Sarah Harkness 0:04
Okay. Good morning, everyone, and all Good evening, wherever you are in the world. I'm your co host, Sarah Harkness. I am co founder and director here at Cattledog Digital. And thank you so much for joining us today I'm super excited to dive into today's topic with Dean from Pendula. And just a few housekeeping items before we get started. The webinar will run for about 45 minutes, if not less, and there'll be time at the end for q&a. But feel free to pop your question in that chat window whenever you have a burning one. And we will definitely answer them. So look out for an email from us afterwards as well. And we'll be sending out the recording. So with that, let's get started. I'm super thrilled to introduce our very special guest. And thank you for hosting us here in the Pendula office. This is amazing. I feel like I'm a news reader at the best. So Dean is the head of business development here at Pendula and has worked for over 15 years in b2b and b2c and we are super, super excited to hear from him today and get his insights about how mobile and SMS and communications can transform marketing automation. So with that, I'm gonna hand the ball over to you.
Dean Moon 1:25
Excellent. Thanks, Sara. So first, thank you to everyone for joining, we know that you're all very, very busy. And so obviously your time is valuable. So my goal for everyone here this morning is to provide you with some value. So hopefully you get some information that you're able to take back to your businesses and hopefully be entertained. You know, otherwise. So grab a coffee, sit back, and we'll go through some information that we've put together hopefully that you get some value out of that. So let's um, let's set the scene. It is December 1992. There is a technician there's a guide here called Neil Papworth, and he is sitting at his desk, and he's got a whole bunch of other technicians sitting around him a couple of guys in suits. And he's there in front of his computer, and he sends the first message and that message is Merry Christmas. On the other side, the recipient. There's a gentleman called Richard Jarvis, now he's actually downtown at a party in a posh hotel. And he receives this message. And so Neil sends this message. And it's interesting this, this is a really interesting time because this was a period where the major telcos there was a bit of a race. And what they were trying to achieve was trying to actually develop a short messaging system service. So SMS as we know it today, why were they doing that they were doing that because what they were trying to achieve was pages back in the day to actually communicate between, you know, back and forth and whatnot. So Vodafone came out with that in 1992. As a result of that, Neil became a bit of a celebrity. So he was then flown around all around the world. So I went to Singapore, Sydney, you know, parts of America and then obviously installing and getting these this SMS service up and running for Vodafone. Yeah, so that's, that's, that's kind of the history, this particular screen. If you if you search the internet is a short ad that the Superbowl put together a number of years ago. And it's got a whole bunch of different people that have developed certain applications on mobile technology. And this is a screengrab where he says I'm Neil, I created this mess. So check that out. It's good. It's quite, it's quite, it's quite a funny little ad. Back home in Australia, we didn't get SMS until 1994. And that's when Telstra had enabled that service. Coincidentally, it was broadcast only so you could only receive messages you couldn't you couldn't respond. But it was the first step in enabling that service here in Australia, and 1995. That's when we saw the other networks allowing that to be used. And so people within those different carriers so if you're a Vodafone customer, if you're a Telstra customer, or if you're an Optus customer, you could send messages back and forth, but you can only send within the networks and I understand to show my vintage here a little bit, but I don't know if you recall, it was kind of frustrating back in the uni days. It's like if you weren't on the same network. You couldn't receive it like Why aren't you on Telstra? Why aren't you on Vodafone? Remember, I don't have a qualifier. Right? So it was pretty funny. So but statistically, it's really interesting. So when that took place, the advent of enabling, you know, intercarrier messaging didn't take place until the year 2000 Olympic games to play so that was quite timely. And then numbers from a usage perspective all the way from you know, 2002 to 2012. it you know, it grew by 12 times, so 1 million messages in 2002, all the way up to 2012 over 12 million. More recently, stats is showing that, you know, as back as 2017, Australians send 85 million messages a day.
Sarah Harkness 5:18
Not a surprise, my four year old can SMS now.
Dean Moon 5:22
Yeah, so if there are any people out there say, you know, SMS is an old technology, it's not being used, I challenge that. And globally, it's 22 billion a day. So it's, it's, it's massive, and it's ubiquitous, it's everywhere. So what does that mean? You know, what does that mean for your customers? What are they doing? What How are they using SMS. And so some researchers and more recent research, Australians, on average, spend about three hours on their phone. And I think with, you know, the recent events of the pandemic, we've probably spent a little bit more than that. Yeah, streaming services, you know, we consume content. So I would say it's a very conservative number, but three hours a day is what the research is suggesting. And of that 98% of messages that are sent are actually opened and, and read, that's pretty high. So take that one step further, of that 98% 11% of those, if there is a click, so if there's a web link, going somewhere, people will actually click and have that if there's a call to action, you want them to do something you want them to send, you know, fill out credit card details, or pay something or whatever 35% will actually respond. So these numbers are pretty impressive. And I think if you know, any marketer or agency out there, that'd be kind of, you know, salivating about these sort of numbers, if they were coming back to their customers say, Hey, we could do this for you. So never numbers. And what we're seeing is that every generation now is moving towards a preference towards message, you know, messaging, you know, who doesn't? It's simple. It's, it's fast, it's quick. We carry our phones. I don't know about you guys. But when I leave, and I leave my phone at home, I stress out.
Sarah Harkness 7:04
So Oh, yeah, it's like missing an arm. Yeah.
Dean Moon 7:06
So so the question then is, why aren't more businesses doing this? You know, why aren't more businesses actually doing this? And I have sort of asked, I'll throw it out there to the audience. So I you guys doing this? And what are the challenges? And in order to sort of really answer that, you've got to look at, I guess, the history. And so here, you know, we've got a slide of, you know, the various generations. So we talked about generation one, that's when we're sending out broadcast messages going out, can't respond. So, you know, that's, there's a lot of businesses actually doing that. Now. If you think about courier services, you know, when they send a message, it's like Sara Lee behind one to one, you know, that that's kind of it, you don't, in some cases, you're not able to actually respond. If we take that a step further, what we're seeing now, generation two, is that really simplistic? You know, respond One, two, yes. No, that type of thing. It's very linear. You know, there's, there's no sort of track for, you know, exception handling, you know, so it's quite, you know, it's, in a sense, it's good, but it's also a little bit frustrating, and obvious spot. It is it is. And so, you know, the Holy Grail really is how do you take that capability? And then humanised. How do you send a message, pause, get a response, and then take action. You know, because when you're having a conversation with somebody, you know, when I'm talking to you, sir, it's about I said, you want to go out tomorrow for lunch? On a go? Do you want to go out for lunch tomorrow? By the level of a bar? One, two, or 312? Or three? It's it's a case of just how do we humanise that experience. And I think what's really important here is not even just about the interaction piece, it's more about actually, how do you execute on what you say you're going to do. And I think that's really, really important. It's really, it's the missing link. So taking, where we've come, humanising that, and then executing on that, you know, creating some automation and delivering on that. So that's really, really hard to want more businesses doing that, a, it's really hard. It's really, really hard. You're in the services game, you see the challenges that businesses have with, you know, how difficult that is, you know, multiple systems, etc. We have spotted an opportunity in that. And so, you know, the reason that we're here talking about this is, you know, some of the challenges that businesses have, and, you know, at pendule, what we do is we take all that difficulty, we take all that complexity, and we allow people to businesses to actually automate that process, really simply connect into your CRM, drag and drop, you know, and then create that journey and create the automation. We talked about some, you know, the exception handling you know, what happens when things sort of fall out if you don't answer one, two or three, what do you do you know that in some cases, it just gets lost in the ether and then it's, you know, get a response, never get a response. pretty frustrating point and then what happens Jump on the phone, you speak to customer service, let me look at your record, sorry, we don't have record of that Sara, and you know, some poor person somewhere in another part of the world, it's been offshored to take Customer service is just getting grilled. So we've taken that complexity out and you know, we've developed a solution that enables business to have that. But enough about us, you know, let's talk about some of the businesses that are actually having free flowing, conversational text messaging out. So in the telco space, I don't know if you guys know but this company called the amaysim, they recently acquired by Optus, and they were looking at a way of how do they improve their interaction, how they improved their interaction with customers doing it in a very efficient way, allowing customers to go back and forth very rapidly. And if you think about it, a telco that's, that's their, that's their business, that's their game, you know, and again, taking that to the next level where they're actually able to execute on some of those things. So you know, they've got a number of different use cases they use, so things like onboarding, cross sell upsell, so things like you know, if your data plan you're coming to the, you know, the, the end of your data are using it close, you know, would you like to upgrade and things like that. Things like retention renewals, anecdotally, they do a number of surveys, they collect information out, they keep it nice and simple. And that information is all come back. And again, keeping it vytex. So that they're getting it back and forth, and it's really easy and accessible for their customers. If you think about the size of their business, you know, they've got something like, you know, under, you know, 1.2 million customers, that's a lot, that's a lot of interactions, you know, to be able to automate that to be able to have that, you know, all the customers go through that experience, it's really, really it's gonna cost a lot of money, you know, in the absence of automation and so engagement numbers went up by 32% What's an engagement number it's basically having a response is basically having somebody come back I don't know if you guys have felt this but you send out a message to someone and you get nothing silence dot dot, dot, you know. So they were able to see a massive increase in their engagement which was which is something that again, marketers, agencies, you know, they salivate over these kinds of numbers -
Sarah Harkness 12:24
Very impressive numbers.
Dean Moon 12:27
And then from a conversion perspective, things like the upsell cross sell the onboard and getting new customers on board you know, they were saying figures around about 15% and upwards as far as you know, those conversions so again, really impressive numbers just by using conversational messaging, having different flows having context around what the message was actually being sent. And for those that are that are aware, a mason was recently bought out by Optus so these guys had been around for a little while but they were disruptive, really challenging the market and Optus Avi saw that as an opportunity to take some market share so when you're doing good things, it gets noticed. Moving on this is this is a really interesting use case. A really interesting customer was because I'm going to be honest, and I don't want anyone to take offence but it's really hard to get emotionally attached to a utility provider. It's really hard you know I don't get excited when I get my my gas or electricity burner you know definitely it's 100% important and it's something that we all need it you know you'd need power and whatnot but at the same time it's it's not a product that people get behind and form an emotional attachment to so origin recognise this and what they were looking to do was you know, how do they actually change and drive closer relationships with their customer base and if anyone knows or I'm sure that we've all gone through this but you know in the utility in the energy space is highly competitive it's almost a race to the bottom of the pit you know, discounts you know, hey we'll lock in your price for you know, an extra 15% off if you do this and whatnot. And there's no emotional attachment it's a price driven game it's a game that you know, is that industry is is vitally important but at the same time it's it's the margins are really really thin because of that high level of competitiveness. So how do you differentiate and what how they differentiate was how do they get closer to their customers? You'll see here there's a number of different use cases so you know marketing customer onboarding, all that type of stuff, but things like you know, installation you know being able to converse with their customers say hey, we're gonna be here at this time will you be there you know, I don't know if you guys know but when you get that when you get you know those those compromises Hey, will you be there between like nine and seven o'clock at night it's it's a pretty it's a pretty big window, you know, you want to be able to know that you can sort of come back and say, Hey, I'm not going to be there Can I reschedule and things like that. So that's that's really important. And again, that's just customer experience. That helps with, you know, hey, these guys are listening, it's easy to do business with them. Yeah, you know, when I pay the bills, the lights come on. And so that's that's one particular area. Another one is demand response. And so for those in the know, you know, there are times where there are peak periods and again, generally what happens in the market is everybody's opted into these events. And what it is, is the ability to actually say, Hey, can we control your usage? Or can you maintain your usage at a certain level, and if you do, we'll give you an incentive. Now, that sounds really good on, you know, at face value, but when everybody is opted in, and everybody is given that opportunity, there's no value in it, you know, hey, sir, I'm going to give you a 5% discount, because you're just a customer. Great, who cares? You know, when when you get fed up, you go to the next provider and say, Hey, I was getting 5% off anyway. But when there is that interaction, and you're buying into doing these activities, and then you're rewarded, that's different. That's, that's communication, there's a bit of value transfer there, and then you can actually see what's actually taking place. So that's, that's now one of the many different use cases that that origin abuse, and I think, you know, that's fantastic for a company that, you know, it's not an exciting product, but it's very important product. So yeah, so which kind of leads into the last, the last use case, and I think this is an amazing, this is a really great quote, you know, Brad, from his cover has said, you know, we need it to be wowing our customers talking about products that aren't, you know, hard to get sort of a little bit of passion behind. For those that don't know biz cover are a an insurance company, they provide insurance products to, you know, small to medium businesses. And I'm a little bit close to this, because I used to be in the insurance game insurance has a grudge by no one wants to buy insurance. You know, you never know how good it is until you actually need to client. So when you think about this narrative, what they're trying to do, they're trying to wow their customers, because again, it's something that everybody needs. Especially if you're a small business owner, you know, whether you've got commercial insurance, PII, you know, whatever current whatever, it's all important, you, you pay for it, but then you don't get the value until you hit sort of disaster. You know? So how do you change that? How do you change that so that the customer feels like they're being valued? How do you change that, and so you have to deliver an exceptional customer service. And again, if we look at the price for if you go down the barrel, you're just going from, you know, you'll end up just going from one insurer to the next insurer to the next insurance connection. So I think here, this is really, really exciting that, you know, you've got somebody here that looks after obviously, you know, their, their IT infrastructure, and, you know, was looking for a, you know, a customer centric driven initiative to try and change things. What do they use, you know, conversational messaging for, again, this is pre qualification. So obviously, you've got people that are looking for quotes, and they go on the website, and whatnot. So you know, when that information comes in, sometimes you just get what you want, you go to the next website, and let's, let's be honest, we all sort of do that I have done that in the past. But you do that. And so what that means to that business or discover is that they've got an abandoned cart. And you know, you want to follow up, and you want to speak to this customer, but they may not want to speak to you. And so they've identified that, you know, calls are valuable. However, people want to be able to respond very quickly, very discreetly, maybe they want to come back to it. So they use the SMS functionality to be able to have those conversations. And guess what, when you're sending SMS back and forth, you're actually having a conversation. And when you're having a conversation, you're building a relationship. On top of that, there's a number of other ways that they use it. So things like you know, helping with claims, notifications, things like billing retention, so all the nasty things that you don't like doing so things like billing, for example, you know, when people go into arrears, and then we've all had periods where, you know, direct debit doesn't go through and then you get the phone call and some, you know, customer service person, say, Hey, you know, and they're being nice, and they're doing their job. You're like, oh, all sorted. Leave me alone. Yeah, you know, it's, you know, they, they don't want to be doing that sort of stuff. And so again, they use the conversational element to the essence of the messaging to be able to automate some of these processes which are a tedious, unpleasant, and so that they can actually focus on you know, more important things that customers actually value. So things like claims, notifications, but obviously, you know, that's high touch and you want people to actually talk about so moving on. We've talked about three businesses, relatively large sort of medium size, but you know, there are a plethora of organisations They're actually using, you know, conversational messaging and the personalization aspect of that. This is this slide here shows some customers that we serve some really, really interesting ones here, from a non for profit space. We've got wildlife, Victoria, they use messaging to help with the notification of injured animals. So you can actually text in, they'll have a conversation that way. And they obviously then mobilise their resources, so that, you know, you know that animals have gone from whatnot, because again, jumping on a call centre, hey, you know, I hit a bird, I'm on the side of the road, I feel really bad, you know, and you might be waiting there for a while, but so they've got that functionality. In the non for profit space, it's also interesting that you know, that we've got organisations that are looking to use that SMS capability to increase donor support. So things like, you know, hey, Sarah, you supported us, you know, last month for $25, I would really appreciate if you get to 30. You know, there's a couple of organisations that I support. And what's interesting is, you know, you get the phone call, you don't know who it is. And that person, does that pitch really fast. Yes. And they do it really quick. Yeah, they got to get it off, you know, the higher the law. And, you know, it's, it's, it's a really tough game, there's, there's a lot of good causes that are being served out there. But the reality is that people are busy. These people that are employed to actually make these phone calls to get these donations for the events that they're having. Feel that they need to get that off really, really quickly. And then, you know, get in, you know, get the customer to bind emotionally. And they go, Oh, yes, I will. But the truth is, most people say, No, I, hey, I'm sorry, I'm busy. Can you call me back later and never to be heard of again, and the poor person in that call centre is great Next, you know, so automating some of this is what some of the nonprofits in our space are using to help with that. You'll notice that we've got TEDx there, you know, events that we all know and love, they use the messaging component to mobilise their staff and actually manage that. So you know, once we have events, again, big events, you know, at the ICC, they've got large, vast numbers of people that, you know, they need to manage and crawl and whatnot, so they use that. And then we've got some healthcare businesses, we've got Ramsay there that use us for appointment reminders. And in that space, we've got a large number of customers that we serve in the NDIS space, things like appointment, check ins, reminders, surveys, all that sort of stuff. And that's really important, because, you know, people that are receiving the services want to be able to enact very quickly, they will likely have their phone with them, they don't want to go into email, you know, yes, no, that sort of thing, have conversations. And if there's anything that's outside of that, it's captured, you know, somebody in the customer service centre could actually even the call and have that conversation around that. And we talked about obviously, origin, and some telcos so. So they're some of the customers that are actually doing, you know, what we're talking about, and deriving real value and getting real customer engagement, you know, which is really difficult in this day and age, because there's so many tools out there, and there's so many different apps, and you see that you're making recommendations all the time. But what are some of the benefits, so, as a, as a product, manufacturer, and as we serve customers, we've sent something like over 18 million messages, we start to see some trends, we start to see some, some trends as far as how people are using it, and what the engagement figures look like. So things like, you know, 30% interaction rates, again, interaction is having that conversation going back and forth, you know, the ability to say, Hey, are you interested in this or no, come back, you know, and if not free flow, you want to send some feedback. So we start to see that this 17% additional feedback is really, really interesting. So, you know, I don't know if anyone's ever done a survey, and, you know, being sarcastic that I'm sure everyone has, but surveys are really blunt, you know, they sort of go down this particular path, one to to 10, you know, and then you fill it out five different times, you know, with the different pages and whatnot. And then right at the end, you get a little box, and it says, Is there anything else you'd like to add? And then you can be really honest, and you can be exactly. So what we found is that through, you know, conversational SMS and the personalization, is that sometimes we've had customers come back with unsolicited feedback. So in some cases where we've had customers actually go out and do a retention campaign. Things like you know, hey, you're a customer or you're about the end of your contract, would you like to renew? Would you like to, you know, stay on board, and we'll give you an extra discount or we've noticed that your usage has gone down. We've had cases where customers have actually come back and said, No, But if you give me this, I will. And that is really valuable. I mean, that's, you know, like marketers and research companies, you know, they, this this stuff is gold, if you can get this information and then understand what a particular cohort or a particular segment of your customer base looks like, you start to understand what does it they want, why do they want this, and this is a trend, and this is something that we need to actually, you know, put out in the market, because this is what they're saying, you know, rather than the poor marketing team having to then go out, yeah -
Sarah Harkness 25:33
Make assumptions that are not data driven.
Dean Moon 25:36
That's right. And then finally, you know, the the upsell, or cross sell, so you know, your existing customer base, you know, when we've seen, you know, 15% and upwards, that's twice, you know, the response rate from from email. And, again, email is a great tool. But at times, it's a little bit overused and at times has quite a lot of information. Again, we're all busy, we don't have time to be sorting through the pages and pages of stuff, and then documents, what not, we want to be able to provide value and execute on offers and things that we want to write there, meet your customer, where you send the message, and then provision what that actually looks like. So this is just before I sort of close up, this is a piece of research that we, we used a little while ago, it's, it's by Walker, a consulting company, it's a little bit dated now, but I think it's really rings true today, you know, if you if you're not, if you're not, if your customers are talking to you, they're probably talking to somebody else, I think it's pretty valid, you know, you'd probably see that your interactions with businesses and whatnot.
Sarah Harkness 26:49
And they often don't even know. So I think uncovering that it's even more critical. It's personalization, or die.
Dean Moon 27:00
That's right, it's, it's interesting that when you don't talk to a friend for a long time, and then all of a sudden, they've either moved on or they don't like you are the you know, whatever, you know, it's the same with customers, when customers are not talking to you or that, you know, they're just paying their bill or whatever. And that's, that's all they're doing. You know, you kind of want to know where they're at, and then all of a sudden, you get the cancellation, and then you know, they're with another provider or that with another service provider. And so again, you know, I think in lieu of automation, efficiency and things like that, you know, experience is paramount.
Sarah Harkness 27:34
Especially now post the pandemic, I mean, yeah, I'm in the world, people want authentic customer experience, that's right, as well. So it's changing, or shift in 123 response. And actually, I'm a person, I've got a personal response to give. Yeah, I think that becomes even more critical.
Dean Moon 27:57
And I think also, the other thing is that we want to be able to, and when I say we consumers, we want to be able to interact, when it's relevant and comfortable for us, not between the nine to five hours and things like that. So, um, you know, I've got examples, you know, where I actually like chatting with people online, when I'm actually you know, got a billing query or something like that. But the problem is, some services only operate between certain times. But with the messaging, what you can do is you can actually create some automation around that. So if I do respond to something, and then I don't respond for what, the chats not going to be closed, I can come back and respond to that tomorrow, the next day, and then, you know, we sort of keep that conversation going. So there's some automation, some smarts behind that. But in saying that, there is relevance with having chats with a real person on the other end, but it's frustrating when you can only do it during work hours, when we're all working. You know, like, that's pretty tough. So just before I hand over, I've done a lot of talking, and I hope you've had some value. We, we here we've partnered up with, with catalogue and we would love to offer an exclusive one month trial, because obviously we've talked about all this great stuff. And I think one of the challenges is like, Yeah, that's great. That's what they're doing. But how we do this can, you know, like, show us show us and I think in this day and age of technology, value has to be derived very, very quickly, people want to see it, you want to mitigate as much risk as possible. We've talked about, you know, a number of different, you know, organisations of different sizes that have actually used, you know, conversational messaging and personalization. So just want to open this up to everyone that's registered and attended their agenda conditions and we'll send some information out but a one month trial to actually use this in your own business, or just test it, get a feel for it and see how easy it is. We'll, we'll set up a call just to you know, help configure that up. But that's that's available there and we'll send more information over I think with that I am going to hand back over to you, sir.
Sarah Harkness 30:02
Perfect. So, look, we've got a couple of questions didn't so I might just ask if that's all right. And any questions, please pop them through on the chat window. So first question is from anonymous, which is not very personalised. No, it's no, but what do you find more effective with marketing messages? plain text, SMS or MMS? So that's obviously talking about the type?
Dean Moon 30:32
Yeah. That's, that's a really good question. And that's a pretty common question, especially when we talk to organisations that like they want to optimise, you know, what channel they want to use. I think it's a combination. You know, I don't think there's a silver bullet, I, you know, there are cases where you will need to send an image and things like that. But in saying that, if you've got a bill inquiry, and you want to dispute that you wouldn't upload a PDF, and then send it back, you know, you would have a conversation. And so there are things so we speak to we speak to, you know, some partners out there, and they do stuff in the, you know, the property management game. And it's really important for them to be able to have, you know, MMS messages going back and forth. But for I would say the majority of the time, depending upon the specific use case and what you're trying to drive with that communication.
Sarah Harkness 31:23
Exactly, you know, it's so it's way you're at, and the context that's right as to what the right approach is really and rock the right thing is to say, part of what we want to do is map that out and understand, what is the typical conversation? Are there different conversations that we're having with different groups of people, and it's not necessarily just about automation, but that's a huge win, you can't do that at scale, you can't have a one to one conversation when you call centres. Only 1000 people for example. Great answer, thank you Dean. Are we finding younger users engaging with SMS or prefer other messaging systems like WhatsApp?
Dean Moon 32:05
Isn't that that's a really interesting question. Um, so every generation is, you know, as I mentioned, in the earliest slides is moving towards a messaging based preference. The challenge with I think, you know, some of these apps, you would have seen some security issues with, you know, Whatsapp being owned by, you know, Facebook, and obviously, how they want to market and collect information and things like that. So, is there a preference? I think there's a big challenge for businesses because twofold. A, you've got to get customers on board into an app. They once they're in the app, how often are they going to use it? So if you think about that, there are real challenges around again, getting engagement. So, you know, we saw with, with WhatsApp, you know, when these sort of privacy concerns came out about, you know, collecting more data for businesses, etc, you know, a couple of months ago, you know, things like Telegram and Signal came out, you know, I've got a whole bunch of people just adding you know, that that downloading it, but I'll be honest, I've not sent one Signal message, or one Telegram message at all.
Sarah Harkness 33:15
I rarely use WhatsApp. It's, you know, one or two people. And that's just because they're overseas. And it's easier. Yeah. That, you know, there's obviously multiple channels in which to reach people on different levels. I think that this is the, I think, to your point before about reaching people in the right place at the right time. Whilst there's trends kind of moving away from say, WhatsApp, and messenger, to more SMS and, you know, other tools, I still think that younger users are using what their friends use, right?
Dean Moon 33:53
Absolutely. I think if you think about it, you know, the big data challenge for telcos is that you know, they used to charge for X amount of SMS and phone calls, you know, in the old bills, you know, hey, you can do this many calls at this time, and this many international and this many, you know, domestic and so many SMS and if you got more, you'd get this, like, massive bill with all these, like, you know, oh, yeah, but what's happened now is that SMS is ubiquitous, you know, the moment you buy a SIM card, you know, it's, it's part of the plan, you don't charge, it's like, you can send as many SMS as much want. And the truth is that when you're overseas, you know, you may not have access to Wi-Fi, things like that. But if you do you have a card or a sim that's actually enabled within that country, you can send SMS and in some cases, you know, there have been stories where SMS has been used for, you know, rescue and things like, right,
Sarah Harkness 34:41
I was in New Orleans A few years ago, and there was a huge flood that was going on at the time, and that was the way that they communicate right there. That, you know, you need to probably get to save ground, basically,
Dean Moon 34:57
I guess, you know, just tying up that question. I would say buyer, beware of the shiny new thing around apps and different sort of channels and things like that. Because you know, those figures that we talked about earlier, you know, there's, you know, back in 2017, the research said that it was 85 million messages a day, I would say that it's, you know, we're probably looking at around about a million now. So SMS is still heavily used so.
Sarah Harkness 35:23
Brynn Chadwick has asked us, where is the customer data hosted or stored? I think there's probably two parts. So I'll let you answer the first.
Dean Moon 35:33
That is a really technical question. So thank you, Brynn. So currently, as it stands, we are our solution, where the way I guess with the messenger, so the message is always you know, the data is actually stored back within the customer's environment. So from a from Salesforce, Salesforce it so if you're a Salesforce customer, we enable to re enable, you know, businesses to access that information for their customers. And we're just the message so whether carrier whether Carrie Burke, you know, we get the message and we deliver it. And then once we get the response, we deliver it back, we don't stored, it's stored back within their Salesforce environment. So from a safety concern, you know, we don't we don't capture any of that information. So you know, and we've, we've had, you know, talking about some of these larger companies, and we've gone through that that rigour to make sure that you know, all that information is safe and secure. And, you know, there's we minimise as much risk as possible. Absolutely. Good question.
Sarah Harkness 36:33
That's a fabulous question. And Ying has asked us, how do you track and report on the red and open rate for the text messages. And I think this comes back to what we do here at cuddle dog. And without giving too much of a plug. But ultimately, we want to help bring that data to life in Salesforce, correct. But we also use your product to bring that data and information to life based on that.
Dean Moon 36:58
Yeah. So you know, when you invest in CRM, and you know, significant infrastructure, you wanted to be able to give you dashboards and have visibility because you want to be able to track things and you know, there's a famous quote, you know, what isn't measured doesn't get done. So you want to see what that looks like. And, you know, so for our Salesforce customers, you can build out dashboards and you can see you can see you know, the responses and things like that. But we also have a an analytics or visualisation, live within the tool. So you can you can access that information. And you can see it, so it's there, you can see it, and you can manage it. So yeah, thanks again. That's a good question. Right.
Sarah Harkness 37:34
Question. And, and in terms of how long does it take to get something like Pendula live Dean?
Dean Moon 37:42
Great question. So the short of it really is, is, you know, we could get it up and running within, you know, 15 to 30 minutes realistically, like connecting it in or whatnot. And I think that, you know, in this modern age, time is time is, you know, time is valuable, you know, time is money. So, it's a case of deriving value very, very quickly. And for those that have been around, you know, the old days of, you know, hey, we're going to do this project, and it's going to cost you a million dollars, and it'll take us five years to get there. And by the time you get there, it's like the world's change, and you're now in catch up mode. That's, that's no longer acceptable for businesses, that's absolutely unacceptable. You know, people have built careers around that, but no more, we're indifferent. So we're able to stand up an environment connecting to data very, very rapidly. We've had businesses do this, you know, over a weekend, and then just send messages out and, you know, just a particular wine business that we're quite fond of, and they sent messages out. They'd never done this before. never done this before. And now we're getting orders back, you know, they said, hey, we've got this offer, you know, and, you know, because we needed the technology. They were kind of expecting one, two, and three, or they'll, you know, you kind of
Sarah Harkness 38:57
I think something like 30% up in sales.
Dean Moon 38:59
Exactly, that's right. And they had people coming back as they've got longtime customers that have come back and I buy the same one over the last 2030 years. And they came back and said, Hey, I'd like a bottle of this. And I'll and you know, so and that customer was just like we've never had this data before. They were kind of shocked. So you could get it done really, really quickly. And I guess the challenge is, it goes back to what is the complexity? What is it like that you're looking for, generally speaking, we can get up within 15 to 30 minutes.
Sarah Harkness 39:26
And I think starting small too, is always a good opportunity to pilot and that's why having a month to play.
Dean Moon 39:34
It's going to absolutely, absolutely we want you to come in, have a play, try and break it. Just joking. Don't break it. Yeah, it's available. So
Sarah Harkness 39:44
So we still have some more questions. Well, we're talking about upselling and asking people to increase their donations, for example, in the nonprofit space. What's the percentage of typical drop off or unsubscribes on SMS or that people that are cranky or a agree that they've been asked to increase by that channel, because it is a very personal channel. Yeah, sends me a text, generally. I'm gonna respond.
Dean Moon 40:10
that's, that's a really good question. I think this question here isn't, so I wouldn't isolate it just to the nonprofit and the donation space, I think it's, I think it's fairly, it's fairly broad. And so when you're asking somebody to do something more of what they're currently doing, it can be perceived, I think, you know, you can be frustrated, I think the reality is here is and I'll get to the percentage pace is that when you've got a customer base that have been regularly doing something, you know, out of the goodness of their heart, because they want to support a cause, you've got to think about it, you know, they're willing to do it again. And if they've got a period of time, it's just how do you enable that experience to be just a lot easier,
Sarah Harkness 40:50
And really authentic that conversational piece, that's right, you're not just flat out asking them for money, you're, you're, you're kind of leading them down a pathway that ultimately does increase the donation, like, we really appreciate this, give them some statistics about where their money's going, you know, the things that are important to donors, that they really want to feel like they are making a difference,
Dean Moon 41:12
It's a case of just understanding where they're at, and then just bank I think, you know, respectful and polite for I mean, you wouldn't send an SMS, you know, the, you know, there's like four pages like, Hey, you know, the people in blah, blah, blah, need this, and this is, you know, it's that there are other, there are other mediums for that. And, you know, obviously email is where you send, you know, the chunk of the information, as far as the drop off rate, look, that kind of varies, and, you know, I'd love to sort of say, hey, it's 5%, or it's 10%. But the reality is, is that different customer segmentations are going to have different sort of response rates, those customers that donate on a fairly regular basis, you know, if they're asked, and again, I would say that it's a case of just incremental increases, you know, you don't go from hey, you've done $25, in the last campaign that we had, can we ask for 1000? You know, that's kind of, yeah, you know, I'd love to support it. That's a little bit hard, you know, but it's a case of then saying, you know, we'd love that, you know, could we ask for an extra 15? Like, $40 for this month? 123? Yes, or no, at least that way, you're getting that engagement, and then you start to collect what that particular you know, demographic, what they're telling you. So, I think it's a little bit different. I'd love to share specifics, but you know, obviously, we respect our customer data is we can't share everything. So
Sarah Harkness 42:28
So another question, then how much SMS is too much SMS? Can you ever exhaust over exhaust your customers? And what's the threshold? I mean, I think probably if I was to get
Dean Moon 42:42
That's a great question. I don't know if you've got friends on Facebook, but you know, when they just hit blasting with offers and things like that, and that's all I ever do. That's annoying. You know, hey, Sarah, you know, can you check out this is great. Hey, can you like my page? Can you do you know, it's the same thing. It's a medium. So I can't give you know, there are specific and say, Hey, you can only send two messages, you know, but I would say the way in which it's done and again, this pointing back to you know, humanising that experience. How do you take a message, send it, pause, dot dot dot die, then respond. And then you respond again. And then you have this flowing conversation, not like, hey, sir, bang, response, bang response, bang response, it's, you know, and at the same time, you don't want to be bombarding people. So I think, you know, at relevant times, everyone here knows their business, really well. Everyone would know what their customers are like. And I would say, think about how you receive information. How do you want to receive Do you want to receive, you know, the terms and conditions of your product via an SMS? I would say no. Would you prefer that in a PDF in an email? Absolutely. But letting somebody know that, hey, this is coming. Just check your email, if you haven't, let us know by saying no, on the SMS and then the email goes out. And they say yes, you know, so there's some etiquette behind that. There's and you know, I would say just some common sense.
Sarah Harkness 44:08
Absolutely. I like to call it empathetic mark and pathetic. Yeah, absolutely. And, okay, so a couple more questions, and then we'll have to wrap up. Okay. We'd love to sit here and talk about
Dean Moon 44:19
these are good questions. These are great questions.
Sarah Harkness 44:21
So we automated solutions, what happens if you get a response that makes no sense? That doesn't fit the criteria?
Dean Moon 44:29
Yeah. So we've, we've collected many of those here in our organisation. You know, some of them not so pleasant. We can't sort of say openly here. But again, the way that we've designed the tool is that again, anything outside of let's say, you know, I would say baked responses, you know, there's a happy path and a sad part on what we're looking for. That all gets captured within, and I don't want to get too technical here. So I'm not a technical person, but we have the ability to capture anything that's outside of that particular path. And that information is captured back in the contact record
Sarah Harkness 45:08
and create a case and etc. So that's where the power of having this all tied back into your CRM is.
Dean Moon 45:16
Absolutely. And then that's when you get you know, somebody you know, so Dean from pendula calls, uh, hey, you sent this message, and you didn't seem too happy about that, you know, how can we help and you've got, you've got that you got the history, so you can see what's been sent, and then why they responded in such a way. And I think that's really important.
Sarah Harkness 45:34
Absolutely. And for me, when we're talking, you know, customer 360, or the one single view of a customer, which is, you know, the Nirvana for anyone that even invest any money at all in any CRM, I think I'm having the capability within and within the tool itself. Yeah. So question, do you only deal with sending and receiving messages? And this one I might need to answer to, but or recommendations around the content or the copy?
Dean Moon 46:07
Yeah, good question. So we're a we're a solution provider, we're not an agency. So this is where we start to lean on, you know, experts like Cattledog. So we wouldn't necessarily produce the content, we would probably give you some advice. So, again, if I go back to some other customers that we've had, you know, we would we would suggest, hey, maybe turn back a little bit, let's not have seven pages of, you know, an offer? Yeah, yeah, let's let's, you know, the whole you got to think about it. SMS is short message service, it's, you know, so again, leaning, you know, we would lean on, you know, experts like Cattledog to say, Hey, this is what they want to do. And then you guys would obviously, you know, give advice around what the campaign looks like some of the messaging, some of the content, that sort of stuff.
Sarah Harkness 46:52
And from a Cattledog perspective, the customer journey, that full customer journey is what we really care about. You know, from beginning to end. And I think that this, your platform, Pendula enables customers and our customers to, from a service and sales perspective, take people on that journey. So it crosses over the full revenue cycle. And I think that's a big differentiator, too, is that SMS is amazing messaging capability. But having that conversation throughout a customer lifecycle changes again.
Dean Moon 47:25
I think, getting back to how do you humanise it, you know, how do you take this novel piece of technology that was built over, you know, over 20 years ago? And how do you weave that into, you know, current technology, which is all fancy and whatnot, and an organisation spend, you know, millions upon millions of dollars on, you know, the fancy new app and the fancy new, you know, this or that, and they might only get like, you know, 1% return on investment, and, you know, questions get asked, you know, budget time, you know, how did how did you guys go with that we spent, you know, a million bucks on this particular kit, whatnot, it's like, oh, well, we got, you know, and, you know, I think the technology is available. But you know, this novel piece of technology called SMS is very, very effective.
Sarah Harkness 48:07
So, yeah, certainly not to be discounted. So, look, Dean thank you so much. And thank you to everybody. We're pretty much out of time, we hope you learned some really valuable tips for planning, setting up executing potential potential strategy using this medium. Pendula is an amazing tool where we've been partnered for a couple of years now. And when we're certainly really excited about what you're doing here in the market, and the kind of customers that we're working together on site, thank you for sharing your research and experience.
Dean Moon 48:39
Thanks Sarah, I promised value. So if I'm going to give you guys back a handful of minutes, so there's a bit of value if I haven't delivered on the content. But yeah, we'd love to be in touch. And again, that offer that we've got, there will be some information going out very shortly. And coincidentally for those that actually provided an SMS, you know, we did send an SMS out and we know there are some cheeky people out there that you know, didn't put those numbers in there. We appreciate that we understand.
Sarah Harkness 49:03
We gotta eat our own dog food you know!
Dean Moon 49:05
So again, Thanks, Sarah for co hosting and we've really enjoyed this and yeah, please be in touch and have a wonderful day.
Sarah Harkness 49:12
Have an awesome day.
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