The SMS industry is absolutely exploding and Teledrip is the fastest growing company in the space. CEO Chris Moreira teaches us how his clients are making incredible ROI using the industry's most advanced SMS Artificial Intelligence
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Show Notes
- Teledrip is an SMS and drip automation platform.
- Chris Moreira founded Teledrip in 2017.
- SMS works great for insurance and finance verticals but can benefit many industries.
- Anyone that has a landing page and wants to automate their communication with customers.
- You can almost double your conversion rates with automated follow-up drip campaigns.
- Using SMS gives customers the power to schedule their own follow-up.
- Teledrip fully leverages automated Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.
- Pros and Cons between Short Code SMS, Long Code SMS and Toll Free SMS.
- AI doesn’t come out a box, you have to train it. Teledrip already does this!
- You need to pay attention to words, verbiage, sentiment, keywords and phrases!
- Short code SMS work well with high-volume campaigns.
- Real-time data is the best use case for SMS and Drip Automation campaigns but aged data still works too!
- AI Texting requires consumer consent and compliance with TCPA!
- SMS allows you to be very specific and targeted with your messaging throughout the consumer journey.
- Over 83% of millennial consumers say they text more than they talk on their smartphones
- 73% of marketers agree that focusing on a customer journey has led to an increase in revenue growth.
About Teledrip
Teledrip's workforce automation software optimizes first-contact and follow-up of prospects through conversational AI SMS, advanced IVR with speech recognition, and API integrations. Our simple, yet powerful console gives unparalleled real-time insights, analytics, and control of your campaigns including web-hooks, schedule/campaign editor, Text Inbox, lead disposition tool, numerous real-time reports, and more. TeleDrip also provides content generation, voice recordings, campaign setup, and user support.
Website: https://www.teledrip.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopherjmoreira
Episode Transcript
Adam Young:
Welcome to the Pay Per Callers Show. My name is Adam Young the founder of Ringba and today we have a special guest Chris Moreira, the founder of Teledrip. Teledrip is an SMS automation company, and I'm really excited to have him on the show today because his clients are making millions of dollars using their technology to send automated SMS messaging. So thank you for joining us today Chris it's a pleasure to have you.
Chris Moreira:
Thanks, Adam. I really appreciate you having me on.
Adam Young:
So tell us how you got started in adtech and SMS.
Chris Moreira:
Yeah, so when I was working for a hosted IT company, I was managing a rather large region. So what I was initially looking for was a solution that would enable me to contact my customers and prospects because managing half the country, there was just not enough of me to go around the state up top of mind with my customers and have them accurately kind of follow-up with me, set appointments, and just maintain those touch points. So I started looking around for developers and business partners that could either build this for me, were working on a similar solution, or some way to collaborate on that. So in looking for a solution for myself as a sales professional, I came across the developers I work with now who were actually already in the midst of building the solution, and Teledrip was already an idea in their mind. So once I saw that and saw that SMS was their core focus of contacting customers and consumers, I thought that this could be an entirely business within itself. And then once we started to really work on that and look at the industry and look at how we can kind of bring this product to market, we saw who else was in the industry and what they were doing, and then we realized that shows like LeadsCon and Affiliate Summit, there was a whole marketplace centered around this. So really in looking for a solution for myself as a sales professional I stumbled upon the adtech industry and the developers who are building the solution.
Adam Young:
That's amazing. It's funny how that works, right? You're trying to solve a problem for yourself and it ends up being this massive problem that a ton of people are experiencing. And we see it all the time to. A lot of our clients are always asking how they can reach more people, generate more phone calls, and create more revenue for themselves. And so I do know that a bunch of our clients work with Teledrip and they're extremely happy with the product and service that they've received and have always told us that you guys go above and beyond to ensure that they're successful with their campaigns. So let's talk about that for a moment. What are some of the verticals and industries that your clients are specializing in today and how are they utilizing SMS technology to drive inbound phone calls and contacts with their customers?
Chris Moreira:
Yeah. Absolutely. So we have a pretty large presence in the insurance industry. Life, health, auto, things like that. Home services is rather large. Finance. Pretty much anybody that has a landing page and/or are looking to follow-up or speed the contact for consumers. So it's a very broad base of verticals. And the way we're leveraging it is we're now taking what we've done with AI and scheduling and follow-up and we're using much lighter touch points on the consumer. We're finding that that's very effective. So in the past, you might have filled out a form for an auto insurance quote and then as soon as you clicked enter you just were bombarded with calls. Maybe you were called five times that day. You weren't available. You were at work. Whatever the case may be. With SMS, we're able to send a single SMS that's customized and personalized, and then that engages the consumer. So a little kind of metric from Salesforce, 91% of users who opted in to receive text messages from a brand see those messages as somewhat or very useful. So people enjoy receiving text messages more than a phone call. Especially the younger generations text way more than use a phone call. So we use that, and we engage the consumer, answer their questions, and then schedule a follow-up call. If they're available at that moment, we'll call them then as well. And we find that there's a good mix between outbound IVR calls and scheduled texts. That's kind of been the most effective solution. And with calling and texting people from a long code number they're now used to who that is. So if I texted you and said, "Hey, Adam. Thanks for your interest." And now, you're having a conversation with us - you're asking questions about the value prop pricing - and you tell us when you want to be called. When that number does call you, you're a lot more likely to answer because you've seen where it's coming from, who it is, and you've already had a bunch of questions answered.
Adam Young:
So what are some of the conversion rates that you're seeing after sending out these texts or IVR calls versus traditional lead generation content?
Chris Moreira:
Yeah, so we're seeing some of the guys that are doing pure IVR versus an IVR and SMS combination almost doubling their convergence. So bringing in that SMS is such a good touch point with enabling the consumer to schedule their follow-up. When you're calling with IVR or any sort of automatic means, you're reaching out and hoping that they answer, or you're leaving a voicemail. When you're sending that text message, now you're putting the power in the consumer's hand to say, "Hey. Call me at 2:30 tomorrow, or 5:00 PM a week from now." So our system and most SMS systems with good scheduling and AI can look at that and give the power to the consumer. And then when they decide when they want to be called you have a much happier consumer who's much more likely to purchase your product.
Adam Young:
That's amazing. And I actually think I've communicated with these types of bots before and not even realized it. They're super polite. They're very I wouldn't say aggressive, they're just very fast to reply, but do a really great job with scheduling and changing appointments and just like you said, giving the power back to me to decide when I want to be called and then being really good about getting those phone calls connected at the actual time that the consumer wants to speak. And it was kind of mind blowing for me the first time I realized I was chatting with AI as opposed to just chatting with a human that had bidirectional SMS. It kind of was like a light bulb moment where I was like, "Oh my God this is AI and it's handling everything for me."
Chris Moreira:
Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, we leverage full AI on our system. I'm sure other systems, they may use some sort of combination of humans and AI. We do have humans that back up our AI, but we found that training those systems on a total kind of big swath of sentiment enables the AI to get smarter and smarter. Because if you're doing a lot of volume, essentially, you're putting the feedback loop in to train the system. So if you're sending out tens of thousands of texts a day it doesn't take very long before the AI really understands what that consumers sentiment is.
Adam Young:
Let's talk about the other side of this equation for a moment. What are some of the challenges of working with SMS?
Chris Moreira:
Yeah, so there's a few of them. One might be your deliverability. So there's some differences between long code SMS, short code SMS, and toll-free SMS. So those are your three kind of options. And they all have pluses and minuses. For example, the short code, you're going to have to get that approved by the carrier, so it's a longer waiting period. They're more expensive to purchase. But at the same time, once your use case is approved by the carriers you almost have carte blanche in the sense of deliverability and the amount of texts you can send over that short code. Whereas a long code SMS, you're seeing that that's very organic because consumers can call that number right back. But at the same time, those are limited in the way that how many texts they can send. So SMS deliverability over a long code really needs to be tended to and watched every day. So there's some challenges with that as well as with a system like ours where it's AI. It doesn't come out of the box AI, right? Ours does now, but you have to train it, and there's a lot of work that goes behind training it and bringing together sentiment. So there's definitely some challenges in that regard, but we still find it a very effective solution in combination with the IVR's or stand alone as well.
Adam Young:
So what you're saying then effectively is SMS messaging requires a lot of set up at the beginning, but also a lot of split testing like A/B testing landing pages for messaging?
Chris Moreira:
Yeah, there's not too much setup at the beginning now. We kind of did that leg work over the last year of training the system. But what you really need to pay attention to is your words and the verbiage. These carriers upstream they're going to look at key words, phrases, D and C percentage, how many people in your campaign are opting out. So there's little, minute details. I guess the biggest challenge, especially for a long code SMS strategy would be the amount of variables that are in there for deliverability. So a lot of times customers will come to us and say, "Can I drop this link in my long code? What's that going to do to my deliverability?" And other than maybe it'll drop it, we really don't know until we launch that campaign because that link may be in combination with the key words and phrases you're saying in combination with how many people are opting out in combination with how quickly the consumers responding. So there's just a whole lot of variables when it comes to SMS deliverability that, like you said to your later point, there's a lot of split testing going on and you want to really try a few different strategies before you get that sweet spot on your individual campaign.
Adam Young:
Now, are you saying different campaigns react differently to local phone numbers, toll-free numbers, and short codes? What are the result differences in those choices?
Chris Moreira:
Yeah, so a lot of it's going to come down to the quality and freshness of the data. So those short codes, those are going to do well with high volume campaigns. So these big, big companies that are doing tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of texts a day, and it's very transactional. They can drop a link, or they can send even another number in there to click-to-call. Whereas the long code SMS, it becomes a little bit more organic and conversational due to the nature of the way the consumers use that long code. And then toll-free, the consumers going to look at that and know right away, "Hey, this is an 800 number. This is a company marketing to me." And again, it comes down to how targeted that data is, how fresh it is, and then when the consumers expecting. If you filled out an auto insurance quote two weeks ago and you've just gone about your day, and now you're getting a text, you may need a little bit of a refresher. You may have some more questions. So you may react differently to a long code than a short code and a toll-free. So a lot of that plays into consumer psychology and how people are viewing the different mechanisms.
Adam Young:
Now, do you see most of your customers integrating with you and sending over lead data in real-time?
Chris Moreira:
Absolutely. So the real-time data is probably the best use case. And that would be for calls as well, right? So the more fresh the data, the higher the conversion rates. It definitely has the highest close rates for our customers. The aged data still works well. And, in general, what we kind of use as benchmarks is the more fresh the data, the more aggressive you can be on the campaign. And the older the data, obviously, you want to space that out. Give the consumer time to kind of wake up and understand who you are, remember that they filled out this form, and then answer their questions. So both strategies work, but we've seen very high successful rates with the very fresh off the landing page data.
Adam Young:
That makes complete sense. So let's head back to that aged data you were just talking about. I think that's a great segue into my next question. What are some of the regulatory challenges with SMS and what are some of the things that people sending SMS really need to watch out for?
Chris Moreira:
Well, so the first part, if you're ever leveraging a fully automated system, the TCPA is the big, glaring neon light. So if you're leveraging a system where it's fully automated, there's full AI, you need to have that express consent from the consumer to contact them in the first place. So they really lump AI texting as the same thing as automated calls and dialing. It's a fully automated system. So right off the bat, hey, do you have that express consent? Then, the other part, which we feel like we've done a good job measuring is you look at a lot of companies that are using different types of AI or they're leveraging an avatar system, and a lot of times you're seeing that consumers need to be removed from the campaign, are not interested, but they're not necessarily saying, "Stop. Remove. Take me off your list." So it's really important that customers work with the system that AI out of the box can recognize sentiment. So that sentiment will be able to tell whether or not the consumer if frustrated. If they're being passive-aggressive. I see a lot of people might get into trouble if they're leveraging a system that's only looking at key words because if somebody is clearly wanting you to remove them, but they're not giving you those key words and you keep contacting them, now you're going to deal with a very frustrated, angry consumer. Whereas, really, people should look for systems that are measuring the sentiment of the consumer and able to remove people easily and get them off that list and scrub them out quickly.
Adam Young:
That seems like a major, major benefit to Teledrip that we probably should just spend a moment highlighting. I mean, I don't send any SMS. We make technology too. But it seems to me like if someone were using an automated SMS system that list hygiene and deliverability as you said is going to be at the top of their list of concerns. And most SMS systems will only remove you if you message them the specific word stop. And I've seen a lot of best practice guides with SMS and it always shows that one removal word of stop. And so I can see that as a massive improvement to this sort of archaic system where you guys are automatically looking for that sentiment, automatically trying to find people who are unhappy - screamers as we used to call them back in the email days. And then getting them off their list because they're going to buy, they're never going to call, and they're just a pain in the butt for everyone. So I think that's an amazing portion of your system and it should be highlighted here that if anyone's going to do SMS automation, that can save you a ton of time and potentially a ton of exposure to TCPA lawsuits and those lawsuits come with very large penalties up to, I believe - correct me if I'm wrong here Chris - $1,500 per contact. So if you send someone 10 SMS's, that's an exposure of $15,000 if they don't want to be on that last and then they complain to the FTC or something like that. So I think that's an amazing thing that you guys have built.
Chris Moreira:
Yeah. Absolutely. And SMS is another easy way for consumers to remove themselves from those campaigns. So in the traditional IVR calling, you have the different options. Press one to transfer, two to schedule in our case, nine to D and C. A lot of times these consumers they won't even listen to that last part. They won't get to that nine to D and C. So when you're texting, it's very easy for them to just opt themselves out through their sentiment.
Adam Young:
So tell me this, how are some of your best clients - without giving too much away, of course - generating their real-time data? What can some of the affiliates that are watching right now do to generate their own data to start to drive inbound phone calls through SMS automation?
Chris Moreira:
Yeah, so from our side, we really kind of stay away from the data in the sense that we're a fully automated system. So we're not providing any data to our customers, but we do work closely with them in the sense that we're very tied in to their whole stream, their path, and then that landing page where that data ends up coming into Teledrip. So really the more targeted you could be with your data the better. Obviously, you have sometimes some cross-promotional offers that really work well together, but the more targeted you can be, the better. And then with the SMS campaign, the messaging allows you to be very specific and very targeted as well. So I think when you're leveraging SMS keep in mind of that whole customer journey or consumer journey and think about, what did they click through? What are they looking at? And then continue that same messaging and flow through your text messaging campaign so that it's very organic all the way through.
Adam Young:
What do you see as the future of SMS? Where is the industry heading?
Chris Moreira:
Yeah, so I think SMS is absolutely exploding. As I mentioned, younger people-- over 83% of millennial consumers said they text more than they talk on their smartphones. And then 70% of marketers agree that focusing on customer journey has led to an increase in revenue growth. So as I just mentioned with the text messaging, that is becoming an integral part of the customer journey. And we all have our smartphones on us. We all text every day. I can't imagine that there's anybody watching this video that didn't send at least one text message today. So I definitely see it exploding in growth. From a user perspective, there's definitely a lot that remains to be seen from a compliance aspect, as well as with the AI portion. I mean, we're looking at laws from the '90s that text message wasn't even a thing back then as well as artificial intelligence. So I think there'll be an interesting look at how the regulators look at text messaging, but I think leveraging systems that are smartly and intelligently applying it to the consumer, we're going to see that explode and open up as the preferred mechanism of contact. I think we would all prefer to send a text or two rather than be on the phone. A typical use case that I'm envisioning is something like-- I called the DMV last week and when I called, I waited on hold for a really long time. Then, by the time I waited on hold, they said, "Hey. We'll give you a callback in 45 minutes." So then I had to wait 45 minutes. I get a callback. They connect me with a worker there at the DMV, and he had no idea about most of the things I was asking. Had to look everything up. Imagine if you could just text a business like that or an organization or a government entity your question, your verify your identification, and now with artificial intelligence and big data, they're able to look at all of the information in the system about you, give you those answers quickly and efficiently without you spending very much time. So I think text messaging, in general, is just in its infancy from a consumer to business relationship, and I also see that may be bleeding over into different applications like WhatsApp. And different mechanisms of messaging, in general, I think will be much more pervasive in the next few years.
Adam Young:
Sounds like a very bright future for SMS. So if any of our clients are crazy enough to not be doing automated SMS right now or any of our viewers watching want to work with you guys to set up automated SMS campaigns, how do they get in contact with you and how do they get in contact with Teledrip?
Chris Moreira:
Yeah, so you can go to our website and fill out a form for a demo request. We also have a bot on there that can connect you with a sales rep in your area, whether it's East or West Coast. So just visit Teledrip.com, and we'll take care of you.
Adam Young:
Well, thank you so much for being on the show. We really appreciate that. Thank you so much for sponsoring our party at Affiliate Summit, the Papers Caller Party. We really appreciate it. And thank you so much for the value that you delivered to our viewers today on the show.
Chris Moreira:
Thanks, Adam. I really appreciate it. It was fun.
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