Kathryn: Hey hey super excited to have Mary Barnett on the show, also known as “MobileMary” super excited to have her to talk about mobile marketing or text marketing, which is something I think we don’t talk enough about, it’s another really amazing tool to get in front of your clients and your audience. So I’m just gonna turn it right over to Mary right now to give us a little bit of an introduction. Who are you, what do you do and why do you do what you do?
Mary: Oh my goodness, well thank you so much for being on being on your show. Hello, thank you. Yeah, I know. Right, so it’s all one big community of love. Yeah, so thank you so much. Yes, so um I, as you said, I’m “MobileMary” go by that because I’m a mobile and social expert Um I’ve actually been in business for 33 years and I’m only 34,
Kathryn: Amazing!
Mary:That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Um but we were involved in traditional marketing for the 1st 20 and then I was starting to tell you a little bit before the show that um one of our clients was Kawasaki and they were complaining that their dealers were complaining to them like we did events and promotions and things for the corporation and I said, I was kind of sassy, I said you know of course it was after a trade show, so a few drinks might have been involved. I said well how do you market to, you know, you’re, and they’re like well you know our agencies do all the things, you know, the website and the ads and the and the direct mail and the, you know, and this new market, this new thing called email back in 2007, I was laughing. I’m like okay. And I said well you’re aren’t your customers mobile.?
Mary: I mean literally on their motorcycles, driving around, like they’re not at home waiting for your postcard, They’re not allowing a computer with email because by there’s only flip phones back then, like maybe a few smartphones, the iPhone had just come out that year 2007. So I’m like this is a computer by the way, so we can actually send links that would lead and they’re like, what? And I was like, yeah. And they’re like, well it sounds good but you need to convince our agencies. So I was like, well you’re the client. Like, just tell them you want to do this, It doesn’t work that way. Ofcourse.
Mary: So I spent two years basically building software every time they would tell me You can’t do this and you can’t be like, you’re not the boss of me because I’m the baby of six kids. Okay, so that’s like my mantra. Um anyways, and so when we finally launched in 2009, We drove 93,000 new customers to their 1500 dealerships across the country. And we learned so much about you know consumer habits and all this stuff that was like, but I had never gotten that kind of response on any marketing campaign I’ve done in 20 years.
Mary: So I dove headfirst into mobile marketing. People looked at me with a head cocked, but what like we have a family phone,
Mary: we leave our phone in the car, like all these things, I’m like, you know what, there’s gonna be a day or you won’t leave
Mary: the house without your phone, your wallet and your keys. And they would look at me like I was crazy and I was like, okay, see you in five years or so and and so now today, right, you literally don’t leave the house if you panic If your
Mary:phone isn’t within like arm’s reach, like you’re like.
Kathryn: Totally, totally that I love that you referenced like the year that you did this in 2007 and then 2009 and obviously there’s early adopters that will jump on things like that, right?We saw that with clubhouse this year, everyone wanting to get on clubhouse when it first rolled out only the iPhone users. So I was left, I was left in the dust because I had an android and I do have an android. I know, I know, but yeah, and when I graduated commerce in like from my marketing degree in 2003, like e commerce wasn’t even a thing. And so I just love that you’re referencing kind of when you first started to introduce this because I think again, the marketing world has changed the way in which we can, you know, get our products and services in front of our clients and customers and audiences change and we are so attached to that phone, like that is the thing that like you said, we do not leave our house without it and if we do it’s like, oh God, where did I leave my phone or did I leave it at home? Do I leave it at the grocery store?
Mary: Because there’s no pay phones anymore, Like you have to like stop them on the street, can you call my house? Like seriously?
Mary: Like we’re so addicted to it. Um But yeah, so you specialize in messaging which I think is phenomenal because that’s what I think is the thing that ties everything together. Mobile marketing or text marketing or smS marketing whatever you wanna call it is such a personal thing, like something that I’ve been saying for years and everyone smile when social media goes down, I’m like ha ha I told you, you know, I’ll be like please don’t 100% rely on social media.
Mary: I mean it’s awesome. We help clients on social media is a great way to promote your text marketing campaign because the whole thing is we want to build our list. So we own a list of people who know like and trust us who want and like what we offer, who want to get messages from us, right? We don’t want to bother just like with the email now of course email is a little slow to the uptake now, you know, because that’s why we have all the spam. They didn’t have the can spam act in place. But the beauty of mobile marketing is that right from the beginning? The FCC clamped that down so you can’t buy a mobile list if you do, it’s legal. I mean it’s against the law and so they’ll shut you down so fast. It’s crazy so we can talk all about that. But what I’m saying is like when someone gives you permission to text them, they’re giving you right to their personal device.
Mary: So that’s a big responsibility to make sure that you’re communicating away and engaging them in a way that they feel empowered and loved and you mentioned you in your, in your thing that, that when your energy is magnetic, it’s the most irresistible force in any crowd without you saying a word. And that’s so true and people love feeling like a personal connection with you. You know, and it doesn’t have to be a small business. You, it could be even a brand like Kawasaki when they feel like they’re taking the time to say, hey, we, we hear you, we see you, we know what you want and in this, creating this whole thing with that campaign, we learned like where these people live because you could literally, we did like secondary campaign so they could text when they’re in the store. So you know when john jones was standing in the temple Arizona store on third and temple and we knew based on questions we asked and things they answered.
Mary: What color bike, what style bike, what brand or you know, they have all these different things. We knew their customers so well that we could send them targeted like, oh my gosh, you’re lucky day, we have a red X five in green or whatever green trim waiting for you and here’s $500 off if you buy it today,
Kathryn: brilliant.
Mary: right? With a link that takes you with it to a map that leads you right back to the store. It’s like, oh and people are so back into this and I am freaked out like what the hell me. Yeah, but in a positive way back then.
Kathryn: Yeah. So I wanna for listeners, I want to kind of back up a bit in terms of like how does it even work? Right? So like for somebody that’s like, I’ve never, you know, I understand email marketing and people get on my list and I send them an email, but like how do people opt in to get on a text message list, is it the same as email?
Mary: Very, very similar and that’s a great way of explaining it because we were like, oh my gosh, it seems like so you know scary. I said no when you click to enter your email, you know email boom, they send you what you want and they have now your email, same thing with text marketing, you neither texting a keyword.
Mary: So as an example I just signed up at customer yesterday who has this big event, it’s like an entrepreneurial event. So if you text the word spirit to a certain keyword, I won’t say because we don’t want people are not the right um they’re going to be entered to win $100 and during the event they’ll get a link to donate which they can choose to give $100 back if they want or not or being able to like when the auctions are open, you know they’ll behalf of communication device.
Mary: Right so do you do you text the keyword to it or we have a cure builder at least in our software and other Softwares might that you can scan it and it basically opens up your text marketing with the keyword already pre populated. He just hits in boom and that’s the thing there’s no data entry like like the marketer doesn’t have to sit there and type out like remember the business cards.
Kathryn: Yeah yeah going to an event and having business cards starting like a fish bowl basically and then having to go home or someone entering a draw at your booth and you’re like then going back and I mean I I don’t have it anymore, but I know at the store um at the wine store that I used to own, my listeners will know this and if they don’t they know now, but but I had to draw once and I had all these names and I think that jar sat literally in the back of the store
Kathryn: forever because I just didn’t have the time to input their email and their customer information.
Kathryn: And so that’s, I love how simplified that is and how it takes. It’s like the work away from the market or or the business owners. So does this work for service based and products based or like what does it work best for or both?
Mary: Um either or because we have clients that are of course brick and mortar. Right? So restaurants and retail stores do well because you’re trying to drive back foot tracking, tracking traffic.
Mary: Um but also online businesses when you have like e commerce as you mentioned, you know, to remind them that they have a product waiting for them, you know, that they have liked in the past or there’s something in the shopping cart. I mean you could use text marketing for things reminded I even have consultants, well a couple of reasons they’ll send out a text saying they have an email waiting for them because people don’t check their email anymore. So you’ve done all this work creating this beautiful email with all these graphics and the newsletter, whatever and then nobody reads it hello, but email is still great because it’s a long form communication tool, which is really important. But if you want to catch someone’s
Mary: attention sending a quick text and with a little link boom that goes to their email, right?
Mary: And the other thing consultants use it for is accountability. So they might have a program set up where they have to, you know, um watch certain videos or or fill in certain reports on certain days to hold them accountable. So they can actually send a text out to say, oh this is what’s due today or you need to do this today. So it’s just again, as you mentioned very similar to email and you can also set up web forms on facebook on your website.
Mary: But the whole point is once you get them into your world into your funnel, right? We call the texting funnel um then it starts a conversation and I think that’s what’s different about, I mean we talk about social marketing as social, right? But sadly not enough people understand how to be social right there, just like blast blast, blast blast. It needs to be a conversation. So the beauty of text is because you’re getting them on their mobile device and I’m looking for my phone, it’s because you’re going to your personal device when you have a conversation and it doesn’t seem like a sales, the weirdo people feel like as we say like heard, you know, they feel like their opinion matters, their input on poles or questionnaires or you know, or if they enter their information like, oh I love green, whatever I love or here’s my, here’s my email and then it integrates directly into your mail chimp or your constant or whatever. Then it just becomes the seamless bringing it. It takes marketers shoulders out of their ears.
Mary: Yeah. That’s some comments and just enjoy their business because like you said, you had a wine shop and never had time to do
Mary: the market because you’re so busy and you’re
Kathryn: doing the day to do.
Mary: Yeah. Yeah. Which is my dream. It’s like I want people to be able to do what they love to do. Not worry about all the tech in the background.
Kathryn: Yeah. And that’s, I mean it’s, it’s such
Kathryn: a big thing for I think any business really I think and a lot of the women that I work with are businesses that I work with
Kathryn: come to me and they’re like, I started this business because I love helping people or I, you know, really passionate about the products I’m selling or whatever it is, but they didn’t sign up to be the marketer of the salesperson and, and it’s so true with social like right, It’s like this we’ve we’ve lost our ability to be human and have like real conversation.
Kathryn: So I want to dive a little bit into that because I know you talked about like long form and short form communication and some of our listeners might be like well what how long can a text message be? Like how long is it only short form or?
Mary: Well that’s preferable because sadly we have less of attention span than a goldfish. Now remember that used to be a thing like oh
Mary: that those goldfish have such short attention that ours is even shorter. Sad. Um But yeah so a typical short code usually has 160 characters which is like the old twitter, nano twitter is now extended. Um But 160 characters which it’s amazing how much you can get done in 100 60 characters. Um we also are getting 800 numbers for customers because um the carriers are wanting to build more privacy so we’re complying and so eventually they’re gonna start shutting off like shared short codes so we get our customers their own 800 number and that goes up to 250 characters. believe it or not a little bit longer.
Mary: Um But we can also this is really cool for a lot of our larger customers who they need customer service and they might have an established like You know 909 plumber, you know it’s like a landline, they can actually actually can activate a landline
Mary: to take text so it still can make phone calls but now if they put a slap it on the side of the van that says text or call,
you know, 909 plumber or whatever, people can actually text, which they’re already doing, by the way, I don’t know about you, but I’ve texted businesses saying, hey, what time are you open? And then I get an air bounced back.
Mary: This number is not, you know, So when you do that, those those messages, any landline, that’s also 100 and 60 characters. I know I’m getting into the weeds. But yeah, yeah, 100 these characters. But you can also, in the last thing I’ll say is mm s which is multimedia service. So SMS is simple and mm mm That you can send 500 characters. So it’s really long with a picture
Mary: of video clip, an audio clip.
Mary: But it’s now like you look at that and go, oh my God, this is obnoxious. Like you hate those long text. Like my Children,
Mary: like mom stop speaking into your phone because the texts are like 15 inches long. I’m like, I’m sorry.
Kathryn: Yeah, it’s so true though. And I think that’s partly why even social has gotten awkward in some way. Like you get into the DMS with someone and
Kathryn: it’s like these like six messages that are like Duke, Duke Duke. nd here is just like, I can’t, I don’t even have to come back to it.
Kathryn: I don’t have time to read it right. And so I think like short snappy is great. But I also think in combination with like an email right? Having people on an email list where you can send long form if you want or post long longer form on instagram
Kathryn: or facebook if you want. But I just, I’m so intrigued by the text message. I had a guest on a couple episodes ago and she’s implemented text in her business mainly to create a community around her podcast if anything. And it’s and, and I was like, this is crazy. And then literally two days later you reached out um and asked to be on the show and I was just like, I have
Kathryn: to have you on the show because I think it’s not a new concept but it’s something that is I think is new specifically in the online space, online coaching consulting space.
Kathryn: We don’t see a lot of people kind of using that and even product based. I still think it’s like not, I remember when we had the brick and mortar, somebody had come in and said we could send text messages to people that were even in the vicinity like how does that work?
Mary: Well, I think you’re talking about geo targeting or geo fencing. Yeah, so we have the ability to do the same thing, but they have to opt in already because it’s permission based. So what they might have been talking about in your store is there used to be a thing and I don’t think anyone even does it anymore.
Mary: It was called beacons. You could literally set up a beacon. It looked like um an apple tv or a google like you know whatever
Mary: those little pucks are called anyways but you could set those up because I remember we had clients who wanted us to put them up in their stores and then they had like a bluetooth beam that would go out and if someone was walking by and they and the phones are all set to default to accept that kind of stuff. So if you didn’t set it so you couldn’t accept it supposedly when you walk by you go bing, get a dollar off your cup of coffee, you look to your right, you know and you’re like oh and then that freaked people out, you know because they were like, you know and so I remember one of my um engineers so that they worked on a campaign for home depot and they would put these beacons out and so if you were even driving by a home
Mary: depot it would be like you know on a freeway and be like ding come on into the and there and but it it I think it was cast too much of a negative to people thinking that there were being watched.
Mary: Yeah. Even though truth be told we’re all being watched all the time. We talked about that social dilemma. Um but you
Mary: know when you just plug into the board, you know, star trek reference um yeah,
Kathryn:we’re being watched
Mary: being watched were basically being fed everything like, oh, it’s, you know, it’s not our ideas anymore. It’s like we’ve seen that at 17 times, we’re going to probably buy those shoes, you know, it’s like crazy. But yeah, so that’s kind of probably what you’re talking about.
Mary: We do build apps as well and apps have that feature as well. But once someone has opted into your list, you can set up a geo fence. So again, if they’ve already given you permission, you can say once they cross over this perimeter, then the message that you’ve scheduled to go out won’t go out until they cross the perimeter. So it becomes timely. Yeah.
Kathryn: So it’s all done with permission. Like you were saying at the beginning when we when you first launched this or when this first kind of became a thing that it was, there was a lot of things that were clamped down on it, right?
Kathryn: Whereas now we’re starting to see a lot more sort of privacy protection even with like new facebook stuff and the IOS rolled out for facebook ads and different things like that. But that was done with text messaging, like kind of right out of the gate.
Mary: It was yeah, the FCC saw what happened with email, all the spam and like, oh my gosh, I remember the days you used
Mary:to get all those joke emails, like you’re like, I never signed up for the, you know, and I think that actually planted a seedfor us not to trust email.
Mary: And so we, that’s why one of the reasons we don’t open it when we get so much too, it’s like I don’t want to click on something and you know, if you see a friends episode but it said open now or you don’t remember that anyway anyways, but um but so from the very beginning they said no. So that can, it’s called the Can Can Can spam act. That’s what it is. Okay. So they implemented right in the beginning for text marking because they didnt the carrier said, well we make money, you know on phones, if we people stop using their phones, we’re not gonna make any money so we don’t want to do you know any. So they made sure that that it was implemented. Yeah. And so that was a big deal to them. So and then back in the old days you actually pay for each text. So I don’t know if you remember like you get 200 texts with your plan and then it went 10 cents a text or something obnoxious. So now data rates, you know, you pay for unlimited texts but what’s interesting is they didn’t update the wording.
Mary: So you still with our software and I’m assuming any good software would have automatically when you first log in. It says message and data rates may apply. Which people complain, you know, does ignore now because they know they have unlimited data. But in the old days literally like when we first started, we were like, oh, I don’t want to get a text because I might
Mary: get charged for it, you know, so things have definitely progressed
Kathryn: cool. And so why do you think, like, why do you think it’s so important for businesses to consider this type of marketing for their business?
Mary: Because you need to own your own data.
Mary: Person who dies with most toys wins. It’s the person who dies with the biggest list wins, right? You want to have, that sounds morbid, but you want to own it. Because like two or three weeks ago when facebook and instagram went down for five hours, I don’t know about you. But I had people texting me saying, you know, is everything okay? What’s going on? Like I own face, I’m like, you know, it’s just, it’s what happens I said, and this is why you need text marketing because you would own your list and you could send out.
Mary: So all of my clients sent messages out saying, hey, just so you know, facebook might be down, but we’re not come on in for, you know, a free slushy when you buy whatever. Like there was actually messaging around the the shutdown and then of course those five hours I was sending out emails and text messages saying, hey, if you’re, if you’re freaking out right now is because you don’t have the confidence because you don’t have a list built, Let me help you build a list. So that’s the thing, you need to own that.
Mary: So you have control of your messaging, which of course you’re the expert at like, you need to know how to talk to your people and make them feel loved and appreciated and text marketing means that you have that ability. You know, again, there are, there are limitations. You’re not supposed to send text the middle of the night. So between seven AM and nine PM, you know, you can do whatever you want.
Mary:There’s not, there’s such, there’s so little though actually cause I do have some bots as well for clients because we can
Mary: tire text messaging platform into bots. But what’s interesting is bots have so many rules. Like if you haven’t messaged somebody within 24 hours, you can’t talk to them again. Like all this weird stuff. We’ll text, no, you’re, you’re the boss of you. As long as you keep between seven AM and nine PM. You know, you can talk to people any time you want, you’re the boss.
Kathryn: Yeah. And I think again, like, you know, we, we downplay, I think sometimes the power of having our own list. I know again when I started the brick and mortar, like that was the first thing we did every person that walks through that door, It was like at point of purchase like what’s your name? What’s your phone number? What’s your email address?And by the way, yeah, we’re going to add you to this list and I’ve talked to so many business owners that like I didn’t even really think about that.
Kathryn: The first thing they think about is like signing up for facebook and instagram and creating the profile and getting out there and starting to put that their information out there. But you’re right, we don’t own facebook and instagram and we don’t own that platform. And so if we don’t have a way to communicate to our people that’s like controlled by us text messaging email, right? Um if facebook instagramgoes down, we lose five hours or six hours or 10 hours in the day. And who knows that could the shutdowns could be longer going forward. We don’t, we don’t know that or yeah, in the metaverse.
Kathryn:I know I was like what? You totally change your name and I still calling you facebook. So
Mary: I mean I understand it’s like an umbrella. Like my my umbrella company is another brilliant idea, writes another billion because everyone needs another brilliant idea. But my I have products under that right have brilliant mobile messaging brilliant mobile apps. So I get why they did it.
Mary: And it’s so funny they obviously are like marvel fans because you know like spy, you know spidey verse and yeah I know and then the logos, the the logo then like other companies have come out and being like oh you’ve emulated our logo. I forget the company that came out. It looks very similar to their logo. Yeah, I know. Yeah, I know.
Mary: Can you imagine having the cojones to sue facebook for your logo?
Kathryn: Right? Not a chance?
Kathryn: Facebook’s like yeah we’ll take care we’re going to just take care of this.
Mary: It’s okay we’ll just take all this from you. It’s okay.
Kathryn: You’re going to you’re going away.
Mary: We have more money than God. We’re just gonna like we’re just gonna take that in.
Karthryn: Yeah. You didn’t post this. No,
Mary: I’m just kidding mark, I’m just kidding. You do what you want.
Kathryn: Yeah exactly. Your God. No. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean I think again, I think there’s so much space right now like I said especially I mean with products for sure. But in the online business space consulting’s coaches to like really build a community and I get a lot of people coming to me that are like how do I build a community off facebook?
Kathryn: How do I build a community off instagram? Well emails a big one. Right. It’s like you can create that community there. There are other platforms that you can you know Mighty Networks I think is one. I don’t use it but there’s other platforms but I think text messaging is like there’s such an opportunity like you said it’s it’s personal, it’s we normally only get text messages, like from family and friends, like right? Like we don’t get it’s just it’s such a new concept and I love it. So I would love for you to share a little bit about, you know, how could a coach or consultant implement this in their business?
Mary: Sure, that’s a great, that’s a great question. So as I said a little bit before about accountability, so um let me give you one example and this is really isn’t a coach, but I guess you could call it that, but a gentleman who owned a he was a brain psychologist for people who had brain trauma, he helped them basically build back the synapses in their brain, right? So he went through the challenge he had and again, kind of like a coach challenge he had is that every time he’d give them new direction because they had brain trauma, they couldn’t remember it badly. So he’d have to start over again, always going back and he couldn’t move the needle. So it was frustrating to him as a therapist that he couldn’t make, I mean he made
Mary: headway, but it just was so slow because you have to go back, you know, take two steps back, one for two steps, one for it,
Mary: right?
Mary: Also he was paid by the insurance companies right to help their clients get better. So he had to prove how he was helping them, right? So it was like this poor the poor guy was a dichotomy. So I was like, okay well how can we create a series of text mark text messages and we’ll set up like an automated funnel, right? So the day they get into therapy, either you enter them with their permission or they enter themselves whatever their family member and then either every day or let’s say on day to day Mary: four, day eight, day 12 you have an assignment for them. Like here’s something to read for the day, here’s the exercise they have to do. And maybe like one day it was just go outside, look to the sky, breathe deep and say something
Mary: out loud that you’re grateful for like just something like that, you know, another day was make sure you’re taking your vitamin C.
Mary: You know, I mean little like goofy stuff like that, but he set it up where if everything was automated and then we would take that and clone that entire funnel for a different kind of treatment. So now he had very targeted messaging to the civic
Mary: patient who needed this. And now he could trap because they would have to click on a link and say, oh I was grateful for
Mary: this or I did the exercise and the date stamped it. So now we can actually go to the insurance company and say, hey look, I not only have gotten them to do this, here’s proof that I did it right.
Mary: So very similarly consultants can do the same thing if they have a group program, they can hold their people accountable, they can get feedback because I don’t know about other software. Ours has two way texting. So you could literally text back
Mary: and forth with your landline number or the short code or 800 number and answer their questions back and forth. And again it’s all contained. There’s a paper trail, so to speak, a digital paper trail, right? And then you can create like inside the software landing pages and mobile sites and things that they can interact with create a community.
Mary: Like you mentioned what makes them feel personal that you’re not part of the masses that they’re talking personally to each
Mary: customer or a client or whatever because you can personalize text, you can collect all the different data and then feed it
Mary: back in a way that again they feel seen and they feel heard which I bring, I get shivers because I’ve seen the difference that it makes, you know, it makes me really happy.
Kathryn: Yeah, I love the, I love what the therapist did and I and I again, I think you know for me and the business that I do is like I’m so passionate about client results and I think again There’s lots of programs and courses out there that are just sold to the masses and there’s like 4000 people in them. And it’s like if you go through it great if you don’t whatever, but I’m so about like my clients result and really helping them get
Kathryn: it. And I just, I think that’s such a cool little layer that you could add as a coach or consultant where it’s like you know, progress reports or even like just like quick little updates, like, you know, goal for the week or you know, set what are your steps for success this week or you know what I mean?
Kathryn: Like some totally ideas and the therapist thing is a brilliant right? Like really playing into the struggle of his clients for patients that they can’t remember. And so it’s like little cute, cute and funny things, lighthearted messages. It doesn’t always have to be selling. And I think that’s the thing that a lot of businesses think like, you know, if I do the text messaging thing or the email, like in every email I have to be selling or I have to put this like sales hat on. But you can create a really lovely community just with some lighthearted stuff to, it doesn’t always have to be like, bye now, bye now, bye now, bye now.
Mary: Because that’s the fastest way to get people to opt off your list totally right. And people can, all they have to say is stop boom, They’re off the list.
Mary: You can’t even add them back on until they choose to come back. So, you know, you do things that’s not sounds, you don’t want to make your customers mad, right? But I love your idea of the humor because that’s like, um, there’s software, I can’t remember the name of it years ago, I used to use that. They, while you were waiting for it to like they would have all these funny things you like, you know, radio, we’re cranking the hamsters are on the wheel like the, like the little things
Mary: as I was thinking and I got such a kick out of that. I wanted to wait so I could see their funny thing, you know, communicate right? And so that’s the thing like with our customers like let’s life is short, there’s so much negative stuff in the world.
Mary: Let’s make something fun. You know, it’s like, hey, so like you mentioned like podcast. Yeah. So I used to have a podcast years ago before they called it a podcast. It was like internet radio or something. And that’s what I used text market because it was called brilliant mobile marketing. And so I would get people to opt in because I it was a live show that people could call in. So I would send a message out every week saying, hey, the topic, this was this, here’s the phone number to call in for Quinn questions. I have to admit not many people did sometimes it was my sister, you know, but it’s all good anyways, but it was, it was a great way to create that community and then we would get silly with it, you know like and then with like the text to win features, you can actually say okay one lucky winner every week is gonna win blank and then you can automate it.
Mary: So instantly it because I’ll be sometimes surprised like oh yeah I forgot I said oh here’s the winner of this thing. And then they call and they’re like oh so I you know I mail out their gift card or I send it electronically because now things have evolved. I can send a Starbucks gift card right from my phone or automated like with’s appear and everything you can automate all these steps and people are happy.
Mary: They’re fulfilled with joy. They feel like you know them they’re having this personal relationship with you and that’s really what we want, right? As markers we want people to feel and this is a dated reference. But did you ever watch cheers?
Kathryn:Like I was young.
Mary: Remember norm?
Kathryn:Yes.
Mary:  And he’d walk in the door and we go norm right? And he’s like, let me say something funny, right? Well that’s what we want. We want people to feel like norma cheers when they get a text message like thanks. Yeah we have a little cookie company that uses text marketing, we do social and mobile for them. So when they send out a thing it’s only they only send that deal out to those mobile V. I. P. S. So when they get that seriously there cookie display, she’ll take pictures Right before the next goes out. And then 15 minutes later. I mean literally people drive over there and buy everything up and I’m like so make more the days you want to do that right? And so when she introduced gelato, oh my God.
Mary: I mean it was like where when people are like oh my god like it was crazy. So yeah it’s just it’s just a fun instant way to
Mary: communicate on demand with your customers that you control.
Kathryn: Love it. Love it. And I think you can get like so creative with
Kathryn: you know with the way that you connect and communicate via text right? It’s like you said it doesn’t always have to be like bye now bye now. But we can get so creative with how we how we make our customers feel and how we connect with them depending depending on the business.
Mary: So I need to connect you with my customers right?
Mary: Because you could help them create the messaging that would write in a short sweet way. Because like we were talking about before like marketers sometimes can’t like note colors, have any shoes, you need to be able to like say it in a way that people will be like oh this applies to me. It’s something I have to you know do.
Kathryn: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah and that’s the thing is that it goes hand in hand, right? It’s like the strategy or the tools of the techniques that you use, like text, email, social media. Like it all works together, but it has, you have to be able to communicate in a nah, Nicky sales e you know, awkward way. Like, we’re all humans and your customers are humans and we got to remember that, that, like, I would love I love the spinning wheel, like you were mentioning on the websites where it’s like, oh, the bots are working behind the scenes or like whatever, and then it’s like, you know, oh sorry, it’s taking a little long. We’ve got to go to mars and back or something like it’s just those things crack me up and I’m like, let’s bring some humor back into marketing.
Kathryn: Make it a little lighthearted because I think, yeah, you can have so much, so much fun with it. So yeah, I loved chatting with you about text. I could go all day really talking to you about text marketing and mobile marketing. Is there anything
Kathryn: else you’d love to share with our listeners today? Um I know we veered away from, I had some questions for you, but I just
Kathryn: I just actually let the conversation flow.
Mary: You have such good questions for me. And I was thinking that way, is there anything we didn’t answer.
Mary: So you asked what’s the definition of success? I thought that was a really good question. So I wrote to myself when you’ve grown a list of active buying customers that want what you offer and you’re not dependent on social media to promote your business. That would be success. Now I’m not saying cut out all other like I think you need social, you need email.
Mary: These are all different platforms. But something I don’t think we did talk, we haven’t talked about yet is that we don’t know how our customers like to get information right As Children, we, you know, we were tactile learners or audio learners or visual learners, right? So everyone and everyone also has their lens of reality on so we all get information different ways we like to write. So it’s our job as business owners, marketers is to figure out how certain customers and even even all of our customers won’t like getting the same information the same way. So when you can automate it, so they get maybe they’ll get a little text remind them that the emails waiting and then the email, it says, hey here, you know, click on here
Mary: to go to our social and then here’s a coupon if you wanted to like you layer it.
Mary: So everyone feels that they’re getting what they need when they need it. You know, and there’s all kinds of tools that you can build into this kind of software and I mentioned, you mentioned brilliant by the way, thank you for the plug because our software spelled brilliant marketing, brilliant messaging. But anyways. But but that’s the thing, we want to make it brilliant for people just like you want to have people have brilliant messaging. It’s it’s important that we don’t work so
Mary: hard.
Kathryn: Yeah.
Mary: You know, we need to like make it so you’re not reinventing the wheel every time that you can just relax, do what the reason you started your business is.
Mary: You have a passion for whatever it is, making wine, sewing knapsacks or what, you know, like whatever your passion is, get all that other stuff taken care of, so you can just sink into your business and enjoy your staff and your customers and just make all that work. I just make that just feels so good to me to know that, you know, once that’s all set up and their messaging is correct like from you that it all everything goes together and then they can go okay.
Kathryn: Yeah. And so such a beautiful way to, you know, say it because I think that’s the thing with a lot of it’s not like I’ve aid, you know, it’s like a lot of them go into business because they’re passionate about the thing that they’re selling or the thing that they’re doing and then they go and then the marketing part feels so heavy and the sales part feels so heavy. And so and you’re so right, it’s like that everybody digest content differently, right? And so we’ve got to play with that and kind of created like a little of an ecosystem within what you’re doing, right?
Kathryn: Like long form, short form, quick text, funny humor, whatever it is.
Mary: And once you do it though, once you’ve created that and I think because when you start talking about, you have to do all the things people are like, you know what’s cool is you do all the things that they’re done, you know, and then if you ever want to like every quarter revisit it, see, you know, if you have your, your smart goals and you know what you need to get done and maybe things shift slightly.
Mary: All you do is clone what you’ve done changes slightly done. You know, it’s like, I think we sometimes feel like if we’re not busy, we don’t deserve it or if we don’t reinvent it every time, it’s not good enough. Oh my God, no. You know, if it’s, if it’s a little expression, if it ain’t broke, why fix it right?
Mary:If something’s working, take what works and then you shift it slightly and see if that works and if it doesn’t shift back, it’s okay, you know,
Kathryn: totally, totally. We overcomplicate. I think for sure and we don’t give service to repurposing or like you said, don’t, don’t try to fix what isn’t broken. Like if it’s working, let that work. We don’t need to be busy all the time doing all the things like just let your marketing do its job once you’ve got it up and running and ready ready to rock.
Kathryn: So yeah, it’s been such a pleasure connecting with you and with you and learning all about text. Text marketing, is there where can our people find you?
Mary: Sure? In fact, I just when you said that it reminded me, so if you go to our website, Another Brilliant idea, if you’re on the front page, there’s actually a sign up, right, my ethical bribe to sign up for email And you can actually get the top 10. Texting tips is a thing. So basically it’s do this, don’t do that. So I kind of read in that format so people kind of know like what’s cool what’s not and and the things we talked about on the show is very similar so you can just download that for free and you can use that, you don’t have to use our service. There’s other software that’s awesome. Of course ours is more awesome, but that’s you know, everything just kidding.
Mary: Um but at least we’ll give you a guideline of how to really connect with your consumer with your client, with your, you know, people who again know like and trust you and start that conversation create that relationship and you have a customer for life,
Kathryn: brilliant. Yeah and I think again we’ve you know that connection, that conversation is so important, is there anywhere they can find you on social
Mary: course I’m mobile mary so you can go to facebook.
Mary: I think somebody once when I first started into somebody had taken mobile mary like they were a notary service or something.
Mary: So anyway so I was the mobile mary so I think it’s facebook the mobile mary and then instagram is just mobile mary. Um so just google mold mary and you’ll find me
Kathryn: awesome awesome. Well it’s been such a pleasure connecting with you and having you on the show and I can’t wait for our listeners to hear all things mobile marketing and text marketing and I’m definitely going to start to investigate it for my own business because I think it’s such a cool cool tool to use and just a really great way to create communities
Mary: and our software works both the United States and Canada.
Kathryn: So amazing. Amazing. That’s a great thing to yeah. So is it just those two countries or is it?
Mary: Yes. Yes I know it’s just we provision with the carriers so there’s a whole that’s a whole other conversation but yeah so U. S. And Canada
Mary: but yeah so if I can even help you even if you don’t choose our software if I can help you kind of direct you and do stuff but you are so awesome with your messaging you would do very well.
Kathryn: Yeah I just I got some cool ideas and I’m hoping our listeners got some cool ideas to have like how to really create community and sort of bring some humor and humanness back into into marketing and connecting with people. So yeah,
Mary:I love it. I love it. Keep doing the wonderful work that you’re doing.
Kathhryn: Thank you. Thank you. It’s been. Yeah. Like I said, a pleasure having you all
Mary: pleasure is all mine.
Kathhryn: Thanks for listening. We’ll see you right back here next time. You can also find us on social media at creatively owned and online at creatively
owned dot com. Until next time. Keep showing up as your authentic self. Mhm mm hmm.Add block218218