Sell More Now: 20 Ways to Quickly Grow Your SMS List

[ {20 Ways to Quickly Grow Your SMS List}

Good morning everyone. Good afternoon if you're joining us from the east coast. We will be getting started here in just a minute. We'll allow a couple more moments here for our other attendees to join us. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to join us today. Wonderful. Thank you so much once again for taking the time out of your day to join us in today's webinar. Um before we kick it off, just want to do a quick round robber introduction here. Um my name is Eduardo Silva. I'll be your host for today. In today's webinar, we're going to be covering 20 ways to quickly grow your SMS list. Now, very, very exciting because SMS is probably one of the fastest uh and most effective ways to drive loyalty. So, we're really really excited to cover this topic with everyone on the line today. And if you're just joining us, uh once again, thank you so much for for taking the time out of your day to join and uh we're really really excited to be speaking with you. Um, we also have uh Jared uh CEO and founder of Sprout on the line with us. He's going to be helping us here um cover several of the points on on SMS compliance and some really really exciting techniques as well that um he has seen um drive a lot of value to um the Sprout user base. So today we're going to be covering why you can't ignore SMS marketing and how to unlock crucial tactics that will help you quickly increase your subscri sub subscriber list which will directly impact your bottom line. So really really exciting. Uh once again um moving right along here and if you have any questions we're going to be covering a little bit of best practices on on the

{Eduardo Silva}

Zoom webinar features here momentarily but uh a little bit about myself. So, Eduardo Silva, I'm the VP of sales here at Foot Traffic. Really, really excited to be on the line with you today. Thank you so much for that opportunity. I always like to do a quick introduction uh relatively silently through the chat function. Uh let's see how many of you can guess where in the world this picture was taken. Uh if you can just chat in the chat window there, uh where you think in the world this was taken. Uh let's see who can guess it first. Any takers? All right, I see a guest here of Brazil. Great job. Great job. Um, as we do a quick round, Robin here. Let's uh use that chat function. Just become familiar with the interface. Where in the country are you joining us from today? So, just type in there the name of your city. Let's just see how many different places we can get on the chat function here. Uh, always exciting to see where everybody's joining us from. So, once again, just type it in there. Where in the world are you joining us from? There it is. Colorado. All right, Colorado in the house. Nova, York. There we go. Wow. We got British Columbia. I'm going to try to actually pronounce this. Can loops. Uh, Hugh, if I if I butcher that name, my apologies. Uh, you can take it out on me later. But thank you so much for contributing there. So we have we have pretty much uh several points in the United States. I appreciate you once again joining us today. Uh real quickly here on foot traffic, we are dispensary digital marketing agency. We've been in business for around 5 years and we cover pretty much all of the United States and Canada. Uh really really excited to be, you know, helping advance the industry, health dispensary, delivery services, medicinal practices out there. reach out to their clientele and drive loyalty. So once again, thank you so much for taking the time. Let's jump right into a quick introduction with Jared. Jared, if you could take a moment, just introduce yourself.

{Jaret Christopher}

Yeah, good morning or good afternoon everyone. This is Jared Christopher. I am the founder and CEO of a software company called Sprout. Uh we are CRM and marketing software company specifically built for the cannabis industry. um and text messaging, both SMS and MMS, is a core component of our overall marketing software platform. So, I'm happy to be here today and share with you some ideas that can hopefully improve your business. Thank you so much, Jared, for taking the time to join us. Real quickly before we get started, just a couple housekeeping items here. So, if you do have your cell

{Focus}

phones on your desk or on you, uh if you could take a moment to just silence them and or place them facing down on your desk, this will just avoid any distractions because we are going to be flowing through several different tips and they're going to fly at you quite fast. So, once again, uh do take a moment to just familiarize yourself with the Zoom interface. We do have a Q&A function in the webinar. Okay, so we have several um moderators with us today. they can actually address those questions live. So do not hesitate to ask any questions through that Q&A function. And then finally, make sure you stick around. We do have a special offers for the attendees here today that I'll be sharing at the end of the webinar. So let's get started. Jared, if you could take us through, you know, uh,

{98% of texts are opened}

a little bit of the SMS marketing and the use of text messages in the industry today. Sorry, I was on mute. Uh so uh text messaging um is probably the number one most effective way to engage your customers whether you're a dispensary or a cannabis brand. Um and there's many reasons for it but you know as everyone has you know has realized that technology has changed right uh 30 years ago direct mail was very popular you know how many people even open the mail uh today right then shifted into email marketing and now consumers are addicted to their cell phones and and really uh text messaging is their number one method of of communication. they prefer that versus even speaking to somebody uh over the phone. Um, and you as a dispensary or cannabis brand can use this to build customer loyalty and continue to get your customers to buy from you time over and over again. Um, so text messaging um is a great way for you to establish a relationship with your customers. Um, you can use it to send out mobile offers, deals, um, if your store hours are changing or if you're closing. It's a it's an immediate response. It takes only seconds to create and send. Uh, and that statistic there is is true. 98% of all text messages are opened and most of them are opened usually within the first 3 to five minutes of receiving them. And as a comparison, email marketing statistic is about low 20% range uh will actually open and read uh your email. So uh text messaging is a highly effective uh communication uh tool. Perfect. Thank you for that. And so why is SMS marketing so effective? And we do have some um some great points here, huh?

{Why SMS?}

Yeah, I mean just some highle points. Number one, it's extremely uh convenient, right? You could be in a business meeting, look at your phone, and immediately, you know, view and read a text. Uh most text messages are are, you know, contain only a few words or a few sentences. So, it forces businesses to get their message across very concisely. Um it's very simple, uh easy to use. It just requires uh your your your thumb and your and your finger. uh to send or reply. Um and technology in text messaging has also advanced in in recent years. Um we have in our software the ability to do MMS messaging and that is multimedia messaging and you can uh upload animated GIF files, your company logo, put multiple images in one text message. uh we have dispensary clients that even include their entire menu uh in in a text message. Um and another reason why it's so effective is just the shift we're seeing in consumer behavior. Um you know, consumers are preferring to communicate via text versus phone calls, voicemail, uh or email. Um it also creates a sense of community when you're texting somebody. It's it's very personal. Um uh and you're able to have that oneto-one relationship with your with your customer, you know, allows them feel like they're insiders, you know, with within your business. Uh and it especially helps in building customer loyalty. Um and then last and not least, it requires your customers to opt in. um you're required uh to obtain consent from a consumer before you can actually send them uh a text message. Um and that's extremely important. You know, when a consumer hands over their cell phone number, that is one of their most, you know, remaining pieces of personal data that they're sharing with you. They're trusting you with their cell phone number, you know, and don't abuse it. Respect it. um and uh you know at the same time they're looking to receive information from you and that's the reason why they're handing it over. So it is uh um a great way to build loyalty, build um a relationship, a long-term relationship with your customer and probably you know one of the very few ways you can reach them directly and communicate with them. So um benefits of text messaging uh there are many benefits. I'm going to speak to just three. Um first of all uh you can track return on investment. So as a marketer, as a business owner, this is a very effective way to not only engage your customers but actually see measurable results. uh if you're sending them a deal or an offer, you're able to track how many people actually purchased and redeem that offer. U our clients uh dispensaries and brands uh oftent times will see uh redemption rates um between four to 10 even as high as 20%. Um, and so the not only is the marketing campaign measurable, but the ROI uh is usually outperforms any other form of marketing you can do. Um, another benefit is uh SMS um is is fast, right? So um it's a great way to connect with your customers instantly in a matter of seconds or minutes. Um, if you're looking to launch a campaign, um, you may see uh, people respond and redeem offers within a matter of hours. You know, we have clients, um, who send out campaigns, uh, during maybe slow times,

{Benefits of SMS}

maybe in the afternoon between, uh, 2:00 and 4:00, and they want to drive business uh, to the dispensary. uh they'll schedule a campaign to be sent at at one o'clock uh in the afternoon and they'll generate thousands of dollars in revenue and they'll see people who've received that offer and and come in and made a purchase within a matter of uh minutes or hours. Um and the uh other third benefit which is extremely important here is you're creating an asset for your company. every phone number that you're collecting and you're putting into your CRM or Sprout or your marketing software, you own that data. That is an asset for your business. Um the larger the database that you're building um will you'll see directly proportional to the amount of revenue that you're generating each month. um if you're implementing marketing campaigns uh that that are effective. Moving on, thank you for Thank you for that, Jared. So, real quickly, I would like to share a quick case study of a campaign that we ran for Clear Choice Cannabis to highlight some of these uh great benefits that Jared just mentioned. So, Clear Choice was really interesting when we first engaged with them in 2018. Um, you know, we heard from them that they were okay, they did not need any more marketing initiatives because they did have a pretty sizable market capture already in their environment. And after doing a quick assessment of their different uh digital strategies and or lack thereof at the time, you know, we identified that the loyalty piece was one of the last remaining uh frontiers for this particular client. So we engaged them on an SMS campaign and over the course of that year SMS generated and this once again can be tracked which is a beautiful practice when it comes to digital engagement. 8 million plus in revenue. All right. So the cost here was what was really amazing. It was a $2.28 of revenue for every penny spent on SMS. So outstanding performance on SMS. And that's in part just a highlight of the benefits, right, that enabling a a loyalty program uh and engaging immediately with your customers can have. Now, keep in mind uh as Jared shared earlier, be mindful of the messaging, right? So, let's jump right in. Uh 20 different ways that you can grow your SMS list. So, starting with your website. Your website is a valuable piece of real estate. In many ways, it's your digital storefront, right? If people are checking it out, they're, you know, there's a considerable chance that that they're already interested in what you have to offer. And that means you should be leveraging your website to get more SMS signups. And there are multiple ways you can do that. The most obvious is to have a popup that comes up and offers you a after your age gate, right? So you have your age gate and then you have a popup and you ask people to join your VIP list. By making it seem exclusive and by sharing the value of joining, you can increase your signups. And this is a great way to do this, right? Add the text optin to the header of your online menu as well. Most online menus give you the ability to add in custom messaging in the header. Take advantage of this. This is real estate that is very valuable for your business and get customer to join your SMS list from the menu as well. You should also have a strong call to action on your homepage that helps convert visitors to SMS subscribers. This can be above the fold or near the bottom of the homepage as well. Either have your optin code available for people to text or embed a form that captures the information you want. Okay. If you have a blog section to your website, another great way here, everyone that uh goes on your blog post, okay, is also another opportunity here to capture consumer data. If you're providing valuable information, then your customers will want more of it. Share the text optin in the bottom of your blog post or include an image that has the opt-in information to make it easy. Now, that's four very, very easy ways to increase your list and all just on your website alone. Thank you, Eduardo. Um, a number of other ways to increase your list. Uh, if you have a waiting area, uh, which most medical dispensaries do these days, uh, you can have an intake person ask the customer if they'd want to join your text club or or your VIP, uh, list. Also within that waiting area, another way is to have a table tent. There may be a coffee table or something. You can have a a table tent or a flyer, you know, uh explaining the benefits of your text program or your VIP club and they can uh text to join. Um and you can also, you know, if you if it's done aesthetically uh pleasing, you can also have uh flyers posted uh on the wall or um on the TVs uh in the waiting room as well.

{Point of sale}

uh your point of sale uh is a great way to grow your marketing database. Uh just train your staff, your med tenders, your bud tenders or your sales associates to ask questions. You know, would you like to receive any special deals via text? And people can provide uh consent. Um you can also um ask them, you know, to join a referral program where they can refer uh a friend. Um, you can also place business cards uh next to the point of sale where it has instructions on how to get them to to opt in, where they could text a keyword to join. Um, you can also add QR codes either to your sales receipt when you're printing out at the POS. Um, or you could have a QR code that they can scan using their smartphone, uh, which can prompt them to opt in and to join.

{Billboards}

Uh, moving on. Um, if you're not keeping count, we're I believe we're on number 12. Uh, billboards is also a very effective way to get exposure, reach new customers, and get people to to opt in. Uh, consider the location of your billboard. It could be, you know, coming to or from, you know, a major city where your dispensary is is located. Also, you know, please check uh with the rules and regulations at each state uh when you do advertise. Um and also uh through the use of digital uh billboards um uh it makes it much easier for you to brand your company in that in the process uh as well.

{Mailers}

And mailers is yet another one. So once again if you're not keeping count this is number 13. Mailers is still alive and well. Some of our customers have found great success in promoting their dispensaries and direct mailers, especially targeted for adults in their communities. And if you use QR codes to track the effective effectiveness of your mailer and to send recipients to your site as well, it's yet another way to engage traditional marketing with digital, right? You can also print your text opt-in codes right on the mailer itself and offer first-time signups a special discount. This is actually something we can help you with. We've actually been doing this with several of what of our clients and we do have a trusted partner that offers targeting so your mailers will be more effective. Leverage your email list. If you were previously collecting emails and you want to switch to focus on phone numbers, make sure that you have your email list um with phone numbers as well. Include your text optin right directly on those email deals and newsletter to tempt people to sign up for special deals only available via text subscription. Make sure you share the value of joining the list as well. Right? Will tech subscriber get information that no one else will? share that to tempt more people to opt in. And finally, loyalty program is a valuable consumer retention tool. We all know this. So, it's also a

{Loyalty program}

great idea to learn more about your customers and capture their data. By combining your loyalty program with an SMS opt-in, you can increase your signups for both lists. And this will also enable you to send more personalized message and offers uh with deals, right, to your customers who want to take advantage of them. People love

{Giveaways & coupons}

winning stuff and unfortunately many states limit cannabis giveaway. So you can give away cannabis products in many places. However, that doesn't mean that you can't give away branded gear or accessories. So, who wouldn't want to, you know, win their own packs vaporize or a basket of some, you know, awesome gear, right? Simply make opt into your SMS list part of your giveaway signup. And if you can't host a giveaway, you can offer special events or coupons just uh for your SMS list as well. So, for example, let's say you're put in a virtual yoga class or introductory tarpin class, right? By making options uh or opting in to your SMS part of the sign up process, you can grow your list and continue to offer list members more value.

{Get social}

If you've followed your previous social media advice, you know, um you know very well that you shouldn't post anything about sales or deals on Instagram or other social platforms, right? However, social is a great way to actually engage with your customers and build your brand. And you can regularly share your opt-in code in your social post to engage with your followers and have them join your VIP list and gain access to those special offers. This will help you get more value from your social media marketing. And finally, you can even add your opt-in code so you you know saved directly on the stories themselves so that it's visible and easily accessible directly there as well on social media. Now, if you've seen display ads on mobile websites or apps, you've u actually seen geo ads. And there's these are display ads that appear when an individual has met the ad uh creators criteria like they are part of a certain demographic and are located within a certain geographical region. You can create a text opt-in deal directly on the display ad or you can advertise a deal and link to an opt-in page. And because you can control where and when the ad actually shows up, you can increase your chances of getting them to uh in front of your target customers. And when using Geo Ads, it's crucial to ensure that you actually have access to the cannabis friendly network. Otherwise, you're going to find it very hard to um find sites and apps that will host your ads. We have a network of cannabis friendly sites where we run ads for our clients and have helped dispensaries increase their list throughout um the country with geo ads and in Canada. Google ads are also another great way to increase your visibility and get new SMS signups. And really by running a pay-per-click ad campaign on Google, you can get your dispensary to the top of the search results. And by combining it with your SMS opt-in, you can then capture those customers and advertise to them time and time again. So, how do you do this? Just like Geo Ads, you can either have an opt-in code directly on the Google Ads copy or link to a landing page that has the opt-in info. By sharing a special deal, you'll get more clicks and more signups. We've implemented this strategy for different dispensaries and scored plenty of new customers phone numbers for our clients. It's a great way to leverage the tool that already has a high ROI.

{Best practices}

Great. Thank you, Eduardo. Um, I do want to talk a minute u before we wrap up here that this text messaging is regulated at the federal government level uh through the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the TCPA. um and it has been for for decades. And I want to also just remind folks that when people are opting in, you want to make sure that you have express written consent from your customers or patients in order to send them uh marketing uh campaigns or marketing messages. U and there's many ways to get op, you know, consent. Uh you could have them sign a piece of paper. It could be a digital uh document as well. Uh there's also a feature that we offer offer called double opt-in where people would reply yes to the initial uh text message or okay so letting you know that they've uh agreed a second time you know to provide their phone number and receive you know reoccurring uh text messages. Um, and it's also a good idea if you're collecting phone numbers or emails to also display your privacy policy and what you'll do with your information and uh how you uh plan uh to use it. But if you follow uh the guidelines published by the TCPA and the mobile marketing association and other groups um you can certainly take advantage of text messaging both SMS and MMS and you can use that to help build your brand uh promote special offers and certainly drive more revenue uh into your into your company. Thank you Jared. And so you know how are you going to grow your customer list? And keep in mind, it's not going to grow on its own. So, you do need to actively pursue getting your customers to sign up. And to help you, we've come up with a special deal for today's attendees. We're going to offer a 30-day free trial of Google Ads and Sprout to help uh manage and help you build that SMS customer list within, you know, the first 30-day trials and see how that works for you. And if you do have any questions, um, you know, this is a great place to start right now with with any questions here through the Q&A. Uh, we do see one of the questions here. Um, Jared, and this one is a great one for you. How does Sprout handle TCPA compliance? Yeah, compliance is a a key component of of what we do uh, and is built into our software in terms of functionality. So,

{Google Ads Sprout 30 day free trial}

we help our clients remain compliant uh when it comes to text messaging by offering them some some tools such as double opt-in as I mentioned earlier where their customers can reply yes to continue to receive messages. Um also, you know, including uh opt out provisions within their text messaging. So customers are provided with best practices uh when we onboard them uh to sprout and in helping them implement a successful and compliant campaign. Perfect. Perfect. We did have another question that came in here a little earlier and that is um what is the open rate of marketing texts? And I do want to highlight that um on uh one of our key points here that we wanted to cover a little earlier that there was a Forbes report that stated that 95% of texts are open within the first 3 minutes. Now this is amazing figures, right? And it's to no surprise because that notification either vibrates a phone that's in your pocket or in your hand, right? So you want to know what that is. So, it's no surprise that the open rate is so high as well as so fast. So, keep that in mind. It is very much a uh quick to communicate with clients here. Um and uh and yeah, um any other questions from the attendees here today?

{Questions?}

Wonderful. Well, I do want to thank you once again for taking the time to speak with us here today and join us on this webinar. Um I want to highlight that you can always get in touch with us um very simply here and we'll put this uh link also on the chat function but you can visit foot traffic.mme/call uh to schedule a time to speak with us. We're happy to pick up the phone and and guide you through any of these and also for sticking around uh if you haven't already uh collected your free Yeti Tumblr. Do get in touch with us. Let's schedule a call. Let's confirm all the information there and uh get you set up. Once again, I want to thank you uh for taking the time out of your day to join us and learn some of these new techniques that we wanted to share with you. And I want to turn it over to Jared for any closing remarks uh that you want to share, Jared. Yeah, thank you, Eduardo. I I just want to reiterate uh the value and the importance of of text messaging. Um, it is probably the the number one way to engage your customers, uh, to build a relationship, a longl lasting relationship to help drive customer loyalty. It's a great way to drive topline revenue and and bottom line uh, profits. So, if it's something that you haven't implemented and you're thinking about, I certainly encourage you to give Eduardo or or Sprout uh, a call and happy to walk you through uh, in more detail or give you a demo of our platform. Wonderful. With that, thank you so much. I appreciate it. Have a wonderful rest of your day and we look forward to speaking with you soon. ]