May 25, 2022 • 16 mins
In Episode 17 we speak with Tripp Wallace- Head of Global Partnerships and Alliances at SMS Magic a leading SMS and conversational messaging company. Tripp discusses how modern organizations can take advantage of one-to-one messaging across different business cases for sales, marketing, support and commerce.
Tripp dives into several industry specific verticals including Healthcare, Financial Services, Legal Services , Higher Education and some interesting Travel and Casino use cases for personal messaging.
About SMS Magic:
Founded in 2007 SMS Magic is recognized as a Global Leader in the messaging space with key partnerships with leading CRM platforms like Salesforce and ZOHO. SMS Magic rated as one of the most downloaded apps on the Salesforce AppExchange and ZOHO marketplace and trusted by thousands of organizations worldwide.
https://www.sms-magic.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Play the King (00:00):
This podcast is sponsored by OMI the company
that makes CRM work.
Today, we are speaking withTripp Wallace, head of global
partnerships and alliances atSMS magic.
And I asked Tripp to get usstarted by introducing himself.
Tripp Wallace (00:14):
Yeah, absolutely.
I'm Tripp Wallace.
I, lead our partnerships andalliances here in North America
at SMS magic.
So essentially I manage all ofour resellers and referral
partners that refer SMS magic totheir customers.
As well as handling ourstrategic partnership with, with
Zoho CRM, as well as SalesforceCRM.
Play the King (00:38):
Got it.
Tripp, can you tell us a littlebit about SMS magic?
You know, just broad strokes.
What do you guys do?
H ow do you serve just the storyof the business.
Tripp Wallace (00:47):
Yeah, absolutely.
So, we were founded in 2007, sowe're a multichannel business
messaging solution.
So what I mean by multichannelis we use the standard carriers
around the world.
So when you receive a text toyour c ell p hone, you've get it
over at AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon,all that good stuff.
We also integrate with Facebookmessenger and WhatsApp.
(01:09):
So you can you can receivemessages, through those channels
as well.
We're a global business.
So we have customers all overthe world i n every geography we
service every industry.
Essentially anyone that needs tocommunicate with their customers
and prospects could be a fit forus.
However, there are a coupleindustries we seem to do the
best with, y ou know, they seemto gravitate towards us the
(01:30):
most, he althcare, l egal,higher education and financial
services.
We provide automated messagingas well as one to one
conversational messaging and oneto many bulk messaging
capabilities.
As I mentioned, you know,working with Salesforce and
Zoho, our solutions are fullyintegrated into their CRMs.
We also have standalonesolutions.
(01:52):
So if a customer's not using aCRM, they can just use SMS Magic
standalone.
Particularly with Salesforce,that's probably our biggest
relationship.
We get the majority of ourcustomers through their app
exchange.
If you go into their appexchange and you search business
messaging, we're the first namethat comes up.
You can compare us to ourcompetitors in that space.
You'll see, we've got the mostfive star reviews, got the most
(02:14):
downloads.
Literally 91% of our reviews arefive star reviews, quite proud
of that.
We were recently named 20 21APAC partner of the year by
Salesforce as well.
So that's something we're realproud of when it comes to Zoho,
we're not just the mostdownloaded messaging app for the
Zoho marketplace, but we'reconsistently one of the top five
(02:35):
most downloaded apps annuallyoverall on their marketplace.
So We do really well inmessaging space.
Play the King (02:41):
That's an awesome overview.
I appreciate that.
I want to dig into the businessa little bit in a minute, but
I'm curious, you know, foundedin 2007, and we've just seen,
you know, mobile commerce anddelivery services and just all
of that stuff take off in thelast decade.
You guys were really early andof course, SMS is in the name,
(03:01):
but you mentioned that you dowork now in Facebook messenger
and a bunch of other serviceslike that.
So I kind of wonder if you couldjust talk to me about the
staying power of text messages,because it seems like even
though there's so muchdisruption, people still text
all the time, it's still likejust a very, very fundamental
way that we communicate.
So how do you guys think aboutall that?
Tripp Wallace (03:20):
Yeah, absolutely.
It's I think it probably comesalong with the younger
generation.
Not that I'm old or anything.
I don't consider myself I'm 39.
Play the King (03:29):
I'll give you a pass.
Yeah.
Tripp Wallace (03:32):
I'm technically a millennial according to, I guess
what they say a millennial is,but I never really considered
myself a millennial, but Ididn't get a cell phone until my
freshman year of college in2001, but there's a whole
generation behind me that grewup with cell phones and that's
their preferred way ofcommunicating is through text.
And, it's kind of funny.
(03:53):
I think back on when I first hada cell phone, you getting a
phone call on your cell phonewas like a really cool thing.
If you remember, we used to havering back tone, so people would
call you, they could hear a songplaying and then you'd have your
favorite song as your, as yourring tone.
So, you know, but now peopledon't even have their phone ring
on anymore.
It's always on silent.
No one's paying any attention tophone calls.
(04:14):
No, one's going to answer a callif it's not a saved contact in
their phone.
But people will answer textmessages.
I mean at any time, I mean youcould be in a meeting with your
boss and someone shoot yourtext, you'll look and read that
text.
So what companies are findingout is that like, Hey, this is a
(04:35):
really good way of communicatingwith folks a really good way of
reaching them.
You know, if you we've gotnumbers to sort of back all this
stuff up of course too.
So a lot of times messaging sortof gets compared to emailing as
a way of outreach.
So, response rates to text are45% compared to 6% for email.
(04:56):
Yeah.
I
Play the King (04:57):
Don't think I don't see them as the same at
all.
That's really interesting.
I just, it's so much better totext so much faster.
Tripp Wallace (05:02):
Exactly.
Yeah.
You get much faster responserates.
You get much higher open rates.
So, um, initially when we sortof land with a company, a lot of
time, it's the marketingdepartment, marketing will say,
okay, we need a way to blast outmessages.
The emails are are okay.
It's a channel that works.
But if you think about your ownlife, think about folks in
(05:25):
leadership positions atcompanies, their email gets out
there through all thesedifferent companies that sell
these marketing services andLinkedIn and all this stuff.
And I know me personally nowthat you know, my career has
progressed and I've gone from anSDR to now head of partnerships,
I get a lot more marketingemails in my inbox of companies
trying to sell me their servicesand solutions.
(05:46):
And I can, you know, I get somany of them I can't read them
all.
So, decision makers out there,they have to decide, you know
what they're gonna do about allthese emails you can't read.
them all.
So you've really gotta catch myattention with that subject
line.
And if it's something that mightinterest me, I'll start reading,
but I can tell within the firstcouple sentences, if this is
(06:07):
something that I'm interested inor not, and I'll just delete it.
If I'm not interested, most ofthe emails I get took it deleted
and phone calls.
I'm not answering my phoneunless, you are in my contacts
or I'm expecting a call withyou.
When it comes to text, peopleare using, you know, people are
reading those texts.
So marketing departments areusing that to sort of start
engaging better with potentialleads.
(06:28):
Once they do get that engagement, then usually goes over the
sales teams and sales teamsstart to realize, Hey, you know,
a big part of sales is thatfollow up.
You know, you do your demo, youdo your presentation, you
establish next steps with theprospect and then you have to
follow up with them.
And a lot of times those emailsgo unresponsive and you spend a
lot of time chasing folksaround.
(06:49):
I think anyone in the salesworld can relate to that, but
they're finding that, Hey, if Ijust shoot this guy a text, I'll
get a response, I'll get anupdate on their decision making
process here.
And I can kind of move this salealong faster.
So if you can move the salealong faster, you can start
closing more deals.
And then once those leads thatwere brought by marketing become
customers, closed by the salesteam, then they become
(07:11):
customers.
And then so now companies aretrying to find ways to better
engage with their customers.
How can we update them onproduct releases?
How can we send theminformation?
You know, about our services andsolutions, support team, for
example, maybe there's a supportcase.
We have to close these supportcases faster.
Texting is a great way o f doingthat.
(07:31):
Then when it comes to particularindustries, every industry kind
of has their own unique usecases that they use messaging
for.
I know w ith h ealthcare sendingout appointment reminders is a
big deal.
You know, people skipping ormissing appointments sort of
backs them up and sort of awaste of time and a waste o f
money.
So being able to send out anautomated text that says, Hey,
(07:53):
thanks for booking your nextappointment.
It's at this date.
And then an automated text cango out a week prior or, and then
another message can go out theday of reminding them that
they've got these meetings,legal industries use that as
well.
Financial services can use textmessaging to speed up the loan
process.
I actually had a call with theSalesforce team that oversees
(08:15):
hospitality and leisurerecently, and they had all kinds
of cool use cases.
If you're thinking about thecasino industry or the hotel
industry, or, you know, cruiselines, things of that nature,
they can use text messaging tobetter engage with customers
that are on site.
You know, they can set it up asa Q&A center for customers or
allow customers or guests asthey call it, allow guests to
(08:39):
order room service, orderbottles of champaigne.
They want to drive activity atthe casino or whatever they got
going on.
They say, Hey, go down to crapstable, meet our hostess there.
She's got a promotion for you,or don't forget about two for
one drinks down at the cabana,all that kind of stuff.
A great way to sort of give a VI P experience to the
customers,, messaging is a greatway of doing that.
(09:02):
People have their phones intheir pockets and they're
checking their phones all thetime.
Play the King (09:05):
All right.
Well, you answered my nextquestion, which was, I wanted
some examples of the ways thatcompanies are using
conversational marketing.
You gave m e some industries,you know, legal, medical h
ealthcare, a nd then some usecases.
T hat's fascinating.
And, and I guess, you know, thequestion that comes to mind for
me is, you know, I get varioustexts from companies and so, and
(09:25):
I sort of think of t hem inlevels of like, I don't know,
usefulness for me.
The reminders super useful.
Right.
then like, it goes all the waydown to maybe, I don't k now,
like I don't really need a textabout outdoor furniture.
I'm getting those now.
Because we just moved and I'mgetting a lot of those.I guess
what are some things thatcompanies should keep in mind as
(09:46):
they think about, instituting,conversational marketing or
whatever, maybe that's only asubset of what you guys would
consider your business.
But you know, across sales,marketing, commerce, various
service areas, what are somethings people and companies
should keep in mind a s theystart to spin that up?
Tripp Wallace (10:04):
Yeah.
Well the first one's was prettyobvious and I basically already
touched on most of that alreadyready is what's your return on
investment going to be withthis.
So if you're thinking about howcan better communication affect
the business is someone inmarketing, some head of sales
that that's gonna be pretty easyfor them to figure out the ROI
(10:24):
is fairly obvious on, on bettercommunicating.
But you kind of touched on thatwith some of your, with how you
said, you know, sometimes I getmessages about appointment
reminders, which is very useful,but sometimes it might just be
sort of a, a marketing message.
So things to consider arecompliance.
That is a big thing.
We get a lot of questions aboutthat from interested prospects
(10:48):
on, Hey, how do I make sure thatI'm compliant in my industry?
Financial services has a lot ofregulations around data.
Healthcare in particular, youthink about HIPAA compliance.
You know, we can't share certaininformation over the phone, over
text, that kind of thing.
If you're thinking about doingbusiness in Europe, they've got
GDPR to consider.
(11:08):
And one of the major sellingpoints of, of our solution with
SMS magic is all the tools andfunctionality and features to
remain compliant in anyindustry.
And any geography are built intoour solutions.
So ways to capture consent,there's variety of different
ways you can capture consent.
You can opt in, you can havekeyword, you know, yes or no, uh
(11:31):
, ways to say yes, I want toreceive the appointment
reminders, but no, I don't needthe marketing stuff.
All those are things that needto be considered when you're a
company looking at messagingsolutions, how easy is this to
implement?
How can I make sure that ifwe're ever audited, that I can
say, okay, this customer optedinto this, here's a record of
(11:52):
it.
That type of stuff is doable onmost platforms.
But a lot of times it requiresspecific coding for every option
of consent, where with oursolution SMS magic, it's much
simpler, much easier to use,much easier to set up.
We've got a team that can, thatcan help the users because a lot
of customers know they need tobe compliant, but they might not
(12:13):
have anyone dedicated tounderstanding all o f those
regulations and they'll rely onour team to sort of guide them
through that process.
And that's always been sinceI've been w ith the company here
a little over a year, now thatone of our major selling points
is, is understanding thecompliance aspect.
Play the King (12:30):
That's great.
And, I should be clear sometimesthose marketing messages do work
, uh, if I'm feeling hungry orsomething.
Yeah, exactly.
I'm wondering, you know, wetalked about how messaging, SMS,
you know, now people are usingFacebook messenger, other
services, WhatsApp, I'm sure youguys are considering all this
(12:51):
stuff.
So what is the future though?
Like I, you know, we sort ofknow where we came from.
We know where we are, where doyou see this going?
Tripp Wallace (12:57):
Well you're gonna see greater adoption,
surprisingly enough in northAmerica.
It's not as widespread as youwould think.
You know, people are starting tosee that they're getting a lot
more messages, but places likeAsia and Europe have been
adopting business messaging muchsooner.
So, first you'll see it becomemuch more prevalent in the
(13:19):
United States and in northAmerica.
You'll also start to see moresocial media platforms being
leveraged.
So I mentioned that we've got atSMS magic, Facebook integration
and, and WhatsApp integration,but, globally there's a lot of
them.
There's a lot of platforms thatpeople are using to send
messages out there.
So you'll start to see a lotmore of those integrated in!
(13:39):
You'll also see a need for asingle hub or tool that it's
going to integrate all of theseplatforms into a single place.
Currently what you see a lot ofin the business messaging space
is okay, I'm using this CRM andI have this separate app here
for my messaging and they mighthave some API calls but not
(14:01):
fully integrated.
Then we've got our VoIP phoneservice that we use it.
This is another tool.
What businesses are gonna wantis a single tool and a single
hub that incorporates all theirsocial media platforms, all
their email marketing or emailmessaging needs.
All their text messaging needs.
All their voice phone needs allintegrated into a single Hub,.
(14:25):
I would say the, I thing that'sprobably coming in the future
that you'll start to see more ofis artificial intelligence
incorporated into, intomessaging bots.
Think of messaging bots.
You go to a website, littlechat, bubble pops up and says,
Hey, what can you know, what areyou interested in?
And you'll say something like Ineed support and it'll the way
(14:49):
it, most of them currently worknow is it's a keyword response.
It recognizes the word supportand that'll trigger an automated
responses, says, okay, it soundslike you're interested in
support, which of these optionsbest fits your request, that
type of thing.
And all that gets ispre-programmed in when it comes
to keyword responses.
So I believe in the future,there's gonna be a lot more
artificial intelligence thatwill start to recognize response
(15:12):
patterns and behaviors and beable to provide, better replies
to your messages that are moresuited to your needs.
Play the King (15:20):
That is super interesting.
Tripp, where people can findmore information about SMS magic
and then maybe sign up for moreinfo or to get started.
Tripp Wallace (15:33):
Yeah.
Well the easiest thing is, wouldbe our website, sms-magic.com.
Most people probably find usthrough Salesforce app exchange.
There's an Intercom feature onthere.
You can reach out to us strictlythrough there, same with the
Zoho marketplace.
If you're using Zoho or ifyou're using Salesforce.
S o you're likely working with aSalesforce systems integrator or
(15:54):
consultant, you can ask themabout us.
Majority of them out there knowwho we are because their
customers have asked about SMSmagic or specifically have asked
about messaging.
They might not know who to use.
So they'll turn to their trustedadvisors with their CRM, say,
Hey, we need to incorporatemessaging those trusted
advisors, then turn towards theapp exchange o r, or the
marketplace.
(16:15):
And, a nd because we're soprevalent on those, we're using
the first one that pops up andthat's how we get a lot of our
resellers and referral partnersi s customer will a sk their
consultant consultant, doesn'thave a messaging partner.
They go to the app exchange,they find us and they reach out
that way.
Play the King (16:30):
Well, Tripp has been really interesting to hear
about this thing that we alluse, but I don't think most of
us know a whole lot about behindthe curtain.
So appreciate your time todayand thanks a lot.
Tripp Wallace (16:39):
You're welcome.
It was a pleasure.
This podcast is sponsored by OMI the company
that makes CRM work.
Today, we are speaking withTripp Wallace, head of global
partnerships and alliances atSMS magic.
And I asked Tripp to get usstarted by introducing himself.
Tripp Wallace (00:14):
Yeah, absolutely.
I'm Tripp Wallace.
I, lead our partnerships andalliances here in North America
at SMS magic.
So essentially I manage all ofour resellers and referral
partners that refer SMS magic totheir customers.
As well as handling ourstrategic partnership with, with
Zoho CRM, as well as SalesforceCRM.
Play the King (00:38):
Got it.
Tripp, can you tell us a littlebit about SMS magic?
You know, just broad strokes.
What do you guys do?
H ow do you serve just the storyof the business.
Tripp Wallace (00:47):
Yeah, absolutely.
So, we were founded in 2007, sowe're a multichannel business
messaging solution.
So what I mean by multichannelis we use the standard carriers
around the world.
So when you receive a text toyour c ell p hone, you've get it
over at AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon,all that good stuff.
We also integrate with Facebookmessenger and WhatsApp.
(01:09):
So you can you can receivemessages, through those channels
as well.
We're a global business.
So we have customers all overthe world i n every geography we
service every industry.
Essentially anyone that needs tocommunicate with their customers
and prospects could be a fit forus.
However, there are a coupleindustries we seem to do the
best with, y ou know, they seemto gravitate towards us the
(01:30):
most, he althcare, l egal,higher education and financial
services.
We provide automated messagingas well as one to one
conversational messaging and oneto many bulk messaging
capabilities.
As I mentioned, you know,working with Salesforce and
Zoho, our solutions are fullyintegrated into their CRMs.
We also have standalonesolutions.
(01:52):
So if a customer's not using aCRM, they can just use SMS Magic
standalone.
Particularly with Salesforce,that's probably our biggest
relationship.
We get the majority of ourcustomers through their app
exchange.
If you go into their appexchange and you search business
messaging, we're the first namethat comes up.
You can compare us to ourcompetitors in that space.
You'll see, we've got the mostfive star reviews, got the most
(02:14):
downloads.
Literally 91% of our reviews arefive star reviews, quite proud
of that.
We were recently named 20 21APAC partner of the year by
Salesforce as well.
So that's something we're realproud of when it comes to Zoho,
we're not just the mostdownloaded messaging app for the
Zoho marketplace, but we'reconsistently one of the top five
(02:35):
most downloaded apps annuallyoverall on their marketplace.
So We do really well inmessaging space.
Play the King (02:41):
That's an awesome overview.
I appreciate that.
I want to dig into the businessa little bit in a minute, but
I'm curious, you know, foundedin 2007, and we've just seen,
you know, mobile commerce anddelivery services and just all
of that stuff take off in thelast decade.
You guys were really early andof course, SMS is in the name,
(03:01):
but you mentioned that you dowork now in Facebook messenger
and a bunch of other serviceslike that.
So I kind of wonder if you couldjust talk to me about the
staying power of text messages,because it seems like even
though there's so muchdisruption, people still text
all the time, it's still likejust a very, very fundamental
way that we communicate.
So how do you guys think aboutall that?
Tripp Wallace (03:20):
Yeah, absolutely.
It's I think it probably comesalong with the younger
generation.
Not that I'm old or anything.
I don't consider myself I'm 39.
Play the King (03:29):
I'll give you a pass.
Yeah.
Tripp Wallace (03:32):
I'm technically a millennial according to, I guess
what they say a millennial is,but I never really considered
myself a millennial, but Ididn't get a cell phone until my
freshman year of college in2001, but there's a whole
generation behind me that grewup with cell phones and that's
their preferred way ofcommunicating is through text.
And, it's kind of funny.
(03:53):
I think back on when I first hada cell phone, you getting a
phone call on your cell phonewas like a really cool thing.
If you remember, we used to havering back tone, so people would
call you, they could hear a songplaying and then you'd have your
favorite song as your, as yourring tone.
So, you know, but now peopledon't even have their phone ring
on anymore.
It's always on silent.
No one's paying any attention tophone calls.
(04:14):
No, one's going to answer a callif it's not a saved contact in
their phone.
But people will answer textmessages.
I mean at any time, I mean youcould be in a meeting with your
boss and someone shoot yourtext, you'll look and read that
text.
So what companies are findingout is that like, Hey, this is a
(04:35):
really good way of communicatingwith folks a really good way of
reaching them.
You know, if you we've gotnumbers to sort of back all this
stuff up of course too.
So a lot of times messaging sortof gets compared to emailing as
a way of outreach.
So, response rates to text are45% compared to 6% for email.
(04:56):
Yeah.
I
Play the King (04:57):
Don't think I don't see them as the same at
all.
That's really interesting.
I just, it's so much better totext so much faster.
Tripp Wallace (05:02):
Exactly.
Yeah.
You get much faster responserates.
You get much higher open rates.
So, um, initially when we sortof land with a company, a lot of
time, it's the marketingdepartment, marketing will say,
okay, we need a way to blast outmessages.
The emails are are okay.
It's a channel that works.
But if you think about your ownlife, think about folks in
(05:25):
leadership positions atcompanies, their email gets out
there through all thesedifferent companies that sell
these marketing services andLinkedIn and all this stuff.
And I know me personally nowthat you know, my career has
progressed and I've gone from anSDR to now head of partnerships,
I get a lot more marketingemails in my inbox of companies
trying to sell me their servicesand solutions.
(05:46):
And I can, you know, I get somany of them I can't read them
all.
So, decision makers out there,they have to decide, you know
what they're gonna do about allthese emails you can't read.
them all.
So you've really gotta catch myattention with that subject
line.
And if it's something that mightinterest me, I'll start reading,
but I can tell within the firstcouple sentences, if this is
(06:07):
something that I'm interested inor not, and I'll just delete it.
If I'm not interested, most ofthe emails I get took it deleted
and phone calls.
I'm not answering my phoneunless, you are in my contacts
or I'm expecting a call withyou.
When it comes to text, peopleare using, you know, people are
reading those texts.
So marketing departments areusing that to sort of start
engaging better with potentialleads.
(06:28):
Once they do get that engagement, then usually goes over the
sales teams and sales teamsstart to realize, Hey, you know,
a big part of sales is thatfollow up.
You know, you do your demo, youdo your presentation, you
establish next steps with theprospect and then you have to
follow up with them.
And a lot of times those emailsgo unresponsive and you spend a
lot of time chasing folksaround.
(06:49):
I think anyone in the salesworld can relate to that, but
they're finding that, Hey, if Ijust shoot this guy a text, I'll
get a response, I'll get anupdate on their decision making
process here.
And I can kind of move this salealong faster.
So if you can move the salealong faster, you can start
closing more deals.
And then once those leads thatwere brought by marketing become
customers, closed by the salesteam, then they become
(07:11):
customers.
And then so now companies aretrying to find ways to better
engage with their customers.
How can we update them onproduct releases?
How can we send theminformation?
You know, about our services andsolutions, support team, for
example, maybe there's a supportcase.
We have to close these supportcases faster.
Texting is a great way o f doingthat.
(07:31):
Then when it comes to particularindustries, every industry kind
of has their own unique usecases that they use messaging
for.
I know w ith h ealthcare sendingout appointment reminders is a
big deal.
You know, people skipping ormissing appointments sort of
backs them up and sort of awaste of time and a waste o f
money.
So being able to send out anautomated text that says, Hey,
(07:53):
thanks for booking your nextappointment.
It's at this date.
And then an automated text cango out a week prior or, and then
another message can go out theday of reminding them that
they've got these meetings,legal industries use that as
well.
Financial services can use textmessaging to speed up the loan
process.
I actually had a call with theSalesforce team that oversees
(08:15):
hospitality and leisurerecently, and they had all kinds
of cool use cases.
If you're thinking about thecasino industry or the hotel
industry, or, you know, cruiselines, things of that nature,
they can use text messaging tobetter engage with customers
that are on site.
You know, they can set it up asa Q&A center for customers or
allow customers or guests asthey call it, allow guests to
(08:39):
order room service, orderbottles of champaigne.
They want to drive activity atthe casino or whatever they got
going on.
They say, Hey, go down to crapstable, meet our hostess there.
She's got a promotion for you,or don't forget about two for
one drinks down at the cabana,all that kind of stuff.
A great way to sort of give a VI P experience to the
customers,, messaging is a greatway of doing that.
(09:02):
People have their phones intheir pockets and they're
checking their phones all thetime.
Play the King (09:05):
All right.
Well, you answered my nextquestion, which was, I wanted
some examples of the ways thatcompanies are using
conversational marketing.
You gave m e some industries,you know, legal, medical h
ealthcare, a nd then some usecases.
T hat's fascinating.
And, and I guess, you know, thequestion that comes to mind for
me is, you know, I get varioustexts from companies and so, and
(09:25):
I sort of think of t hem inlevels of like, I don't know,
usefulness for me.
The reminders super useful.
Right.
then like, it goes all the waydown to maybe, I don't k now,
like I don't really need a textabout outdoor furniture.
I'm getting those now.
Because we just moved and I'mgetting a lot of those.I guess
what are some things thatcompanies should keep in mind as
(09:46):
they think about, instituting,conversational marketing or
whatever, maybe that's only asubset of what you guys would
consider your business.
But you know, across sales,marketing, commerce, various
service areas, what are somethings people and companies
should keep in mind a s theystart to spin that up?
Tripp Wallace (10:04):
Yeah.
Well the first one's was prettyobvious and I basically already
touched on most of that alreadyready is what's your return on
investment going to be withthis.
So if you're thinking about howcan better communication affect
the business is someone inmarketing, some head of sales
that that's gonna be pretty easyfor them to figure out the ROI
(10:24):
is fairly obvious on, on bettercommunicating.
But you kind of touched on thatwith some of your, with how you
said, you know, sometimes I getmessages about appointment
reminders, which is very useful,but sometimes it might just be
sort of a, a marketing message.
So things to consider arecompliance.
That is a big thing.
We get a lot of questions aboutthat from interested prospects
(10:48):
on, Hey, how do I make sure thatI'm compliant in my industry?
Financial services has a lot ofregulations around data.
Healthcare in particular, youthink about HIPAA compliance.
You know, we can't share certaininformation over the phone, over
text, that kind of thing.
If you're thinking about doingbusiness in Europe, they've got
GDPR to consider.
(11:08):
And one of the major sellingpoints of, of our solution with
SMS magic is all the tools andfunctionality and features to
remain compliant in anyindustry.
And any geography are built intoour solutions.
So ways to capture consent,there's variety of different
ways you can capture consent.
You can opt in, you can havekeyword, you know, yes or no, uh
(11:31):
, ways to say yes, I want toreceive the appointment
reminders, but no, I don't needthe marketing stuff.
All those are things that needto be considered when you're a
company looking at messagingsolutions, how easy is this to
implement?
How can I make sure that ifwe're ever audited, that I can
say, okay, this customer optedinto this, here's a record of
(11:52):
it.
That type of stuff is doable onmost platforms.
But a lot of times it requiresspecific coding for every option
of consent, where with oursolution SMS magic, it's much
simpler, much easier to use,much easier to set up.
We've got a team that can, thatcan help the users because a lot
of customers know they need tobe compliant, but they might not
(12:13):
have anyone dedicated tounderstanding all o f those
regulations and they'll rely onour team to sort of guide them
through that process.
And that's always been sinceI've been w ith the company here
a little over a year, now thatone of our major selling points
is, is understanding thecompliance aspect.
Play the King (12:30):
That's great.
And, I should be clear sometimesthose marketing messages do work
, uh, if I'm feeling hungry orsomething.
Yeah, exactly.
I'm wondering, you know, wetalked about how messaging, SMS,
you know, now people are usingFacebook messenger, other
services, WhatsApp, I'm sure youguys are considering all this
(12:51):
stuff.
So what is the future though?
Like I, you know, we sort ofknow where we came from.
We know where we are, where doyou see this going?
Tripp Wallace (12:57):
Well you're gonna see greater adoption,
surprisingly enough in northAmerica.
It's not as widespread as youwould think.
You know, people are starting tosee that they're getting a lot
more messages, but places likeAsia and Europe have been
adopting business messaging muchsooner.
So, first you'll see it becomemuch more prevalent in the
(13:19):
United States and in northAmerica.
You'll also start to see moresocial media platforms being
leveraged.
So I mentioned that we've got atSMS magic, Facebook integration
and, and WhatsApp integration,but, globally there's a lot of
them.
There's a lot of platforms thatpeople are using to send
messages out there.
So you'll start to see a lotmore of those integrated in!
(13:39):
You'll also see a need for asingle hub or tool that it's
going to integrate all of theseplatforms into a single place.
Currently what you see a lot ofin the business messaging space
is okay, I'm using this CRM andI have this separate app here
for my messaging and they mighthave some API calls but not
(14:01):
fully integrated.
Then we've got our VoIP phoneservice that we use it.
This is another tool.
What businesses are gonna wantis a single tool and a single
hub that incorporates all theirsocial media platforms, all
their email marketing or emailmessaging needs.
All their text messaging needs.
All their voice phone needs allintegrated into a single Hub,.
(14:25):
I would say the, I thing that'sprobably coming in the future
that you'll start to see more ofis artificial intelligence
incorporated into, intomessaging bots.
Think of messaging bots.
You go to a website, littlechat, bubble pops up and says,
Hey, what can you know, what areyou interested in?
And you'll say something like Ineed support and it'll the way
(14:49):
it, most of them currently worknow is it's a keyword response.
It recognizes the word supportand that'll trigger an automated
responses, says, okay, it soundslike you're interested in
support, which of these optionsbest fits your request, that
type of thing.
And all that gets ispre-programmed in when it comes
to keyword responses.
So I believe in the future,there's gonna be a lot more
artificial intelligence thatwill start to recognize response
(15:12):
patterns and behaviors and beable to provide, better replies
to your messages that are moresuited to your needs.
Play the King (15:20):
That is super interesting.
Tripp, where people can findmore information about SMS magic
and then maybe sign up for moreinfo or to get started.
Tripp Wallace (15:33):
Yeah.
Well the easiest thing is, wouldbe our website, sms-magic.com.
Most people probably find usthrough Salesforce app exchange.
There's an Intercom feature onthere.
You can reach out to us strictlythrough there, same with the
Zoho marketplace.
If you're using Zoho or ifyou're using Salesforce.
S o you're likely working with aSalesforce systems integrator or
(15:54):
consultant, you can ask themabout us.
Majority of them out there knowwho we are because their
customers have asked about SMSmagic or specifically have asked
about messaging.
They might not know who to use.
So they'll turn to their trustedadvisors with their CRM, say,
Hey, we need to incorporatemessaging those trusted
advisors, then turn towards theapp exchange o r, or the
marketplace.
(16:15):
And, a nd because we're soprevalent on those, we're using
the first one that pops up andthat's how we get a lot of our
resellers and referral partnersi s customer will a sk their
consultant consultant, doesn'thave a messaging partner.
They go to the app exchange,they find us and they reach out
that way.
Play the King (16:30):
Well, Tripp has been really interesting to hear
about this thing that we alluse, but I don't think most of
us know a whole lot about behindthe curtain.
So appreciate your time todayand thanks a lot.
Tripp Wallace (16:39):
You're welcome.
It was a pleasure.
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