't even have to know how to how to log on to the platform, honestly.
• 8:40
  Oh, interesting.
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  Yeah.
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  So so I know you talked about earlier, but we just talked about, you know, what is text
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  messaging and why is important But can you tell us some other benefits that can come from using
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  a texting, you know, a text messaging platform?
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  Is it more so for local businesses?
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  Like, you know, retailers and and restaurants, or is it the kind of thing that any business
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  could benefit from using?
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  So it's It's best use case is really an established business that has business, like a
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  new brand new business.
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  You could do it but it's not gonna deliver return for a very long time because you're
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  building your database very slowly because you just don't have the volume of business.
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  That's that's number one.
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  It this will work for retail for restaurants for service providers like spas and salons and
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  auto repair and We have an investment advisor that use uses us.
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  We work with a senior center.
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  It's really, at the end of the day, what what mobile marketing is is delivering the
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  information that a that a customer is looking for at the time they're looking for it on the
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  device of choice.
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  Which for most of us is our phone.
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  So if you think of it in that way, because we're everything we do is customized to the
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  client, this is really something that can be used for almost any type of business.
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  We do curbside pickup alerts for schools, after school programs, daycare centers, restaurants,
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  obviously, are the the logical one, but it there's a lot of applications.
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  It's really a communications vehicle.
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  Alright.
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  So now I need you kind of help me with some technical jargon.
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  So what is the difference between SMS marketing and MMS texting.
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  What?
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  Sure.
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  What is each one of those, and what is the difference?
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  Yeah.
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  So SMS stands for short message service.
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  Okay.
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  And that what that implies is you have a 160 characters including the link, and that's
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  that's a short that's a SMS and S and S tax.
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  It's very short.
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  No pictures.
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  And MMS stands for multimedia service, which is allows you to send a photograph or a GIF along
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  with your your actual message.
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  But the difference between SMS and MMS is MMS allows for 500 characters, and a link.
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  So you have a lot more real estate to talk about your offer or your whatever it is you're
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  communicating.
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  MMS tends to in in some use cases will perform better, like, for retail, it's it's really slam
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  dunk.
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  So for certain industries, MMS works really well.
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  I always tell people to experiment when they first start their program, and they're just
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  building their database, try try a little of each and see which ones perform better.
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  Even if you have a small database, you can extrapolate those results of by you know,
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  percentage wise to see which one performs better.
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  The difference between SMS and MMS is MMS because of the data cost.
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  It does cost twice as much to send that message.
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  So if you have a 1000 messages in your in your bank, and you got 500 contacts, one message,
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  what MMS message will deplete your bank.
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  If if you have 500 contacts and you send an SMS message, it's only gonna use 500 message
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  credits.
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  So that's the difference.
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  That's and the and that price is is just our price.
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  Some Carrie providers charge 3 message credits for MMS.
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  Some 4.
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  So you gotta really price that out.
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  So if someone wanted to leverage text marketing, like, what are some of the creative
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  ways people do it?
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  Like, you know, like, other than, like, appointment confirmation or, yes, your move is
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  ready.
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  Like, what, like Right.
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  What are some of the other ways, like, a service business maybe could use it?
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  Yeah.
• 12:27
  So, I mean, we we have lots of fun with what we do.
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  We try to be, you know, very creative and think out of the box.
• 12:33
  You can do sweepstakes.
• 12:35
  Where you can do a monthly giveaway.
• 12:37
  You can do surveys.
• 12:38
  If you're thinking of a product line extension, you wanna know if your customer base would be
• 12:42
  open to it.
• 12:43
  Asked them.
• 12:44
  I did this for a for a customer that was thinking of do adding a subscription box.
• 12:48
  She she made like soap And she was thinking of doing a subscription box.
• 12:53
  So we just sent out a text saying, hey.
• 12:55
  We're thinking of doing a subscription box.
• 12:57
  Good idea or bad idea.
• 12:59
  Reply good or bad.
• 13:00
  And within 2 hours, she had her answer.
• 13:03
  Interesting.
• 13:04
  Gamification.
• 13:05
  Choose your offer between door a, b, or c, reply a, b, or c.
• 13:10
  And depending on how they reply, they get a different offer.
• 13:13
  With mobile marketing, it's really all about the data and being able to get as much data as
• 13:19
  you can from someone so that you can personalize the outgoing message to make it
• 13:24
  highly relevant to them.
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  So we do that in a number of ways through web forms, you know, asking these interactive
• 13:31
  questions to get that data.
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  We don't scrape or do anything nefarious like that.
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  We are asking the customer to help us be more relevant for them, and and they will often give
• 13:42
  it to us.
• 13:43
  Well, I'm gonna ask you a little more about that.
• 13:46
  When we come back, and we will be right back.
• 13:50
  Are you ready to become a boss?
• 13:52
  Hi.
• 13:52
  I'm Melinda Harrison's small biz lady.
• 13:54
  Click the button below and take my free boss quiz.
• 13:58
  This assessment will help you learn your entrepreneur type and find the right business
• 14:02
  model for you.
• 14:04
  About the number one asset in your business.
• 14:06
  Yeah.
• 14:07
  That's you.
• 14:08
  Hi, everybody.
• 14:09
  Welcome back to the small bizchett podcast live.
• 14:12
  I'm Melinda Emerson's small biz lady your host.
• 14:15
  And I've been speaking with Barbara Casey, and she's talking to us about text messaging do's
• 14:20
  and don'ts.
• 14:22
  Alright, Barbara.
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  I gotta know.
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  I know for me, when I teach people about lead gen and creating landing pages, I tell people
• 14:31
  name, email.
• 14:32
  Now are you saying that I need to say name, email, cell phone?
• 14:36
  Cause I know for me, I don't like to put my name my cell phone number in something before I
• 14:41
  have a trust relationship with people.
• 14:43
  So what are some of the best ways to to build your list of text contact information.
• 14:50
  I mean, should you buy a list?
• 14:52
  No.
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  You can't.
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  You can't.
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  That's illegal.
• 14:55
  That's illegal because remember we said it had it's explicit opt in, so you cannot buy a list.
• 15:00
  What you have to do is you have it's a value exchange.
• 15:04
  So if you're going to ask them for something, you have to give them something.
• 15:07
  So you create a welcome offer and you say, you know, could be either a welcome offer.
• 15:13
  It depends on the type of business.
• 15:14
  It could be a welcome offer.
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  It could be a piece of information that's of value, a white paper, or something that they
• 15:21
  want.
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  And in exchange for that, they're gonna give you their their phone number.
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  So that's one really good way of of building that list.
• 15:31
  The other way is if you do other advertising, you can use the text to join as a call to
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  action.
• 15:37
  I'm sure you've seen this on TV ads, radio ads, you know, text, you know, offer to 55678 and
• 15:45
  get this thing or save this amount of money.
• 15:49
  Do those really work?
• 15:50
  The text.
• 15:51
  Oh, yeah.
• 15:52
  Yes.
• 15:52
  Well, so there's there's there's a couple of different ways of joining a program.
• 15:57
  The traditional DIY kinds of platforms, there's only one way.
• 16:01
  It's text to join.
• 16:02
  Text a keyword to a phone number, you get a bounce back message that asks you to confirm
• 16:07
  that's your explicit opt in.
• 16:08
  The other way is through a web form on a website.
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  And then the third way which we use is a key through a kiosk.
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  So if you have a brick and mortar, we set up a little proprietary tablet that's customer
• 16:20
  facing It has slideshow about your business and all kinds of good things.
• 16:25
  And then there's a keypad.
• 16:26
  And the staff simply says, you know, would you like to join our rewards program or, you know,
• 16:31
  would you like to join our VIP club, whatever?
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  Put your number in here.
• 16:34
  So then the customer puts their own number in.
• 16:36
  Got it.
• 16:37
  So when it comes to sending someone an SMS message, how important is it to have it
• 16:44
  personalized, to have hi Melinda?
• 16:46
  You know, I wanna let you know about this 10% offer we're doing today because it's our
• 16:50
  company anniversary or something like that.
• 16:53
  Anytime you can personalize a message, it's better.
• 16:56
  Personalizing can be your name.
• 16:57
  It can also be something we know about you.
• 17:00
  You know?
• 17:00
  So we work with a beer store.
• 17:02
  So during in, we asked them.
• 17:04
  We had to age verify them first of all because you can't text someone under 21 for beer store.
• 17:09
  So we asked them what information would you like to hear from us?
• 17:12
  You know?
• 17:13
  So we asked, do you wanna hear about new releases?
• 17:15
  Cause there's a lot of beer nerds out there, apparently.
• 17:18
  Do you wanna hear about our monthly giveaway?
• 17:20
  Do you wanna hear about our sales?
• 17:21
  Know, what do you wanna hear?
• 17:22
  They check the boxes, and then that puts them on a a segment segmented list.
• 17:28
  So now we're able because we have that data to personalize the outreach so that it gives them
• 17:33
  exactly what they're interested in because otherwise it's just junk mail.
• 17:37
  Just it's the equivalent of the old junk mail that you threw in the basket.
• 17:40
  Sure.
• 17:41
  Sure.
• 17:41
  So bottom line for you, you feel like text messaging is gonna become the number one
• 17:47
  channel by when?
• 17:49
  I think it is already well on its way.
• 17:52
  The there there is a first mover advantage still because of the number of customers that
• 17:59
  want to be able to get tech from businesses, you know, their favorite businesses compared
• 18:04
  with the number of businesses that offer this, there's an imbalance, big imbalance.
• 18:09
  So because it's it's not everybody yet, if you do it, you're going to stand out.
• 18:15
  So that's the number one thing to to think about.
• 18:18
  I don't ever suggest anyone drop a communication channel because everybody
• 18:23
  consumes information differently.
• 18:25
  And so, you know, your your SMS text club is not gonna be at your entire customer base.
• 18:30
  It's just not not everybody wants text.
• 18:34
  I believe they are your most engaged people, though.
• 18:36
  They're the, you know, they say 20% of your customer base delivers 80% of your business.
• 18:43
  Well, these are the people that are keep are keeping your business afloat are these text
• 18:47
  customers.
• 18:47
  They're your most engaged.
• 18:49
  So you want those people in your court And the other thing that you can do with text is refer
• 18:55
  a friend programs work super well with that because mobile is very viral.
• 18:59
  People love sharing things.
• 19:02
  So, you know, you can use that to turn your customers into brand advocates and get their
• 19:07
  friends on board.
• 19:09
  And and with with the with texting, you're reaching everybody.
• 19:12
  If you go with the app approach, it's only the people that download the app And it's only if
• 19:17
  they enable notifications, which not everybody does.
• 19:20
  And it's only if they remember their password.
• 19:21
  I mean, there's a lot of problems with and they slow your phone down, and nobody can remember
• 19:25
  how to use them.
• 19:26
  And so they abandoned them on average after 45 days.
• 19:30
  So you've just spent a lot of money developing an app
• 19:33
  for what?
• 19:34
  Interesting.
• 19:34
  Interesting.
• 19:35
  Well, listen.
• 19:36
  Tell me this.
• 19:36
  This is my last question for you.
• 19:38
  What is the best business advice you've ever received?
• 19:42
  Wow.
• 19:42
  The best business advice is know your why know why you are in business and what is your
• 19:50
  mission I really believe that even for profit businesses should have missions.
• 19:55
  And if you don't know your why, you cannot remain focused and achieve your goals.
• 20:02
  The other piece of advice is just stay nimble because we've all learned that during the
• 20:07
  pandemic.
• 20:07
  You gotta be ready to pivot.
• 20:09
  I mean, we we did that.
• 20:10
  You know, the pandemic hit and, you know, it hit the small business market big, which is our
• 20:14
  primary client base.
• 20:16
  So we immediately pivoted and started doing curbside pick up text alerts.
• 20:20
  And we were the first people on the market with it because we had a product that we just
• 20:25
  reconfigured a few things and rebranded We are already out with it.
• 20:28
  And while everybody else was over here developing it, so you have to remain nimble.
• 20:32
  Good stuff.
• 20:33
  Good stuff.
• 20:33
  Well, thank you so much, Barbara, for your sage advice.
• 20:36
  I mean, I really feel like I learned a whole lot about marketing.
• 20:40
  What is your favorite podcast?
• 20:42
  I
• 20:45
  actually am addicted to TED Talks.
• 20:48
  I spend so much time thinking, breathing, and living small business.
• 20:54
  That podcasts are my escape, and I derive so much inspiration from all of the TED Talks but
• 21:01
  I just love them.
• 21:02
  I also like how I built my business.
• 21:05
  I like that one too.
• 21:06
  I like that one too.
• 21:07
  That's a good one.
• 21:08
  Barbara, what is your favorite business app?
• 21:10
  HubSpot.
• 21:11
  HubSpot.
• 21:11
  I think it's very well designed, and it always works.
• 21:15
  I love HubSpot too.
• 21:16
  And their and their content on their blog is like Amazing.
• 21:19
  Yes.
• 21:20
  Definitely.
• 21:20
  Alright, Barbara.
• 21:21
  What's your favorite old school marketing tip?
• 21:24
  Again, I'm gonna go back to to know your why.
• 21:27
  Because everything starts with that.
• 21:29
  Love it.
• 21:30
  What is the best business book you've ever read?
• 21:32
  This was a while ago, but I would have to say my Daniel Pink drive.
• 21:37
  I like that book too.
• 21:39
  Thank you guys so much for being here.
• 21:41
  Thank you again to my guest.
• 21:42
  If you're working on your digital pivot, Be sure to check out Small Buslady University
• 21:47
  where you can sign up for my latest course, social media selling.
• 21:51
  You can get everything you need finally start developing and making the money that you
• 21:56
  deserve online.
• 21:57
  So go ahead and reserve your spot today at smallbizladyuniversity.com.
• 22:03
  You know, the mission of small business chat is to end small business failure.
• 22:07
  And I thank you for allowing me to inform your small business journey once again.
• 22:12
  And I'll leave you with this.
• 22:13
  You never lose in business, either you win or you learn.
• 22:17
  Take care, everybody.
• 22:20
  Thank you for listening to the Small Biz Chat podcast with Melinda Emerson.
• 22:25
  For more resources and small business success strategies, visit succeed as your own boss.com.
• 22:31
  Subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and join us next Wednesday.