Michael: What is your story Jeff? How did you guys get into this technology of lead generation and client nurturing?
Jeff: Well way back in 1989, our founder actually, Brad Chatham who, by the way I have known since I was 10 years old; we go way back, was doing business as a real estate broker. Like everybody else at that time, he was struggling to make a living. Like so many businesses, especially real estate, he was cold calling, door knocking, and working around the clock to find customers. We had long talks about this. He said Jeff there were really three things that I wanted. Number one, I wanted to find a way to differentiate myself from every other realtor who was advertising all of the same.” Everybody else’s ads in essence would say call me I am the best. I am the most experienced. I won the most awards. I am the most honest. If you put this in the language of any business out there, if you open up any yellow page book, if you look at any ad, you are going to see there are some or all of the following adjectives. You are going to see words like lowest prices, trusted, friendly, 100% satisfaction, and best selection, all of those things. The problem is that if everybody is claiming and saying the same things, then the only criteria that the consumer has of using you over someone else is price and you become a commodity. That is the last thing that Brad wanted to do. So he had to figure out how to change that. The second thing he said that he wanted to do was to quit spending money on advertising that just wasn’t working. He needed a way to track every piece that was going out, whether or not it worked. The third thing that he wanted was a way to screen out people who were going to only waste his time. He said wouldn’t it be great if there was an automated way to do all this because the time it would save me and allow me to do the things that I really wanted to do for my life and business. Well, you realize that the first thing that I have to do with a prospect is that I have to find a way to attract them. I have to find a way to compel them to call me. What he did was he came up with the idea of running ads in the real estate classifieds. Basically the ad said “call my 24-hour free recorded message, enter an extension and hear a pressure-free recording on the different properties”..he is trying to sell. He was amazed at, not only how many people would call and listen to the free-recorded message about all of his listings, but also all day and night he would get calls at 2 in the morning, 3 in the morning. It really was 24 hours. It was at this point that he realized that the response rate from his advertising was going through the roof. The other thing was, he faced a challenge that a lot of business owners face and that was dealing with this ongoing balancing act between getting new business through lead generation when at the same time maintaining contact with all of his customers. There was a great quote I read many years ago. Basically it said, “The sole purpose of business is to create customers and keep them.” As much as we may try to mystify it, that is what it really boils down to. His free-recorded messages solved his lead generation problem, but now he had to figure out how to automate his client contact and his client nurturing. He began using a technology that was new back then, fairly new called voice broadcast, which a lot of people have heard about, to send out pre-recorded, warm, nurturing messages simultaneously to the answering machine of his entire client base every month. It took a couple of minutes of his time to send each broadcast, but the result was he was getting a two to three times increase in repeat referral business. All of his friends and associates began asking him what in the world are you doing? How are you able to generate all of this business and all of these leads? What he did, Michael, was he put two and two together and he created a business out of his idea, which today 18 years later is helping entrepreneurs across the U.S. and Canada automate all of their marketing. That is our history and a little bit about how we got into the technology of lead generation and client nurturing.
Michael: I can remember before I even moved out here to San Diego, right after I graduated from the University of Alabama, I moved to Nashville. I bought one of those Comcast; I think they were called Comcast. There was a company who produced these machines that you could buy and they were automated dialers. I am sure this is way before the web. These were machines that you would plug in and you would record a message into it. It was used for lead generation. Was Brad residential real estate?
Jeff: He was residential. He was doing both actually.
Michael: He was doing both? Was he studying any other marketing guides at that time where he got the idea or had he seen it? He wasn’t really an originator, but was there anything that influenced him other than those things, like a marketing guide?
Jeff: Well, he was a broker. In looking at all of this, his big thing was that there has to be a better way to automate in my time. Again, he was kind of doing this on his own where he was thinking, how can I get it to where I am not repeating the same information over and over to the same people and all of these kinds of things. He started using voice tape recorders and he set up a whole bunch of them in his office where these inbound lines would come in and he would do these recorded messages. That was very primeval back then.
Michael: He would just play the tape recorder when the phone rang?
Jeff: Yeah, he had it set up so that it would auto play when the phone rang.
Jeff: It was very primitive back then. Later on, of course, we got into tracking and things like that, which I will go over later. What he really believed inherently was that people hated to call a live person and have to go through the selling, pressured, manipulated, obligated and all of that. That was the basic instinct that he felt because he knew all about going into used car places and having to deal with sales people. He thought, you know if I can really supply this idea pressure free information. I am going to see what happens. Lo and behold, he found that his ads stood out from everybody else because a real estate agent was saying call me, here is my – well back then it was really not cell phones per se, but call me here is my phone number, here is my home phone, my office phone, and my fax. In other words, I am desperate and he came across as desperate. He really felt that if he gave the public the opportunity to listen to this information in a pressure-free, relaxed environment it would go really well and it did. Voice broadcasting came later. We started with voice broadcasting about 9 years ago and that came about because so much emphasis was placed on lead generation initially with our company and then we really saw the need to nurture the client once you got him.
Michael: Let’s talk about why free-recorded messages are so powerful as a lead generating tool as well as some of the industries and clients who are currently getting huge results from this type of technology.
Jeff: After doing this for 18 years, we really found that the three most important words in advertising are free- recorded message. Sounds funny, but we like to call them magic words. When you use those in your print advertising as well as on the web that can increase your response by a factor of three to five times. In fact, we use a lot of statistics supplied by the direct marketing association. They did a survey a number of years ago. They found that 83% of the population would rather dial a telephone number and hear a free-recorded message than speak with a live sales person. They gave three reasons. The first two are pretty obvious. Number one was 24-hour access. Number two was no sales pressure. The most interesting reason to me was number three. There was a perception on the part of the caller that the information being delivered via a recorded message was more accurate, trustworthy, and believable than that delivered by a live person who at any time changed their message or their sales pitch depending on how the conversation was going. When the message is recorded people are more apt to believe the credibility of the message because it is out there in a recorded format. It is in concrete for everybody to access. The other great benefit is it is allowing the caller to get to know you. They are hearing your voice. They are hearing your tonality. They are hearing your sincerity. They are hearing how you can help them as a knowledgeable, warm, caring consultant versus a sales person. All of that ice breaking stuff that has to go on in the initial stages of a relationship that is being done for you, so that by the time the prospect talks to you it is like you are old buddies. Here is a great way to describe the process. I am a very visual person and I think a lot of people out there are. If you think of your free- recorded message as this giant funnel where everybody who has seen your ad and is compelled to call your free-recorded message, they come into your funnel. Everyone is going to have varying degrees of interest. Some are going to be curious. Some are going to be very serious. Some are going to have almost no interest. If you have done your job with your ad, they are going to pick up the phone. They are going to call the free-recorded message number and they are going to hear your personal greeting. Then they are going to be prompted to enter an extension number that they can listen to, maybe you have a consumer alert message, a free report offer or things like that that they can listen to. You attracted them. You have compelled them to call and come into your funnel. The second thing now, which you want to do is you want to educate and build trust with them. In fact, there was a Gallup poll that said the number one concern out there from consumers is who can I trust? A free recorded message positions you completely differently in the mind of a consumer. It positions you as an expert versus a sales person and eliminates the possibility of them perceiving you again as a commodity or price that becomes the determining factor because they are listening to your voice to get to know you. Now that you educated them and built trust with them, the third thing you want to do is you want to kick out the tire kickers. You want to sort and screen people that are going to normally waste your time because to be honest, most businesses spend way too much time and money attracting and working with unqualified people. After they listen to your recording, they can interact with you in four different ways. They can press zero to direct connect to you if they want at any time. They can leave you a message at which time you can be paged a number of different ways instantly. They can enter another extension. So if you have listed a menu of other services you provide maybe, free reports, or consumer awareness messages then they can immediately access those. They can even get a fax on demand automatically. If you had something in print, maybe a price list, list of services, list of testimonials, forms or anything like that then they can instantly get a sense it is such a great automated feature. Here is another really cool quote. “The number one complaint of the public when it comes to dealing with companies that provide a service is that no one ever returns my calls.” This was another thing that came from the direct marketing association. Here is a way to handle that. Let’s say that they leave you a message on your free-recorded message line. This is really cool. One of the features that is available to our clients is they have a feature called auto voice responder and here is how it works. When a prospect listens to your free-recorded message and then they leave you a message, let’s say to receive a free report. They give you their name and address and all of that. What it will do is when they hang up, 15 seconds later their phone rings back. They pick it up and they go hello. They are going to hear, let’s say they called Jim Wilson with ABC Insurance. They are going to hear, “Hey folks. It is Jim Wilson with ABC Insurance, just wanted to thank you for calling and leaving me a message to get my free report entitled “Ten Crucial Questions to Ask When Choosing a Healthcare Plan”. I am currently with another client, but as soon as I can break free I will arrange to have it mailed to you right away. Thanks.” That is what we would call an instant gratification, wow experience. After you sift through and screen out the time wasters, you are going to be left with people who are pre-interested, pre-motivated, pre-qualified, and pre-disposed to either buying your products or using your service. That is the beauty of recorded messages. The different industries that are using us, I mentioned 18 years ago real estate agents and they continue to do that. They advertise property. They offer free invitations to free homebuyer seminars, free reports and so forth. They have tons of the mortgage lenders that are using free-recorded messages. Carpet cleaners. I will use a real world example. One of our clients is a carpet cleaner in Oakland and he was spending about $450 to $500 a month on a couple of yellow page ads. They were generic, bland, quarter-page ads. He mentioned that he was getting a lot of calls though, 25-30 calls a day, which is a ton. Here is the thing, 99% of the people that were calling him were asking him, number one how much do you charge? Number two, why are you so expensive? He would have to spend an average of 15 minutes with each person on the phone. He had to educate them. He had to sell them. He had to try to convince them. In the end he only sold about 5% of them because it was these live back and forth conversations. The number one thing he did is that he completely changed the ad he ran. He went from the big quarter page ad down to a 2/3 of a business card size ad. It was a direct response ad. It said; “Warning do not call a carpet cleaner. Listen to this 24-hour, free- recorded consumer awareness message and choose the right carpet cleaner. 1-800-blah-blah-blah.” Now since that happened, he gets about half the number of calls. Maybe 12 or 15 calls per day, but here is the key, 99% of those people calling him now are calling him to set up an appointment. This recorded message ended up doing all of the educating, assessing, sorting, screening. They can hear the six most common misconceptions about carpet cleaning, the seven most critical questions to ask a carpet cleaner before inviting them into your home. All of this education is being done beforehand automatically. Now he only spends 2 minutes on the phone.
Michael: Where did the free consumer report originate? Do you know?
Jeff: Joe Polish conceptualized, at least to my knowledge, a consumer awareness message or that concept. It is a wonderful template to use because this is really the education based marketing ware. It doesn’t matter what industry you are in. If you are a massage therapist lets say. The six most common misconceptions about massage therapy. The eight most common questions to ask any massage therapist before becoming a client. The consumer listens to that and all of a sudden they are guarded down. First of all it is a recorded message, so there is no pressure. They view you entirely differently. House cleaning services use them, Chiropractors, obviously because they want to educate the public about chiropractic, auto repair shops, restaurants. This is awesome for restaurants because it enables callers to hear pre-recorded messages on information that normally has to be repeated over and over again by a busy host or hostess on the phone. You know standing there while everybody is waiting in line. We have a client who is in the home remodeling business. He ran a display ad in his local newspaper inviting readers to call and listen to a 24-hour free-recorded message on how to get his free consumer’s guide to home remodeling mailed to them. One hundred people called his free-recorded message line and out of the 100 that called him, 97 left him a message to get the guide. Because of those calls, he generated $45,000 in work and another $8,000 in referrals. He got over $63,000 in business. Now he has so much work coming in that he called us, this is like a month ago. He called us and said, “I have to put my account with you guys on hold because I am getting too much business.”
Michael: That is a great story. How long of an outgoing message can you leave?
Jeff: The free-recorded message?
Michael: Yeah. Is there a limit or can you go an hour?
Jeff: You can go up to about 10 minutes, but we typically find that most recorded messages, if it is a consumer awareness message, those messages are anywhere from 4 1/2 to 6 1/2 minutes, something like that. If it is a property description of a home then it might be a couple of minutes. Now if you want to go beyond 10 minutes, we have the capability to do that. I am saying that an average message is anywhere from 4 to 6 minutes.
Michael: Does your system have the ability to do an hour outgoing message? Can it handle that?
Jeff: It can’t handle an hour outgoing message. The only reason is that you have to look at the purpose of pre-recorded messages. We can go up to about 20 minutes.
Michael: How does it differ from a voice playback line? Let’s just say the interviews on my site. A lot of people might not have access to the internet, but most people have access to a phone and they can call in if there are playback lines. How does what you have differ from a playback service?
Jeff: Our system is not set up as a playback service. 99.99% of our clients use our free-recorded message system as a lead generation deal. So that would be the difference.
Michael: So there are playback services that do stuff like that?
Jeff: Exactly. It doesn’t matter what industry you are in. We have air duct cleaners, hair-replacement surgeons, pest control, stone restoration, martial art studios, network marketers, and musicians. That is just some of the industries that are getting big time results.
Michael: So any advertiser that is advertising in the yellow pages can reduce the size of their ad. They may reduce the number of leads, but they will close a higher percentage, saving time. Literally the reduction in advertising expense could pay for this system and then some.
Jeff: Absolutely. You have to look at it this way. A friend of mine does a lot of marketing. He was in the Dallas area. He was looking for a roofer. He went to the Dallas yellow pages to look for a roofer. He needed some work done on his roof. He told me that there were 23 pages of roofers, 23 and everyone said the same thing. Top quality, lowest prices, bonded, licensed, guaranteed, and family owned. They all said the same thing until he came across one that said, “Warning. Don’t even think about hiring a roofer until you know the 17 code-of-ethics questions to ask that roofer. Call for your 24-hour, free-recorded message.” He did research on that among a lot of the roofers and he found that that guy gets 10 times the calls of everybody else.
Michael: Over the years, that warning ad, is that a proven winner? Are there other yellow page ads that really are proven?
Jeff: From the yellow page perspective, I would say that a warning ad and it doesn’t have to say warning, it could say important, attention, free report reveals, consumer alert information and things like that. They are really designed to stand out. The vast majority of those ads do not display the name of the person. They do not display the name of the company. It is interesting because the public has, as you know, very sensitive advertising radar. They can detect a pitch in a heartbeat. If they are getting consumer information from a non-biased source, the interesting thing is that in these consumer alert messages most of them are scripted so that you are talking about the 6 most common misconceptions of carpet cleaning for example. They are going to talk about the 6 most common misconceptions and then they are going to talk about the most critical questions to ask a carpet cleaner. When all is said and done, you the consumer have a list of all of these questions that you can interview carpet cleaners, but you know what theologically the last thing that you want to do is go out there and interview carpet cleaners. You just naturally draw your own conclusion. I should just call this guy because he is amazing. He gave me all of this information. He is a true expert. That is highly attractive to consumers and prospects.
Michael: So is that your recommendation when you run your yellow page ad to not have your company name on there? Just have your warning free consumers guide to carpet cleaning?
Jeff: We have seen it done both with success on both ends, but I am going to go off on a limb and say that the ones that will probably generate the most calls will be a straight direct response ad with a toll free number to call with no company name.
Michael: We have talked about some conventional uses of free recorded messages. What are some unconventional uses of these calls that have proven to be real effective in many circumstances?
Jeff: I can think of a couple right off the bat. Why not use free-recorded messages for what we would call a testimonial ease-drop line? This is a great way for people to call and listen to the actual comments of people who have done business with you. You can collect voice testimonials by setting up a 24-hour recorded-message line. You can have your clients who love you, call in and leave their testimonial right on that message line. Then you just give us a call and after you have gathered 4, 5, or 6 of them and then we will edit them together and put them on one extension that the prospects can access and listen to. You may have an ad that has a menu of extensions. Frequently asked questions about tile and grout, consumer education methods. Then you may have one that says “What others are saying about us”. People can call up and they can instantly hear testimonial after testimonial. That is a great use for free-recorded message line. Another great strategy is to use free-recorded messages to recruit employees. Almost everyone that works here at ART has come to us via a recorded message. What is great about this is you simply run a help wanted ad inviting people to call a free-recorded message where they are going to be able to hear all about your company, what you have to offer, and the type of person that you are looking for. Then they will be able to leave a message where they can tell you a little bit about themselves, why they feel that they would be uniquely qualified for the job because as you know you can find out a lot more about a person by how they communicate. It really makes it easy for an employer to sift through all of those messages and determine whom they want to invite and initially interview. It is a huge time saver. It is a great method to use. Again you are using automation to save time and all of those people that come in and are looking, you are going to right off the bat end up talking to someone on the phone if you found what you are looking for. Those are a couple of great unconventional uses.
Michael: Another simple technology that you offer for client nurturing is voice broadcasting, an inexpensive, personal, and easy way for businesses to keep in contact with all of their clients. I know that Joe Polish does this, Jeff Paul. They are using probably your technology to do this. Let’s talk about that.
Jeff: Well, I don’t know if most people know, but most businesses spend 90% of their time trying to get new clients while virtually ignoring the clients that they have. They don’t do it on purpose. Businesses for the most part just don’t have a system in place to automatically stay in touch the way they should. Actually I will go back to the direct marketing association again. They recently said that 9 out of 10 clients buy another product or they use another service with somebody else because they don’t remember who you are. True story. My next-door neighbor got their tree trimmed 9 months ago and they are getting ready to get their tree trimmed again and they lost the business card of the person that trimmed their tree. They forgot who it was. That person never stayed in touch. Inadvertently, that tree trimmer sent that customer back to the yellow pages searching for a tree trimmer amongst all of his competition. Businesses for the most part have lots of customers. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to place a warm and friendly phone call to every one of them, once a month, with the sole purpose of nurturing them so that they would become loyal clients and then ultimately advocates who refer others to them again and again? That is the purpose, but you know if you have 500 clients or what if you have 5,000 clients? How would you do it? Voice broadcast takes care of that. Here is basically how voice broadcast works. The first thing that you are going to do is you are going to export all of your phone numbers and names into Microsoft Excel. If you already have them there, then that is great. If not, they can easily export out of a contact manager, whatever. You can create as many different lists as you want. You may have your entire client base. You may have your past clients, you’re A, B, and C customers, and so forth. Then you are actually going to go to our web site to log in. You are going to upload that phone list and you are going to give it a name. Then you are just going to record on your own telephone or any telephone, a short, 20-30 second voice broadcast message and that message is going to be sent outbound to connect with the answering machines in your entire client base simultaneously. There are a lot of different messages that you can do. Obviously, thank you for your business, happy holidays, a reminder or an update, a tip of the month, maybe you want to announce upcoming community announcements. When you do these messages, you are assuming that they are going to go to an answering machine so your message might sound something like this. It might sound like, “Hey this is Bob Jacobs with ABC Company. I am sorry I missed you, but I was thinking about you guys. There is going to be a big concert down at the park this Saturday. There are going to be a ton of people, a lot of food and a lot of fun. Just wanted to give you guys a heads up and let you know if you can make it down then that would be great. I hope to see you. Thanks.
Michael: So the listener has no idea whether it is you personally doing it or whether it is automated. That is the goal, right?
Jeff: Right. Then if they pick up live and say hello, they are going to hear a very pleasant female voice say, “Oh, I’m sorry. I must have dialed the wrong number.” Then hang up. One of the most powerful and profitable strategies that we have come across and one that we preach all the time has to do with your mailers and your direct mail that you are doing. Most businesses send direct mail pieces to their clients in the form of newsletters, postcards, etc. Here is one of the most powerful strategies that we found. First of all, less than 20% of direct mail ever gets opened. That is less than one out of 5 and here is why. You go to your mailbox, you open it up, and there is a pile of mail in there. You pull it out and you stand over your recycling bin and if it isn’t a check or a bill, it is going to get trashed. Yet, people are sending untold thousands of dollars on mail that never gets read. Here is a way to super charge your campaign. Next time you are ready to mail out, let’s say, a newsletter? You send a voice broadcast the day that you do the mail. It might sound like this, “Hi folks. It is Bob Thompson with ABC Company. I am sorry I missed you. I just wanted to let you know that our new newsletter is going to be arriving in your mailbox tomorrow. Be on the lookout for it. Don’t throw it away. It is in a bright green envelope. There is a great article on page 3 that I think you will really love. So remember, be on the lookout for the bright green envelope. Thanks a lot. Talk to you soon.” When you do that, Michael, it has been proven over time that when you send a voice broadcast alerting people of an arriving mailer, your readership response increases by three times. It is absolutely phenomenal. Then when you actually send your voice broadcast messages out it is going to simultaneously dial all of the numbers, when it finds an answering machine it is going to leave your message. I want to back up by saying that print always has worked. Print always will work and you are spending money anyway on print ads so why not use every print tool available to supercharge your response. Now return on investment is probably the greatest thing about voice broadcast. A typical voice broadcast message that actually makes it to an answering machine costs about 10 cents. Let’s say that you had a 30-second message that actually connected with 1,000 answering machines that would cost you about $100. Imagine how much it would cost you in time and manpower to physically sit down and call 1,000 people, there is just no way. Again, back to the direct marketing association, they did a study on return on investment that comes from various forms of advertising. A typical radio spot generates on average $6 for every dollar invested. If you make a live telemarketing call you might generate $8 for every dollar you had invested. Direct mail or newspaper ad might get $11, but voice broadcast on average generates almost $30 for every dollar that you invest. That is from the direct marketing association that did this study. They said that categorically voice broadcast is heads and tails above every other form of advertising out there or as a way to supercharge your existing advertising. That is how it works and how best to use it.
Michael: Let me ask you this. Does the receiver of the message have a chance to be removed from the list?
Michael: So at that point they do know it is not really a personal call?
Jeff: Here is the first thing that we do, we do not promote, endorse, or preach using voice broadcast. Now you can use voice broadcast for whatever you want like a tool. You can use a hammer for building a beautiful home or tearing down a beautiful home, but we since day one have endorsed and promoted and taught using voice broadcast to nurture your client base.
Michael: So these are clients and customers who already know you?
Jeff: Yes, those who already know you.
Michael: But they will know that it is automated.
Jeff: Here is what is going to happen. It goes to an answering machine that is going to play the message and it is going to be from Bob Jacobs from Allstate or whoever. If they want to contact him, they can call him. If it goes to a live person, they pick up and say hello. They say, “I’m sorry I called the wrong number.” There is a caller-ID that actually goes to us here. They can call and say I want to be removed. We can instantly do it. We can blacklist immediately.
Michael: Yeah, everyone has caller ID now. If someone saw the call come in it is coming back to your company.
Michael: Will it be an automated thing when they call back?
Jeff: They are going to be able to call us during business hours and ask to be removed if we want. We are instituting a feature real quick here within the next few weeks that will enable it to be automated, if you would like to be removed from this voice mail.
Michael: Will a live person answer if they hit the caller ID?
Michael: They will say, “Hey, I just got a call from this.”
Michael: What do your people say?
Jeff: We say, “Oh it was probably someone that you do business with who was placing a nurturing phone call for you. If you would like to be removed, we are more than happy to do it.”
Michael: Let’s say Jeff Paul or one of these guys is sending a broadcast out to 50,000 people, are you going to get inundated with call backs from caller IDs?
Jeff: No. It doesn’t happen that way.
Michael: Are there any laws or consumer laws, do not call laws say that someone listening to this may need to know about?
Jeff: We always recommend that people go and look up the applicable do not call rules and regulations with the FCC, FTC. There is the telephone consumer protection act. There are the telephone sales regulations in a lot of them. We have done our due diligence going through all of them as much as we can. Obviously, we are not lawyers. What we do is kind of a over riding statement. We just tell people, look we use voice broadcast in a way in which you would like to experience it. Meaning that if you are going to place a voice broadcast call, then make it a nurturing call. Make it an information call. Make it something that you would be glad to receive this call. Don’t blatantly pitch. Use common sense in doing that. You are going to be fine when you do that. If someone does ask to be removed, by all means remove them, and you are going to be fine. Do not use prospecting. Obviously any person can do that, they can buy a list and all of that kind of thing. I just don’t go down that road because I just believe that voice broadcast, the right way to use it is as a nurturing tool.
Michael: Yeah. That is kind of the same with email today. You don’t want to scam people.
Michael: You want to make sure that they have opted in, they are on your customer list, or you are doing business with them.
Michael: Tell me about the tracking system and reports that you get from both of these automated systems because that is important information. Why don’t you explain the benefits of these reports and how they improve ones ROI?
Jeff: Oh, sure. We have always believed that the very first rule of advertising is to never do anything that you can’t directly track as a result because if you are not constantly testing, measuring, evaluating and adjusting then what you are doing is wasting potentially hundreds if not thousands of those hard-earned dollars that you are making. How do you do this? How do you track that kind of value if you are advertising? Well you are going to use a very sophisticated an online tracking program that we have that allows you to create three customized reports having to do with all of the activity being generated by your prospects. We have a report called a call activity report. You can punch in the date range and it is going to bring up every captured number of people who called your free-recorded message. Every phone number is captured it doesn’t matter if they have call blocking. It is also going to show the dates and times, what ad they called on, whether or not they left a message, press '0' to direct connect to you. Also in probably 75-80% of the cases it is going to match a name and an address. The purpose of doing this would be that if part of your marketing campaign were to do what we would call drip mailers to people who called. Maybe they didn’t want to leave a message or maybe they did and you want to follow up. What it does it help you create your highly targeted, and that is the key word highly targeted, mail list. That is the call activity report. Probably the most powerful report is our tracking report. Tracking your advertising is probably one of the most critical things that you can do in any kind of marketing campaign. Unfortunately, many people have heard the quote that says, “I know half of my advertising is working. I just don’t know which half.” That is not a place that you want to be. When you think about it, how do most people find out if their advertising is working? Here is how they do it. When someone calls them they are going to say, “Hey thanks for calling. How did you hear about us?” The problem with that is that you are going to get inaccurate information or no information. Somebody might say that I heard about you from my husband, I read about you from some flyer, or they will lie. What tracking does is it enables you to monitor the activity that you are getting in up to 10 different mediums. Say that you are doing a newsletter; you might be doing a mailing or a flyer, door hanger, web site, business card, whatever. You are going to be able to go in there and punch up a date range, maybe last week. You are going to look in there and say, “Wow. I am paying $400 a month on this display ad and I got 4 calls. Yet over here, my little $75, 3-line classified brought me 50 calls.” That is the importance of tracking your advertising, which you can do. The third report is what we call a call duration report. It is designed to help you tweak your message. It displays a bar graph. It shows how long each caller listened before each caller hung up. You may find in your 3-minute message that 75% of the people are hanging up three quarters of the way through. What you want to do is you want to listen to your message and find out what in the world you are saying. Are you boring them? Are you getting too salesy on them? If you didn’t have this report, you might never know. You might say, well I am getting tons of calls, but no one is calling me back or hitting through and directly connecting. Our philosophy Michael is it is absolutely important to test, analyze and then adjust. In other words, if you can’t track it, don’t do it. Now on voice broadcasting, when you send the voice broadcast out, you are going to be able to bring up a detailed report on the internet showing every call that went out, date and time it went out, whether or not it went to an answering machine, busy signal or a live person, whatever. You will be able to recycle all the numbers that didn’t make it the first time and then schedule them to go later that day, tomorrow, next week, whenever. We have a lot of people that will weed it down. They will recycle the broadcast two or three times because what you are hoping for is the person that picked up live today, is out shopping tomorrow. It enables you to go in there and do that.
Michael: What did you find is the best time to send a voice broadcast out?
Jeff: We tell people to start sending your broadcast at 10 am and don’t go any later than 4 pm. We have a window of time in there that you can set it up. You can say that I want it to go out today, the 17th. I want to call this campaign, look out for my newsletter. I want to start sending the broadcast at 10 a.m. It doesn’t matter where you are nationally. It will know when 10 am hits wherever you are in the country and starts sending those calls. I don’t want it to go any later than 4. So we tell them to put a window of time in there 10 to 4. If I had to break it down any further, not that it matters that much, I would probably say a Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. You are hoping to catch most people away or out or at work. So 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. is the window that we tell them. Monday through Friday is fine. If I had to break it down even further, I would go Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
Michael: From what I understand you guys are pretty marketing savvy. You have a marketing mindset that most of these other voice broadcasting companies and automated telephone services lack. You guys are coming up with new ways to increase the success of your clients. Tell me about some of these other marketing strategies that you guys are using to help improve that ROI for your client?
Jeff: Here are a couple of free-recorded message strategies that are great. Probably one of the most under-used advertising mediums in the whole world is the business card. If you go to anyone’s business card, what does the back of the business card look like? It is blank. When I say under-used it is because you have a whole lot of real estate on the back of that card that could be used as a direct response medium. Rather than give someone your business card with nothing on the back, why not add a menu of different extensions they can call to get a free report, consumer awareness guide, or even hear testimonials from clients who love you. That is a great strategy that people can implement right away. Even if they want to create a stamp and stamp it on the back of the card, free-recorded message and then all the different extensions. That is a great strategy. Web site. If you have a web site, then you need to have something somewhere on it that drives people to a free recorded message. How many times have you heard, wow I have a lot of hits on my site? I have 200 hits. I have 500 hits. My first question to them is that is great, who were they? They go, “I don’t know.” By having information on your site that is only available through a free-recorded message, the caller is going to get to hear you. He is going to become more emotionally attached to you. You will capture their phone number and in most cases a name and address. You have a good idea of how effective your site is. A number of people out there, Alex Mendosa is a big promoter of this, he talks a lot about online to offline marketing. What that really means is that if you have a vehicle as another way to get someone to interact with you. If you have another vehicle, something on your web site that banners a free-recorded message that contains information that is not on your site where they have to call for your free-recorded message. Then you are doing a great thing. You are sending someone to somewhere like I said they can get emotionally attached, you can capture information that normally you wouldn’t and it is a great thing. Those are just a couple of other strategies that we provide and have seen success from. As we get more and find more then we let our customers know about it.
Michael: What percentage of the calls that come in are you able to get the address information?
Jeff: The address depends on probably where it is you are calling. We are seeing 70% plus, something like that with addresses. Again, the way that people are using the name and addresses obviously is the ability to data-mine their information. Also, as I said, part of your marketing campaign is to do direct mailers to people who lets say have a lot of people call and they didn’t leave a message, they just listened. You could easily export that data into Excel and create a mailing campaign to those people and use their addresses as well.
Michael: Let me ask you this. What about people who are I guess techno- phobes. They think that they are technically challenged and think this is going to be too hard for them to get set up. Is it easy to get set up and running?
Jeff: Absolutely. You don’t have to be a marketing genius. You don’t have to be a tech-head to take advantage of this. In addition to instant access to our online quick-start guide, we have ad samples and scripts. Here is one of the most important things that you get. First of all, everybody knows Nike’s slogan, “Just Do It”. That is the biggest challenge that most people have. The guarantee that the majority of those are not ever going to start using it, not just stick it on the shelf and forget about it. Every person that signs up will receive as many as 14 audio emails within the first month that come with instructions, tips, help, ideas on getting the system up and running quickly so they can experience success. Plus we have step-by-step video tutorials where you can follow along with me on my computer screen and see how I set up everything and how I use it. Then after the first month, they are going to continue to receive an audio email every two weeks or so for the next 11 months. Keep them on track and excited. Then the last but not least, we have an awesome customer support staff that is just a phone call away. If people have questions, they will be able to handle it, whatever.
Michael: Can we talk about some more specific case studies or success stories that when you think of successes can we talk about some specific success stories that we can relate to the listeners?
Jeff: I gave you a number earlier, the home remodel and others, we have, insurance agents for example, we are doing a lot with insurance. We have agents that are calling in and saying that by using voice broadcast messages to nurture their clients, they are having great increases in retention. First year retention rate is 6%, which in the insurance world that is a lot when you have a $10,000,000 agency; increases in 6%, decreases in advertising expenditures because they got a lot more bang for their buck.
Michael: Why would someone want to work with you guys instead of your competition?
Jeff: As I kind of alluded to earlier, no other company markets free-recorded messages and voice broadcast as one holistic marketing system. I think that is really crucial because if you are not doing both, then you are running a really fragmented business. We are not just a voice broadcast company. We are not just a free-recorded message or hotline company. We really market and teach people, plus we have a lot of marketing scripts and campaigns and all of that that goes along with it. Plus, there is also the relational side to our business when it comes to our clients. Even though we do everything we can to get somebody on their feet and using our system quickly so that they can start experiencing success, there are those that might need a little TLC and a bit of hand holding and I think that we are really, really good at that. At the end of the day to us, at the end of the day, it is more about relationships than it is about pricing and per minute rates. So people leave other people and come to us because they may not have had great customer support experiences or the kind of things that really matter in terms of building a relationship. We are good at that.
Michael: Do I need any hardware or any software to use this?
Jeff: No, all of your recorded messages you will just do on your own phone.
Michael: How long can my recorded message be?
Jeff: You can have 10 minutes to a free-recorded message and then you can optionally have another thing to add another 10 minutes to it. Again, as I mentioned earlier, the real purpose to our system is from a lead generation standpoint. We have done a lot of studies and depending on what you are talking about beyond 6 or 7 minutes, people interest tends to wane off a little bit, depending on what the message is. Again, the vast majority of our clients have recorded messages of anywhere from 3 to 6 minutes.
Michael: Let’s say that I didn’t want to record the message. I don’t like my voice or whatever. Do you have a service where you could record the messages for me?
Jeff: I actually record the male messages for people that would like that. We also have female voices in here and we can easily do that. If they want to do one, the first is free. I think that every script after that is $15 per recording. The funny thing is here is a good example. Sometimes people call me up and they say, kind of like you said. I don’t like my voice or I would like to have a professional radio announcer do it. The one thing that I tell people that it is very important to understand is that if it is too slick and if it is too professional it is not as effective. This may sound weird, but the less professional the better. What I mean by that is we have a couple of clients of Joe Polish that have very bland, boring sounding voices, but they have been very successful in the response that they have gotten in voice broadcast campaigns, free- recorded message campaigns because the purpose of free-recorded messages is to get them to know you personally. Obviously if someone has a personal dialect that is hard to understand or heavy accent or whatever it may be then sure I can throw it together. I really encourage people to use their own voice.
Michael: Can I still get an 800 number or are all the 800 numbers taken up? Are you just doing 888 or 877 or 866?
Jeff: You can get an 800 number, there is a one-time surcharge to get it because we are so limited by the funds that we are charged for those, but I will tell you that our studies have shown there is really no difference between an 888 and an 800. The most important thing that they see in your ad is not your phone number. The most important thing that they read in your ad is the three magic words free-recorded message.
Michael: Let say I do a voice broadcast to 20,000 people and I have them call back on an incoming 800 number. If I have a bunch of calls coming back at the same time will they get busy signals?
Jeff: No they will not. We have the capability to handle tons and tons of calls coming in from that so there is no worry there. On outbound voice broadcast calls, obviously there is no issue. We can send out thousands and thousands and thousands because of our servers and so forth. You are not going to get a busy signal.
Michael: Do you guys have a service where incoming calls, where people are leaving information, where you will type them up and send them via email, my messages?
Jeff: We don’t do transcription services, not that we can’t, but we do a lot of polling our customers and clients as well as requests that we get for various services and features. We have found that over the years, up until even now we might get a request for a transcription service maybe once a month or once every two months. We just found that with all the other products and features and the upgrades and the new systems that we are designing and the amount of time that our programmers are devoting to various things that it is much better time used creating all the new and really cool things we are developing than putting a system in place that we get hardly any requests for.
Michael: Let’s say that I have 50-100 voice mails on my system; does your system make it easy for me to play these back, to slow it down so that I can transcribe all of that information or is it easy to get those messages off of my system?
Jeff: What we found, again, is that when people get their messages they go in like voice mail, they play it back, they can replay it, it is strange really because we have never had a situation where we even asked for the ability to slow messages down or things like that. We are developing a new free-recorded message system that will be out in a number of months that will have a lot more features probably along those lines. Right now it is a standard play back like a voice messaging system and if there is a phone number given they write it down. We have never had a situation where that has even come up really.
Michael: Can I access my messages via the Internet and my phone?
Jeff: That will be in the new version of the free-recorded message system that we are developing.
Michael: So the existing version is phone only?
Jeff: Yeah. The new one will have that.
Michael: When is the new one coming out?
Jeff: We are probably looking at a matter of 4 months, 5 months.
Michael: What if I have an 800 number already, is that something that I can transfer over to you guys?
Jeff: Yes it is. It would be a simple process. We would give you a form. You would fill out a form and you would get it back to us. Then what we do is we turn that over to Verizon and one other carrier that we work with. Then what they do is they contact your provider, whomever it may be, maybe A T & T and they request that number to be sent over to us. Then it goes and you can turn that into your free-recorded message line. If you have an 800 number that you want to use for this purpose, you can do it.
Michael: Do you all handle anything as far as receiving faxes as well? Let’s say someone calls my free-recorded message, do they have the ability to send a fax to me and I would receive it?
Jeff: No, they wouldn’t send a fax, what they do is they have the ability to get a fax from you. That is called Fax-on-Demand. If they are listening to your free-recorded message and you say “If you would like a printed property profile of this beautiful 3-bedroom, 2-bath town home, wait for the prompt and then press 8 and enter your fax number and it will be immediately faxed to you.
Michael: You can in essence deliver your report by fax, rather than mail.
Michael: Do you have a lot of people doing that?
Jeff: Most of the people.
Michael: They want the mailing address.
Michael: That makes sense. You want the mailing address.
Jeff: What they will do is say, “If you want my free report mailed to you right away, please wait for the prompt and leave us a message with your name and your address and we will get it mailed to you right way. Thanks so much”.
Michael: Then again you could leave that option off and say, “If you have a fax machine and you want it faxed” and then if you are capturing 70% of those calls anyway.
Jeff: Yeah, you could do that too. We found that they like to mail them. If the message is short enough, as I mentioned within the 3 to 6 minute range, a typical consumer wanting this message is about 5 1/2 to 6 minutes. I am using Joe Polish’s template as an example “The Six Most Critical Questions” and “The Six Most Common Misconceptions” that kind of thing. That runs 5 1/2 or 6 minutes depending on your industry. People will be more than happy to sit and listen to that.
Michael: Let’s say that I am listening to this and I really liked the idea that “Warning, don’t even call a carpet cleaner”. If I am opening phone books in all of the major cities, am I going to see other ads in the phone books that I am going to be competing with? What would you say about that?
Jeff: I would say the threat of competition is next to nil. I say that because most businesses in this country, this is born out by so many direct marketers that I know and so many gurus and other industries that are over a specific industry and maybe its chiropractors, believe me I have looked. You do not see, maybe it’s just because most businesses either they don’t know or they have not been exposed to this type of marketing. They have always been brought up on well my dad did it this way, my granddad did it this way and all I know is I am suppose to run a yellow page ad and that is what the yellow page ad rep told me to do and that is how I am going to do it. I have never seen a situation yet where all of a sudden you open up the phone book and there are all kinds of people with free-recorded message numbers.
Michael: Can I re-route callers to a different extension anytime during my recording?
Michael: How does that work?
Jeff: What is going to happen is after they listen to your free-recorded message; they are going to hear the following options that come on in my voice. It says, “To speak to someone directly, press zero. To repeat the message, press one. To leave a message, press 2. To enter another extension, press 3. To receive a fax, press 8.” So what they can do is press another extension. Now what a lot of people do, a good example might be a restaurant ad where they will have the call-in number let’s say for a reservation listed. Then they might have a little box with a menu down below that says call 24-hour free-recorded message. It might say for hours and directions, extension 9000; for a take-out menu, extension 9001; for catering info, extension 9002. So they can have a little menu down there. We have a tile and grout client and they list the whole menu, 1-800-blah-blah-blah and an extension number. Frequently asked questions about stone and tile care, extension 9000; six common misconceptions about granite and what others are saying about us, extension 9004. You can have a little menu and now you have really taken an ad to another level and you have made it completely interactive rather than passive. One of the examples that they use a lot, I know that Joe Polish had a great term that he used for most ads that you see in the yellow pages. They are called one-step ads or more specifically name, rank, and serial number ads. Basically it is an ad that says, “Bill’s Auto Repair, in business since 1979.” 702, then the number, and maybe an address and that’s it. It is what we call a one-step ad. It doesn’t tell you to do anything, but when you have a direct response ad it is completely different. The definition of direct response is any ad that is compelling you to take action, right then and there to do something. There are direct response ads without a free-recorded message and then there are direct response ads with. The most successful ones I think are the ones that have the free-recorded message versus calling someone live.
Michael: I am curious to know statistically. I am sure that you guys have looked at this. How often do you find people pressing the button to replay the recorded message?
Jeff: Oh, hardly ever. One time is enough.
Michael: Are there any phone numbers that your system is not able to capture, where they can get the number and the address?
Jeff: Every phone number is captured. It doesn’t make any difference. You see when you are calling an 800 number like this; you are essentially placing a collect call. So you have the right to know who is calling you. It is on your dime. You will capture every single phone number. Again, addresses it is a numbers game. As I mentioned in most cases, 65%, 70% or more you will capture an address. Again, that is like the icing on a cake. It is a great tool to have. Some people depending on what they are trying to accomplish with their marketing could care less about addresses, however as I mentioned if you are going to be doing mailers or mailings and you want to have that as a resource then it is great.
Michael: Would I be notified somehow or paged when someone has left a message?
Jeff: There are a couple of different ways. One is you can have a text message go to your cell phone that will display the captured number and the extension they listen to so you will know that, that happened. The other way is we have a feature called message express and what that does is when somebody leaves you a message, your phone rings and you will pick it up and say hello. It is me, it is my voice that comes on and says, “A message has just been left in your ART voicemail system. To listen to this message now, press 1. To save it for later, press 2.” This works well like in the real estate community. If somebody sees a yard sign or an ad and is interested and they leave a message that says “I am interested looking at the house on 127 Main Street.” It is completely time sensitive so the agent will get a call and it will say that a message has been left. You want to listen to it now? Yes. You press 1 and immediately you get the message.
Michael: Will this work with an 800 number, an 877 number in Canada if I have customers?
Jeff: Yeah. Canadians can use it and all Puertoricans.
Michael: Do you have customers who have international lists?
Jeff: We are not international.
Michael: Just U.S. and Canada?
Jeff: U.S. and Canada. That is something that we do want to do down the road because we do get a lot of calls from the UK. We get them from Australia. Simply, because they may have been at a seminar over here where we have been talked about. Naturally they are curious. Wow, we would like to do this, but we are not international right now.
Michael: What is this On-Demand marketing line?
Jeff: That is the name that we have given to our free-recorded message system. The client connection broadcast center is the name that we have given to voice broadcast because it does so much more. It is not just like On-Demand marketing. It is not just a hotline. It is an integrated marketing system and when you put the two of those together, the name that we use for our entire system is the connection marketing system. Kind of a little tag line is “Getting connected with prospects. Staying connected with clients.”
Michael: How do I actually pay for my service? Do I need a credit card to be able to use this service?
Jeff: You would go online and what we have done is we have actually set up a special offer for your listeners as an incentive to get them on board with us. Basically what is going to happen is that everybody that signs up with us is going to get a special discount off the set-up fee because of you as well as the special bonus offer related to voice broadcast. Here is what they would do. They would go to our web site, which is at www.automaticresponse.com. It is all one word, automaticresponse.com. There is a link that they can click on where they can watch cool little 6-minute movie, PowerPoint where I narrate it and tell them everything we do, soup-to-nuts in 6 minutes. After cruising around on our site they can click on the sign-up button and it is going to take them to a page where it is going to ask them to enter a promo code number. What they are going to want to do, Michael, is enter your code, which is 5185, that is 5-1-8-5. After they do that, they are going to go to our marketing cart page where they are going to get a discount off the sign-up fee. Typically when someone comes in off the street and gets the entire system they are going to pay a one-time $299 set up fee, but because of the special offer through you, we are knocking $100 off of that, so it will be a $199 one-time, set-up fee. Then there is a little play button on that page where they can click and they can hear me explain how to fill out the marketing cart page, how to sign-up and get them going. As I mentioned everyone that signs up is going to get all of those audio emails within the first month and great customer support staff. Kind of to put it into perspective, we did a lot of research and our average client across the nation that uses both the free-recorded messages for lead generation and voice broadcast for client nurturing religiously, as they should month-in and month out and spends an average of about $4.25 per day. Let me put that into perspective. How much does a Vente Frappuccino at Starbucks cost?
Jeff: $4.60 out here and that is for an addictive drug in a cup. For a little over $4 they are going to have all of the tools they need to start automating their lead generation.
Michael: This shouldn’t even cost them anything with the automation and the savings on labor and advertising. This is an investment. There is no doubt. When I hear you talk about this and I think of my web site at which is an automated audio delivery system. It is just on the Internet rather than through a phone system. I totally get it. This is what I teach and what I preach and I am with you, but there is something about the phone. Everyone knows what a phone is. No one is afraid of a phone at least here in the United States.
Jeff: You bring up a great point. Sometimes people will ask me, “You know Jeff with all of this technology today, with pod casting, email, and the web and all of this stuff and you are asking me to use the 100-year telephone?” You know what I tell them. I am like you. I said, “What is the one tool that everybody on the planet either has access to or own and it is the telephone. The one tool that no one needs a user guide to understand, that no one is afraid of, that they are familiar with. It is the telephone. The second most common way that people communicate to one another.” I heard an interesting comment from a gentleman that I met actually at a Dan Kennedy seminar that we were at. He made the comment. He said, “You guys are old school, new again because of the fact the advent of technology; this crushing onslaught of emailing and texting and all of those things. It is great to see that you are bringing back what is really meaningful, powerful, and purposeful to the art of communication and that is through the phone. 50% of email communication doesn’t ever make it. It is blocked, thrown into spam filters or whatever it may be. With voice broadcast it is not the case. It gets delivered. There is just something again about the relational aspect of the human contact and hearing a human voice. There was a gentleman. I can’t remember his name. He wrote a book called the wizard of ads. He had a great quote. He said, “If you want to persuade the world, use the human voice.” I love that and it is true. That is what we try to convey to people. The other thing that we are very careful to emphasize is “This is not a magic bullet”. This isn’t the be all and end all. People are smart if they use a lot of the tools and technologies made available to them. We are one aspect. We are a powerful tool to go in your tool kit. We are another arrow that you can put in your quiver that you need to be using because people still advertise in print traditionally. They still talk on the phone. They still need to communicate with their clients. There are a lot of ways to do it. All we are saying is that we are a great tool to add to that tool kit that you don’t want to overlook.
Michael: I appreciate that. That is great. Give the listeners one more time a way to get started.
Jeff: Go to our web site at www.automaticresponse.com; all one word. When they get there they can watch a little 6-minute movie that tells everything we do. Then they can click the sign-up button and when they go there it is going to ask if you are a current client or a new client. They will click on the new client. Then they are going to want to type in your promo code, which is 5185. Then it will take them to the page where they are going to sign up for the connection marketing system, which is free- recorded messages and voice broadcast. When they sign up they get activated right away. Within minutes they are going to get confirmation emails. They are going to get an account number, a pin number. They can login. They are going to get the audio emails sent to them. They are going to get a welcome aboard call from our customer support department. It says that if you have a promo code number, enter it here. Then they enter it, but yes they do need to do that. They are going to save $100 off of the set-up fee. The other thing when they sign up for Connecting Marketing, which is both systems. What we do is we will take $100 of our own money, of ART’s money and we will put it into their Voice Broadcast account bank. What that enables them to do is place their first 30-second message to a thousand people for free.
Michael: When my subscribers sign up and they enter my promo code, you guys will put $100 in their credit?
Jeff: In their Voice Broadcast account.
Jeff: What that enables them to do as I mentioned because a typical voice broadcast that makes it to an answering machine is about 10 cents. On average, $100 in their little bank enables them to actually connect their message to 1,000 answering machines for free. It is a great incentive to get them going and to start relating to their customers.
Michael: That is great. Hey Jeff, we have covered a lot of stuff. That is awesome. I am all about tools and I am going to be doing additional interviews on time saving, leveraging marketing tools, but this one certainly is tried and true.
Michael: I appreciate your time.
Jeff: I appreciate the opportunity to be on the call and chat about this. It is a lot of fun. We have been doing this for years and years and I hope many more years to come. Michael, thank you so much for having me on the call.
Michael: You are very welcome. Take care.
