Attracting, Engaging, and Delighting with SMS Marketing + HubSpot [HubHeroes, Video EP68]
Max Altschuler, Liz, David Gates, and Devin discuss SMS marketing best practices for sales and inbound marketing. They cover consumer attitudes toward texts, the difference between transactional and promotional messages, and how to integrate SMS with HubSpot for personalized communication.
How you doing, Liz?
I'm good. Are we ready to rock? A new episode of Hub Heroes? Even though we are unsupervised, George is on vacation on our phones.
We've been de georged this week.
I know. I don't know how I feel about it. Like, I know that he and I, week after week, will sometimes, like, you know, we keep each other on. On each other's toes, you know, like, that's our thing. So I'm unchecked this week.
I do like the lack of supervision. I do like the lack of supervision. I like that part. That part's exciting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know.
Oh, yeah. I need an adult. I need another adult.
Like, I need many adults unhinged Liz this week.
Yeah.
Yes. Yeah.
Oh, boy.
Unchained, dude.
Yes.
That's what's up. You know what else is nice, though, guys, we do have someone warming that seat this week. I'm sure our listeners have noticed a new voice on. We've got David Gates, head of sales at Kixie. That's you, buddy.
That is me. Hey, guys. How's it going?
It's going great. So, Kixie, my understanding is that you guys offer automated calling and texting solutions for sales teams using CRMs like HubSpot. Right. That's kind of the big.
It's almost like you read those words like we. Those words were just given to you.
I know. Someone smart gave them to me.
Accurate. Yes. I could not have said it better myself, Liz. It's almost as if it were typed, emailed to you and read right back to me. It was so specific and actionable. I love it.
You would be so proud of me. No one actually sent it to me. I did that research all by myself.
Did you really?
I did. I did. I'm an empowered, strong, independent woman.
You are. And unsupervised. And you did that all on your own. It's amazing. It's amazing.
I know.
Really is.
I know. Yes, One day I'm going to want the votes, but until then. Thanks, bud. Thanks, bud. I look forward to hearing about that in my 360 review.
Yes. I don't know what that is, but.
I'll be sure to give one to you.
So clearly with someone like David on today, as our folks at home might have guessed, we are talking about SMS texting in the context of marketing, and that's a bit of a controversial topic, depending on who you ask. So I want us to go ahead and just dive right into this conversation. David, before I get to you, you, Max and Devin When I say SMS text marketing, what immediately comes to mind for you? Because I will admit, as I was preparing for this, I kind of had some complex feelings about it. There are some brands that the way they use SMS texting, it makes me want to chuck my phone into a river. But then there are other cases where I, I started going through my phone and I'm like, oh, wow. But they're actually ones that I interact with very regularly, that are perfect, purposeful, that are helpful, and that I actually use. So it made me wonder, you know, my knee jerk reaction. But I don't like SMS texting. Maybe it's, it's more circumstantial, But Max and Devin, I would love to hear from you guys about that. What are your initial thoughts when you heard here about it?
I want to say one word. I want to say one word. That's my initial thoughts. And then I want Devin to go into his thing because I think they'll tie together very well. Ready?
Careful.
Careful. That's what I'm gonna say. Careful. Great power comes create responsibility. Careful, right? Oh, God, I'm sorry.
Oh, no. Already, Already in the chat. Wait, wait, can we just point that in the chat?
SMS to SMS marketing right now, Devin, is that what's going on? Have you gotten text message marketing? He has.
He's gotten like five.
But that's the danger right there. Look what can happen? You could derail a whole webinar just with improperly timed text message communication.
Can we also talk about how Chad in the chat pane was already ready for this? I'm ready for a Devin rant. So, Devin, take it away, bud.
I could barely contain myself trying to be really, you know, respectful of our guest and the work you do. But I hate SMS text messaging with a passion. Like, yeah, it goes beyond chapping my hide it.
It really, like grinds your gears, huh?
Oh, like from the core of my being. I hate it. I have never gotten an SMS marketing text that I was happy with. The only time text messaging from a company is okay to me is when it's transactional. Like when I'm calling AAA and they're letting me know someone's coming. Outside of that, the store letting me know that they've got this sale because I put my number in the kiosk receipt. I know. Oh, my God. Or one time I applied for a loan and these people keep, oh, by the way, you got approved for the loan. Yeah, but I didn't get it, so leave me alone. And, and, and, and I keep like, I'VE marked them as spam and they still. Because I, I did stop and it didn't work. And then, and then I marked them as spam. And so now I get these me and they send them from new numbers. But my phone is smart enough. Like, I know that's spam. And so every now and then I'll get a text message indicator and I look at the text message says, hey, this was spam. And I'm like, I already know who it's from because they're the only ones that are blowing me up. But I never, never since SMS messaging has become a thing, have I been happy to get a text from a company. And the only thing, the only thing that frustrates me more about SMS text messages is the fact that they work. I hate the fact that people from SMS messaging because that just guarantees that I'm gonna get more messages. And it's like, I wish you people weren't so okay with strangers texting you because then they wouldn't text me. I wish there was an SMS do not text list that I could just get on just to. Because it's like, it's like direct mail except instead of your mailbox, they're in your bathroom. And it's just, it's so, so intrusive and just so annoying to me.
But Devin, how do you really feel?
Yeah, yeah.
That is a channel has reported positive results and I hate it.
Yeah, they're in the bathroom and they got the remote switch to your bidet is what they're doing.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Right?
I want to add on so because I wanted to stay careful and then I knew Devin was going to do that and then I want to, I want to add my, the rest of my thoughts onto that first.
Right?
Is like I think of SMS almost in the same, almost with a couple of key differences than I think about email, right? There's a right way to do it, there's a wrong way to do it, right? And I think everyone here, including you, Dave. Dave is going to agree with that. There's a right and wrong way to do everything that you do with HubSpot or anything else, right? When I think of texting, I think the biggest kind of difference between that and email. Because think about it. With emails, like, I look at screen, I see message that has words. I maybe do something because of it. Like, yep, in that sense they're the same. However, email is very passive. People can interact with their email when they want to. They can shut their notifications off. They can say, I'm only going to check my inbox later. And in that point it's just how much are you messing with their life when they're doing that?
Right?
Yeah.
But you check your text messages immediately, you stop what you're doing and look at your text message. Your Apple watch taps you on the wrist and goes, hey, there's something really important. You got, you got it trained you to do this, right?
Yes.
It makes me so angry because I'll be like, is it a hot guy? No, it's 10% off of Geico. Fantastic.
Next best thing. You know what I mean?
So when I, when I think of SMS and when I think of like it's, it's injury with, with for marketing, I think you got to think about how marketing supports experiences that people go through. And I think with sms, like an SMS should not be doing like the job of a blog post.
Right, Right.
Blog posts and like content you create goes out there and it interacts with people that you don't have permission to talk to yet.
Right.
Because they just freely find it on the Internet.
Right.
However, if you get someone's cell phone number and you hit them up and you they were not expecting you to text them, that is like instant violation of like my privacy.
Right.
When I get political campaigns smashing me on text messages, I'm like, I can't write, stop fast enough and I hit the report button. It's like, no, don't do that to me.
Right?
Like if you're going to, if you're going to buy my info, shoot me an email, Don'. Text me.
Right?
Because like that text message could be a text from my wife, a text from my kid, a text from someone who's like really important to me. And when you've invaded that sacred attention wave that I have and you did it to try to sell me something and I didn't ask you to do that. Hate you. Hate you so much.
Right.
However, if I was expecting to hear from you, that's a different story. Right?
Yep.
So I think like it's the way in which you use it. I have two brands that I frickin love when they text me.
Right?
Yeah.
And they're trying to sell me something, but it's under a very specific circumstance in which they know I buy their shit all the time.
Right.
And they know that something that I like is buying stuff from them, but they have the data to prove that they were doing this before they knew I liked to buy shit from them. They got my phone number a while ago. They didn't Ramp up the text messaging until I spent a shitload of money with them.
Right.
Yep.
You know, it wasn't, oh, we got your phone the first time and you haven't bought anything from us, which is.
What usually people do.
Right?
Totally don't do that. But it's like, hey, thoughtful, like, drops of new products, including, like, a nice, rich, like, image. I love it. I'll shout them out later and stuff. But that's kind of what I'm where I'm thinking there's a time and place for it, just like there is for anything else.
So, David, I want to turn to you here. Yeah. Because what I would like to hear from you is, first of all, your reaction to the clearly complex myriad of feelings that we all just dumped on you.
I heard Devin's complex myriad of feelings. I heard Devin. Yeah, it was subtle, but I was able to tease it out. It's interesting because when you message SMS messaging, I have the same initial reaction. I'm a human who's evolved over millions of years to identify threats and generally ignore things that are going well. When you ask about SMS messaging, my mind goes immediately to all those SMS that I do not want to receive. Like, immediately. Right. And what I forget oftentimes, unless I really think about is how great it is to have SMS messaging instead of having to call people for all the things I've been texting them about. Right. Like, in my interpersonal day. I love texting because it's synchronous to my schedule, which is like the most important thing. Right. I'm willing to forego lots of benefits of a call, like tonality not being that mistaking what the person is saying and getting angry at them for no reason and then them questioning whether why they've ever moved in with you. It's a long story. But, you know, text messaging is an easy way to fall into traps like that calling much better. Right. However, I'm willing to sacrifice all that because I'd much rather have it be in sync with my schedule. I can text you when it's convenient for me, you reply when it's convenient for you, and everything's gravy. But like Max said, we want to make sure we're texting it at a time that is actually appropriate about a subject that I actually want to hear from you about. And so I'll give you, this is a quick counterexample because I think it's better than me arguing in the abstract. But, like, if someone comes on the Kixie Chat and starts chatting and they say, I love your chatbot. They don't ever say that, but I want to talk to a human. Right. And then they don't get a response in a minute and they bounce. Right. That person would love to get a text message probably if we have from an agent here at Kixie, an actual human here at Kixe.
Right.
They would love that. Now they haven't overtly said to me, and you're likely to really hear this very often, hey, please text me. You know, they're probably not going to hear that, but man, they would love to talk to a human. And so that's a great. So we trigger an auto text right. From an agent here, Kixie, to that person. Hey, sorry, commented calling the chat. Sorry we couldn't get a human over to you in less than a minute. I'd love to talk to you whenever you're free.
Yes.
What a great use of text messaging. So I think to Max's point, it is definitely contextual and I think, you know, the mistake people make is thinking that it's, you know, it's a hammer, everything's a nail. I just need to start send out more auto text. It's like, it's like the bad days of email spam and it was just like more emails, you know, and it's just like if I send out enough tens of thousands of emails, people will buy my product. No one is buying your product direct off of SMS marketing, you know, but. But it can be a great way to bridge conversation. Yeah.
And that's super interesting you bring it up, I think, because. Because what we need to do for everyone listening here is like, there's. I think there's two different sort of like schools of thought when we're thinking about texting inside of HubSpot, there's sending texts meant to be the sort of like traditional. I hate saying the word blast.
Right.
Where it's like, here's a list of people. We're going to promote this thing and send it out to everybody. And that would, I think when people think of like marketing text message, a lot of people are thinking of that, right?
Yep.
Whereas kind of what you mentioned, you're not talking about sending out texts as if it was like an email blast to like a list of people. You're saying, how can we give a more convenient way for you and your sales rep to kind of connect with each other when waiting for a zoom call scheduled at a certain time is not always going to be convenient for everyone's schedule as well.
Right.
That's Exactly. Right?
Yeah. So like in what's cool in HubSpot is like both of those things can happen, right. And you can use them in unison. But there can be elements of marketing, text messaging or SMS or whatever it is. But then there's literal ways where inside the HubSpot interface, like, you could literally empower your sales reps to have text, conversate conversations, not broadcasts, like conversations back and forth for someone who likes to just be able to text. So it's like you got a rep working on a deal or something. They've got a quick question about like the configuration of the, of the doodad that you're selling it. You can like, you can like, oh, hey, did you need this? The red or in the blue? Oh, the blue. Okay, great. I'll update the quote for it.
Right.
Instead of let's hop on a zoom call to do like, whatever this is, you know what I mean?
So, yeah, one, you nailed it 100%. I think the keyword, you know, you mentioned, like, unsolicited text message, the keyword being solicited. Right. Like, and oftentimes that solicitation might not come in a really over way, like, hey, please text me at my cell phone number. But it might come at like, hey, I'd love to talk to a human, or, or crap, I didn't identify which color I want the doodad in. I would love to get a text message, say, confirming, confirming, red or blue. You know what I mean? Yeah, like, that would be great.
Yeah.
So, David, here's what I want to ask you here for a moment. You know, because we're seemingly having a conversation about what SMS can be and what it should be for marketing and sales organizations using inbound. But then we also have to wrestle with the fact of what is in some cases the reason why. Devin, our complex man of nuanced emotion, and quite frankly, me too, I think we've all been on the receiving end of the good, the bad and the ugly. So.
Yep.
Where do organizations go wrong? How are they thinking about SMS incorrectly that leads to literally, not customer delight, it's prospect and buyer repellent. How does that happen?
I think they get it wrong by thinking it's one of two things. Either a panacea, meaning all I need to do is SMS enough people and they will buy my product, or that it's completely useless and I should abdicate that entire medium and focus only on calling and email. The two other ways I can annoy people and get them to scare them away from buying my product. If not used correctly. So I think those. If you find yourself gravitating towards a poll on the issue, I would say you're probably wrong. It's the same standard I use for politics sometimes. If you find yourself really gravitating really strongly, maybe I would edge towards the middle a little bit. Meaning. I think SMS is actually the preferred method of communication for most of us for most of our day. And because it's preferred, we're especially defensive about it. You know what I mean? Like anything valuable to us, Devin's especially Max, is especially me too, really defensive about my SMS because. Because I've given up on my inbox long, long ago. That thing is just filled with slings and arrows from a million different marketers trying to get ahold of me and so it's almost useless at this point. So I'm okay abdicating email, but please don't do that to my sms. But however, if it's something that, if it's communication that I want, then God I'd love to have it over sms. I mean for me, if I had to handle all the communication I handle over text, over calls or long form emails, what a pain that would be. You know what I mean? So really it's about someone in the chat was mentioning C for consent. It really is, I think looking for indicia of consent like or indicia of wanting that communication addition, meaning just some indicator from that person that this would be a good method of communication for me.
And it's not going to get much of you podcast. I know we do strategies. I love it.
Yeah, and it's fun. Look at these backgrounds and these hats people are wearing. I mean this is a fun podcast and yet informative at the same time. It's amazing. We're doing both things, you know what I mean? All the things. So I think looking for indicia and then triggering calls or triggering text messages based off of that. HubSpot is like my favorite platform to build workflow automations in. My favorite. And the great thing is we can automate techs either through Kixie or through HubSpot itself that go direct to a person from someone on your team at a time that is convenient for them. So someone you send out an email and the email has an embedded video in it from Vidyard or one of these other companies. And that's awesome. You see they watch the entire video goes through all minute and a half on an email. Dude, someone spent 90 seconds watching my video. There's some interest there. That's not a bad Time to text them and just say, hey, what did you think of the video? And have that text come from me and you can auto text that right up through your workflow and just real, it's a real soft thing. What do you think of the video? I'm not saying, hey, buy my product. I saw you watch the video. More text messages. It's not that. It's just like, hey, what do you think of it? That's great. That's a great way to open up some communication and it's less intrusive than a direct call, you know what I mean? So I think, to answer your question, like, I think for companies it's about finding indicia of consent or indicia of like an invitation. What action has this potential customer made? That means that tells me, hey, this is a soft invitation here to text me. And it's probably going to be useful.
You know, but like let's also remember too because which when you say the interior, it is the same thing somehow saying it. But I like that word so much better. I'm going to start.
I feel so fancy when I say.
Does it sound cool? It sounds, I love it. That's right, I love it.
It's one thing to collect the email, I mean it's one thing to collect the phone number, but it's also another thing to understand how you're allowed to use it.
Right?
Yeah.
So like that could be something as simple as saying a little checkbox that says it's okay to text me. Right. Check it off. Have that. Because inside of HubSpot for the new SMS tools, right? There's like you can only send to people that have like a certain property checked or consent check or something like that.
Right.
And so like you could power that property getting switched from that.
Right.
You know, or it could just be, you know, maybe your, your sales rep asking that first call, hey, is it okay for me to like text you? Yeah.
Cool.
Check a box bomb, good to go.
Right.
100%, you know, things like that. And like especially when easy to ask for that consent.
Right.
And you, you really want to. Because the last thing you want to do is get some information from someone and not know how you're allowed to use it and then potentially create like a really bad interaction with them.
Right.
So it's like, it's easier just to figure out if you have the consent or not to do it.
Yeah, I think the other thing to keep it.
Yeah, go for it.
Go ahead.
As a helpful little nugget too when you're asking for that consent or like, or ascent, you know, I think just saying like mentioning the alternative. So, hey, would you love me? Would you like to text back? As we move through this process, would you like to do it over text as opposed to me calling you and emailing you? When you phrase the alternatives, you're like, oh, well, I mean, I definitely don't want to jump on a phone call. I mean, dude, a phone call is like someone just show it these days, a phone call. It's like someone just showing up to your door and being like, hey, David, I'm here. And it's like, what the hell, I'm not ready for a phone call. I can't, I don't know how long the call is going to be. I don't know what, you know, I've got things to do. Oh my God. It's a shocking thing these days to be called. So like, as an alternative to that, I mean, sure, I'd rather you text me than that, you know, like.
Yeah, well, I think the thing to keep in mind though, David, and at least this is where I'm coming from on it, is that over the past, I don't know, 10, 15, 20 years, it's become easier for consumers to throttle and block ads. Right? As we become more inundated, whether we're talking about television, whether we're talking about. I remember when folders were introduced in Gmail and all of a sudden all of the emails that us marketers were sending got started going to like promotion and started getting buried elsewhere. And so what's fascinating about this is that when it comes to sms, it's one of the last few places where you can kind of catch somebody off guard. There is no real filtering. So what I find fascinating about it is like I'll even catch myself eye rolling sometimes when I receive texts from people I opted into. And I think that's one thing marketers need to keep in mind is that I think they treat it sometimes with the same mindset as other channels. Like if I send an email, I have the expectation of, well, somebody will read that, you know, when they're, when they're ready to read it. But when it comes to texting, that's not the same thing. I think there needs to be a little bit more reverence and kind of purposeful intention around when you're reaching out to people. Because texting is jarring. I mean, now people are like, I don't know if anybody else is like this, but I am perpetually on do not disturb on my own phone Like, I just got so tired of every app and notification and text that I get. It's just like a constant barrage of stuff. But I think it's frustrating because texting is one of the last places where we're supposed to be just getting good, happy messages, not junk mail. And I think it's starting to feel that way.
Yeah, you're right. So it's one of those things where you want to make sure these are good, happy messages you're sending out, these people. You want to make sure that like, like there is a real. This text message is delivering something of value in some way to this person. Like, I am helping. So I'll give you an example. I'm the head of sales over at Kixie, and so my guys get on sales calls all the time, and we're trying to negotiate these deals across weeks or months. And oftentimes we'll invite someone to a Slack channel or something like that. Why? Like, not because we want to get a Slack notification all the time from them, but because, man, is it easier to coordinate when you have some quick async synchronous communication, meaning it's synced to my schedule and you can read it within whenever it's time it's convenient for you, rather than just me trying to call everybody or doing one of the crazy email threads where someone replies in the middle of the thread and then it surfaces back up that half the thread but not the rest of the three. It's great. So texting is in a similar vein. If you're trying to move through a process and you're really trying to solve a problem for a customer, sales comes off as a negative thing so often. But at the end of the day, sales done well is really helping them solve a problem that they're experiencing. And so if I'm getting help over text message, well, that's not so bad. I mean, if someone texts me saying, hey, David, I'm happy to help you move, I'm like, oh, well, well, well, that's a. That's a text message. I would love to hear. So in the same way we've helped moving companies do exactly that, you know, So I think they're getting value in.
Exchange for the time they're getting value in exchange for the time it takes for them to interact with the medium. And that's like what makes emails. That's what makes a good email versus a bad email, right? Because, like, whenever we interact with something on a screen, right, we're wasting our time in order to see what it is and see if it's value and if it's not, we hate it. And if it is, we go. I'm fine with the time I just spent doing that.
Totally.
So the same goes for text messages, but yeah.
So David, you've alluded to a couple so far. What are some great examples that you've seen with your clients in terms of how they with purpose and intention integrate SMS into their inbound marketing or sales programs? What does that mean?
Totally. So the example I gave earlier is a great one. Obviously that's like really overt. Initiate someone comes into a chat, tries to engage, wants a human, can't find a human, leaves you auto text them back from a human. Amazing. You saved the day. You're spider man with text messaging, it's, you know what I mean? Great. The great power and responsibility met in one and you were able to web them and get them back home safely, whatever it is. So like that's, that's great. That's a great easy example. Usually they're not so strong. So like I do want to, I have so much sympathy now as someone who runs sales teams with salespeople. And so for those of you who are watching the webinar who are like, yeah, but I mean, I want to sell more. I get it, I get it. From the consumer standpoint, texting sucks, but it's the one medium that works right now. Like, how do I make use of it? Right. And so for those people listening with that question, like, I'll get a great example. So it was Covid we locked down. I was working with a large pest control company ends in Irminex and they, they, they, they couldn't go door to door anymore. Right. And there are all these bug problems that are localized, specific areas. So a part of Ohio, cicadas everywhere or whatever. Right. And so they, they can't go door to door and help people, but they would love to, you know, hit people up and let them know, hey, if this wave of cicadas or whatever like flows over your home and the pestilence spreads and you would love us to deal with it, we're happy to help. Right. Well, what they were able to do was they were able to send out emails because again, we want soft initial contact. We don't want to spam everybody in Ohio or Cincinnati saying, hey, cicada problem, text me here. And we're going to create a bunch of dev ins everywhere. They just hate this company and never want to hear from me. They'll be like, no, you know what the Cicadas aren't the pest. You're the pest for texting me. Right? So we don't want that. So instead what they did was sent out the email campaign with an embedded video just like, hey, if you see this kind of bug, husk, that's an indicia of this kind of bug. We would love to go out and help you to use that word. And so when they watch that video, if someone watched it all the way through, not just watch part of it and skipped it, watched it all the way through, then it would trigger a text message saying, hey, sorry, what do you think of the video? You know what I mean? If they got a response over text message that wasn't like, do not text me ever again, great. Then it's like they'll get a text back saying, I did see that. I think we have those damn things or whatever. Like, I tried to get rid of it myself, I couldn't. Great, we'll send someone out over there to help. And that was a whole. It became like a nationwide campaign. But they made it very specific. Again, they weren't just sending out a random mass text to everyone in the United States saying, hey, do you have a pest problem? Like that's the wrong way to do it. But specific to their area. Like, hey, we noticed there a bunch of silverfish in this area hitting these homes. You're in the area. Have you seen this? Here's a video explaining it. And then if they watch the video, reply to the email or workflow automation is triggering the text. That's great. Awesome.
That's, that's brilliant actually because like what they're doing is like they're doing so one very targeted.
Right.
Because it's like, we know the cicadas are here, right?
Yes.
And I'm pretty sure the, the, the, the, the cicadas are related to the indicious too. Never mind. That was a dumb joke.
Anyway, Speaking of indicious. Speaking of indicious.
So it's, that's great. But like the fact that they were thoughtful enough to say, hey, yeah, we could get them to do this thing, watch this video. And if they skip out in the two seconds, they clearly don't give a right. But if they watch the whole thing, then we have like a really cool indicator there of like this might actually be not just relevant because of where they are, but relevant because of the fact they watch the whole video means they may have seen these things have been going, oh, oh, I'm gonna actually hear what they have to say.
Right?
Because if they didn't care. They'd be gone in a second.
Right.
No one's gonna watch a five minute bug video if they were seeing those bugs outside.
Yeah, exactly. Right.
You know, unless you're like my five year old. She loves bugs. But.
So, Devin, I have a question for you here because you've been, you had understandable feelings, but as we've been unpacking this conversation around Indicia and how, how these types of programs can be put forward with intent, where does your mind go?
What are the.
Whether that's. You can see the case for it, or you just have more pleas for marketing and sales teams. Just please to not screw this up.
Well, my number one is don't text me specifically.
Even if he says yes? Even if he says yes, it's a no.
He doesn't mean it.
You are.
Yeah. Devin doesn't actually even have a phone number. He got rid of it just for this.
I have a burner Google voice number specifically for things that I think I'm gonna get spammed on. But like, I, I, like I said, I get it. If you do it right, it works. I, I've, I've heard. I, I knew when I was working an agency, there was, there was a, a house flipper that was using SMS to let people know about houses that were available and, and, or, or in, in trying to even purchase some homes. And it worked for them. It was great. And so there are.
You're saying you don't have enough of a cicada problem yet for SMS to be okay? You, you're saying that the, the spread of locusts, cicada, whatever, needs to be much higher for Devin to be really.
Committed until the cicadas are asking for squatters rights. I feel like Devin's out on the cicada.
It's not enough, dude. He'd rather live in harmony with the skaters.
Yeah, there is no, there is no cicada level because I've driven through cicada country and there is no like, because at that point, I don't need you to text me. I'll already call.
Liz. Can I interrogate Devin for a second?
Yes. I actually, I saw you leave up on that mic, so I was about to say, Max, do you have some questions?
I want to see where Devin is on some of these things. Okay.
Okay, do it.
All right, so I'm gonna just ask you a couple questions. You tell me if you're okay with it or not. If you were like in the sales process, let's say you had a conversation With a sales rep. It's a product you're like seriously consider buying but it's a complex sales cycle. Are you okay texting with the sales rep? No. No. Okay, all right, interesting.
But again that's just me.
That's just.
You don't text me.
We are. Yeah. You only like getting texts from those that you're close with.
Yes.
Right.
So like what if it's like, so even like with convenience stuff. So let's say you're, I think we mentioned AAA before, right? You're, you're, you're stuck on the side of the highway and the, the truck gets assigned to you and they're on their way out and you get a text. Is that cool?
Oh yeah. Transactional? Absolutely. Like my Walmart delivery is almost here. Absolutely.
Okay, interesting. So you like the convenience, the texts that are convenient, texts that are like hyper specific to something you just did, you think transactional. That makes a lot of sense.
Right.
So if you just bought something, right. And it has to do with what you bought or requested or something like that, you're okay with text automations that are simple notifications.
Right.
Just keeping you in the loop. Which is very different than a conversation with the sales rep. Which is also very different than a hey, you don't know us but we're trying to sell you something.
Right.
Like those are, I'm trying to like form the categories you're okay with and the ones that you're not. Yeah.
Text messages telling me that what I asked for is on the way and that's it. Like don't even ask me for feedback, just tell me that like okay, you, you, you, you got the delivery from Walmart. This person just started shopping. Okay, this person just substituted some. This person just dropped, is on their way to drop it off. This person just dropped it off and that's the end of the interaction period.
Interestingly enough, Chad in the chat he just, he brought up a very similar scenario in which how his company uses it. He says another thing we do is inspections on route SMS texts from the sales reps number. We use a system that has a live tracking link and it sends a bio that is about the rep, their image and the link. Then they can follow along with the rep and call the number back to get a hold of that specific user on the way to do the inspection. Which I think is a really neat thing. And I like what you're talking about there Max, about the categories of it. I think there's a very big difference between solicitation, unsolicited solicitation. Right. And something that has to do with the completion of a transaction or service or however it's being rendered. What would you say? So I want to take a moment here before we run out of time to talk a bit about technology. So obviously Kixie, which is this particular platform, it has the capability to integrate with CRMs like HubSpot. So David, can you talk to us a bit about the technology piece? What does that look like in terms of integrating those two types of, of that app and HubSpot together? And Max, I know you'll have thoughts about this as well.
Technology, Technology here. I've heard of technology. I've heard of it in fact. Yeah. In fact Chad was mentioning in chat another thing too. It links in perfectly. He was talking about technology. He was saying when I get a text message, what I would love is for to be human on the other side of it. And so you asked for a second like what side of the technology? I think one of the things that we really provide value on as an add on to HubSpot, we integrate directly with HubSpot. You can trigger a text message not from a general marketing email or sorry, text phone number associated with the company, but text message from an individual rep that way and that way it can be part of a deal that's already moving forward. You're already in progression, you've already moved through certain stages and maybe you're trying to buy a car or something like that and all of a sudden they got the car washed and they don't rather using the stock images that you've been seeing on the initial website when you were browsing, perusing the car. They auto text you the brand new newly washed car photos where it's gotten like the inside you can see everything and that's cool. Like that's a, that's a good use of text messaging. You're already far along in the process. You've been approved for an auto loan. You're shopping around the, you knew already expressed interest in that particular car and now you're getting an auto text. It's an MMS with individual photos of the car from the actual rep who you've been dealing with around the purchase. Like that's, that's great. That's, that's a very different experience and probably one more in line with what Chad wants. But again we're using stuff that sounds really scary. We're using it, we're using text messaging, we're using it as part of a sales process and we're using automated Text messaging. If you only told me those three things about it, I'd be like, hell no. I would sound a lot like Devin. I'd be like, no, no, no, I don't want any of that. But when you put it in context like that, you're like, oh, actually that's kind of cool. I would like to have some MMs of like real photos and not these cheesy stock photos that were on the website when I first looked at the car. Like that's sick. So I think making sure that you're using technology, you can use technology in a way that makes it feel more human and facilitate human to human communication. Even if it's automated, which is kind of, you know, it's kind of an odd mix. You wouldn't expect that it's a result that you wouldn't expect from an automation.
Yeah. David, is Kixie. Like does Kixie more so focus on that facilitating texting conversations between humans at your company and your and your customers or does it also have the element of where like brands are more so like you're getting a text from the brand versus like the, you know, Jimmy the sales rep. Yeah.
You could use us to send a text from brand. Where we really shine is texts and calls. Could we do calling too? That's event based. And the event based, we're not, I'm not meaning so much like July 4th. I mean like someone opened the email, watch the embedded video and replied the email and said yeah, I'd love to jump on a call. And then you get an auto text saying, hey, what time works for you? I'm free these days. These hours. These days. Okay, that's very different. That's kind of cool. Like, but even again, even though it's automated, even though it's an automated reply based, but it's based off of the event of the person interacting. So I think for a lot of the calling and texting I see and I see this all the time. So someone sets up a sequence and sequences are so cool. Right? You see them in HubSpot, you see them in other places like sales office and Salesforce and like sequence like call on day one, email on day two, call on day four, email on day 10. And that's great, right? Like for a sales rep, that's great for a recipient you're like, well look, there's no particular reason you're calling me on Thursday at 2pm in the afternoon on day four. Apart from it's convenient for your schedule as a sales rep, but me as a recipient like I'm doing stuff, man. I don't want a random text or call at 2pm on a Thursday. That's not, that doesn't fit my schedule. But again, so again what we're looking for is we're looking for an event. So you send out the email or maybe make the call on day one. And then we have triggers where we sent out little pieces of bait. The email, the embedded video. Maybe they visit your website, maybe they engage with your chatbot. Like all this data flowing into HubSpot. And what people typically do with all that data flowing in is they call them at day four on Thursday at 2pm in the afternoon and then send them an auto text because it's in their sequence. It's a. Why are you doing that? You have all this data coming in. You know when they're free, you know when they're reading your emails, you know when they're engaged with the chatbot. Like it's a little creepy, but at least it's convenient to their schedule and at least it's solicited in the sense that they're doing some action that lets you know they're actually interested in the product that you're trying to talk to them about. I think that's a much better way to use technology to facilitate human to human communication like Chad wanted. As opposed to like scaring people off from ever wanting to talk to you ever again and just replying, no, stop texting me on their phone from. You know.
Yeah, yeah. And then you guys also have just like from a technology piece of it. I remember, I don't know if I'm getting the name right, but you have these like. I don't, I think call cues is the word inside of HubSpot. But you have this feature where it's like if someone fills out a form you can literally get them into like, like it, it, it basically auto calls them from or assign. I can't remember exactly how it works but like yeah, it basically triggers one of your reps to call them and like puts them in a queue to be called. Right? Or something like that.
Exactly right. Someone fills on your website, all of a sudden a sales rep on your team, boom. They get a pop up form fill. Do you want to make a call to this person? They click accept. They're automatically calling them. They don't pick up. Drop an automatic voicemail and then maybe you send them a text and say, hey, I dropped you an automatic voicemail. I won't text you again. That's me. You want me to but let me know a good time to call you again. Now I'm texting them to find a good time to communicate with them. That's great. Now again, I'm texting them just in a way to get permission and to get some information from them. So again, I don't want to be a spammy salesperson at the end of the day. I want to talk to you. And if you sell me no, I want to go away and remove you from my list and never buggy again. You know that that's the. That's the ultimate goal here, not to just annoy people with my brand. So I think the incentives can be aligned between the person and the brand. It's just making sure we use the information available to us to be smart about it, you know?
Yeah. Do y' all ever recommend that people. And this is more like a strategy thing, like, and kind of going back to the in now I can't even say indicia thing right. Would you encourage folks who, when they see someone unsubscribes from their email, is that a pretty good indicator that, like, you probably shouldn't text them too? Oh, God, you guys have experimented with or looked at.
Okay, yes. Got it.
Again, like, hey, guys, safe to say if they don't want your emails, probably don't send them a text either, right?
Cut it, dude. You know, again, we're looking for event base. So, like, I think this is true for a lot of sales processes. A lot of the automation gets used incorrectly. We saw, we see automation come in and we're like, ooh, I could automate everything. It's like, whoa. Okay, before we start automating everything, let's think about what the triggers these automations are. And the automation should work in both directions. They should both get people further along in the sales process and. And encourage us to auto call or auto text in a community times it also do the opposite, which is they're giving me addition that they do not want to be a part of this process anymore. That I extricate them is another word from all the other communication. The various channels I'm hitting them up in. Let's pull back on that. And that that's true for not even. I mean, a tangent. That's true for marketing spend as well. I see a lot of times people unsubscribe from emails and stuff and that you're still your ad spend for LinkedIn sales ads. You know, your LinkedIn ads are still targeting that person. It's like, whoa, what are you doing? Pull back from everything. Stop bugging them about Kixie or whatever it is. Like, yeah, they're not interested. Like, save yourself that marketing spend and put it towards someone who might actually be interested. Like, let's unenroll people from things, you know. Yeah, yeah.
Love it.
So, as we wrap up this conversation, I'd love to hear from all of you. And Max, I actually want to start with you this time. Time. I would love to hear from you all on what would you like to see brands challenge themselves to do in 2024 when it comes to SMS and their marketing and sales programs? Devin, I'm predicting that your answer may be don't. But you know, I'm gonna leave room for you to prove me wrong. But we're gonna start with Max.
Yeah. First, don't. Don't you dare text Devin is the one thing.
Yeah.
Really do not do. Because you know what? You know what? You'll end up on a podcast that you weren't even invited to.
So that's what's gonna happen.
So just in that. He'll probably start a segment at the beginning where he goes, this is a list of the companies that texted me this week. Actually, you better do that, Devin. We should start right away.
It's not a bad idea, actually. It's a clever idea.
Yeah. Devin's sms. Shit. Listen. Yeah, I'd. I'd. So. So here's. Here's what I would recommend. And I'm gonna. I'm gonna say. I'm gonna say maybe I'm. I'm gonna focus a little bit on. On companies that. That do rely on repeat business.
Right.
Yeah.
Specifically e commerce companies out there. There are two particular brands that I really love. One's called Melon, they make hats. And another one's called One Bone, which makes clothes for guys that are my size.
Right.
Yeah. These guys do a really, really great job at sending, not sms, but mms, which is like SMS is just plain text. MMS is where you can get like emojis, files, pictures, like all these other things. Right. What they've done is they've clearly kind of figured out that I like to buy stuff from them because. And that is very interesting because most of the time, a goal or a challenge of your customer is not to buy things from you, especially if they've never bought anything from you in the past. However, if you've seen somebody buy something from you multiple times, there's a good chance that a goal of theirs can sometimes be to buy more stuff from you because they've clearly done it Multiple times. It's going to be way more likely that that is somewhat, even if it's a small one, at least a bit of an iota of a, a goal or challenge that someone, you know. And for those people, I'd say if there's any time that it's okay to send the hey, here's a, here's a great deal on you know, 20% off of like whatever it's to the people who buy from you regularly, right? There is, there's. So I think one my, my, my thing there is take those messages that you're sending just to everybody because you're basically saying I want everyone to buy from me, right? So I'm going to send everybody these coupons and these, these friggin, you know, 20% off. Like you know, there's a on thing. Don't send them to anybody. Send them to the people that buy from you regularly and stop annoying the people that don't because you're just do. You're just doing negative stuff to these, the margins of folks that don't care about that.
Right?
When you could just be focusing on the people that actually care.
Right?
Because I'm assuming, you know, the more people that report your text as spam or I don't know if you. That's even a thing or like saying stop or like reporting you for like abuse or like whatever it may be, you want to avoid that as much as possible and really kind of of you know, isolate the, the, the, these, these sort of like super bottom of the funnel like text, text message messages to the folks who have actually indicated like buying from you is something I do regularly.
Right.
And just make sure it's used in the right spot. But I would also think too that how can you think of like new products that you have as like new content, right? So a really cool thing that these companies do that I enjoy getting texted from. Let me actually, actually I'll find melon here and I'll put it up on the screen. So melon. So these guys, I could barely see it on the screen here. I don't really know. Every single time they send me a text, they only send me. Well of course it was the holiday so they, they were a little bit crazier on like the coupon stuff, right. But they only text me when there's like a brand new like drop like a brand new hat like something that I haven't, haven't seen before. So it's like net new content to me and they always deliver it with like a really beautiful, stunning image, which is not something that you're used to seeing in a text message, right? Especially any kind of marketing text message. It's usually always like say 50 off hit to a Texas back stop to not get this. And no one likes that.
Right?
So it's like for those folks that really like to buy something for you, if you are going to send a text, what are the little things you can do to make that text a little bit more interesting thing, Right. If it is one of those very bottom of the funnel, buy some stuff again from us text, it's all the little stuff you can do in there to make it better. But the most important thing you could do is really make sure you're isolating a segment of your audience, that buying stuff from you is actually an interest they have.
Right.
And you know, until you've seen someone do it multiple times, you can't say buying from you is something that they're genuinely interested in.
Right.
So.
So yeah, look for that stuff.
David, what about you?
Yeah, I would say I know we're short on time, but I'd leave you with like three compound words like event based, event based, event based, like for. If you're doing outbound and you're in sales, then you want to be triggering these text messages as a part of the sales process once it's already kind of been initiated, or because there's been, to use that word again, some major indicia that they would like to receive a text or that would be a convenient way to communicate given the interest they've expressed in whatever it is that you're trying to sell to them, whether that's email opens, email replies, watching embedded videos till completion, stuff like that. We're going to gather that. Visiting your website, engaging with your chatbot, start cobbling together those some if and statements in a HubSpot workflow, and boom, you're off to the races. You can do a great job at facilitating communication, not just from a primary marketing number, from an individual rep on your side. So again, you have that human communication. The other thing I'll say, like, this is kind of an unsung hero. I think often support teams, support is a rough business to be in, but that's a business where people want to talk to somebody. In fact, what people don't want is to deal with a lengthy ivr. So if you see someone trying to call into support, maybe you miss their call. This could easily be true for salespeople. I have this set up. You call me and I miss your call. My Kixie phone number. It auto texts you back just saying, hey, I'm stuck on another call right now or on a webinar with hub heroes. I'll get back as soon as I can. Here's my calendly link to schedule time to talk to me, otherwise I'm going to text you right back. And I see the text message that came out from me to them on my Kixie dialer and like, it's great, it's great for everybody. It's giving it for me because I'm stuck on doing something else. But I want to reply and it's great for them because they got a response from me, a human who they want to talk to because they were calling me support. It's a great use case for that. Someone comes into a call queue, maybe they get stuck in an IVR situation and then they leave. They would love a text from an actual human saying, hey, this is Sarah, I'd love to talk to you. I noticed you dropped out of the hold. I hate being on hold too. You know what I mean? That's perfect, right? You save the day. So I think knowing when to use it based off of events is key. And luckily if you're on HubSpot, you made an amazing decision because you picked a CRM that has so many points of entry for data that you have lots of data at your disposal to look for these events to trigger these texts and trigger these calls.
My big thing from the perspective of a consumer who has a love hate relationship with the texts that I get from brands is I would encourage brands. And I think this is true of any channel, but it's especially true of sms. Do not treat it like every other channel. Do not make assumptions on what people want from you. Like people will have a much greater threshold for marketing stuff from you in your email versus your text. So everything you should be doing should be done with intention. You should be double, triple opting in people to make sure that that is what they really want. It is a space in which you may feel like, oh, it's the same message that we're sending out over email, we're sending out over other channels. We're just, you know, to use the word that Max didn't like from earlier, you know, blasting people into space with all of the coupons and all of the things, you're turning them off, off. More people are going to have a much more adverse reaction to your brand if you continue to do that. So just being really purposeful and intentional about and I can't believe it's taken us this long to say it. The humans. The humans. The humans on the other end. The humans. Like Devin. Devin, do you have a message that you want to leave the world with as a human?
Human.
As a human.
So, yeah, I'm not going to continue beating the dead horse. Well, it's not a dead horse. Don't text me. But.
We were so close. I thought we hadn't convinced Max. Max. For a second there, I thought we had him. I thought he was finally going to consent. Well, taken by his guns.
Here's the thing. Doordash. It's okay if Doordash does it, but not, I don't know, literally anyone else.
Taco. But the thing is that if you're going to integrate SMS into your strategy, focus on delight, focus on making people better off for the interaction. Don't think about you and what you want to get out of the interaction. Think about, about what the other person is going to get out of the interaction and whether or not what you are, what you're doing, how you're engaging with this person is going to is worth the sms. Think of it almost as currency. Is what you're giving them worth the intrusion? And if the answer is no, then maybe you don't need to message them.
Yeah. To say is this helpful before you send it? And if you can't seriously in your heart without having a conversation with the person who really, really wants you to send it next to you, you can't say yes. Just don't, don't do it.
Well, David, thank you so much for joining us this week on Hub Heroes. How can people learn more about.
Thanks so much for having me.
Yeah, of course, yeah.
I mean you can visit our website but hey, if you want to be direct, we actually have an email for anyone who watch the podcast or met us at inbound. It's literally HubSpot at Kixie where a diamond Platinum Partner. Platinum Partner I think right now with, with HubSpot and anyone who emails that like we will roll off the red carpet for you. We have sales engineers specifically dedicated to HubSpot, HubSpot reps and anyone who emails hubspotkixie.com and they'll jump on calls with you. We'll give you free trials of Kixie. You can set it up, use it for a month, play around with it, see if there's features you like. Features you don't like. More than that though. Well, we can just teach you how to use event based automations in HubSpot like you email us we'll teach you how to use them whether you use Kixie or not. That's just like a part of what we do. It's why we're considered a platinum partner, even though we don't actually charge for implementation services like a typical partner does, because it's part of our give back to the community kind of ethos. So email that. Email us there. Hubspotkc.com you heard us about us on the webinar. We'd love to set you up with a trial, help you out, answer any questions you have. Devin, if you email us the HubSpot at Kixie, we will try and convince you to allow us to text you. We'll give it a shot. You know what I mean?
Well, you're have to convince him over email.
You might have to do it via smoke signal at this point.
Send him a carrier pigeon.
So wait, I was about to ask Devin, are you in or out on carrier pigeons?
Birds are awesome.
Interpretive dance. Could we do that? Because there's some way we could like, like convince you through the power of dance.
As long as you're doing it in my bathroom, sure.
What about a falcon? What about a falcon? Wearing a little cap, carrying a little scroll that says the cicadas are coming.
Well, can we just go full.
