While we’re so busy perfecting our digital presence, our guest this week reminds us of another branch of marketing which is text messaging. Text messaging is here and continues to conquer the globe as the cheapest and most effective way of communicating with one another.
As a world-known marketing consultant, Paul Ruppert, shared with us his insights on how text messaging plays a vital role in engaging with and nurturing customer experience. He worked with big companies such as Facebook, Mastercard, Western Union, and many other global companies in different industries.
In this episode, we discussed:
– History of text messaging
– Text messaging as the cheapest and effective way of sending messages around the globe.
– Text message VS WeChat, WhatsApp, Viber, etc.
– SMS as universally available and enabled form of messaging.
– Mobile telephony and its impact on a country’s GDP.
– Application Program Interface
– Combine different message platforms for your marketing
– Text messaging is very effective in engaging with customers.
If you’re thinking of ways to level up your marketing, check out this week’s episode and learn more about how you can utilize text message marketing for your business.
Visit Paul’s website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulruppertintl/
Katie Brinkley 0:02
Hi friends. I’m Katie Brinkley, and you’re listening to Rocky Mountain marketing. This podcast is all about helping Colorado based small business owners, entrepreneurs, realtors and professionals discover the strategies and systems that take their marketing to all new heights. Let’s dive into today’s episode. Welcome back to another episode of Rocky Mountain marketing. Today’s guest is Paul Rupert. And I am so excited for our conversation today, we are going to dive into the world of text messaging, how can you use text messaging marketing for your business? How many people use text messaging for your business? We’re going to talk about all of that today. And Paul is the absolute perfect guest to have this discussion with because he has worked with some pretty big names. He’s worked with some international clients, including Facebook, MasterCard, Western Union, before we hit record here, we were actually talking about he just got off the phone with somebody in Dubai is one of his clients. So, Paul, thank you so much for joining me on the show today. And I can’t wait to have this discussion on text messaging with you. Welcome back to another episode of Rocky Mountain marketing. I am so excited for today’s guest. Today’s guest is Paul Rupert. And he has had the opportunity to work with some pretty big names his international clients have included Facebook, MasterCard, Western Union, just to name a few. He also has worked with private equity and venture firms teaching them how to leverage mobile services in their digital plans for conversational commerce. So again, like I said, he’s had worked with international clients. And he’s going to be bringing a lot of great tips today about how you can scale your startup going global from the start the art and science of high stake deals. We’re going to talk about a lot for growing your business. Paul, thank you so much for joining me today.
Paul Ruppert 2:03
Hello, Katie. Pleasure to be here. And hello, tell your listeners as well.
Katie Brinkley 2:07
Well, you and I have had the opportunity to talk offline a few times now. And you’re based in Washington, DC. And we actually were just talking about having global clients, one of your clients is is in Dubai. But tell us a little bit more about what it is that you do.
Paul Ruppert 2:22
Sure. So what I do right now, the value proposition that I bring to clients is I’m a consultant that helps both enterprises, as well as what are called aggregators or C pass providers and seapass is one of these terms of art or not acronym that stands for communications platforms, as a service, at route, my business experience, my technology experience is in the text messaging world, something that we all utilize and has only been around for about 31 years. And of those 31 years, I’ve been involved in it for literally 25 got into the business very, very early on 31 years. 1991 is when the first text message was sent by two engineers inside Vodafone. Yeah,
Katie Brinkley 3:13
it feels like texting is it’s been around for a while, but 31 years, I feel like it’s that that seems so long.
Paul Ruppert 3:20
Well, yeah, that that’s when the first one that doesn’t mean it was commercially available. That’s when they did it in a lab recognizing there is, you know, this gets into the technology of mobile telecommunications, which is complicated enough. But there are layers of data that flows through the air that are all part of the mobile connectivity that we all benefit from in using a mobile phone. And a mobile phone really is a radio that sends and receives signals. And it’s not really like it’s going to when you and I are talking on a mobile phone, you being in Denver, me being in Washington, DC, it’s not like some signaling is transmitting 2000 miles, it’s only transmitting about a mile and a half to a cellular tower. Okay. And that’s why the business at one point was called cell phones because they were phones that were connecting within a cell, a regional or a physical cell. And that’s how this all then connects. And then once it gets received by the tower, it then gets into, you know, the old style copper telecommunications network. Since then it’s been upgraded, because this is all right now based on light fiber optics, if you will. And then that’s how that is transmitted. And then if you and I were talking, because as you pointed out my experience in this space, and my clientele is really global. If we were talking and you were in Beijing, and I was in Denver that then goes through the old style telephone networks that we’re all used to, and it’s done in milliseconds. Now to the messaging piece, so you were asking it’s 31 years commercially, it became available around 1990 For when the mobile network operators started recognizing that this layer of the signaling could be used for what was then called provisioning, so a text message would go to your handset, and we essentially was changing what you might be receiving in terms of billing fees or anything else along those lines. Hence, the term provisioning. And that’s when these guys at Vodafone are realizing well, we could push 160 characters on this technology. And that’s the basis of mobile of short message services that we all benefit from, and the capture of the imagination of people how we utilize that I always talk about it in the context of it’s glimpse simple, you don’t need to read 160 characters, you know, there’s lots of neuroscience research that shows our brain is able to pass process both images and what’s going on visually without having really to see it. And this is one of those things where you don’t need to read 160 characters, it’s so short that you see it, your brain recognizes it and you move on, which is one of the power but one of the one of the elements of the powerful impact of text messaging. So too, you know, this is a long story. But the bottom line is today, but one last piece is when we were in elementary school, what did we do when we wanted to pass a message to somebody two rows over or in middle school, middle school, we would write something on a little piece of paper folded up, pass it to somebody, hey, send it over to Katie over there, two rows over, etc? Open it up. And there’s this little message that is that’s in there, you know, and that is one of the elements of why text messaging took off. Today, I’ll throw a question to you true or false? Does the average American receive a sender receive more than 40 messages a day? Or less than 40? messages a day?
Katie Brinkley 6:50
The average? Um, well, I think I’m above average, but I definitely say more than
Paul Ruppert 6:56
okay, so the average the actual number is 42. But then I’ll ask you this. A, what do you think the highest average is on a national market bases? So how high? Is it in the number as an average? And then where do you think that occurs? What country? Do you think that it happens in
Katie Brinkley 7:16
EU? So I think the highest amount of text messages being sent a day will say 100. Okay, I’m gonna say 100. And I’m going to say, I’m going back and forth between the United States and China. So I’ll say us, I’ll say us Americans are avid textures.
Paul Ruppert 7:36
So the number is 85. And that’s out of the Philippines.
Katie Brinkley 7:39
Oh, the Philippines. Wow. And that’s a small country.
Paul Ruppert 7:45
Yeah, not in terms of huge population. But the reality is, because a whole bunch of factors, you know, there is a large foreign worker aspect to the Filipino economy. You know, if you go to Las Vegas, for example, or a number of nurses all around the world, domestic workers in Japan and Saudi Arabia, this is all part of the foreign worker aspect of their economy. So they have friends and families that are spread out all over the world, and how do they communicate cheaply, and yet effectively, and quite quickly with each other text messaging. So that’s one of the aspects of it. And I have, as a result of the businesses that I’ve been involved in, in building out the capability of mobile operators to send these messages all around the world, because there’s, there’s essentially a third party and middleman, technologically and commercially, that enables all these messages to go all around the world because the operators may be mobile network operators, the cellular operators, however you want to call them, whether it be Verizon or T Mobile, or US Cellular, or whatever it might be. There were companies that I was principally involved in 25 years ago, we were startups and recognize we can do this better than the operators can. And we did because back then text messaging for one thing is based on originally was called the native GSM radio format. So GSM is the style of radio interface, but there were a lot of competition. There were a lot of technical competitors to GSM back then. So if you are thinking about let’s say, Nextel if you remember Nextel and if you remember Verizon, which is still around today, and you remember T Mobile US which is goes back to another company called VoiceStream. I’ve just gone through one standard which is called idin. Another standard called CDMA, which stood for CDMA. So got I’m forgetting this the acronym name, but CDMA and then GSM. And text messaging was based on the GSM radio format. It wasn’t new, these others. So I was in a company that was able to come forward and say we’ve got a technical solution. So text messaging can flow from GSM to CDMA, CDMA to TDMA to idin. Those were the predominant technological capabilities in North America, for example. So because of that occurred, and because messaging started going higher and higher and higher and higher, we were at a very opportune point and in a very opportune place to be able to provide that to the mobile network operators. And today on a global basis, we’re talking about a $200 billion business globally. And then the other element is, you know, we were talking about average numbers of messages sent. So last year, about 14 trillion messages were sent globally around the world pre pandemic, we were at a growth rate and keep in mind messaging was a you know, there’s a lifecycle in terms of growth and plateauing. Globally, we were growing at about 8% per year. Now, during because of the pandemic. And post pandemic projections are the growth rate is going to be around 30 to 40%, depending on what country you’re in, and various types of use cases. So not only you and I messaging, but now you and enterprises, you and firms, you and companies, and those companies could be your hair salon stylist, or it could be United Airlines, it could be what I get text
Katie Brinkley 11:10
messages from both United Airlines and my hair stylists. That’s right,
Paul Ruppert 11:14
exactly. So this is the power of this communications platform, and how it can be utilized in a variety of different scenarios. And that’s what I do I help companies like MasterCard, as well as the aggregators themselves, so that they’re called to see past providers, you know, and that includes companies like Syniverse, or Twilio, you know, other companies around the world, including info bib, which started in Croatia, all these other players, and I help them competitive to be able to to provide more competitive strategies. But I also help the guys like at MasterCard, and Facebook and others, how to be able to leverage messaging more effectively for their end customers, consumers, you and I,
Katie Brinkley 12:01
I love it. Because I know as somebody that like I said earlier, I will definitely respond to someone leaving me a voicemail with a text message. It’s a lot, even though Look at me, I’m recording a podcast, I’m avid with social audio, I’m a speaker. But I love text messaging, because I feel like it’s just faster. Like you said before, I loved your 160 characters, and we don’t necessarily need to read it, we can just look at it and get the gist of it, essentially, yeah,
Paul Ruppert 12:30
it’s expanded beyond the 160. Now, but you know, that was a great way of having everybody get trained and utilizing the service. And then technologically, we were willing to advance it, you know, much more, you can have a very, very long texts. That’s what’s called concoct, donated and being able to deliver to you through the ether in a number of different packets, and all the technology that goes on behind it. But on average, about 98% of text messages are opened, and they’re usually opened within 3% or three minutes. And that compares to the fact of email, for example, average opening rate for an email is about three days. Yeah, so this is a very intimate communications platform very personal in the context of how we utilize it, and the prioritization that we provide to it as a telecommunications platform.
Katie Brinkley 13:17
Well, and I think that too, you know, you were saying 98% of text messages get open, I said, right here, my, I get a text message from my hairstylist, when I book an appointment, and when the 24 hours before my appointment is coming, you know, I get those text messages, and I’ve become dependent on them. And I think that a lot of us are okay with businesses sending us text messages now. So for people that you know, and we’re going to get in to a lot of the the business growth discussion, but I love this conversation on text because it is so when I mean like, whether it’s it’s the good old fashioned text messaging, I’m curious what your thoughts are between like Facebook, messenger WhatsApp, and going through those sort of messenger tools versus text, or do you think they’re kind of one in the same
Paul Ruppert 14:08
they’re not one of the same at all, because these characterize the Facebook, the WhatsApp you know, if you’re Chinese WeChat, which is all around the world, etc. These are protocols over the top solutions. So they are essentially islands of the subscribers that subscribe to WhatsApp. Viber, line Kakao, WeChat, etc, that I just mentioned, and because there is a limitation to the subscribers, so you and I could send you bring out WeChat because I lived in China for a little while. If I were to send you a text and you’re not on WeChat you’re not going to be able to see that text. Or if I’m you know on WhatsApp, same idea. It might be free but it’s not free everywhere. The reality of SMS is every mobile phone has is SMS enabled, and that’s text enabled. So that’s one aspect of the pie Our and the reach of this, which is why you get things like what are called one time passwords, or two factor authentication, which is essentially a security provision, which, you know, we all do. In fact, that’s the largest swath or tranche of messaging, in terms of enterprise related messaging is those types of messages. And you know, they’re in the trillions as well. So when you get a check as to please validate your identity by confirming this text code that was just sent to your mobile handset, so that can be sent whether you’re in Timbuktu, or whether you’re in Tennessee, and as long as you got a handset. And by the way, the you know, the ultimate aspects of this, is there 7.2 billion people on Earth at the moment. Do you know how many mobile active subscriptions there are around the world?
Katie Brinkley 15:52
Well, now I was gonna say like, maybe 5 billion, but now I think you’re gonna throw me for a loop here. Yeah,
Paul Ruppert 15:59
exactly. This is a trick question. 15 point 9 billion subscribers are active handsets, I should have more than one phone. That’s right. And many people have more than two phones, you know, back to these active with one. Yeah, in some other areas around the world. It’s a very different dynamic. So my point in all this is it just speaks to the power of SMS as universally available, and you’re universally enabled. And then the last piece is, as you know, we’ve been talking about what’s called Enterprise related messaging or application to person messaging, which is essentially a computer to a person, it’s you dealing with your firm’s your customer care, all these things that we’ve been talking about telehealth, whatever, you know, there are all kinds of different use cases that can be applied here. The estimate is that only about 6% of the world’s businesses utilize text messaging, why is he part of there? Well, it’s very new, it’s also very spread out, you know, there, the concentration obviously, is in the more advanced economic markets, Western Europe, the US, Asia, etc. But then you have the middle tier, and the developing economies where these things are now just starting to flow in. And even in the context of you look at the growth rates of various countries, you know, the fastest growth rates for mobile telephony right now is Sub Saharan Africa. So this is finally getting down to the point where it’s affordable, where handsets are not $1,000, like we utilize, you know, with an Apple iPhone or a Samsung phone, the reality there is that there are various types of revisions that you can get even smartphones for about $75. That’s a lot of money in some places. But it also speaks to the importance as well as the economic drivers of this type of telecommunications. There’s all kinds of research that shows where mobile telephony started to flow into various countries and how their GDP spiked as a result of that. In fact, I even wrote an op ed piece for Asia telecoms, which was about 12 years ago, or so just looking at I was looking at Vietnam, because it was about to be entering into the World Trade Organization. And you can plot out the types of impact on their GDP.
Katie Brinkley 18:16
Well, and Paul, I work in social media. And I love the fact that there’s, I think, 4.8 billion people on social media. And in some regards, whether it’s LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, whatever, but hearing that I could potentially reach 15 billion people with text messaging, it makes me want to learn more about how I can use it for my business. And I’m sure that a lot of the listeners right now are like, Okay, this is pretty cool, you know, if I could just figure out a way to give valuable texts to my customers and my clients to kind of give them that, like you said before, the average email sits in the inbox for three days before someone opens it, if they even open it. So it seems like text message marketing is a great strategy to start.
Paul Ruppert 19:08
Absolutely no question about it. Yeah. And there are a number of companies that have been grown over the course of the last 10 to 15 years who are focusing on the space. So you know, if you were depending on whether you were a small medium, but a small medium business or even a micro business, there’s opportunity. You know, if you were a tradesman, for example, like an HVAC guy, or a landscaper, there’s all kinds of ways that you can implement text messaging for meeting notifications, alerts, predictive monitoring of various types of equipment, it really is driven by your particular use case. And that’s why I say just as you were mentioning hair salon, same with me, you know, when I get my hair cut, the guy who cuts my hair, he has a service that, you know, we confirm verbally, but then I get a reminder of that day or reminder from my calendar that can be then embedded in my calendar via text message solution. So lots of different ways to skin the cat, if you will.
Katie Brinkley 20:07
Well, and I think that it goes across just hair salons and airlines, I mean, you could use this for if you’re an auto repair shop, or you could use this, you know, if you’re a real estate agents and send those weekly Open House updates, or whatever I mean, there, there’s a lot of opportunities that you could use. And I mean, I’m curious insurance
Paul Ruppert 20:25
companies believe it or not really no one that just as a specialist in insurance, yes. And that’s how they differentiate themselves within the marketplace. Because this is, now we’re getting into, you know, big competitive positioning within the market space, because some of these companies, they can be as small as let’s say, five to $10 million in revenues that enable this. And they can be up to to a billion dollars in revenues, the largest players in the space that are the ones that I’m familiar with, because I was involved in them when they were fledgling startups, you know, and over the course of the last, as I say, about 20 years, these have become quite large, significant companies.
Katie Brinkley 21:04
So with text message marketing, what are your thoughts with just trying to provide like a quick hello, here we are, this is reminder or sort of kind of just a text message or using the text messaging, kind of like you would in an email with sending people to a destination. So a reminder of, hey, this event is happening, click here to join the waiting room or click here to get an extra ticket or anything like that,
Paul Ruppert 21:35
right. So in the United States, there are regulatory issues in terms of being opting in to these solutions, you you have to make an active engagement, therefore, that is how spam is reduced in there. There’s quite onerous penalties with multipliers. So if you’re being texted by someone that you not want to be texted from, for whatever reason, you know, all you really need to do ever do is just put in caps sto, P, or opt out is another one. And this gets into the regulatory aspect, but what you described that if you want to fall into, or you want to start receiving something via email, you can also option, you know, whether you want to receive something via email, or via text that depends on the marketer, or the firm or, and, and the specific use case that we’re talking about in terms of how you want to get notified. And this also falls into government. You know, I just recently got my booster, my second booster for COVID-19. And in Maryland, there is a service that is tracking all of this, and I chose to be notified via text. So once I got the vaccination, and got into the system, again, the system came back to me two days later, and they asked How are you feeling? They go through the basic stuff, and it’s all through text messaging. So I opted in, in addition, actual
Katie Brinkley 22:50
person texting you it’s Oh, it’s
Paul Ruppert 22:52
all it’s all via? Yeah, exactly. Well, it’s not necessarily a but but yeah, these are all various types of algorithms that go if then analysis, and you then get into these large databases. And the databases are essentially what’s enabling that. So behind the scenes, there is a provider, like the companies that I’ve been involved in who have links to your database, and we then have the means to be able to send out that text message. The means is essentially is we are providing what’s called an application program interface, which is essentially what it looks like to the consumer, would you like to receive a text message about X, Y, and Z, or to confirm your appointment, or this confirms your appointment, etc. And then that goes into, let’s say, company A that I was involved in. And then we would have the actual physical connections to all the mobile network operators in North America, or that we could be able to send the same type of text message to anywhere around the world because we have what are called peering agreements with the other providers all around the world, or we’re we’ve got those connections on our own. There are about 1400, mobile network operators all in the realm all around the world. And no one really has all connections. So this is the nature of the business, we compete, but we also cooperate with each other to be able to send these messages all around the world.
Katie Brinkley 24:16
So Paul, if someone’s listening right now, and they’re like, this sounds really intriguing. And I’d like to learn more about how I could utilize it for my business. I’m gonna ask you a couple questions here. What would you say they focus in on versus either doing other alternative mess? Yeah, well obviously say SMS versus like, going through an SMS sort of platform where you’re getting the text messages or going through a Facebook Messenger platform or a whatsapp platform because you can utilize all of these for your business.
Paul Ruppert 24:47
The reality is that you want to be able to cap I talk in the world of CPAP assets is called I’ll use this acronym again, it switches communications platforms as a service. Imagine the concept being Bing, where are you on video right now. So that’s one platform, you can also have voice, just telephone call, that’s another platform. You can do text, which is another platform, you can also do email, which we’ve been talking about. That’s another platform. So today, in terms of the seapass world, it’s a means of being able to combine, orchestrate and coordinate all of these messages, all these engagement platforms at the same time. At the end of the day, if you are thinking as a business person, how can I utilize this, you have to think of convenience to the consumer. And ultimately, the consumer wants to send any message anytime, any platform. So how you use the communications platforms are going to be different than how I use them, whether it’s male, female, whether it’s older, younger, whatever it might be, whether you’re traveling, not traveling, whatever the dynamics, you got to be able to plan out, you got it, you got it. So that’s how you have these use cases that are developed inside the companies like United Airlines, or the providers, you know, I’ll just throw a couple of these out there, whether it might be info bip, or might be Twilio, or it might be cinch or it might be Syniverse. These are all some of the bigger providers. But then if you’re a smaller player, you might be going to a company called comma, phi, or Hi, Marley, or podium, there are a whole bunch of these that are out there. In fact, I track over 300, globally and a friend of mine who used to run business messaging for Google, he has a list that’s over 500 long. So you know if you’re at that stage, so how do I get involved in this, you know, the best way to do it is just, let’s say, text marketing or SMS marketing on Google. And you’re going to be presented ads, they’re going to be asking you questions, and you’re going to see that as I mentioned, cinch Twilio and Philbin are going to probably be up there. But also because your geographic location, you’ll probably some, see some others, it all depends on where you want to dive into. And I could go through, like I say, there are about 20 that I look at on a global basis. But there are far more than just that the company that I mentioned, comma, phi, for example, is about $100 million revenue company, out of the UK, they just bought another company in the US. Same dynamic relative to the company mentioned info bit started in Croatia. Now they’ve acquired other companies in the US and then are growing very quickly. Twilio is a very, very well known company that not really is in the space, but utilizes text messaging to the nth degree from their inception, they essentially provide communications capabilities to application developers, I mean, this gets into the bits and bytes of how all this works, which is kind of boring. But I’m a commercial guy. I’m not a technologist. So
Katie Brinkley 27:53
Well, man, this has been such an awesome conversation. And I think that with everything that we’ve talked about today, it’s the biggest takeaway that I have is that text messaging marketing, is a great way to have instant access to your clients and customers. And it’s not necessarily a great, you know, Lead Magnet sort of marketing tool of trying to get in front of new customers. But it’s a great nurturer way to help guide your customers through the customer journey, and give them the support,
Paul Ruppert 28:26
right customer journey, customer experience. That is where the let’s say the heat in the market is right now. Because if you just think back, let’s say 10 years ago, or let’s say 20 years or so, all of the interfacing that we did, to try to have a customer engagement, let’s say, have it you know, scheduling your cable installation, or trying to resolve a telephone bill or something like that, what did you do? You made a telephone call, and you made a voice call into a call center, and the call center initially would be in the States, but then it was moved all around the world. You know, we were talking about the Philippines or India, whatever it might be. And there’s actually a human being that’s trying to resolve that. Now that is being shifted into text messaging, because in text messaging, you can send this to me, you may not have to have an immediate what’s called a synchronous resolution. And instead, you could have you could accept an asynchronous resolution, you know, what are the ripple effects of that are? Well, call centers are notorious for very difficult places to work. Most of them have 100% turnover in 90 days. But if you’re able to make that less intense, so that resolution doesn’t need to be done immediately, ie through text messaging, you could have sent me you know, let’s say to Company B, regarding an issue on your scheduling, all that could be done either through a human being later or through an artificial intelligence solution, and that would all be sent up and exchange You and I would be going back and forth via text, I don’t need to respond immediately to that text, you know, you might be just a route to go on a bike ride. So you know that you can come back to that in an hour when you’ve done instead of that, you know, sitting around getting on hold all that stuff. That’s where the real opportunity is right now in terms of big deals, chasing the Great White whales, if you will, in terms of how do we capture and shift behavior from telephone calls into texts. And guess what, most of the emerging generations ie millennials, Gen z’s, you know, I’m a trailing Boomer, and I use text to be able to make these kinds of resolutions, just because a telephone call now is more inconvenient. So you know, relative to my prioritization of my time and my usage of time, I’ll go right into the text aspects, you know, and even, you know, there are we’ve been talking about smaller companies, but they’re, they don’t have to be smaller companies, I have a list of over 12 that I’ve tracked, you know, over the course 12 segments, over the course of my career. And that’s Ott, we’ve talked about financial services, logistics, travel and leisure, Internet of Things, which utilities, oil, gas, also insurance, automotive, that you just mentioned, if you’re a mechanic, or car service bay, if you look at Jiffy Lube, or if you look at AAA, they are very big users of text messaging, to be able to arrange and provide couponing in a to provide incentives to come in, think of that all kinds of stuff. And then the last piece is, you know, we’re talking about an external engagement, right? When I say external, it’s accompany to consumer. Well, as a result of doing this kind of digitalization, which was what is going on, that also changes the internal dynamics of a company and affirm and how they work. Because it’s easier to do these things in a digital manner, meaning utilizing text messaging, and then providing an assimilation, a coordination with such things as customer data and customer relationship management initiatives. So it has this flywheel ripple effect with effect, you may have started thinking, Oh, I’m going to send out a coupon for an oil change, and I’m Jiffy Lube, and it’s an $8 coupon. And then you find out six months later, this is transforming how I operate my business internally. And whether it be reduced capex might be reduced, or more efficiencies, I mean, I can go into a whole bunch of different use cases where they saw Wow, this is really starting to affect how we do different how we do business differently. I mean, even with insurance companies where you start having adjusters, they don’t need to come out, because you can have a hot link to a text message. And the hot link goes into a video link, or photo link, you’re taking a picture of your dent, you know you’re sending it on, what did you just do,
Katie Brinkley 32:53
we would happen when my husband got rear ended, we had GEICO and we did this whole text messaging of him taking pictures and texting it off,
Paul Ruppert 33:01
you got it. And instead of having a claims adjuster, or you know, somebody who’s going to inspect the damage, like you did, in the old days, either drive it to the repair shop, or somebody coming to your house, and whatever, you know, and it’s like they’re in the fifth meeting of the day, and all of the efficiencies around this. And you still have a human interface that’s looking at all this. And that just makes things so much more efficient. And therefore, it’s a flywheel effect from that coupon, which is marketing, which is external. And all of a sudden, we’re doing things differently internally. the digitalization of all this? Well, Paul,
Katie Brinkley 33:36
this has been awesome. How how can people continue to work with you? How can they learn more about what it is that you
Paul Ruppert 33:43
do? Easiest way is just to engage me via LinkedIn. So you can find me as Paul, our Robert, are you PPERT on LinkedIn, and I’d be happy to have a conversation with anybody who’s interested in how can I find this, you know, no links, no hooks to it just in the context of here’s some information that you can guide towards examining what you’re doing, and being able to take advantage forget, take full advantage of text messaging power.
Katie Brinkley 34:09
Awesome. Well, thank you again so much for joining me on the show today.
Paul Ruppert 34:13
Thank you, Katie.
Katie Brinkley 34:14
I cannot thank Paul enough for coming on the show today. I feel like I just got a whole masterclass in the evolution of text message marketing. And like I said on the podcast, you know, there’s there’s Facebook messaging, there’s WhatsApp, there’s the traditional text, there’s WeChat. There’s a lot of different ways to text nowadays. And how can you utilize those for your business? So I love some of the examples that Paul gave, be sure to connect with him over on LinkedIn so that you can have this discussion with him. But I mean, I got a lot of lightbulb moments, a lot of the tips that he shared about taking people through the customer journey because that’s really once people come into your community, how can you give them the best customer service experience? How possible whether you’re a coach and you want to check in with your your coaching clients or if you are an auto repair shop, how can you give them a coupon and then follow up after the service text messaging is a very powerful way to continue the customer journey and to continue giving that customer service that high customer service that your clients will think about when they’re not working with you, they’ll you’ll stay top of mind. So I hope you take some of the tips and think about how you can utilize text message marketing for your business whether like I said, whether it’s Facebook, whether it’s traditional SMS, start trying to think outside the box on how you can give your customers the best experience possible. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Rocky Mountain marketing. As always, I’d love to hear from you. You can visit my website at www.nextstepsocialcommunications.com. Connect with me on LinkedIn or check me out on Instagram. Let’s keep taking your marketing to new heights.