Conversations to Conversions

Chapter 1: Intro and Agenda

0:01

secondafternoon or good morning depending on where you are. So glad everybody’s able to join us today. I think I’ll give us a

0:09

9 secondsminute to make sure we get everybody pulled in who’s ready to join and then we’ll get started learning about conversations to conversions all the things text messaging.

0:27

27 secondsjust that there.

0:30

30 secondsSee, we’ve got folks getting in. That’s great.

0:41

41 secondsGive everybody just a few minutes.

0:50

50 secondsYep. One of our folks here on our kicksite team is asking, “Let us know where you’re joining from today on the

0:58

58 secondschat. We expect to have a good group.” So, I’m excited. I’m in Kansas City. I know don’t know how many of you know where Kicksite is, but that’s where we are.

1:08

1 minute, 8 secondsHi, guys. Fantastic.

1:18

1 minute, 18 secondspeople all over.

1:21

1 minute, 21 secondsIt’s great. Oh, Santa Barbara. I kind of wish I was in Santa Barbara right now.

1:30

1 minute, 30 secondsWelcome. Welcome.

1:32

1 minute, 32 secondsIt’s storming. Oh, well, today we actually have sun, so maybe just for today I’ll work with Kansas City.

1:46

1 minute, 46 secondsAll right, Florida.

1:50

1 minute, 50 secondsGreat. People all over. That’s fantastic.

1:53

1 minute, 53 secondsHonolulu. Oh, there’s another place that’s got fantastic weather. I can attest to

2:02

2 minutes, 2 secondsOh, fantastic. I see that. Pedro, sun just came out. Must be just in time.

2:15

2 minutes, 15 secondsHopefully, Phil, you get a chance to get in and stay in. I don’t know if we can really complain about kicking puns around here. I think that’s all for all for good.

2:27

2 minutes, 27 secondsOh man, blizzard warning. So, it’s at least February somewhere. That seems good.

2:33

2 minutes, 33 secondsI give us just a few more minutes while we let everybody join.

2:43

2 minutes, 43 secondsFor anybody joining later, if you want to pop into the chat and just let us know where in the world you are joining from, we’d love to know. Excited to have everybody here today.

3:16

3 minutes, 16 secondsI’m not sure if that’s how the platform works or not. That’s Pat’s gotcha. He’s the right person to answer those questions.

3:26

3 minutes, 26 secondsOh, yep. All right. I’m going to let you guys work that through.

3:38

3 minutes, 38 secondsGot it.

3:45

3 minutes, 45 secondsGive us just another minute here. I see we still have people joining. So, give everybody a second.

3:52

3 minutes, 52 secondsHello from Hercules.

3:55

3 minutes, 55 secondsHercules. Is that how you say it? I know sometimes I feel like I know that that’s true, but you can correct me if I’m

4:02

4 minutes, 2 secondswrong, Carla. Yes. Fantastic. I like to say things the right way if I can.

4:13

4 minutes, 13 secondsAwesome. Awesome.

4:21

4 minutes, 21 secondsOkay, getting everybody pulled into the room.

4:26

4 minutes, 26 secondsWell, I’m going to give it maybe another minute or two and then we’ll get started. Thanks for being patient.

4:44

4 minutes, 44 secondsAll right.

4:46

4 minutes, 46 secondsOh, yeah. We got people popping in left and right as we get settled. For everybody

4:56

4 minutes, 56 secondsjoining, more new joiners, feel free to pop into the chat. Let us know where you’re joining from, please.

5:04

5 minutes, 4 secondsHappy to have you with us here today.

5:07

5 minutes, 7 secondsI’m going to be asking everybody to bear with my voice. It’s a little scratchy on me, so I have a big jug of water.

5:14

5 minutes, 14 secondsHopefully that’ll keep me in goodstead.

5:22

5 minutes, 22 secondsWelcome everybody scrolling through. It’s fantastic.

5:32

5 minutes, 32 secondsHappy to see everybody joining. All right, I think I’m going to go ahead and get started.

5:40

5 minutes, 40 secondsUh we are of course all here to talk about conversations to conversions just lots of things best practices and usage

5:49

5 minutes, 49 secondshow to make the most of texting for your business. So uh I am Marina. I am going

5:57

5 minutes, 57 secondsto be leading the show today. Before we get too far into it, just want everybody to know as you can see on your screen,

6:04

6 minutes, 4 secondsthere will be a recording that goes out that we’ll have a link to the video as well as there’s a handout that is coming

6:11

6 minutes, 11 secondsyour way um that might be available in part of the platform today already in the webinar and if not then we will make sure it will get sent to you for sure.

6:22

6 minutes, 22 secondsSo there’s some helpful recap on some of the things just to highlight some of the details that we’ll go through today so you have some quick reference uh material there for you when we’re done.

6:32

6 minutes, 32 secondsSo again, my name is Marina Mccclure. I am the product manager here at Kicksite and I am uh have spent a lot of time

6:42

6 minutes, 42 secondslately learning all about and refreshing on lots of details relative to texting.

6:48

6 minutes, 48 secondsSo, we’re going to talk all about um you know, just how you guys can use texting, why it’s such a powerful tool, uh what

6:56

6 minutes, 56 secondsthings you can do to make sure you’re using it effectively, and what things to avoid. We’re also going to talk about making sure your messages get delivered.

7:03

7 minutes, 3 secondsThat is, of course, a huge part of effective texting and can be something that sometimes if your primary use for

7:11

7 minutes, 11 secondstexting, like most of us, is texting with friends or family or other contacts from your phone, you might not know all the ins and outs of. So, we’ll cover a lot of that today. I’ll do a little bit

7:20

7 minutes, 20 secondsof demo. So, I’ll just tee that up for you guys. If you are interested in um opening a separate tab later, I’ll give you time to do that, but I would love to

7:28

7 minutes, 28 secondshave you join me and kind of walk through an example. Um no pressure, but you’ll be invited to do that later. So, just a heads up. Um and then we’ll have

7:37

7 minutes, 37 secondstime hopefully at the end for some questions. I am going to keep us moving.

7:44

7 minutes, 44 secondsAll right. First, before we get started, let’s talk about what you guys are doing today uh in Kicksite. So, how often are

7:53

7 minutes, 53 secondsyou using T texting in Kicksite? Oh, great. I already see people starting to answer. So, you can go on up and click that.

8:02

8 minutes, 2 secondsIf you didn’t hear me say it already, I’m going to ask you to bear with my voice a little bit. I’ll probably take lots of water breaks so that I can make sure I last through the end here. But, while you guys are answering, I’m going to take a drink.

8:15

8 minutes, 15 secondsOkay.

8:16

8 minutes, 16 secondsHaven’t started yet. No problem. Weekly, daily, monthly, lots of variety. That’s great. Okay. Good. We’ll give anybody who wants to go ahead and answer.

8:27

8 minutes, 27 secondsUm and then we will have something for everybody in this hour today together that will hopefully, you know, my goal

8:35

8 minutes, 35 secondsis for sure for you guys to leave and feel like, wow, that was useful. That’s helpful for my business. I know what I need to know. I have clear details and

8:43

8 minutes, 43 secondsclear action plans. So, I’ll be covering a lot of material today to cover kind of the basis for everybody. And then, like I said, there will be a handout for you

8:52

8 minutes, 52 secondsto follow up with so that you can just have a quick ready reference for all those things kind of at your fingertips anytime you need it.

9:01

9 minutes, 1 secondSo, I’m going to start us out on So, I interestingly, just I’m not sure if you guys can see the results of the poll.

9:08

9 minutes, 8 secondsI’m guessing you cannot. Um, the slight majority of you have not yet started with texting. So, that’s kind of exciting. I hope that you will be able

9:17

9 minutes, 17 secondsto leave today feeling fully ready and empowered to do that. Um, I just unplugged myself. That’s all right. Uh,

9:25

9 minutes, 25 secondsand um, we’ll get you going so that those numbers can shift around. For those of you who are using it daily, weekly, monthly, we’ll definitely have

9:33

9 minutes, 33 secondsgood information that should be valuable for everybody. All right, I’m going to move us on. So talk first, let’s talk

Chapter 2: The Power of Texting

9:41

9 minutes, 41 secondsfirst a little bit about why texting is such an important tool in our businesses. So first just talking about

9:48

9 minutes, 48 secondsthe numbers. Texting has a 98% open rate. So what that means is that when you send a text 98% of the time it gets opened within the first three minutes.

9:59

9 minutes, 59 secondsThat’s incredibly fast. Um, especially if you think about email where the benchmarks say that we’re looking at

10:06

10 minutes, 6 secondsmaybe 20 to 30% of people might open an email. That’s like if you have open rates at 30%, you’re doing really great a lot of the time and that can take

10:14

10 minutes, 14 secondshours or days. So that kind of transitions into this second real strong benefit of texting, which is just that

10:21

10 minutes, 21 secondsit’s real time. Um, when you are working on if you guys have prospects who are thinking about potentially joining you

10:29

10 minutes, 29 secondsguys, when you when they’re thinking about you and sending in that message, you can get that form right away and you can know as soon as possible to respond

10:38

10 minutes, 38 secondsto them while they’re still thinking about you. And that kind of thing is what closes deals and, you know, complete sales and gets new members into

10:45

10 minutes, 45 secondsyour schools and facilities. And that’s where the power of texting is so much more impactful and can be than email or any other mode of communication.

10:55

10 minutes, 55 secondsUm, and also it’s of course not just for new leads. There’s lots of power for retention. Um, you guys know I know that in the business you guys are in, you all

11:04

11 minutes, 4 secondsare probably great at helping build a sense of community. I know that’s one of the things I love about working at Kicksite is how much um our our our

11:13

11 minutes, 13 secondsmembers, you guys, um do care about what you’re doing and the people that you’re engaging with every day. And we all know

11:21

11 minutes, 21 secondsthat that personal touch can feel really meaningful and help keep you connected to your students and the people that you want to stay connected to. And when they

11:29

11 minutes, 29 secondsfeel that personal check-in, they’re going to understand and know just how much they mean to you. And that’s one of those things that can just really drive

11:36

11 minutes, 36 secondsretention and help pe keep people from stepping away from their training or just quitting for whatever reason. So

11:44

11 minutes, 44 secondsreally it is a very powerful tool. Um like any powerful tool, there’s ways to use it that can maximize that potential

11:52

11 minutes, 52 secondsand ways that can um maybe keep you from making the best of it. So we’ll get into all of those. Uh first thing I want to

Chapter 3: Five Rules for Effective Lead Texting

12:00

12 minutestalk through is kind of some of the to-dos. So here you’ll see on your screen we have five rules for effective

12:08

12 minutes, 8 secondslead texting. So this these rules really do kind of translate across the board.

12:13

12 minutes, 13 secondsUm but these are specifically for leads where they can be the most advantageous.

12:17

12 minutes, 17 secondsSo your first rule is speed. Like we just talked about. When somebody’s in decision mode and you can answer the questions they have right away, then

12:25

12 minutes, 25 secondsyou’re going to help move them along in that decision-making process and move them from being someone who’s just feeling things out to being ready to

12:33

12 minutes, 33 secondssign up for a trial and become a regular part of your school.

12:37

12 minutes, 37 secondsIf you wait till tomorrow or another time later, sometimes that opportunity passes. Of course, I know that you guys are out on the mat. You’re busy. You

12:45

12 minutes, 45 secondsknow, you can’t necessarily answer every text within two minutes. As everyone who knows me, I never answer texts that fast. But when you can do that and you

12:53

12 minutes, 53 secondscan do it as quickly as you can, then you can maximize the just power of texting and people feel like they’re really connected and able to have that

13:02

13 minutes, 2 secondsreal-time conversation. Uh it’s a great reason to make sure that you have um the downloaded app on your phone and that

13:11

13 minutes, 11 secondsyou also have notifications enabled on that because then you can get notifications real time when you have messages coming in. so that when you do

13:19

13 minutes, 19 secondshave the bandwidth to respond right away, you’re alerted to the need to do that. So, we have some information that we’ll link to in the handout and later

13:26

13 minutes, 26 secondson just to make sure everyone knows how to get that app installed, how to make sure your notifications are turned on, but those notifications, especially when

13:34

13 minutes, 34 secondsit comes to text message and conversation, are an incredible resource that can really help you just take it into the next level.

13:43

13 minutes, 43 secondsSo, here’s a question for you in the chat. How many of you feel like you do already make an effort to respond to

13:50

13 minutes, 50 secondsyour leads right away? Is that something that you thought about? Is that something that you wish you could do more of? We’re just kind of trying to figure that process out as you go.

14:00

14 minutesAnybody have anything on that they want to share?

14:04

14 minutes, 4 secondsI’m going to ask you lots of questions because that’s how I get a chance to take a drink. No, really. Also, I want to know.

14:13

14 minutes, 13 secondsAnybody want to chime in on that? Yeah, definitely.

14:18

14 minutes, 18 secondsYep, people are opting out. Okay, I hear that. I’m actually not happy to hear that people are opting out, but I’m really happy you’re here because we are

14:25

14 minutes, 25 secondsgoing to talk about some of the reasons and the things that you can do to help shift that balance so that your content and the things that you’re sending to people feel really relevant for them.

14:35

14 minutes, 35 secondsAnd we’ll bring those opt out numbers lower for you. Great.

14:42

14 minutes, 42 secondsOkay. Awesome. I see all these notes.

14:45

14 minutes, 45 secondsThese are great. We’re going to keep going, but this is great. Keep this stuff in mind as we keep going. So, your first rule is speed. Looks like some of you are already doing what you can to

14:53

14 minutes, 53 secondstake advantage of that. That’s fantastic. Later on, toward the end of our time together, I’m going to talk a little bit about some of the changes that are coming in the Kicksite

15:02

15 minutes, 2 secondssoftware. So, I am deeply uh consumed with the world of all things communications in Kicksite right now.

15:09

15 minutes, 9 secondsand the development team is working hard on a bunch of changes that are coming your guys’ way late this year. They’re going to be very exciting and really take things into a whole new

15:17

15 minutes, 17 secondsstratosphere for you. So, we’re going to talk for most of our time today focusing on the capabilities that are at your fingertips right this very minute. But

15:25

15 minutes, 25 secondsby the end of this hour, you will have a good sense of some of the exciting improvements that are coming your way.

15:31

15 minutes, 31 secondsAnd we will, of course, when those are out in the world, we will have u lots more resources for you about how to take advantage of those, too.

15:39

15 minutes, 39 secondsNext rule is specificity. So this one is huge. It can be really um tempting to or just sort of happen naturally to fall

15:47

15 minutes, 47 secondsinto the pattern of sort of saying the same thing to everybody. Hey, thanks for reaching out. Let me know if you need something or here’s our hours. Let me

15:55

15 minutes, 55 secondsknow what else you need or go check out our website. Whatever the case may be.

15:58

15 minutes, 58 secondsBut what one of the things that can really take those um sort of unspoken feelings that a potential lead might have about your business to the next

16:07

16 minutes, 7 secondslevel is to be specific and personal with them. So that might be instead of saying like let me know what you need or if you have any questions. It could be

16:15

16 minutes, 15 secondsyou know if you have this information, hey I saw that you’re interested in this adult beginner class. Maybe use their name. Um that’s you know is we have it

16:23

16 minutes, 23 secondsstarting next week at six o’clock. Would that work for you? those kinds of things that can get people really thinking about taking the next step. So since

16:31

16 minutes, 31 secondsthis is your business and you know how it works, you have in your mind of course what the next step you would like that person to take is. So when you can

16:39

16 minutes, 39 secondsbe specific about just prompts, you know, little gentle subtle nudges moving people in that direction, then you can

16:46

16 minutes, 46 secondsabsolutely help move them down that path. And that makes that conversation so much more meaningful and effective for both you and for your potential

16:54

16 minutes, 54 secondscustomer. Uh, the next one is consistency. So, this one, when you just send one text, that’s often not enough.

17:02

17 minutes, 2 secondsIf you think about yourself as a consumer, this might make a lot of sense. Sometimes it takes three or five or seven times of going back and forth

17:10

17 minutes, 10 secondsover the course of a few days or a week or more. Not necessarily every day, of course, but you want to be staying constant and consistent in that, not

17:18

17 minutes, 18 secondsconstant, consistent. That’s an important distinction. You want to stay consistent in that conversation. And that’s the kind of thing that’s going to keep you top of mind. We all get busy.

17:28

17 minutes, 28 secondsAnd so when your leads are thinking about something, they move on. It’s you can help just bring them back to that.

17:33

17 minutes, 33 secondsAnd that’s where texting again because so often people are just carrying your way of connecting with them in their pockets day all the time. And so you can

17:42

17 minutes, 42 secondshave contact with them and be able to reach them in such an efficient and effective way that really nothing else really can touch. Uh and the last thing

17:50

17 minutes, 50 secondsis of course just write with personality. Um, sometimes that can feel intimidating, I think. But just making sure that you’re writing the way that

17:59

17 minutes, 59 secondsyou would talk to someone in person or write the way you would talk to somebody that you know in a personal sense. Just normal language, not corporate, not announcementy. We’ll talk a little more.

18:09

18 minutes, 9 secondsYou know, you’re going to want to avoid lots of exclamation points or excessive caps or whatever the case may be. So, those are our first things, our five

18:16

18 minutes, 16 secondsrules for effective lead texting. Like I said, those really do translate into all kinds of texting. These are just great

18:23

18 minutes, 23 secondssimple rules to keep in mind all the time, top of mind for you. I’m going to move us forward. So, texting in

Chapter 4: Texting in Kicksite (Live Demo)

18:32

18 minutes, 32 secondsKicksite, this is something everybody knows how to do hopefully, and if you don’t, we’re going to look at it a little bit today. Um, what you’re looking at on the screen here, for those

18:40

18 minutes, 40 secondsof you who may not have seen it, is our conversations feature. This is our true onetoone messaging. You’re texting one person at a time. they’re texting you

18:49

18 minutes, 49 secondsback hopefully and then that’s where those true conversations happen. Um we’ll talk a little bit more about some of the other features that we have today, general announcements. Um but

18:57

18 minutes, 57 secondsthis conversations is really built for engagement. It is the place that you’re going to be able to just kick it up the next notch. And those can be super quick

19:06

19 minutes, 6 secondssimple interactions that can make you’ll see a world of difference in the way that people feel like they’re interacting with you and then that can

19:14

19 minutes, 14 secondsdrive retention that can drive sales conversion and you’ll be growing your business before you know it. Few things to point out in here is just you know

19:23

19 minutes, 23 secondsthese are onetoone. You can also access conversations from inside the profiles of your people. So, what I’m going to have us do next is we’re I’m going to

19:31

19 minutes, 31 secondsask you to follow along with me. This is what I primed you for. If you want to, I would love it if you would do this, especially if you answered in that poll

19:39

19 minutes, 39 secondsthat you haven’t used texting yet. If you have a Twilio integration, if you have SMS already set up in your Kicksite account, please pull up a separate tab.

19:49

19 minutes, 49 secondsYou can put windows side by side so you can keep an eye on the screen as well.

19:53

19 minutes, 53 secondsUm, in the information we’re going over and pull up Kicksite. I’m going to do the exact same thing. And so what you’ll

19:59

19 minutes, 59 secondsbe able to see here in just a minute is me logging in as well.

20:13

20 minutes, 13 secondsHang on just a second. Oh, you know what? I think give me just a second. I’m going to pull this up.

20:22

20 minutes, 22 secondsI think when I was getting set up There it is. Okay. I just got myself lots of windows open right now. So, let me get this shared for you guys.

20:33

20 minutes, 33 secondsHere we go. Alrighty.

20:40

20 minutes, 40 secondsI think if you guys can’t see the prospects, let me know. Hopefully, you can.

20:45

20 minutes, 45 secondsIs that Oh, I need to make it bigger for you guys, maybe. Oh, there we go. Okay.

20:55

20 minutes, 55 secondsworking. Okay, here we go. So, I’m going to show you this. This is, of course, my prospects. I’m going to go in to this user right here, Melissa. Maybe she’s a maybe.

21:05

21 minutes, 5 secondsAnd I am going to send her a message. I’m going to do this from right within the profile. So, you’ll see

21:14

21 minutes, 14 secondshere, this will pull up this little message for her, and I’m going to say, “Hey, Melissa.

21:24

21 minutes, 24 secondsIt was great to see you at the expo yesterday.

21:28

21 minutes, 28 secondsWe have that beginner uh women’s class you were asking about tomorrow at 6:00 p.m.

21:40

21 minutes, 40 secondsWould that time work for you? So, I’m going to send that off to Melissa.

21:48

21 minutes, 48 secondsAnd then she knows this is the same just is kind of following those same rules, right? I’m being specific. I’m being personal. I’m talking to her in the same

21:56

21 minutes, 56 secondsway that I would. Um, this is me following up obviously on a lead that I talked to somebody at an expo yesterday.

22:03

22 minutes, 3 secondsWe’re seeing that from her and then hopefully she will respond back to me and we can work forward on closing that deal.

22:14

22 minutes, 14 secondsI am going to Is that looking It looks really dark on my screen the version of that. So, I hope you guys can see that.

22:20

22 minutes, 20 secondsI apologize as you can. If you cannot, hopefully I narrated that well enough for you to be able to kind of see what’s going. But really using texting. Oh,

22:27

22 minutes, 27 secondslook. Melissa wrote me back. That works great. Fantastic.

22:32

22 minutes, 32 secondsI’ll get you signed up. See you tomorrow. And there we go. Thank you. You’re welcome, Melissa. So helpful.

22:39

22 minutes, 39 secondsShe’s such a great helper. Um, okay. So, she is logged in. She’s ready to go. And we’ve got that handled. So, this is how

22:46

22 minutes, 46 secondssimple it can be. I think sometimes when we’re starting using a new tool, we feel like we’re not really sure what we’re doing. It can be intimidating. But truly, guys, it can be just that simple.

22:56

22 minutes, 56 secondsAnd you don’t have to, you know, crack any magical code. We’re going to leave you with the rest of the tools we’re talking through today, and you guys will

23:03

23 minutes, 3 secondsbe equipped to start today, uh, if you have not already, and just improve your game if you have. All right. as we follow along.

23:13

23 minutes, 13 secondsI think I’m gonna stop my screen share for the moment.

23:17

23 minutes, 17 secondsHere we go. Then I can pull the slides back up for you. There we go. All right.

23:23

23 minutes, 23 secondsSo, if you get to do this yourself, I’m going to pull this up and give you guys a second to do this alongside. So, if you have somebody that’s maybe a

23:31

23 minutes, 31 secondsprospect you have thought you needed to get back to, but you haven’t done that yet. Or if it’s just a contact that you know you’re like, “Oh, I haven’t seen

23:38

23 minutes, 38 secondsthem in a while, or they were in a class yesterday and they did a great job.” Whatever that may be, please feel free to take a moment, send them a quick

23:46

23 minutes, 46 secondsmessage, and just let them know. I know all of us are busy. It can be hard to find time to make uh the just take the thought process of finding those things.

23:56

23 minutes, 56 secondsWho should we say that hey, you did great yesterday to? So, just giving you guys an opportunity to do that now so that it can just feel more accessible,

24:03

24 minutes, 3 secondseasy, natural. We keep going. So, you don’t have to send it just yet. You can just practice drafting it. If you don’t have SMS integration in Kicksite just

24:11

24 minutes, 11 secondsyet, no problem. You guys can think through this. This is obviously not something we need to spend a ton of time on, but if you’d like, then you can share what you wrote in the chat. And if

24:20

24 minutes, 20 secondsthis is something that is different for you or just something that um you know even maybe so far you’re already like oh I have not really thought about doing it

24:28

24 minutes, 28 secondsthat way. I’d love to know what pieces have popped out at you or what things maybe seems counterintuitive. I think sometimes we can think about oh I got to

24:37

24 minutes, 37 secondsuse a lot of exclamation points or all caps to make sure I’m getting people’s attention. And the reality is that what research has found time and time again

24:45

24 minutes, 45 secondsis that what’s most really effective for users is this sort of simple personal specific communication.

24:53

24 minutes, 53 secondsAll right, I see you guys having lots of conversations. Thank you to my moderators who are helping. Uh I cannot keep track of all of the things at once.

25:01

25 minutes, 1 secondSo I’m going to let you guys keep talking through some of those things and I’m going to move us forward. There’s a lot cover. I better speed up a little

Chapter 5: What Gets More Replies

25:08

25 minutes, 8 secondsbit here. Okay. So, the kinds of things that get more replies because of course there’s lots of reasons to want responses. Um, we’ll talk a little bit

25:17

25 minutes, 17 secondslater about how what it does for your deliverability, but also this is kind of how we’re trying to get people to engage with us.

25:25

25 minutes, 25 secondsSo, you can see the examples here. These will be the kinds of things that when you can be they’re following all of these are following those five rules we

25:33

25 minutes, 33 secondstalked about. Just being specific, asking a question. You can see every single one of the texts on the screen here in the little green checkbox. You

25:40

25 minutes, 40 secondsknow, good examples. Um, end with a question. So, things that we can do that are just simple yes, no, or, you know,

25:48

25 minutes, 48 secondsan a question that’s going to have a clear answer instead of just what do you need? Something super open-ended can be hard for people to even know what to

25:55

25 minutes, 55 secondsask. So, asking them something really clear-cut can really help them and help you.

Chapter 6: What Not to Say

26:01

26 minutes, 1 secondOkay. Couple things to avoid that are really easy to get stuck in these traps.

26:06

26 minutes, 6 secondsToo long. I’m gonna take a drink really quick. Speaking of too much talking.

26:12

26 minutes, 12 secondsSo sometimes we feel like, “Oh man, this is my one chance. I have this person’s attention. I’m going to send them all the information I possibly can. Here’s

26:20

26 minutes, 20 secondsthe history of our school. Here’s things that will help you understand that we really are credible and we know what we’re doing and we’ve got what you need.” Totally can understand that

26:28

26 minutes, 28 secondsinstinct. But in this kind of context, those are great things to talk through at various points in time. But at this point, when you’re in conversations,

26:37

26 minutes, 37 secondswhen you’re texting, you’re going to want to keep it short. It’s meant to be like a quick access medium. And that really helps with you just keep your

26:44

26 minutes, 44 secondsmessages from getting too long. Robot language. We’ve kind of talked about this. Stay away from all caps, things that are, you know, you can see here,

26:52

26 minutes, 52 secondslimited time offer. We’ve all seen that message on a million commercials. That kind of thing. Again, just keep it personal.

26:59

26 minutes, 59 secondsThis is true in conversations and general announcements. We’ll we’ll talk more about general announcements in a minute. Um, but just so you know, these

27:06

27 minutes, 6 secondsrules really do apply across the board to try to keep your language natural.

27:11

27 minutes, 11 secondsCopy and paste. Again, we talked about these. Just saying, you know, thank you for contacting us. We’ll get back to you can be um just kind of deterrent for

27:21

27 minutes, 21 secondspeople almost. It’s not the most effective way to use your moment because then they are maybe thinking, “Oh, this is not really a connection that’s going

27:28

27 minutes, 28 secondsto work for me.” They might not think that consciously, but it’s kind of you want to again just underscore that personal touch vibe. Emoji heavy. Talked

27:36

27 minutes, 36 secondsabout that one, too. So, you want to avoid all of those things. All right, talking a little bit more about a breakdown of conversations.

27:44

27 minutes, 44 secondsUm, we’re just going to, you know, talk through some of the different ways that we’ve already touched on. These are things that you can use to um give a

27:53

27 minutes, 53 secondsfast response. If you’re in the actual conversations uh section, so when I just did it on the screen, I joined from a profile. You can also go in through

28:02

28 minutes, 2 secondscommunications or into actual the conversations section of the site by getting in through the little icon on the top right if you have SMS

28:10

28 minutes, 10 secondsintegration. And there you can save um little templates that are meant to be quick reply. And that’s where you can

28:18

28 minutes, 18 secondshave certain things that are, hey, we’re excited to see you tonight. Can you tell me, you know, what’s your ghee size or something that you might need? And make

28:26

28 minutes, 26 secondssure those are at the ready. So you don’t have to be, you know, reinventing the wheel every time. And just make sure those templates have that kind of personal sense to them. And that will help make them more effective.

Chapter 7: Avoiding Being Marked as Spam

28:39

28 minutes, 39 secondsAll right. Now, we’re going to talk a little bit about deliverability. I know before we got started, we had some conversation in the chat about just

28:46

28 minutes, 46 secondsgetting lots of opt-out messages. I will tell you this that this fact that you’re getting opt-in messages can be um dis

28:53

28 minutes, 53 secondsdiscouraging and just frustrating. The good news is there’s things we can do to kind of tweak the way your communication works and that can help lower those. Um,

29:02

29 minutes, 2 secondssometimes we might have a situation where you’re not necessarily realizing that people are opting out or that

29:10

29 minutes, 10 secondsyou’re not getting their messages aren’t even getting through to you. So, that’s what I want to talk a little bit about next. Um, when you send a text from

29:18

29 minutes, 18 secondsKicksite or really any text, especially from Kicksite, it has to pass through like kind of three different gatekeepers

29:26

29 minutes, 26 secondsbefore it can actually reach your students eyes. So the first one of those is registration. This is handled automatically by Kicksite. So what that

29:35

29 minutes, 35 secondsmeans is um Kicksite handles getting your phone number registered as a legitimate business as you went through that application process. That’s what

29:43

29 minutes, 43 secondsthat’s for. So that we can ensure that you have that first level green light on your number to get through to people. So that part’s handled. If you have SMS

29:51

29 minutes, 51 secondsintegration with Kicksite already check one box, that one’s done. The next gatekeeper that you have to be mindful of is the carriers themselves. So this

29:59

29 minutes, 59 secondsis Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile. Those are the companies. They also monitor how you’re using texting and which things

30:08

30 minutes, 8 secondsare coming from your number. They’re also especially looking at how people respond to your texts. So they’re looking for lots of people opting out.

30:17

30 minutes, 17 secondsThey’re looking for people marking as spam. And those are the kinds of things that they take in large number all that

30:25

30 minutes, 25 secondsdata from everyone on T-Mobile who’s getting your phone number, who’s getting texts from that number, and that’s how they kind of form a profile almost of

30:34

30 minutes, 34 secondsyou, of your number, and they decide then how good of a score you’ve got for them. It’s a little bit like a credit

30:41

30 minutes, 41 secondsscore. Every number, every line can have its own sort of senator reputation is what it’s called. Um unfortunately unlike credit score we can’t go out and

30:50

30 minutes, 50 secondsjust check it but we are going to talk through some of the indicators to watch for so you can get a sense and also just as we talk through these things you’ll

30:57

30 minutes, 57 secondsknow some of your own um usage patterns that might help inform that too. Uh the third gatekeeper that we have to be aware of is the actual devices. So these

31:06

31 minutes, 6 secondsdays the aversion to spam is of course very high. I’m sure none of you like receiving spam texts any more than I do any more than any of your students do.

31:14

31 minutes, 14 secondsUm, and so the other layer is that this actual phone device companies themselves also have a layer. So Android and Apple

31:22

31 minutes, 22 secondshave built-in spam filters that also look at your message content and look at the way that people are interacting with

31:29

31 minutes, 29 secondsyour messages. Um, so if someone reports spam, then that’s going to be something that kind of is registered relative to

31:37

31 minutes, 37 secondsyour phone number, at least for the short term. There is a way to change course on this. So hang with me if this is sounding concerning for you.

31:45

31 minutes, 45 secondsWhat we do then is that you end up with, like I said, your sender reputation score. The higher your score is, the more deliverable your messages are. The

Chapter 8: Sender Reputation Score

31:55

31 minutes, 55 secondsmore of them will get delivered. If you have students telling you, especially routinely, I didn’t get that message. I didn’t get that text. then unfortunately

32:03

32 minutes, 3 secondsyou may be in a situation where your number or where your number is getting blocked by either carriers or phone

32:11

32 minutes, 11 secondscompany device companies themselves. So if that is happening um then there are the good news is there’s things we can

32:18

32 minutes, 18 secondsdo to kind of rehab um and then these things. So, if you have those concerns, listen carefully. This information will

32:25

32 minutes, 25 secondsbe in the handout also. Um, and if you don’t, that’s fantastic. But watching and in taking in this information is also going to help you make sure that

32:33

32 minutes, 33 secondsyou never need to worry about it. So, this is relevant for all of us.

32:37

32 minutes, 37 secondsThe big concept here is really to think about like the difference between a megaphone and a handshake. So, we have these graphics here to just sort of keep

32:46

32 minutes, 46 secondsthat in mind. And this is where we’re talking about general announcements, too. I know that truly part of the challenge today is that there aren’t the

32:54

32 minutes, 54 secondsa level there isn’t the level of flexibility in kicksite that you might want to specifically target every single

33:01

33 minutes, 1 secondmessage you send. There are things coming that will make that make a huge difference for you guys in that and I’m excited to tell you about them in just a

33:09

33 minutes, 9 secondslittle bit. But also then that’s where we just have to make judicious decisions about what we do with general announcements versus what we do with

33:16

33 minutes, 16 secondsconversations and in other methods of communication. So let’s get into that a little further. So the things that can

33:23

33 minutes, 23 secondsreally uh have a negative impact on your reputation, your sender reputation, excuse me, are generic blasts. If you

33:31

33 minutes, 31 secondsare sending out um you know messages to 200 2,000 prospects about a class that’s

33:41

33 minutes, 41 secondsthat night or a possible event coming up in a week. The challenge there is that the likelihood that that’s actually

33:49

33 minutes, 49 secondsrelevant information for all 2,000 of those people is low. And so then you are going to end up with more people who,

33:57

33 minutes, 57 secondsyou know, either hit report spam or just opt out. So when you’re getting a lot of those opt out messages, that can be a signal to you that some of what you’re

34:06

34 minutes, 6 secondssending isn’t relevant for all the people you’re sending it to. That doesn’t mean that your messages are bad.

34:11

34 minutes, 11 secondsIt certainly doesn’t. I’m sure you guys are not spending your time communicating things that aren’t important. It’s just that we need to be more thoughtful about

34:19

34 minutes, 19 secondswho they get sent to and how often and what. And that can help kind of shift that balance and put us in a place where

34:26

34 minutes, 26 secondspeople aren’t as inclined to report spam or opt out. The other things they’re looking at on those generic blasts, like I said, reporting spam, same things we

34:35

34 minutes, 35 secondstalked about with lead texts, robot-like language, um, or, you know, that includes all caps, lots of emojis, those

34:43

34 minutes, 43 secondssort of things. Um, sudden volume spikes. So, if you send no texts and then in one afternoon you send 4,000

34:50

34 minutes, 50 secondstexts, that’s going to trick that’s going to catch the radar of some of those filtering systems that we talked about because that seems kind of

34:58

34 minutes, 58 secondssurprising and unusual. It doesn’t mean you need to get super stressed out about making sure you’re sending the exact same number of texts every day or every

35:06

35 minutes, 6 secondsweek or anything like that. It’s just keeping things generally consistent. A lot of this for today’s kicksite will just come down to using general

35:15

35 minutes, 15 secondsannouncements in a thoughtful and kind of restrained way. We’ll talk a little bit more about that. And again, texting

35:22

35 minutes, 22 secondsirrelevant contacts. One of the challenges is that we all want to grow our businesses. I know everybody wants to be casting a wide net when it comes

35:30

35 minutes, 30 secondsto prospects, but sometimes we forget that for some prospects or people who we may have had on a list or may have been

35:38

35 minutes, 38 secondsprospects a long time ago that we may not be a relevant text for them today.

35:43

35 minutes, 43 secondsAnd so even though we might want to catch their attention, we just have to kind of weigh the different pieces of that puzzle and make a decision about is

35:51

35 minutes, 51 secondsthis something that they’re likely to think is a good fit for them. If not, then that might be something that you consider communicating a different way.

35:59

35 minutes, 59 secondsThat might be a great place to spend a time when you can and just reach out personally to that person if it’s someone that you have that kind of connection to.

Chapter 9: Using General Announcements

36:08

36 minutes, 8 secondsNext piece here. Okay, more general announcements. I’m going to take a drink real quick here. Bear with me.

36:15

36 minutes, 15 secondsI was worried my throat wasn’t going to make it for today, but it’s it’s doing its job. So, let me give it a little water. All right. So here again we have

36:24

36 minutes, 24 secondsjust a five question test. So this when you’re getting ready to send a general announcement so that you don’t have to think back to all the different things I said and you can just kind of go through

36:32

36 minutes, 32 secondsa checklist. This will also be in the handout that you’ll get. Um is these five questions. Does this message apply to everyone I’ve selected. One nuance

36:41

36 minutes, 41 secondsabout that is you’re going to want to think about not do I hope that they it feels like it applies to them, which might be an important distinction, but will they feel like it applies to them?

36:51

36 minutes, 51 secondsWhat’s the likelihood that they’re going to feel like this is applicable for them? Uh, would a former student be annoyed by this? Honestly, sometimes you

36:59

36 minutes, 59 secondsmight ask yourself, would I be annoyed by this if somebody that I had a history with was sending me this message? I hope you can answer definitely no on that one

37:07

37 minutes, 7 secondsand yes on the first one. But these are just to help you kind of cement some of those best practices into your own processes. Am I using the right feature

37:16

37 minutes, 16 secondsfor this message? So that’s again, should this be a conversation? It might be this should be five individually sent messages through conversations instead

37:25

37 minutes, 25 secondsof something I send through general announcements. Could be. It might be there’s perfectly good reasons to use general announcements. We just have to be thoughtful about those and then weigh the sort of potential impacts of them.

37:36

37 minutes, 36 secondsWill the device filter catch the language I’m using? So again, I’m hitting the same things over and over again. I hope you guys are picking up on that. So no robotic, you know, just

37:45

37 minutes, 45 secondspersonalized, not a ton of caps, not dollar signs. That’s another big one that the filters really can jump on and run with. Um, and then am I sending at a

37:52

37 minutes, 52 secondsreasonable volume? So sometimes, especially I know that there are limitations around how targeted some of

38:00

38 minutesyour general announcements can be unless you’re spending a lot of time curating groups on your own. And I get that that can be kind of a counterbalance

38:08

38 minutes, 8 secondschallenge. Um, but you just have to make sure that you really are sending things so that an individual is getting a reasonable number from you. If you’re

38:17

38 minutes, 17 secondssending three different groups, three different things, fantastic. Just keeping that piece in mind can be really helpful though. And sometimes it just takes a little slowing down to think through.

38:26

38 minutes, 26 secondsAll right, protecting your reputation.

38:29

38 minutes, 29 secondsSo, of course, following all the rules I’ve already said. The other really, really great thing you can do that is honestly one of the things that can kind

38:37

38 minutes, 37 secondsof bypass a lot of those filters and just short circuit some of the things that might negatively impact your sender reputation is to ask your recipients to

38:46

38 minutes, 46 secondsput you in their contacts. Now, if you’re like me, you’ve had people ask you to put you in their contacts before, and you might think like, I don’t want

38:54

38 minutes, 54 secondsto do that. But when you have students in your school or people that you’re speaking to personally and they’re opting in for text, it’s a great time to

39:01

39 minutes, 1 secondjust say, “Hey, just so I can make sure that you get the information you need, it really does matter to put me in your context.” Sometimes I think people

39:09

39 minutes, 9 secondsaren’t convinced that it really does matter. But I’m here to tell you it really does matter when we’re looking at those gatekeepers that we talked about

39:16

39 minutes, 16 secondsbefore, particularly the carriers and the device creators. just having you in the contacts will just bypass you

39:24

39 minutes, 24 secondsthrough all those things. So that’s one huge thing you can do that can make a world of difference.

Chapter 10: Recovery Protocol

39:31

39 minutes, 31 secondsNow if you are concerned and feel like uh I’m sitting here listening to this and I think that it’s possible that my sender reputation is not great. First of

39:40

39 minutes, 40 secondsall, you’re not alone. That’s why there’s the whole thing we’re about to talk through which is kind of what a recovery protocol looks like. Um there’s

39:48

39 minutes, 48 secondsa few simple steps and honestly then you can just sort of reset and start from scratch using these best practices and

39:55

39 minutes, 55 secondsnot have to worry about sender reputation again hopefully. Okay. So it does take a little diff discipline and

40:02

40 minutes, 2 secondsit does take a little time but I promise you it will be worth it. Uh the first thing that you’re going to do is a cool

40:10

40 minutes, 10 secondsdown period. So this means you’re going to want to stop all general announcements. you are period. I mean, I

40:17

40 minutes, 17 secondswould just tell you truly completely stop. Uh, you might also want to think about inactivating SMS on your message

40:25

40 minutes, 25 secondsflows that are set up. This is for a short period of time. It is a little bit of leg work, but that’s just one switch toggle in the message flows. It’s not

40:33

40 minutes, 33 secondshard. You just got to toggle it, save it, put something in your calendar for two to four weeks from now. We’ll talk about that timeline. And then flip them

40:40

40 minutes, 40 secondsback on and you’re good to go. So, what this will do, this is one of those things that can be a little bit like feel like, oh my gosh, just another thing to handle. But I promise you,

40:49

40 minutes, 49 secondsmaking sure that text messages are getting through to the people you’re trying to contact, like we talked about in the beginning, it is a huge needle

40:56

40 minutes, 56 secondsmover in businesses. And I want all of you to really be able to take advantage of that to the maximum. And so, sometimes if you have maybe

41:04

41 minutes, 4 secondsunintentionally used some of these practices in the past that can get you more filtered out, this is the way to solve it. So, you’re going to want to

41:12

41 minutes, 12 secondsput yourself in a cool down period. I know it says um 1 to two weeks on the previous screen that we looked at, and that can be sufficient. It does depend a

41:21

41 minutes, 21 secondslittle bit on kind of where your reputation is. And since that isn’t something we could just go look up for you, I wish it was. That’s just something you’re going to have to feel.

41:29

41 minutes, 29 secondsIf you’re like, “Oh, I didn’t know.” Fine. Lots of us don’t know. I didn’t know a lot of this stuff till I started researching it. Um, but I’ve been

41:37

41 minutes, 37 secondssending like blasts of, you know, I’m sending out thousands and thousands of messages to people that I haven’t actually had any contact with or haven’t had any contact with in four months or

41:46

41 minutes, 46 secondswhatever. Then you might want to air on the side of going a full four weeks with all your general announcements stopped.

41:53

41 minutes, 53 secondsThat’s up to you. You guys can decide.

41:55

41 minutes, 55 secondsKind of depends on where your usage has been. The next step then is going to be what we’re calling the trust campaign.

42:02

42 minutes, 2 secondsSo, this just needs to be the next following week or two. And what you’re going to do is you’re going to have this quiet period and then you’re going to

42:10

42 minutes, 10 secondscarefully restart group messages. I will say, let me back up just a minute. In the cool down period, you can still use

42:17

42 minutes, 17 secondsindividual conversations. That’s perfectly okay. Um, you might want to try to make sure you’re asking lots of questions when people respond to your

42:25

42 minutes, 25 secondstexts. that improves your sender reputation, but you’re just going to want to put a pause on general announcements and potentially message

42:32

42 minutes, 32 secondsflows if you’re concerned about volume there, too. So, after that period of quiet, then you can restart group messages, but you’re going to do it in a

42:40

42 minutes, 40 secondsreally targeted way. So, you’re going to take a small list of people. you can create a group for them, maybe 10, maybe

42:47

42 minutes, 47 seconds20 of people that you know are loyal, active students, people that you know are going to be likely to engage with you and be welcoming of your message.

42:56

42 minutes, 56 secondsAnd what you’re going to do is send them a text that requires an answer. So, like we talked about, having a reply is like a really great thing to just kind of

43:04

43 minutes, 4 secondsagain reset some of those meters on your sender reputation. So you can send them a text that’s requires something, you know, so you’re not gonna want to say

43:12

43 minutes, 12 secondslike, “Classes are at normal time tonight.” There’s not a question in that. Instead, you might just say, “Hey, we’re updating our records. Could you

43:19

43 minutes, 19 secondsreply with your current belt size?” Or, um, “What’s the next time I’m going to see you in class?” Something that requires a quick, easy answer for people

43:28

43 minutes, 28 secondswith a group of people that you know are very likely to reply. And that’s something that if you’re going to just spend a week or two doing that kind of

43:35

43 minutes, 35 secondsmessaging in very limited quantities, this does not need to take a massive amount of your time or energy, then when those people are replying, that’s giving

43:44

43 minutes, 44 secondsyou kind of like a whitelist signal to the carriers and to the devices telling them, oh, this number is safe. And after that cool down period, that’s going to

43:52

43 minutes, 52 secondsjust kind of do this flip where it resets your reputation across the board.

43:58

43 minutes, 58 secondsThen the next thing is just going to be a new normal. you just get to move forward. So, if your trust campaign worked and you’re getting higher reply

44:05

44 minutes, 5 secondsrates, you can just slowly return to normal operations as long as you’re keeping those rules in mind. So, you’re

44:13

44 minutes, 13 secondsof course going to want to make sure all the things we’ve been talking about, personal language, not some of the things that can flag those triggers,

44:20

44 minutes, 20 secondsthings like, you know, quick act now in all caps. Those are the kinds of things you want to avoid. just moving forward,

44:27

44 minutes, 27 secondstargeting people who need that message, being judicious about that. Be conservative about it. Um, and then favoring conversations over general

44:35

44 minutes, 35 secondsannouncements whenever you have that option. And that’s going to get you replies. That’s going to get your number of people opting out to drop. And that’s

44:43

44 minutes, 43 secondsgoing to get your messages getting delivered consistently without any issues whatsoever. Um, of course, it’s normal. Just want to make sure I say

44:50

44 minutes, 50 secondsthis, too. Like, some opt outs are always going to happen. There’s nobody who could not have people opting out.

44:56

44 minutes, 56 secondsPeople’s lives and situations just change. That’s not necessarily at all a bad thing. Just part of life. But if you do see consistently lots of optouts or

45:05

45 minutes, 5 secondsif you send a certain message or a certain type of message and you see a high number of optouts after that message, that’s something you can really

45:12

45 minutes, 12 secondspay attention to and think through, okay, what did I do in this message that maybe I should have done differently?

45:19

45 minutes, 19 secondsAnd in fact, if you’re in that situation today and you’re like, “Oh, I have a lot of optouts in my inbox.” You can go back and look and maybe there’s a general

45:28

45 minutes, 28 secondsannouncement you sent and you can say, “Oh, I guess I did send this to a lot of people who maybe didn’t need it.” And that’s just learning for you and then

45:35

45 minutes, 35 secondsyou can file that away. If you’re still getting opt-out messages, that’s good because it means your messages are still getting delivered and then do you just

45:43

45 minutes, 43 secondshave the chance to course correct right now without any real concern. All right.

Chapter 11: Kicksite’s Communications Overhaul

45:49

45 minutes, 49 secondsSo, that kind of brings us to the end of um all the things that I was going to tell you about texting and best practices and making sure your texts are

45:58

45 minutes, 58 secondsgetting delivered. I also want to give you partially because we just want to share. I’m really excited about everything we’re working on right now.

46:05

46 minutes, 5 secondsTake it away.

46:08

46 minutes, 8 secondsThank you for bearing with me. Um, but I also, um, know that if you’re here in this chat right now and in this webinar,

46:15

46 minutes, 15 secondsit’s because you do really care about making conversations and other communications features things that can really drive your business. I was just

46:22

46 minutes, 22 secondstalking with Jason, our CEO, this morning about how much I really believe, the numbers bear this out, the research bears this out, robust and effective

46:31

46 minutes, 31 secondscommunication can be a huge lever mover in success of a business. And so we are working hard at Kicksite to equip you

46:39

46 minutes, 39 secondswith tools that you need to do that better and to do that more. So I want you to know we are hearing you. We are taking every piece of feedback that

46:46

46 minutes, 46 secondscomes our way. It gets cataloged. It gets categorized. We keep every single thing and we are paying close attention to those and making sure that we’re

46:55

46 minutes, 55 secondsgetting that input and feedback from you. So all the work that we’re doing now and all the things that you’re doing are going to have a really great synergy

47:03

47 minutes, 3 secondscoming later this year. um when you’re learning how to, you know, tweak the way that you’re writing text, that’s going to be applicable from here on into

47:11

47 minutes, 11 secondsforever. Um and then we’re going to just keep building great tools that help make that easier for you. So, I’m going to give you some details right now on what

47:18

47 minutes, 18 secondsis coming. And then I’m going to give you an opportunity if you’re interested, if you hear things here that you feel like, oo that’s interesting or I have

47:26

47 minutes, 26 secondsthoughts on that. Um, I’m going to give you an opportunity in just a moment to share with us and help partner and collaborate with us and giving us some

47:34

47 minutes, 34 secondsinsight into what those needs are for you specifically. So, bear with me. I’m going to cover quite a few things in just a couple minutes here. Um, so some

47:41

47 minutes, 41 secondsof the things that are coming, um, and when I say they’re coming, I mean we’re working on them now. They will be coming as kind of a um, uplifted

47:50

47 minutes, 50 secondscommunications experience for you guys late this year. Later this year. Um, that’s going to include marketing campaign sequences. So, those will

47:58

47 minutes, 58 secondsinclude sequences of email and text that you can send, intermingle them, send those out. We will have those um both

48:07

48 minutes, 7 secondsthat you can create on your own and manually send off. Also, we’re going to have automated ones that get triggered off of actions taken in the system. We

48:15

48 minutes, 15 secondsknow we’ve been listening. These are some of the biggest requests we’ve heard from you guys, and we definitely are excited to get them into your hands as

48:22

48 minutes, 22 secondswe keep going forward. We’re going to have tons more options, tons more options for um targeting and segmenting

48:30

48 minutes, 30 secondswho you’re sending to. So, we’re going to have things that are we’re going to have ways for you to send your communication to targeted groups of people based on different

48:38

48 minutes, 38 secondscharacteristics, whether it’s what belt level they’re in or whether or not they’re in a family, if they are a trial membership, all different kinds of

48:47

48 minutes, 47 secondsthings. All the data points you can imagine. Um well, maybe not all the data points you can imagine, but a lot. We know right now we just don’t have as

48:54

48 minutes, 54 secondsmuch flexibility as you guys need and we are working on that truly this very day.

48:58

48 minutes, 58 secondsI’ve been working on that and so we are going to get those things um built and in your hands and it’s I think it’s going to be phenomenal for you guys. We

49:06

49 minutes, 6 secondsare also building um a lot of kicks built templates for sequences for those

49:14

49 minutes, 14 secondsyou know campaign message series of messages and for just regular messages.

49:19

49 minutes, 19 secondsSo we can ensure that you will of course still have your ability to create templates and do things on your own, but also we want to equip you with uh a

49:28

49 minutes, 28 secondslarge swath of different things to cover your needs. So you’ll have sequences that are targeted toward um you know

49:35

49 minutes, 35 secondsnurturing a lead or nurturing a cold lead or helping drive retention in someone who is getting ready to hit

49:42

49 minutes, 42 secondstheir membership renewal date. All different kinds of things. And those are going to be things that are created and provided to you as part of your kicksite

49:50

49 minutes, 50 secondsexperience so that you can just run with them and use them without having to put a lot of time or energy into figuring out what those best practices are for

49:58

49 minutes, 58 secondsyou. We’re doing that work and we are really excited to get it in your hands.

50:01

50 minutes, 1 secondUm, we’ll have a new communications dashboard that’s going to just have a lot more insights into how your performance and engagement are working

50:10

50 minutes, 10 secondsrelative to different communications so that you can make decisions moving forward about where you might need to add things or subtract things or change

50:17

50 minutes, 17 secondsthings up. Um, we’re going to have inbox that handles email and text messaging.

50:23

50 minutes, 23 secondsUm, so there will be two-way communication on both of those fronts and more. So, I’m going to leave that at the ubiquitous and more. Uh, but there

50:31

50 minutes, 31 secondsreally is more. We are doing a lot of exciting things here and um I cannot wait to share about them more with you

50:38

50 minutes, 38 secondsguys. So, we’re targeting this, like I said, later this year. We will of course do tons of communication to make sure everyone knows what’s coming um long

50:46

50 minutes, 46 secondsbefore it hits you so that nobody’s surprised by anything. Um, if you have put in specific features or requests or

50:54

50 minutes, 54 secondscomments in the past, I just want you to know we have those. We’ve heard those. I we will capture everything in this chat.

Chapter 12: Join our Communications Insight Group!

51:00

51 minutesBut the next opportunity I want to share with you is we are kind of creating something new here and that is we’re

51:07

51 minutes, 7 secondsgoing to have a targeted um communications insight group. So this because communications is such a big

51:14

51 minutes, 14 secondsthing and such a thing that touches so many different parts of the business and we have so many things planned. We really would love to have a small

51:23

51 minutes, 23 secondstargeted group of people who will help share and collaborate with us. So, we want a place for your voice to really be

51:29

51 minutes, 29 secondsheard. And we want to make sure that even though we have all this feedback and all this research, and I am steeped in this stuff all day long, you guys,

51:37

51 minutes, 37 secondsbut we also know that each of you have unique needs and situations in your businesses, and I cannot tell you how much I mean it from the sincerest places

51:45

51 minutes, 45 secondsin myself that the more we understand about you and your needs and the problems you run into in communications and across the board, the better job we

51:54

51 minutes, 54 secondscan do giving you what you need. And that’s really what we want to do. Um, so if you are interested in even just finding out about that, this is not a

52:02

52 minutes, 2 secondsmassive time commitment. It’s not going to be like anything crazy. Um, probably a few hours over the course of several months potentially. Um, we would love to

52:10

52 minutes, 10 secondshelp you uh connect with my team and myself and then we will be communicating more as time goes on about what that’s

52:18

52 minutes, 18 secondsgoing to look like. So we’re really looking for people who care about communication or who just understand the potential for it. If that’s you, please

52:26

52 minutes, 26 secondsjust shoot a an email over to this address that’s on your screen, productsite.net.

52:31

52 minutes, 31 secondsThat will make its way to me and the team, and we will be in touch because we would love to have um you engaged in

52:39

52 minutes, 39 secondsthat conversation so we can make sure we’re building it in ways that really have the most maximum impact for you.

52:46

52 minutes, 46 secondsAll right, this is a new approach for us, so we’re really excited to try it and I would love to have all of you really partner with us in that approach.

Chapter 13: Final Takeaways

52:54

52 minutes, 54 secondsOkay. So, I’m going to just recap a few quick takeaways here for us and then we will have just a couple minutes. I’m going to um get my helpful moderating

53:03

53 minutes, 3 secondsfriends here to let me know if there’s anything else that I should address. Uh but before we do that, some key takeaways. So, conversations beats

53:10

53 minutes, 10 secondsbroadcasting beats general announcements most of the time. Of course, there’s still good use for general announcements. Um but you’re going to want to follow those five rules that we

53:19

53 minutes, 19 secondstalked about. Your sender reputation really does matter. So, be thoughtful about that. Be aware about that. It’s one of those things that there’s not

53:27

53 minutes, 27 secondsalways a lot of awareness about. Again, the handout that’s coming has kind of takeaways of all of these pieces, too.

53:33

53 minutes, 33 secondsIt looks like that is there in um sort of by where your chat is. I’m going to move that off my screen though so I can

53:41

53 minutes, 41 secondskeep going through here, but that’ll be there for you. Um and then just using general announcements sparingly and then when someone replies, you win. And the

53:49

53 minutes, 49 secondsother one that I should have included on this slide is having people add you to their contacts is a plus. So those are

53:57

53 minutes, 57 secondsour key kind of roundup of things we’ve talked through. Again, please go take a look at that um handout. It’s got kind of a summary of all of the details here.

54:06

54 minutes, 6 secondsThere’s resources also available to you.

54:08

54 minutes, 8 secondsThose are in the handout as well so that you can touch base on any of these things. As you guys know, we have an amazing success and support team here at

54:16

54 minutes, 16 secondsKicksite, and they will be happy to help anybody who needs that. Either getting an SMS integration started and going or

54:23

54 minutes, 23 secondsjust tweaking any things that you might need help walking through. We’re happy to do that and you guys know how to find us. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

54:31

54 minutes, 31 secondsThis is my first Kicksite webinar, so I really appreciate you being here. I hope that it was really great for you and useful and meaningful if you happen to

54:40

54 minutes, 40 secondshave the time. And if you don’t, it’s okay. And you um you know do some of these things and you feel like they make a difference for you, we always would love to hear that. So that product at

54:49

54 minutes, 49 secondskicksite.net email address, you can use that for that as well, of course. Um but either way, we hope that you guys get a lot out of it and that it’s meaningful

54:57

54 minutes, 57 secondsfor you. Uh I am going to take a peek over here and if there’s any questions

55:03

55 minutes, 3 secondsin the chat or anywhere else that moderators think that I should address, I will do that.

55:18

55 minutes, 18 secondsOkay, I’m not seeing anything pop through. I will say this, any questions you put in the chat that don’t haven’t been addressed yet, obviously I could

55:27

55 minutes, 27 secondsnot keep up with the whole chat. That’s why it’s awesome. Hannah and Pat have been helping me with that. Thank you guys. Um then anything you’ve left there, if you haven’t gotten an answer,

55:36

55 minutes, 36 secondsdon’t worry. You will get an answer. So even though we end our session today there, we’ll take those and we’ll get read back to you. So don’t feel like

55:43

55 minutes, 43 secondsthat question is going nowhere. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, I do see one question I’m going to answer. In general announcements, can we increase

55:50

55 minutes, 50 secondsthe character limit? When the new communication stuff goes live, you will not have to worry about that. I promise.

55:56

55 minutes, 56 secondsSo we have lots coming. And so much of that feedback is being incorporated deeply into everything we’re doing. So thank you guys again. Really, really

56:05

56 minutes, 5 secondsappreciate your time today. And I hope you guys get out there and use conversations to best advantage today.