Today’s GSDdaily is episode 139. We are on a new time, which is 1:00 PM Eastern, and we’re doing this for a couple of reasons. First of all, so that we can start to hang out with some of our West Coast friends and clients who are up a little later than we are here on the East Coast. And also, really just to switch things up a little bit, start having these conversations a little bit later in the day.
Plus, as a quick aside, we just discovered this roundup of the best email marketing services online from The Daily Egg. Make sure to check it out!
What we’re going to talk about is expanding your marketing automation reach, so basically getting in front of more people, and we’re not going to get in front of more people by sending more email. We’re going to get in front of more people by sending SMS messages. We have a lot of clients who do webinars. We have a lot of clients who do live events. Well, now they’re virtual events. They’re still alive, just … And at the end of the day, basically what we want to do is we want to get them into our webinars, our sales pages, download lead magnets, and all that other stuff.
Sending SMS Messages
One of the most effective things that we do to make sure that they are in the loop on things does not only do we send an email out to them in their campaigns, we also send an SMS message. So inside Axis, I’m going to show you how we do that.
If we go into Axis, this is basically the front side of the Axis. You can read more about it. I’m just going to drop a comment in here, so this is our CRM. It triggers that app, and when you log in to Axis, you’re met with this dashboard here. Basically, you can click through the marketplace and see what’s going on there and see what kind of apps you can add to your CRM. But where we’re going to play today is we’re going to go into the CRM itself, and then we’re going to go into the message center.
Inside Axis CRM
Inside the message center here, there are two different types of messages that you can send. You can send an SMS or you can send an email message. And if we hit Compose, then here, you see this little flip box? So if we fill out this form, we’re filling out a text message. If we fill out this form, we’re filling out an email. And once either of those is created, then we can automate them. We can put them inside of a marketing automation campaign.
So real quick, we’re just going to fill out a text message, and the name of this text message is going to be Webinar Promo. Better yet, It’s going to be a live call, Live Zoom Call, and it’s going to be Text One. Then the from address, the form number is that, and then the text message itself is going to be, “Click here to … Just a quick reminder, we’re going live in 15 minutes. Click here to sign up.” And then let’s say, “doneforyou.com.” Cool. So now, this link will be going to be a link, but it’s hyperactive inside your text message screen. Now, it’s fine that basically, we set up a message.
Ways of Sending SMS Messages
There’s a couple of ways that we can send it out.
- All Contacts on the List– We can either go to our contacts here and we can select all of the contacts in this account, and then we can send a text, so we can literally text message every single one of the people who we have a phone number for, so that’s awesome.
- Individual Basis – We can select the test here, or we can send it on an individual basis. Let’s say we want to send it to … We’re just going to send it to me here. So we’re going to send it to me and we can send a text here and we can just literally compose a message, hit Send, and it sends it away, right from inside the CRM. Super, super cool stuff.
- Using the Campaign List – The third way that we can send text messages is if we go into our email marketing campaigns and then we click on Edit A Campaign. Underneath the Automation tab, this is the campaign builder. There are two different parts to a campaign. One of them is your trigger, so it’s basically the thing that starts that campaign. A tag is added to somebody’s contact record. If somebody does something on a website, somebody opts in for a form, all of that stuff, there’s an action that triggers the rest of the automation. And then it’s what … This is the if statement, if this happens, then send this.
How often should we send messages?
So, we have sent a text message. Here we have sent an email, then send the text message, then wait a day. Send an email, send a text message, wait three days.
If we have this scenario, we’re sending two emails and then two texts, and then we’re waiting a day, so they’re going to get bombarded with text messages and emails before we give them a break. That’s obviously not advisable. And when email marketing campaigns has too much stuff in it, you just drag it off the screen, and then it goes away. So we just drag it off and it’s all gone.
That is how we end up setting up automated email marketing campaigns inside Axis.
Purpose of Sending Messages
Now, why would you do this? If you are doing a live event and you want somebody to show up for a live coaching call, or as a benefit to your members, you want to bring them into your Facebook group or whatever, sending a text link through an SMS is welcome. If you were sending a discount code, sending an SMS is welcome.
A lot of times, what we’ll do is when somebody is doing a live webinar, we will include a phone number field so that somebody can get the text message reminders that are sent out from GoToWebinar. That phone number field we use in marketing sometimes. Some clients are more obtrusive than others. Most of them aren’t, but the phone number we will use in-text message campaigns sparingly. We don’t go crazy with it, but it’s more just a subtle reminder, just a nudge that something is going on.
Software To Send SMS Messages
Those are some quick ways to expand your reach, to add some more capability inside your marketing automation campaigns, using texts or any email marketing campaigns. A lot of CRMs have it. We used ours just because we built it, but Ontraport has it. ActiveCampaign has SMS messages. Infusionsoft has SMS if you tie in with 13 other apps. That’s a little bit … That’s a stretch, but it’s at least two, you know? So, it’s just really what you’re looking for in a platform or what you’re already using.
For Questions and Guide
If there’s anything that we can do for you, or if there’s any way that if you need some business help or you want somebody to look through your sales funnel and your traffic, or build something from scratch, just go to consultingsession.com, and that’s about it.
