The Chat Bubble: Recent Episodes
Michael Sabat
The Chat Bubble is a show about Messaging. We discuss messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, iMessage and WhatsApp - especially as a way for brands to communication with customers.
A secondary focus is brand messaging, the psychology of the pitch and best practices around sales and marketing.
The show combines interviews with shows discussing news and announcements about messaging channels and other companies in the space.
Using SMS is an opportunity for podcasts to greatly improve their advertising response rates and become a much more strategic space for brands to spend their ad dollars.
This episode introduces the idea and dives into how podcasts might implement the strategy.
Read more about this idea here. https://www.atmssg.com/blog/podcastings-opportunity-with-messaging
Facebook has built conversation and data collection into Facebook Ad Manager. It's a great capability, but no one is talking about it yet.
This episode talks about why this tool is important and how to add Facebook conversations into your Facebook Ads.
Text messaging works really well in the public health space. In this episode we discuss why text messaging + public health are a match and details some successful, past campaigns that focus on flu shot finder via SMS, text message smoking cessation and query services during the Sandy Hurricane in NYC.
This episode is an overview of the different options for messaging campaigns and high level strengths and weaknesses for each.
- Opt-in SMS
- Peer to peer SMS
- Text to donate
- Automated reminders/2FA
- Facebook Messenger
Messaging is part of the digital marketing space. Like every other discipline in digital marketing (Search, Social, Ads, Email, etc) messaging has unique aspects. Matching strategies to the unique advantages of the channel make it more likely that the strategy will be successful.
In this episode we review the unique aspects of messaging channels and how to think about strategies to match.
This might be the most important episode in the Messaging 101. All of the tips and best practice episodes that follow, build on the core ideas discussed here.
It seems like the Facebook Messenger platform is coasting to a stop with their latest change ending the Discovery tab. In this episode we discuss what's really going on. If this means Facebook is slowing the Messenger platform we review what caused the problems and lessons to take away from the demise.
Messaging 101 helps any digital marketer understand messaging channels for marketing. We start with the easiest question of all, "What is Messaging?
It's pretty simple, but important to understand what channels & technologies are in and out in. For more materials on the topic, and to signup for the newsletter please visit atmssg.com.
Following last week's conversation with Jed Alpert, and channeling by best Ben Thompson (or Scott Galloway) in this week's episode I pull apart different approaches for how messaging platforms might grow.
Most episodes are focused on tactics, news or different campaigns, but this week I put on my analysts hat to talk about business strategy for some of the companies in the space. I hope you like it.
Jed founded Mobile Commons, which was one of the earliest mobile messaging platforms. Mobile Commons brought thousands of messaging campaigns to hundreds of non-profits, government agencies and healthcare companies.
Mobile Commons was acquired by Upland Software in 2014 and Jed has continued to drive much of what's happening in the messaging space. Upland software has acquired several messaging platforms and is one of the largest messaging companies in the world.
As Jed discusses in the episode, Upland software is currently focused on helping their customers take an omnichannel approach and understand the actionable insights in their messaging and digital data.
I found another excellent podcast about messaging. It's the Messenger Mastermind podcast and messengermastermind.co on the web.
This week I chatted with Jeremy Horowitz, the founder and host of Messenger Mastermind. Half the conversation is on their podcast and then we finish the conversation on The Chat Bubble.
Listen to find out how eCommerce companies are using Facebook Messenger and how Jeremy expects the upcoming changes to affect the space.
The new Facebook Messenger pricing model, might hurt the channel and all of the developers that have built on Messenger. There is a different approach that might work better for everyone involved.
Predictions and wished for messaging channels in 2020.
The biggest takeaways are:
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Messaging is a digital marketing channel
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The one most important thing an organization can do is build their mobile opt-in list.
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There are special incentives behind RCS where if any vendor has success with the features, other incumbent vendors will be forced to release RCS offerings. So I think we will see significant adoption of RCS in messaging platforms and organizations.
Let's review the year 2019 in the messaging space. The one word that summarizes what's going on is "uncertainty". The biggest messaging platforms, Facebook Messenger and SMS/RCS, are undergoing big changes and nobody knows what's going to happen. Peer to peer SMS, the previous trend in the space from 2016 - 2018, seems to be slowing down.
The one thing that's been true from 2010 - 2019 and will continue for the foreseeable future is that building an opt-in SMS list is the best thing to focus on.
Visit http://atmssg.com for more information on messaging channels and be sure to tell friends and coworkers about The Chat Bubble podcast.
Sangeeth Peruri joins the podcast to talk about OutreachCircle and the recent launch of P2P texting into the product. OutreachCircle is a tool that helps businesses or organizations like political campaigns or local unions communicate and drive collective action.
OutreachCircle is an existing business & product that added fairly sophisticated messaging functionality. It's exciting to messaging integrated into products, rather than simply standalone applications. This instance is more interesting because the messaging is more than just a simple reminder or 2FA.
Sangeeth talks about why they built P2P SMS, how it differs from the other options out there and where the functionality might head in the future.
If you're a campaign, organization or small business looking to communicate and activate more people, check out OutreachCircle at https://client.outreachcircle.com/
Certain types of organizations are predisposed to be more successful with messaging. Let's list those industries and talk through why certain verticals are better than others with messaging as a marketing and communication channel.
Anyone that's worked on SMS marketing campaigns has seen incredible response rates and conversion rates. It's extremely common for the SMS list to convert at 3x, 5x or even 10x the rate of the email list.
We've all wondered, why is there so much more attention and resources paid to email campaigns, when the SMS campaigns are doing so much better.
That's the question we pull apart in this episode of The Chat Bubble. After all this success, why isn't SMS the dominant & default digital marketing communications channel?
This podcast is a review of a case study published Chatfuel's website. A written review has been posted on atmssg.com
This is a great example of how Facebook Messenger can work with an existing sales and marketing process to make customers happier and make the whole process more efficient.
The “welcome message” is part of the Facebook ad, and the most critical piece taking users from the ad click to the Messenger conversation. In this episode we talk about best practices for the welcome message and how to build tests for welcome message options.
Sierra Club is well known for their environmental protection efforts. In the non-profit tech world they are also known for being an innovative and data driven organization. They were an early adopter of Facebook Messenger and over the past few years have built a robust and engaging Messenger campaign.
Andre Sternberg joins the show today to talk about how the organization launched on Messenger, how Sierra Club approaches that channel and their goals for Messenger campaigns.
This is my favorite episode of the year and anyone interested in messaging channels will find this success story interesting.
Atmssg.com is a site that shares news, best practices and case studies about everything messaging. The idea is to build community around people running messaging campaigns and to provide information for those looking to launch messaging at their organization.
Please check it out and signup for the email newsletter (yes, I get the irony of that).
Facebook announced big changes with the Messenger platform. These changes greatly affect how organizations can use Messenger in the future. This has created a lot of uncertainty in the space and frankly a lot of worry.
The good times are definitely over. Facebook Messenger is no longer a channel where you can build and activate a subscriber list. But this doesn't mean that FB Messenger is dead.
In this episode we talk through what's still possible with Facebook Messenger and the type of interactions that organizations should focus on in a post-broadcast world.
Facebook announced that only verified news Pages can send broadcasts. I personally don't know what it takes to become a verified news Page, but I imagine that less than 1% of Pages doing Messenger can be verified. So any Page that has built a subscriber list on Messenger will be losing the ability to freely connect with those subscribers in January 2020.
This is a big deal. There are organizations out there that have built lists of millions of subscribers and they are losing those subscribers because of this change.
As an alternative to broadcasts, Facebook is pushing Pages to use Sponsored Messages. Sponsored Messages are ads, sent as a message. It's easy to understand why Facebook is doing this, but the Sponsored Message product falls very short of what the messaging platforms offered. As far as I've seen segmentation, timing and personalization are completely lacking from Sponsored Messages. This idea is a round peg being sold to fit a square hole.
All of this is a major change in the (micro) messaging space. Like everyone should have expected, the real winner here is Facebook. The change is devastating for Pages that built subscriber lists, and even worse for the platforms that have been powering messaging campaigns on Messenger. If there is a bright spot, Messenger (and Facebook) could change the entire digital landscape in terms of how businesses think about converting mobile "visitors". IMHO that's been the place to start all along.
This episode talks through the big ideas around how messaging can reach it's full potential for organizations. Spoiler alert - we're not there yet.
This is a more advanced episode that talks through the best practices for collecting user data in an SMS conversation.
I'd suggest that when it comes to messaging, non-profits have launched the most interesting and successful campaigns. In this episode we talk about why that might be the case.
This episode details why messaging is such an exciting channel for non-profits (and businesses). The ideas behind this podcast are also posted at 101fundraising.org.
In June I'm presenting a virtual session focused with the Resource Alliance talking about non-profits using messaging channels for acquisition and fundraising. This podcast is the background on that session.
If you're interested in messaging, please register for the free conference and check out my session.
WhatsApp provides some new tools for non-profits and business to communicate on using their app. Here is an overview of the basics as to where an organization can start with WhatsApp.
Derek Johnson is prolific, talking about SMS, RCS and the messaging space on the Tatango Youtube Channel and LinkedIn. He chats with me today about changes to how the carriers plan to manage shared short codes and long codes.
Derek provides valuable information, echoing what the carriers are saying about shared short codes and providing insight on where he thinks the space is heading.
The framework that I like to use when an organization is thinking about their messaging strategy is "More People + More Action". When an organization ads messaging as a channel, it brings More People and drives More Action.
In this episode we talk through the "More People" benefit and how that works through messaging.
Kate Myers joins The Chat Bubble to help explain the differences between opt-in and peer to peer SMS messaging.
The short answer is that if an organization wants to do automated messaging they're required to have users opt in. An organization can manually send messages to people without getting their opt-in first.
Last week's episode was about call to action best practices. This week we are going to focus on a specific piece of the call to action - they keyword. Here are keyword best practices.
- I like to capitalize the keyword. It highlights what the user should text in, but doesn’t confuse them with quotes. Any text message vendor should be able to handle capital or lowercase letters, just like a URL.
- Keep the keyword simple. Just use a word. Again, think like an ideal URL and focus on simple and understandable. Sometimes teams want to squeeze their brand message into a keyword. Imagine if Skittles tried to make “Taste the rainbow” their keyword. Think of all the potential for misspellings. The keyword is for response, not branding.
- Use different keywords to track different promotions.
- Similarly, the worst possible misstep is making a keyword that feels like a tracking code. Yes, the keyword can track the promotion channel, but it shouldn’t feel like a tracking code. I’ve seen customers try to make TV2 or RADIONYC their keywords. DON’T DO THIS. No numbers in keywords, no weird combinations. Just a simple word.
To review, a keyword call to action (or text call to action) is when a promotion tells the viewer to text in. This takes the form of “Text KEYWORD to SHORTCODE”, where the short code is a 5-6 digit number that is statice and the keyword can be chosen and tracked to the promotion. If I were a marketer with the Cleveland Browns I might have a call to action that reads.
“To put your name down for 2019 season tickets, text BROWNS to 216216.”
Let’s break down how all of this might work.
“To put your name down for 2019 season tickets,” Good calls to action don’t say, “For more info…”. There is a specific reason that someone should text in. If people want more info, they already know what to do. A newspaper I worked with wanted people to text in and join a database of sources for stories. If the paper needed to speak with a doctor that was over 65 and ever delivered a baby on a plane, they would have a database of people to connect with.
When they paper’s call to action read, “Would you like to be a source? Text SOURCE to 12345”, no one texted in. When the paper ran a story about a dog attack and the call to action read, “Have you been attacked or almost attacked by a dog? Text DOG to 12345”, the results were great.
The reason that someone might text in is the most important aspect of a call to action although sometimes it’s overlooked if the organization is focusing on the more technical aspects. The keyword and shortcode part of the CTA should be kept simple.
Helping hundreds of organizations understand text message calls to action, I’ve developed a few best practices.
- Make the call to action clear. The call to action should avoid confusion. No one needs to remember the call to action. If they are going to text in, they will do it immediately. Make sure that the call to action doesn’t stop them from texting in.
- Repeat the call to action. This is true for any response channel - if you’re promoting a URL or phone number, it’s important to repeat it. This is especially true with text messaging where an SMS call to action may be new for viewers.
- Show and tell the call to action. Some people are more visual, and some people focus more on audio. No matter who the audience is, it’s best to do both. Show the words on screen - “Text JOIN to 12345” and say them at the same time. This will just get the best results.
- Share a good reason to text. As mentioned before, the reason behind the call to action is the most important aspect. If it’s interesting and valuable, people will take action. If the promotion isn’t that interesting, any response will be an uphill battle.
Last note, use calls to action to test different messaging, ads or media channels. Keywords naturally act as tracking codes, so you can measure and compare response for each keyword that’s promoted.
It was pointed out to me that I should share some of the campaigns I've been a part of and my experiences in the messaging space. So that's what this episode is about.
In early 2016 Facebook released an API for Messenger and introduced the age of bots. Quickly it became obvious to everyone that bots were the next huge trend, startups got funded, Medium posts were written and the space was officially hot. I’d been doing messaging for about 8 years at the time and the it wasn’t clear to me that bots would work. Other people that had experience with messaging didn’t jump on the bot bandwagon either.
It’s safe to say, 3 years later, that the bot era hasn’t happened. I don’t think it’s coming soon. This podcast digs into why bots didn’t make it between 2016–2019, and why messaging is still thriving. The reasoning starts with the boring basics, but gets more advanced. So please stick through obvious stuff.
The first big problem with bots was the hype. You could see it from a mile away. Every tech publication featured articles titled, The Bots are Coming with images showing 1980’s robot toys explaining how every interaction that we were having on the web would now take place with a bot.
Oh you want to buy shoes? Soon you’ll just message into Zappos with your shoe size and their AI will automatically pick out the best shoes for you. Then you can just press a single button and complete the purchase. They hype was outrageous. These interactions would play out everywhere, from doctors offices to ordering pizza.
It was clear that tech was thirsty for the next big thing and the public oversold in the process. Of course Facebook and the promotion around the Messenger Platform launch played the biggest part. But hey, it was early 2016 and Facebook was on a winning streak, riding high. It was still before the other (Russian) bots came.
Which brings me to the second reason that the bot-craze crashed and burned — the word “bots”. I couldn’t think of a name with more baggage hanging on it. Russian bots ruined the American election. Twitter bots are spreading fake news. And both social networks are now cracking down on bots on their platform.
There are also the bots coming for your job (a lot of headlines when I was googling for this post). The robots are coming for your job and if they don’t get you, AI bots surely will. Until Facebook coopted the word, “bots” were just spam accounts on social media.
Did we mention AI? A few paragraphs back I talked about sending a message in to a webstore and that store knows exactly the right product for you. How will that happen? AI. How about when I message in to reschedule my delivery. How will the system understand my request? AI.
The tech press projected bots as the coupling of messaging with AI. The problem is that AI doesn’t exist. For some reason when the interface changed to messaging, AI came closer to possible. But this doesn’t make sense. You’ll know when it’s possible to produce the 1 correct answer to any query because google search results will just include one link.
Positioning bots as AI, spreading this through the hype cycle and at the same time conflating messaging interactions with Russian troll farms attacking American Democracy caused a little cynicism and backlash. But none of these reasons are why bots were DOA and messaging is still a strong and growing channel.
From the descriptions above, a simple explanation of a bot is that a user can text in, there will be some logic to understand what user is saying and the bot will respond back with the correct answer. This type of interaction lends itself to customer service or the actual usage of a product (what I call customer operations). Specifically this interaction is started by the user, it’s not meant to be driven by the organization. Because these bot conversations are directed by the user they aren’t marketing.
I want to quickly distinguish another approach that I call messaging as a marketing channel. The idea of using messaging for marketing means building an opt in list and then sending outgoing messages to this list. This is exactly how email marketing works. From all my experience, this is where messaging makes the most sense. This list building and activation approach is not what people are thinking when they use the word bot.
A simple way to distinguish the two approaches, when a user directs the conversation it’s a bot and when the organization is driving the conversation, it’s a marketing use case.
With this context for bots, here are the specific problems that kept bots from taking off:
- It’s extremely complicated to let the user drive a conversation, understand understand that user and respond appropriately. For the user to find value the scope of conversation topics must be wide enough to address anything the user might ask. It’s just an incredibly hard problem to be able to parse and respond to so many potential inquiries.
- Compounding this core problem described above is that the bot must be correct. Even a 5% error rate will be noticed. On messaging channels, it’s not particularly easy to help the user when there’s a problem. Sending the user a menu/list is a horrible UX (and contradicts the reason to use a bot) and starting the conversation over would super frustrating.
- Focusing on customer service or customer operations (like calling an Uber) use cases are not easy places to build & test MVPs. These use cases can require deep integrations, and the stakes are high in these interactions. A frustrated customer failing to get an answer from the customer service bot is a much worse situation than a marketing lead not converting. Marketing departments are constantly testing and failing ideas — customer service, not so much
- Which leads to the final point, customer service (and potentially customer operations) aren’t revenue generating divisions A hit strategy in marketing can drive growth. So marketing departments are looking to innovate, have test budget and will grow the channel quickly when something works. An amazing customer service bot might reduce cost, but it won’t significantly increase growth.
In summary, bots were a new interaction that tackled incredibly hard problems in high stakes company functions with little room for errors. Bot makers were pitching to teams that aren’t built for innovation and even if things work amazingly well, the upside is limited. That’s why bots were DOA.
This was a hard article to write. If you’ve made it this far, listening to the podcast might explain some of the ideas from a different angle. I hope you’ll subscribe on itunes.
Finally, I think that AI and customer service automation will start working soon. I just don’t think it will happen on messaging first. It’s more likely that call centre audio + AI is the place where humans will first start to interact with bots, if we aren’t doing that already.
The super power of messaging is response. With a messaging campaign it’s possible to ask people to respond, they’ll do it and the response can be valuable. I don’t know a better way to say it.
Messaging has the most reach and is the most used communication channel in the world. This episode details how big it actually is.
The Chat Bubble is back with a new spin. We're going to publish regular episodes that focus more on education explaining how messaging works as a communication and marketing channel for organizations.
This episode focuses on the basic pitch - how to explain messaging and why it's interesting for business & non-profits to investigate the channel.
We briefly touch on the big news this week that Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram messaging will merge.
It's been a bumping road for Facebook and anyone working in their ecosystem. Here are my thoughts on what happened and where all of this will lead.
Facebook is back, approving new apps! So it appears that things will be back to normal soon.
Notes:
Set the stage: Set the stage: -
Facebook is not launching/approving new apps.
Zuckerberg is testifying before Congress.
#delete_facebook is a thing
My take:
Yes Facebook is agressive.
They are going to come out of the sitation in a very good place.
Huge misunderstanding about the situation.
The data that was swept is FB Likes. Not personal information.
What CA did with the data -- imagine what FB can do with the data.
FB might get penalized, but this proves the value of their asset.
Prediction
Essentially nothing happens, maybe some small regulation.
More importantly for people working with FB Messenger, I think that FB Messenger Apps will be getting reviewed again by F8 or before - May 1-2. (and apps being reopened was announced the day I recorded this episode).
It's not the most fun thing to talk about, but let's dig a little into how the FB setup and approval process works. It's confusing and there are a lot of misconceptions.
FB Page + FB App + Platform
Logo, Privacy Policy, ToS
Approval - Messaging & Subscriptions
Big shift coming from approving apps to approving pages. Part of real policy enforcement efforts.
The last few episodes focused on SMS. This episode we are going to snap back into the FB Messenger world in a big way. Today we'll talk about new features that Facebook released, and we'll get into a big permission update included in the Messenger platform 2.3 release. But before we get into that, as always if you have feedback, questions or comments, the best way to get in touch is to send a Message to the podcast FB Page - Open Facebook Messenger....
Back to Messenger Platform 2.3
First off, I love what the FB team is doing here. The innovation is incredibly fast and this is really the first time that I've gotten to know a development platform so well. It's hard to keep up with all the new releases. Let's look at what's new
First up -Quick Replies with contact information. A lot of the campaigns that I build for organizations start with data acquisition. Typically how that goes is the user starts the conversation and the Page sends a Message that asks the user to respond with their email address typically. The user responds with their email and then the next message happens.
We see really high response rates. Once the conversation starts, we generally expect to see 50% or higher conversion rate for email collection. It's actually much harder to start the conversation than it is to collect an email address.
With this new feature, Facebook is juicing this use case. So a bot can send a message that asks the user to reply with their email. Facebook will then show a user a button, with thier email address entered. All the user needs to do is push that button and their email will be messaged into the page. So instead of the user typing their email, Facebook auto-fills for a one-click experience. Facebook will also do this with the user's phone number - so they will show the user a button where they can click and send in their number.
It's pretty cool and it really validates a use case that I've been focusing on for a long time. But there might be a downside.
First of all, when you ask the user to send in their email address, the results are good. Almost always 50% or higher. Notably, asking the user for their phone number performs much worse. I believe that we saw about 24% conversion rate when we asked the user for their phone number so that we could text them. It's still really good, and the cost per phone number was amazing, but just a big dip compared to email.
I guess the point I'm making is that I don't know if typing the email or phone is friction that actually slows people down, or if they just don't want to give the info. It will take some testing to see if there's a difference, so it's really about launching these quick replies and seeing how well they convert.
There is a bigger question though, is how good is this Facebook data? People signed up for Facebook years ago, and Facebook basically keeps you logged in forever. So the question is whether people still use the email or phone that they gave to Facebook when they signed up or if they have moved on. The reason this is a concern is that I've heard that data that Facebook shares in lead ads, doesn't perform that well.
A lead ad is a type of Facebook Ad where FB autofills the email, name and phone number in a webform. It's the same data that Facebook is autofilling here. The lead ads convert well, so clickers convert into emails, but I'm not sure if those emails perform up to par. Or to think about it another way, asking the user to type in their is effort, and that might actually prove to be a good signal that the user actually wants to give their email address - and make those typed in emails worth more. I've heard both very good and very bad things about the Lead Ad data - so again, we just need to test. Either way, this data autofill is a cool feature.
The next feature in 2.3 release is Customization for the Customer Chat Plugin. I usually call this the web chat plugin - it seems to have a lot of different names. This was a pretty cool feature release in the Fall. Anyone with a Facebook Page and a FB Messenger App can install some code on their website, and on the bottom right of a webpage, the Messenger icon appears. It shows a greeting, like "Click here to chat" and when a visitor clicks it opens a little messaging window and starts a conversation via messenger that is showing on the webpage. Previously, to start a conversation with a FB Page, the user needed to go to the FB Page, or open Messenger and talk to the Page that way. Now it's possible to start a conversation from the website - but still have the conversation in Messenger.
Why is that cool? Well, this idea of live chat on the site has been a big trend. There are companies that do just that. The problem with traditional live chat (now that FB Messenger is here) is that traditional live chat lives in the browser. So a user can be in the chat while they're on the page, but if they leave the page, the chat - the connection also ends. With FB Messenger, once they start the chat, the website has connected to them on Messenger. So even when the visitor closes the page, they still have Messenger on their phone. The website can respond the next day and the user will get that message.
All of this changes the dynamic of how live website webchat can work. When you have live chat, it needs to be staffed. If a visitor chats, doesn't get a response and leaves they are gone for good. With Messenger, a connection has been established with the person, not just their page session. It's possible to respond instantly with some automation and the Page can follow up directly in the future.
Anyways, this plugin was released in November, and we're just starting to see it appear on websites. With the new release it's possible to customize the greeting that the user sees. I believe the default is something like, "Click here to chat", but now the page can say anything they'd like to frame the conversation.
The results I've seen from the web chat plugin have been so so, but it's all going to depend on how much traffic the site has.
The BIG BIG announcement with this platform release(and I wouldn't call it a feature) is a policy change and a break notice. The break notice means that it's really important. This change will break existing apps or bots. This change requires a lot of background so hang tight. And if this is confusing, please message in any questions.
The way to set up a Messenger interaction, or bot, is through a Facebook App. So the brand has a Facebook Page of course - that's where the user is sending their message. There will be a platform or system that manages the automation - like a 3rd party bot builder. And then there is a Facebook app that connects to both the Facebook Page and the bot builder platform.
Before launch, in the FB App we need to submit for approval from Facebook. There are two types of approval. The First is called Pages_messaging approval - this is the name FB uses. With this approval, Facebook is checking that the automation works. So they will test it, they send a message in and make sure they get a message back. Once approved the Page can launch their interaction, but only immediate messaging is allowed. When a user messages in, the page can respond.
There is a second type of approval called pages_subscription_messaging. Again, these are Facebook terms. Subscription approval is exaclty like it sounds. This approval is needed to send broadcast messages that happen outside of the scenario where the user has just messaged in.
Let's add a little more detail. The first approval, pages_messaging gives the bot a 24 hour window to message the user after the user sends a message in. The bot can send any message it likes in that window - specifically there can be marketing or promotional messages. With the second approval, pages_subscription, the Page can send a message outside of the 24 hour window. The critical criteria is that Facebook explicitly does not allow broadcast messages to be marketing or promotional messages. In fact they only allow a few use cases - news alerts, productivity and personal tracking.
Alright, hopefully you're following so far.
Now, when the Messenger Platform launched, a bunch of companies popped up that all called themselves the easiest way to build a Facebook bot. If the promise to the user is super fast setup, you can't really ask the user to submit and wait for Facebook approval. So these companies would build a single Facebook App, get it approved for both the instant messages and subscription and then they would use this single app and approval to allow multiple customers to all use the same app and send both instant and broadcast messages.
The big change that Facebook announced is that messaging approvals will now happen at the page level - not the app level. So every page that wants to send messages needs approval and a single app cannot work for multiple pages. From the language, it appears that every FB Page that launched on Messenger, but did not get their own approval, will need to submit the page for approval and need to get it to keep running. It's kind of a big deal - I do individual apps and approvals for each client and it's definitely a process.
Why did Facebook do this? Here is my guess.
The first approval for instant messaging is pretty easy and straightforward. The second approval for subscriptions and broadcasts is much trickier. Facebook only allows a few use cases and specifically not marketing or promotional messages. The reason FB doesn't allow for marketing or promotional broadcasts, is because they have a new ad called sponsored messages. If a Page wants to send a marketing broadcast, they pay Facebook to send a Sponsored Message.
Real quick aside, a sponsored message is an ad where Facebook will basically send a message only to people that have previously messaged into the FB Page. So basically, once someone messages in to the FB Page, that channel is now open to communicate with the user. If it's a non-promotional use case, then the messaging can be free. If it's a promotional use case, then the Page pays Facebook.
Currently we have these bot builder platforms that include the subscription messaging for customers by default. These customers never got approved and most of these customers don't fully understand that marketing messages aren't allowed. Some bot builder platforms actually promoting marketing broadcasts which is a clear violation. Facebook seemed to let it go, and my guess is that the Sponsored Message product wasn't ready for prime time. But now sponsored messages have arrived and Facebook is starting to enforce their broadcast policy.
This will be a big reckoning for pages that think they've built a marketing automation list on Messenger and the rug is totally going to get pulled out from under them. It will most likely be a big hit to FAcebook's numbers as well. But I think it's a situation where they've grown the space for 2.5 years, and now they are going to test monotizing.
Either way, there are a lot of developers in the FB forums that have been complaining about pages that are cheating - sending marketing broadcasts. So it's good that Facebook is enforcing their rules and leveling the playing field. We'll see how this all goes.
That's the big news. Thanks for listening.
Today's show is another response to questions that I found this week. This time the questions came from a list serve that I subscribe to, and the focus was about how non-profits can use text messaging for fundraising. I responded on the list serve and was kind of surprised that I hadn't already done a podcast on this.
One interesting thing about podcasts is that it's really hard to know who is listening. We get stats on how many people download, but it's not possible to know who you listeners are. If you're not a non-profit, keep listening. If you are interested in Messaging, there is a lot to learn from the non-profit space. This might not be typical - or stereotypical - nonprofits usually aren't thought of as being on the vanguard of technology. But I would posit that NPOs are really leading the charge when it comes to messaging, especially text messaging.
Think about it - in 2008 Obama announced his VP pick via SMS. That was a national news story and almost a decade ago. A year and a half after that, the Haiti earthquake happened and mobile donations exploded on the scene. The Red Cross raised 36 million dollars from Americans texting Haiti to 90999 and giving $5 donations on their phone bill.
So as messaging and bots came back into vogue in 2016 when FB Messenger announced the messenger platform, it wasn't really a breakthrough. A lot of organizations were already doing SMS campaigns.
But before we get too far into the conversation, a little promotion. If this is the first time you're listening to The Chat Bubble Podcast, please subscribe on itunes or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you have a question or feedback, the best way to get in touch is to message us on Facebook. To do that open Facebook Messenger, search for The Chat Bubble and then send in a Message. Of course, thanks for listening everyone.
Why are non-profits advanced?
Back to non-profits. I'm pretty convinced that NPOs are pretty far ahead of the game compared to commercial businesses. There are a lot of companies doing SMS, certainly more than there are NPOs, but I haven't seen the same type of innovation from business. I'm not sure why exactly, but I actually have a new theory. Previously I had 2 ideas as to why non-profits seemed to be out in front of corporations.
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It's pretty simple, I thought it was vendor-driven. Being in that space, I knew a number of vendors doing innovative campaigns. When I saw and heard about some of the SMS vendors working with for profits, I wasn't that impressed. I doubt this is still the case, but it was a few years ago.
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The second theory was the nature of non-profit communications. When the non-profit finds a new supporter, they aren't focused on the short term donation, it's nice of course, but the organization is also thinking about this person donating 50 thousand dollars in their will. The idea of ongoing CRM and building a relationship is incredibly important. I worked with many for-profit companies where we would build a big list, and then just stop communicating with people once the conversation was over. This mindset is changing a bit, but this change isn't wide spread. I spend thousands of dollars on my car and never hear from the manufacturer or the dealer for that matter.
I think this second idea sticks a bit, but the big reason that nonprofits have had better results with SMS is user driven. Messaging is a personal channel. It's a little scary for a consumer to trust a company on the user's personal channel, but a non-profit that focuses on a cause the person cares about. Yes, they'll connect on that personal channel. If you love dogs, you're willing to give the Humane Society your phone number. No matter how much you love hot dogs, you don't want Oscar Meyer texting you.
That's the theory at least.
Anyway back to the question about how non-profits can drive fundraising via SMS. We're going to list a few options. One point to think about with all of these options is - where does the transaction happen. If you work at a non-profit, think about that and think about if where the transaction happens is important to you.
- Mobile Donations -- Our first option for non-profit fundraising is a Mobile Donation. This is sometimes called mobile giving or text to donate, but the idea here is that the donation goes on the users phone bill. That's what distinguishes mobile donations. When I mentioned the Red Cross raising money for Haiti, this is what they did.
The advantage is that it's easy and fast to drive small donations from individuals. With mobile donations the organization can collect $5, $10 or $25 dollar donations. They set up the campaign and select a keyword. The user texts in the keyword and recieves an immediate response asking them to confirm the donation. The user replies yes and then the charge is added to the phone bill. That's all the user needs to do - except pay their phone bill obviously.
The downside of mobile donations is that the carriers are collecting money and remitting it all to the non-profit, but the carrier doesn't give the customer data to the non-profit. Most of the time, this is a problem for the non-profit - the donors data is just as important as the donation - especially a small donation like 5 or 10 dollars.
So mobile donations are mostly used in disaster type situations. If something is front page news, like a hurricane for instance, there might be a lot of people willing to chip in. The non profit might be in major fundraising mode, but these people that want to help are not the typical donor for the organization. They are donating because the news or celebrity tells them to do so. The non-profit probably doesn't even want this donor in their CRM becuase they are so unlikely to donate again or want updates from the organization.
Basically, mobile donations work when the organization would rather have a small donation, rather than the donor and their information.
We're going to move on to the next approach for an organization, text to pledge.
- Text to Pledge - This is a term of art. Basically, it means that the organization builds an autoresponse conversation that collects contact information and donation amount or "pledge" amount. The supporter is then followed up with to complete the transaction. Usually this followup is via email, a link in a text or even a phone call.
This idea originated because mobile donations (added on the phone bill) became a big trend after the Haiti earthquake. But setting up text donations was a process and it's fairly inflexible - there are low donation amounts and no data. A few companies started promoting this idea of text to pledge and it fit well for some organizations. Most of the time it's more of a service than a product - so the text to pledge vendor might be running the event or staff the people that are calling on the phone.
I mentioned that text to pledge is a term of art. The idea of collecting data over SMS and driving action is kindof what every organization is doing. Text to Pledge means speeding up the interaction and trying to squeeze everything into a single day or single campaign. When I was selling SMS software, our pitch wasn't opposed to text to pledge, but we viewed SMS as a long term channel for the organization - not just something that powers an event.
Text to Pledge is a short term campaign, focused on a little data collection and driving a transaction.
- Integrated Transaction - The next fundraising approach doesn't really have a name. It's been called quick donate or fast donate. I'm calling it an integrated transaction -- not super-catchy. What this means is that an action in the text message triggers the credit card transaction. This is pretty powerful. Text messages have high open rates and high response rates. If someone signs up for the SMS list, they are generally a big fan, not just checking it out. If these people can be sent a message and complete a donation with only a few clicks, that's a big deal.
This is exactly what we talked about with Lloyd Cotler who managed SMS on the Hillary Clinton Campaign. You can check out that past episode - it's from November 25 of 2017. This integrated transaction is pretty advanced and only a few organizations have been able to pull this off. The results are generally great, so hopefully any technical issues can be worked out and more organizations can take this approach.
In order for this integrated transaction to work, a few pieces need to be in place. First the organization needs a system that can save a credit card and attach it to the user. This generally won't happen in the text message platform, but some non profit CRMs/donation platforms allow this. Once it's possible for this credit card to be saved then the SMS platform just pings the CRM system and tells it to drive a transaction. There are probably a million particular details, but this is the gist.
When done correctly this is a home run. We already have the user data, the transaction can be fast, and the donor can choose any amount to donate. I guess the one hang up is that it's not great for first time donors. The supporter would have needed to give their cc previously in order to have that saved. This type of transaction is also a shift in timeline - compared to text to donate or text to plege. With those options, the entire messaging interaction is focused on the donation. Literally, the call to action says, Text In To Donate. This integrated Transaction works with an ongoing relationship. we've been building a list and communicating regularly and this donation ask, is just one ask throughou the relationship.
The other interesting thing - in my work on FB Messenger, this integrated donation is a little smoother. It's not being done yet, although it's quiet possible.
- Campaigning - The last approach to fundraising doesn't really have a name. I'm just going to call it text message campaigning. In my opinion this is obviously the way that makes the most sense. When an organization launches a website, it's not just a page to make a donation. There's campaign information, petitions, about us, contact us and then also pages to donate. Same with an email campaign. No one would join the email list if the pitch was - sign up for our email list and we'll ask you to donate over and over again. Email and the web are channels. The organization needs to connect with users, share information and of course every once in a while, ask for donations.
It's the same with a text message list. The organization needs to build their mobile list and start with interesting and engaging commmunications and then mix in donation asks. You would never build a one page website and then tell people to go there to donate. Telling people to text in to donate would be analogous to that one page website. Sure, when there's an emergency and it's all about fundraising, maybe the donation form goes on the home page - but that's rare.
What works for most organizations is to build a mobile SMS list, and keep the people on that list active. The same way they'd build an email list and keep it active. When there is a fundraising campaign the organization will send out an email ask, and at that time, they should also send a text to the mobile list. Even if the user doesn't donate, by clicking the link in the text, the SMS will make the supporter more likely to donate online. In the past I've done a study and found that and a supporter that receives a text and an email is 3 times more likely to donate, compared to someone that receives an email and no text message. Most of those donors just aren't donating on the phone.
So again, it all comes down to building a list, nurturing that list and giving people a good reason to support the organization.
New Channels -- I mentioned it a little, approaches that we already listed, but there's also an additional option where an organization can use Messenger and take advanatage of Facebook donate or a saved credit card that FB might be holding. I expect this will be possible, but w just need to see if this comes to fruition.
To sum up, there are really a lot of approaches when it comes to fundraising via messaging. The big questions that an organization needs to ask are - 1) How are we going to get people to message in. Same as if you built a website, you would need to decide, "How will we get people to the site." The other question is about the transaction. What type of amounts make sense, and would you like the donation coming through a credit card or to try something more advanced. And like everything in life, there aren't too many shortcuts. What really works is to connect with supporters, engage and nurture the list and make strong asks that are connected to issues that the list cares about.
Hope this was a helpful overview. I'd love questions or feedback....
This is a pretty niche podcast and when I started it I thought that maybe there is a thousand people in the world that might be interested in this stuff. That audience would grow, but I've never really cared about the number of downloads - I've cared more about engagement from the people listening. This engagement has been pretty incredible and it's really rewarding. So for everyone that has messaged in or emailed thank you.
On today's show I'm going to give my opinion on a few questions that a listener had. Along these lines.... if you're listening and want me to talk about something, let me know. Message in.
A few questions came from Lauren. First
- What is messaging used more most frequently and how does that differ across platforms (SMS, Facebook, What's App etc)?
There are a million answers here because messaging is a comunication channel. Generally, the messaging use case would be something that the organization is already doing via email, phone call or mail and for any number of reasons it makes sense to add messaging or use messaging instead of the other channel. The major use cases are -
Transactional - 2FA, text to confirm a purchase or redemption, or a bank texting about transfer or deposit. These are pretty boring, but super useful. These cases will mostly rely on SMS because the company has your phone number and they can just send out a text.
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A close cousin to transactional messages are reminder messages. An example is that my dentist reminds me about an appointment. Maybe this is a little more interesting than the transactional stuff, but still pretty simple. Traditionally these reminders have sent via SMS, but this is an area where FAcebook Messenger might be trying to encroach. They might have an advantage over SMS too because with FB Messenger you can send buttons such as - confirm/change appointment etc. Where with text message the reminder would say, respond CHANGE or CONFIRM - which is a little clunky.
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There is customer service use cases where customers are messaging in questions and complaints and then the company is responding to the person or providing answers. This is either live messaging or this is the space where people are mostly talking about bots. A bot would be an automation that receives the message from the user, figures out what the person is saying and then replies with an answer. I'm not really bullish on bots, and the customer service use case isn't my favorite. This customer service is a use case that's possible on both SMS and Facebook Messenger. Facebook Messenger is new, but it might have the advantage with customer service.
If I buy a new Bose stereo and I'm having trouble with it, maybe I want to message in for some help. I don't necessarily know how to send a text to Bose. Sure there might be a card in the box that tells me how, but on Facebook Messenger I can just search for Bose and be fairly confident that I'll find them. If this messaging-customer-service use case becomes a real thing, I think Facebook Messenger will win because all of the companies already have a prescence there.
- The use case that I like most on messaging channels is the idea of messaging as a marketing channel. In the desktop era the main marketing channels have been email and webpages. As we move into the mobile era, I think that messaging can do a lot of the things that pages and email did in the desktop era. Under this idea of marketing, we really have 3 use cases - Acquisition, Engagement and Activation.
Acquisition means that we can drive someone into a conversation and then collect data in that conversation. In the desktop era we would tell someone to go to www.com and fill out a webform to give the company their email address. With messaging, instead of promoting the link to the page, we could drive someone to a conversation and the conversation would ask for the data - rather than a webform asking for the data. These marketing use cases work on both SMS and Facebook, but interestingly acquisition works a little differently on each channel.
We're going to go deeper on acquisition in a question coming up.
Still in the Marketing category, the next use case is Engagement. Since messaging is so personal it works very well to respond to a subscriber one on one. I think of this engagement idea as an offshoot from the acquisition piece. So one on one conversation driving to a marketing oucome - not answering customer service questions. I have a lot of ideas about scaling this one on one engagement - but that is probably something to discuss at another time.
Finally in this marketing category, the last use case is Activation. That's a fancy way of saying since people are messaging in in the acquisition process rather than going to a webpage - we have a tremendous advantage if we send them broadcast messages back. You just can't do that with a webpage - when the person leaves, they are gone. If someone messages in, they may be subscribing to receive future messages.
This gets a little tricky with the different channels. With SMS you need to be sure to have opt in language that explains to the user that they are opting in. Each text message costs money, so most organizations only send messages that are important - this is a great natural limit so consumers aren't getting spammed with texts all day.
With Facebook Messenger there are different aspects to the broadcast based on what type of message the Page is sending. A page can send News Alerts (and a few other types of messages) at no cost. But if the FB Page wants to send a marketing or promotional message, then Facebook charges. It's a new type of Ad called a sponsored message.
OK, so under that category of marketing, we have these 3 use cases - Acquisition, Engagement and Activation.
As far as the other channels, right now it's only SMS and FB. Whatsapp and iMessage are rumored to be releasing APIs, but I don't think that either is public yet. So I'm deep, deep into this stuff and it's enough work to keep up with FB Messenger Platform.
OK, that's a long answer - I hope it helps. On to the next question.
- What is the new "hot" thing on each platform?
We'll keep this very short. SMS hasn't had anything new on it for decades. BUT that's all changing, the carriers are rolling out RCS. I don't know the specs, but essentially the idea is that SMS will become more like a messaging app. It will handle pictures better and it will be able to send cards and buttons. This is not a sure thing, though. It's taken the carriers - verizon, ATT etc so long to innovate on SMS, that there are now other factors to deal with. The biggest being Apple. The beauty of SMS is that it's on every phone, but with RCS it's unlcear if Apple will support RCS on the iphone. Why would they? They already have iMessage. If RCS isn't on the iphone, then it's pretty much toast.
Facebook Messenger is releasing new features all the time. The most interesting new feature might be the webchat plugin. Any website can install Facebook Messenger. It will popup on the bottom right of the webpage, just like a live chat software. When a user starts a conversation, it's happening over Messenger. There are a lot of interesting aspects, but the biggest is that once the user starts the Messenger conversation they are now connected on a channel outside of the browser. So the brand can follow up the next day and they'll still reach the user. With the old live chat software, when the user closes the browser they are gone.
The reason this is a big deal is that the webchat plugin is a way for brands to tiptoe into Messenger.
- Where do you think each platform is going in terms of major use cases?
Andrew
Just starting out. Looking to learn how Brands are building the messenger contact lists?
We began the conversation about this when we were talking about the acquisition use case. Remember, to build a list, the user first needs to message in or opt in.
SMS is great for acquisition from the real world or media. The way to start a text conversation is to tell someone to take out their phone and text the word JOIN to 12345. Companies can give this call to action on the radio, tv, print promotion or from a live event. A lot of organizations will ask a user to give their phone number via webform to join the mobile list too - but in that case the webform is doing the acquisition, not the SMS. What you cannot do with SMS is link into a conversation.
Facebook Messenger is great for linking directly to the conversation. So if pepsi links someone to a Messenger conversation, when the user clicks that link it will open Facebook Messenger and load pepsi as the recipient for that user. Pepsi can also add tracking into the URL so they know where the user came from and then can even start a different conversation based on the source of the user. Facebook Ads can also route the user to Messenger. So one of the main use cases is to take Facebook ads and route those clickers into Messenger rather than the mobile landing page to collect email, phone address etc.
I would like to understand how Brands create broader messaging campaigns that universally deploy across multiple platforms. Which include Messenger, Skype etc?
This one is tough. Each channel - Messenger, Skype, SMS has it's own capabilities. Facebook for instance has certain types of menus, carousels and share options. It's possible to send the user a message and when they click it will post something on their Facebook Feed. While Skype and SMS don't have the concept of a feed. If a brand is building a campaign that is cross-messaging channel, they would need to strip out any unique features. So the campaign would basically just send out text messages on every channel. It would force the campaign to be boring.
In my opinion, it's better to dig in to one or maybe two channels. There isn't much disadvantage. SMS reaches everyone and FB Messenger reaches almost everyone. So things aren't super fragmented in that sense.
There are services out there. One I can think of called Smooch, that can help you build something to connect to multiple channels.
This episode provides a little more insight to the article below. We test the different types of Facebook Ads to see which objective works best when routing users to Messenger.
https://chatbotsmagazine.com/testing-facebook-ad-objectives-that-route-to-messenger-aa3784bb7eb4
Another episode with a fellow podcast host. Balint founded Chatbot Tutorial and hosts the Chatbot Tutorial podcast.
Part One of the episode airs on the Balint's podcast. https://chatbottutorial.com/marketing-channel/
Part Two is here in The Chat Bubble feed.
You can also click through to checkout a quiz about bots, and some free tutorials.
https://chatbottutorial.com/quiz https://chatbottutorial.com/freecourse
I found another podcast about messaging, and we are guesting on each other's shows. Thomas Hybki is the host of Yakker Bot Talk and he's on The Chat Bubble today to talk about what's new and interesting with Facebook Bots.
You can get his podcast on iTunes. I'll be on his show sharing all my ideas on messaging that I haven't yet divulged on That Chat Bubble. I hope you enjoy both shows.
Yakker Bot Talk on iTunes. https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/yakker-bot-talk/id1296369391?mt=2
This episode is an overview of how messaging works for political campaigns. We're working on a more thorough written overview, but wanted to get the audio out.
Here are some links to pages mentioned in the audio.
First, the interview with Lloyd from the Hillary for America Campaign. http://thechatbubble.com/2017/11/lloyd-cotler-sms-campaign-manager-for-hillary-for-america/
@Mssg Election Messaging: http://try.atmssg.com/voter-reg-and-gotv/
Message into The Chat Bubble Facebook page: http://m.me/thechatbubble?ref=vote
Today we are doing another solo series and I am talking through Chapter 3 of the messaging playbook. This part is all about engagement and how to start using messenger for engagement. If you haven't checked out the Playbook yet, you can message in and download it. Just open FB Messenger, search for The Chat Bubble and click the get started button. We'll ask for your email and then we'll email you. The Playbook gives an overview of the top 4 marketing use cases for messaging and FB Messenger. We lay things out in a step by step guide so that any digital marketer can launch messaging campaigns and focus on their existing KPIs.
A lot of what's in the Playbook is contrarian to the idea of bots... With bots it's about the user messaging in and then the bot tries to interperet the message and reply back correctly. The Playbook takes the approach that messaging is a channel > a marketing channel. Instead of inventing new functionality like bots, this approach takes the objectives that marketers currently focus on and use Messenger instead of other channels.
Given that approach the first step of the Playbook is convert. The first thing that a marketer can do is build a little automated conversation designed to convert the user. Think about it like a landing page/lead form, but just in a conversation format rather than a webform. Any place that you might drive traffic to a mobile webform, you can also or instead drive traffic into a conversation. Facebook Ads are a great example where it's possible to drive traffic into a conversation.
The second step is to test and compare the value for a visit to your mobile lead page vs a conversation. From a FB ad campaign, for instance, what's the cost per email when the ad sends the clicker into a conversation and how does that compare to the cost when the ad sends the clicker to the web page.
Those are steps 1 and 2. One = convert and Two = Test. There is a lot more detail in the Playbook and in the previous podcast episode which are 3-4 episodes behind.
The next step is about engagement. Just a quick side note - if you're launching messaging, you don't have to follow these steps, but it helps an organization grow the channel in a way that makes sense.
The engagement step focuses on following up, one on one with people when it makes sense.
Welcome to 2018. As we're releasing this episode it's early 2018 and absolutely freezing in DC where I am and all over the East Coast.
On today's show we have a Chicago native, so he's probably used to the cold > Michael Lamb, the President and Co-Founder of nativeMsg and OptIt Inc. Part of what I like about doing the podcast is that the people I speak with have different experience levels with messaging. Some people are just getting started and talking about bots, some people have been doing messaging for a long time. Michael Lamb has a lot of experience in the space.
We talk about what it was like to start a text messaging company in 2004, and how he would even explain the product to people that might have never texted back then. We discuss the growth and how he got to present day where he is launching the new company nativeMsg which builds chatbots on the new messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger. Stick around to the end of the episode, Michael shares a call to action where you can try what they've built.
We're going to jump right into the show, but if you like what you hear, please subscribe. We're on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts - just search for The Chat Bubble. We're a weekly podcast focused on messaging. A lot of interviews and sometimes just me.
Link to nativeMsg: https://nativemsg.com/
Link to OptIt Inc: http://www.optit.com/
Today's guest on The Chat Bubble is Chris Messina. He's pretty internet famous. Most notably, he popularized the hashtag-- like the original hashtag for Tech and for Twitter, that hashtag-- and more recently he coined the phrase Conversational Commerce, which has been a label for different strategies as messaging apps and automated messaging campaigns become more common. Here’s the original post on conversational commerce.
Listening to him, it's clear that Chris spends a lot of time thinking about technology and the strategies behind a lot of the companies in the emerging sectors in the space. This is another one of those episodes that I've listened to twice in order to understand everything. We've actually also published a few show notes and links below.
If you're just finding this podcast please subscribe. We talk about messaging channels, SMS and all of the Automation and messaging campaigns happening. You can find us on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts just search for the chat bubble and subscribe.
And the last piece of housekeeping we've published a playbook for Facebook Messenger. This outlines the top four marketing use cases for Facebook messenger and shows any digital marketer how to launch Messaging campaigns that focus on their existing KPIs. The only way to get the Playbook is to message into our Facebook page > click here to message in and get access to the Playbook.
Chris used a term that google doesn't seem to show results for - Ultimate Reality Plasticity. It's best defined in the show, but the general meaning is > We are talking to services that aren't human, like Alexa, and then some human relationship are becoming more digital. An example is a kid that talks to grandparents over Facetime. So the delta between human relationships and technology relationships is getting smaller. It might get confusing whether a person is talking to another service or another human.
Chris mentions Scott Galloway and some of his ideas in his book The Four.
Scott's also really good on the James Altucher Podcast.
Hope you guys enjoy the show.
We are back working through the Playbook. This week we talk about measuring results from conversations, the best ways to compare conversations to landing pages, and the long term benefits of conversations and the data that they generate.
We published a Playbook for Messaging. It highlights the top marketing use cases for Messenger. The Playbook lays everything out in a step by step guide so that any marketer can launch Messenger campaigns and focus on their existing KPIs.
The best way to get the Playbook is to message in to The Chat Bubble Facebook Page. Just click here to go to our Messenger Page and then click the Get Started button.
We're back with Part 2. Be sure to listen to the first half before listening to the second.
If you're not already, please subscribe to The Chat Bubble Podcast on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts.
I've launched a Playbook for Messaging. It highlights the top 4 marketing use cases for Facebook Messenger, and lays everything out in a step by step guide so that marketers can launch messaging campaigns and stay focused on their existing KPIs. You can get the guide by messaging in to our facebook Page.
http://m.me/thechatbubble?ref=cb_blog
I've been in to a lot of the guests that have come on The Chat Bubble podcast, but I think this episode is the best story we've heard so far. On today's show we are speaking with Lloyd Cotler. He was the SMS Campaign Manager for the Hillary Clinton campaign, sometimes referred to as HFA. As we'll discuss in the episode, the Hillary campaign did things that no other mobile campaign had ever done. They did it at a scale that most mobile campaigns never reach and they did all of this on a timeline that's almost impossible.
The campaign had some amazing talent. Specifically Lloyd with his understanding of how to launch, grow and execute on messaging initiatives. The other thing that the HFA messaging campaign had was buy-in at the highest levels. We talk about how that worked and the type of results that the campaign saw which caused them to double down on mobile messaging efforts.
Also, the campaign had a really good platform called Mobile Commons. I want to mention that company. Full disclosure, I used to work there and I own some stock. Not sure if I have to mention that, but everyone seems to do that on podcasts.
Anyway, there is so much in this conversation I've listened to it multiple times. I was obviously at the recording, I listened to it during the edit, and this is the first episode that I listened to a third time. Some of Lloyd's casual remarks are absolutely golden and approaches that I had never thought about.
Finally, we are breaking this up into 2 parts. So if you're not already subscribed, do that now..... itunes
And a little promotion before we start. I've launched a Playbook for Messaging. It highlights the top 4 marketing use cases for Facebook Messenger, and lays everything out in a step by step guide so that marketers can launch messaging campaigns and stay focused on their existing KPIs. You can get the guide by messaging in to our facebook Page.
http://m.me/thechatbubble?ref=cb_blog
We're releasing a Playbook for Messaging. The focus is making messaging a marketing channel. It highlights the top 4 marketing use cases for Facebook Messenger and lays everything out in a step by step guide.
The hope is to share an approach that digital marketers haven't heard before. Instead of leaving Messenger to the customer service bots or operations teams, the marketing department is actually in the best position to capitalize on messaging immediately.
The best way to get the playbook is to message in to The Chat Bubble - click here, and then the Get Started button. http://m.me/thechatbubble?ref=cb_blog
On today's show we have Sandi Fox. She is the founder and principle at Smart as a Fox, which is a Digital Strategy agency.
Recently on the show, I've been talking to people that really know the messaging space, but they've all been vendors. On this episode we have someone that really knows about messaging, but she's coming from the client side and the consultant angle. Sandi worked for a non-profit where she took control over the text messaging campaigns and oversaw tremendous growth and success. After that, in the last 6 months or so, Sandi has launched Smart as a Fox, which is an agency that helps organizations with mobile campaigns and of course can help with all kinds of digital and communications needs.
So we talk about all of the SMS stuff that we've been discussing recently, but from the organizations perspective rather than the vendors. It's going to be a really good compliment to the last 5 or 6 episodes.
Alright, a little housekeeping before we start the conversation. To all the new listeners, Welcome. There has been a spike over the last few weeks. People have also been messaging in to the Facebook Page. It's really interesting to hear what everyone is up to so thanks for connecting. I've checked out a few demos and had some excellent conversations about messaging. If you have thoughts, feedback, questions for me or questions that you'd like me to ask guests, message in. The way to do this is send me a message on Facebook.
Click here to open The Chat Bubble Messenger Page http://m.me/thechatbubble
Please subscribe on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-chat-bubble/id1191382024?mt=2
On today's show we have Max Kamin-Cross from Hustle. Officially, his title is Director of Product Partnerships, but he was the first DC employee at Hustle, and has been a big part of building everything they're doing in Washington DC.
If you haven't heard of Hustle, they're a pretty big deal. They are definitely a darling of the messaging space, and have done particularly well with Peer to Peer SMS campaigns for non profit and political campaigns. They are one of the few companies that are venture backed and also doing a lot of business with campaigns and non-profits.
We talk at length about how P2P SMS works, the type of results that an organization can expect, and where the space is heading.
To check out hustle, visit their website - it's simply hustle.com
This episode shares some great information about text messaging campaigns. Derek Johnson, Founder and CEO of Tatango is today's guest.
We'll let Derek tell us more about Tatango, but it's safe to say that his company Tatango is one of the best known text messaging companies out there today. And a big reason why Tatango is well known is Derek's blogging and conent marketing. He's an absolute thought leader in the space and he's very respected by people in the industry.
I can't say enough about the content that Derek is putting out there. Right now he's focused on video, so be sure to check out their Youtube channel. Just go to youtube and search for Tatango.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHVh-it4Cf5bzfmewdilNYg
If you prefer to read, go to the Tatango blog. It's possible they've written about every single topic in text messaging.
https://www.tatango.com/blog/
Sick, busy and baby. So this podcast is short. Actually have some very interesting guests coming up, so stay tuned. Today I’m doing a short overview of the top advantages that Facebook Messenger has over SMS. These are the simple simple basics.
For the last few episodes we’ve been talking through SMS- how it works, FAQs etc. We’re going to make a shift in the solo series and talk about Facebook Messenger. We already discussed a little bit about how messaging apps came into being. I just thought of a new analogy that is applicable.
If you’re old enough, you remember AOL in the late 90s. It basically was the internet or at least indistinguishable from the idea of the internet. At some point the walled garden broke down, people figured out how to use URLs and we all realized wow, there’s a whole lot more here than just aol. Messaging is sort of the same. SMS was all there was for a while - like a decade. Now we’re seeing this shift where there is an entirely new space called messaging and SMS is simply a part of that -- but it’s a big big world of messaging.
OK so Facebook messenger. There are downsides and we’ll get into them, but let’s talk about 3 positives first.
Number 1: It’s Free. Yes, you heard that right. Sending a message over Facebook Messenger does not have a cost. You might need a platform to send the message or a developer to build some technology or you need to hire someone to respond manually within Facebook, but… Facebook does not charge for messages the way that carriers do via SMS.
Cost can play a big deal for organizations that are scaled up. Having a million people on an email list is not rare. The fact that sending an email is virtually free has lead to its ubiquity as a marketing channel. 1 Million person SMS lists are rarer, but it can be expensive. If you’re paying 1 penny per text sending 1 million messages to that list will cost at least $10k. It’s just a factor that comes into play.
Number 2: Facebook Messenger is worldwide. We talked about SMS having this amazing ubiquity because it’s installed on every single phone. That’s great, but the market is fragmented. The suppliers of SMS are different in every country. Costs are different and more importantly the setup is different and needs to happen in every country where SMS campaigns are launching.
If you’re a brand that wants to message people in US, Canada, Mexico and the UK. That means 4 different SMS setups, 4 different cost structures and potentially more than 1 aggregator (remember them). If you launch on FB Messengers, it’s one launch and of course 1 cost structure, free, and the build is to a single API.
Combining worldwide and free is a multiplier. One perfect example of these two benefits is messaging for podcasts - go figure. I launched SMS campaigns with podcasts and it went great. The only two problems were - if enough people messaged in to the podcast to actually make a difference, it became too expensive. We could see tens of thousands of people messaging in over the course of a month or so. It’s great response, but podcasts don’t have huge budgets and it’s tough to experiment when the costs are rising a little bit with each message. Also, a penny per text is low…. At high volumes. Almost all campaigns doing thousands of messages, not millions are paying more per text.
Also, podcasts can be worldwide. When a podcast tells listeners to text in, it’s great but the call to action will only work for one country. Doing multiple calls to action isn’t realistic.
So FBM being free and worldwide takes care of these issues and aligns really nicely for podcasts.
Number 3: This is the biggest advantage. Facebook Messenger is connected to Facebook!!
This is probably a 10 hour conversation, but high-level, this connection is a multiplier. Anything that an organization might want to do via messaging can be multiplied by Facebook. One example is a the Facebook Share action. So if my company wants people to take a survey for some type of incentive, at the end of the survey I can ask the person to share on FB and the social aspect means that some of their friends might see it and then click and take the survey.
This isn’t a groundbreaking process - it’s what socials all about. But the multiplying idea comes into play if we can make it easier to share via Messenger (than through the web) then Messenger is multiplying all of the social aspects.
It also works the other way. The first example is Facebook amplifying what the brand does via messaging. The opposite way is that Messenger amplifies what the brand is doing on social. The idea here is that the brand is buying Facebook Ads, can we increase the conversion rates, and value we are getting from the ad by sending the clicker into Messenger rather than a landing page.
This is where I get really excited. With SMS it was always tricky. People wanted to use the channel, but in order to get started they needed marketing to make a TV commercial to drive opt ins. With FB Messenger, marketing can actually get excited about messaging - hey, this will increase ad conversions AND build the messaging channel at the same time.
This is a big deal and it’s just getting started. We’ll be talking a lot more about all of this soon. So if you haven’t subscribed yet, please do so at itunes or wherever you get your podcasts. You can search for us - just type in The Chat Bubble.
Of course if you have questions or feedback, message us on Facebook - eh - we are The Chat Bubble there as well.
We’ll be back soon with more, thanks for listening.
SMS, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp or iMessage?
This answer is evolving. It’s now October of 2017 and I think this answer might be different in the future. The short answer is SMS is the dominant channel right now, but in the future one of the messaging apps might be a better choice.
The question really boils down to SMS broadcast vs. Messenger Apps, and right now it’s only really Facebook. Let’s go through the SMS positives.
First, it’s ubiquitous. It’s installed on every phone.
The other big positive for SMS is there is a well established ecosystem of vendors and case studies and use cases. It’s possible to copy what other people are doing… and start to do it for your organization.
It’s sort of the place to start in messaging.
The list of cons for SMS is growing. A few years ago there might not have been any cons at all and now there are cons… Although a few years ago I worked for an SMS company so maybe that’s why I didn’t see any cons.
First, SMS is expensive. There is just no way of getting around the per message cost. Even on the super low end we’re talking a penny or two per message. It doesn’t seem like much, but sending 10k messages costs $200-$300. All this means is that you have to have a plan to make each text worth more than a few pennies. It’s not hard, but it does rule out some use cases.
Second, SMS might have different limitations in different countries. If you’re doing international campaigns, SMS is tough. If you’re working in a single country that isn’t America it’s good to understand if people use SMS in that country.
My bigger worry for SMS is that there are very capable companies encroaching on the messaging territory. Specifically Facebook, iMessage and potentially Google. SMS will always be on the phone, but I’m worried that the channel will seem old soon. It’s the default, but the best companies in the world are trying to displace it.
The iMessage move is incredibly deft. They step in front of the text message and almost consume it, without the user knowing. I guess the takeaway on this point is that SMS is no longer a sure thing. In the past it was the only/best option, now the door has been opened to competition.
There is an interesting advantage for Facebook Messenger. It’s the only messaging app that’s connected to an ad network. With SMS a brand needs to find a way to build a list. Maybe that’s the web, maybe that’s a TV commercial or live event. But the brand needs some type of campaign to drive the list building. With Facebook Messenger, it’s obvious, you can drive messages from the ad network.
Of course Facebook has it’s own disadvantages, most notably that you don’t own your list and cannot do certain types of marketing messages. We’ll get into all of this soon. Facebook is the next messaging channel that we’ll be digging in to.
OK next FAQ.
SMS - broadcast or peer to peer?
This is not a tough decision. Broadcast messaging and peer 2 peer are completely different things and they are not mutually exclusive, so this isn’t really an either or situation.
Peer to is sort of like advertising on steroids and broadcast SMS is like email on steroids. I say that peer to peer is like advertising because it’s not permission based and it’s interruptive. Peer to peer is like an advertisement that happens via SMS and then is followed with a personal conversation. The best analogy is telemarketing - the consumer’s phone rings and then someone wants to talk with them.
First let’s talk about the benefits of P2P. It can be highly targetable. The organization launching the P2P campaign brings their own list of numbers, so they can use any data vendor or their own lists to target and reach the right people.
P2P is also really engaging. SMS is a very personal and powerful channel and the campaign is powered with a real person talking to the target users. I guess a one on one conversation would be more engaging, but this is as close as you can get - and texting scales much better than calls, because one operator can be talking to more than one target person at a time.
The other advantage of P2P is that an organization will see results really quickly. As soon as P2P texting starts, we’d expect to see results coming in.
Now the downside of P2P. First, it can be very expensive. You’ll have the vendor costs, but then there is also a cost for a person to do the P2P texting. This concept of P2P launched during the presidential campaign where there are plenty of volunteers, but the dynamics change when those volunteers need to be compensated.
The other downside of P2P is that the organization is not necessarily building an asset. So maybe a political campaign can pay $1,000 and do P2P texting and find 100 volunteers for the event. But if the same organization wants to do another event, they’ll need to do P2P again and find more volunteers. There is no inherent opt-in or list building built in.
Less quantifiable, I think there is a real concern about texting people that haven’t opted in. It’s ok when it’s a presidential election and almost everyone in the country is paying attention. But it is ok , when it’s a non profit asking for a donation? What happen when it’s a business letting you know about their new car insurance options? It’s always a little risky when an organization is intruding in people’s lives.
Onto broadcast messaging and let’s talk about the pluses.
An SMS list is the strongest list that an organization can build. These are people that are interested enough to give the brand or organization their phone number. And then the organization can communicate with the person over SMS on an ongoing basis. The organization is building a list which is an asset - just like an email list.
With broadcast SMS if you incorporate calls to action from media, the SMS call to action can increase all of your results from the media campaigns.
The other big plus is that the SMS list will route people to other assets - SMS is a great way to collect other data and information. So the first best practice of broadcast SMS is that you should ask for the user to reply with their email address.
The big downside of broadcast SMS is that when a company launches, they are starting with a list of 0. For broadcast SMS the brand is building out this channel, given that people need to opt in, there is just no short cut - the organization needs to spend time and effort to build the list. It’s obvious, but this can be a hurdle.
I sold SMS technologies for a long time and there was a lot of selling this dream of the channel. We would eventually get to this point where the buyer would ask, OK where do we get the list? The answer is… well you need to find a way to get people to opt in, here are our ideas. It forces the buyer, who might be in the communications department to now go talk to marketing, because they need to find a way to promote an SMS call to action.
So overall with this question of peer to peer vs. broadcast messaging. It’s not a valid question. It’s kind of like saying, should we do Twitter or should we build our email list? Other than both being on the SMS channel, they are basically unrelated. I wouldn’t consider them substitutes in any respect.
Broadcast messaging is definitely a bigger, more long term initiative. The longer you do it, the bigger the asset and more valuable the initiative. P2P can show results faster, but campaigns are not cumulative. They don’t build towards anything necessarily.
Short code or long code? Unique short code or shared? Vanity or random Short code?
Finally a simple one.
Peer to Peer messaging forces a long code. Mobile Donations force a short code.
If you’re a small business doing reminder type messaging, it’s fine to use a long code from the local area code.
Anyone that has calls to action in media - text JOIN to join the list should be using a short code. It looks really shitty when text calls to action are based on a long code.
For anyone doing any type of volume - 1 or 2 thousand messages per day, I would recommend a short code.
So I guess all of this breaks down to broadcast messaging means short code and P2P and reminder messaging means long code.
For the question of shared or unique. First off, if you’re getting your own short code, get a vanity code and make it something easy to remember. It doesn’t matter what the code spells because it’s never promoted that way. PEPSI if they have a short code, it’s probably 73785 because that spells pepsi on the keypad. But they would never advertise text CONTEST to P-E-P-S-I. They would spell out the number. And it’s an ugly number. It’s better to get 222333 or something that’s just easy.
Along the same lines, if you’re going through the process of getting a number, it’s best to get a vanity short code. It’s worth it to get a number that you like, vs a randomly assigned number that won’t be as easy to recognize or remember.
But back to the question, should you get a shared short code or get your own number? It all comes down to cost and timeline. If you’re a bigger organization and can afford the $15k per year for the short code, it’s worth it.
All organizations should start with a shared short code. Even if you are getting your own short code, I recommend starting early with the shared short code during the three month setup period. It’s always best to get going with the promotional aspects especially on this new channel where it’s going to take a little time to understand how to promote SMS and generate optins.
How do I pick a vendor?
There are a lot of SMS vendors out there. If you are going to build the technology yourself or integrate into an existing system that you’ve built - like uber would, then just start with Twilio. They are by far the most reliable, fastest and most flexible way to start if you’re looking for an API. It’s possible that you might have special needs and go to a different aggregator, but Twilio is far ahead of the game, basically everywhere I can think of.
More people will have questions about how to choose an ASP, and this is tougher. Like choosing any system, it’s probably best to start by finding a vendor that focuses on the space. The biggest advantage to having a vendor that works in the space is integrations with the other systems that work in the space. Just like email and the website really need to work together, SMS is in the same mix. It needs to work with other systems especially scheduling and CRM.
Any ASP vendor should be able to answer tough questions about short codes and know some of the terms that we’ve used on previous podcast episodes. It’s not that hard to build a platform that sends a text message. The harder part is knowing how to run mobile campaigns effectively.
On that note, I think that vendors that provide strong account management or customer success services are essential. Text messaging is a new channel. It’s different than email, different than web, apps etc. It’s really worth it to get experience and help along with the platform. The cheapest ASPs out there are going to start in the $30-50 range. They are going to be hard to set up, they won’t have a lot of features and the charges will increase with every addition - like adding a keyword will cost money. Or for a few hundred dollars a month you can find a system that’s solid, has a lot of features, and when you need to talk over a campaign, there is someone you can call.
How do I make money with messaging?
As far as I’ve seen, SMS needs to support a business model. SMS hasn’t been successful as the business model. If you’re an oil change business, messaging can help you make money, by reminding people to get their oil changed at the 3 month mark, upselling people etc. It’s not really possible to make money charging people to receive text messages or with sponsorship of messages.
I’ve recently noticed some attempts at trying to do this - so there is a monthly charge to get messages on a topic. It’s interesting and I hope someone figures it out. Generally in 2017, we think about media being free - music, TV, newspaper articles etc. Messaging would be hard to share and not worth it. I think this will get figured out.
Sponsorship of SMS campaigns will be harder. I have worked with media companies doing SMS and the idea of “this text is brought to you by a sponsor” just never worked. Messaging is just not an eyeball business. If the sponsor is extremely integrated, there are options, but it doesn’t make sense to just append a sponsor name at the end of a message.
How much does a text cost?
I haven’t checked recently, but I believe that Twilio charges one penny per message. If you’re using an ASP the cost per text will probably be higher than that. Most ASPs will have a monthly fee that includes a certain amount of texts.
If the cost per month is low, the ASP may charge for every text and it could be sizable - that’s how they get you. As the monthly cost is more for the software, it will usually also include more messages. As requirements get really high - like into the millions of messages per month, the cost per message can come down under a penny, depending on the negotiating power.
Also, as you’re investigating price it’s important to understand if the vendor is charging for incoming messages, outgoing messages or both
Should we do messaging?
Yes, absolutely. Messaging works today and there’s a strong chance that messaging becomes a more dominant channel in the future. Launching messaging today is like launching email 15 years ago or social 10 years ago.
We’re going to talk a lot more about how to start, and some exciting stuff about Facebook Messenger. If you’re listening to this podcast, and aren’t already doing messaging - it’s something to get on the list for 2018.
Jason is a linguist that works at Georgian Partners, a growth-stage investment firm. Georgian Partners focuses on conversational business as an investment thesis. They've written a great deal of best practices and think pieces on where the space is heading.
As part of the Impact team, Jason helps Georgian Partners companies use NLP and advanced linguistic tactics to improve products and customer outcomes. Jason has more than 15 years of experience applying advanced analytics, computational linguistics and machine learning to business problems in the financial services, pharmaceutical and legal domains.
Our conversation covered many topics with a focus on how language, linguistics and NLP work for technology companies.
You can read more about Georgian Partners, their investment thesis and any of their whitepapers at https://georgianpartners.com
Why companies and organizations should do SMS.
The solo series has been about explaining messaging channels. We’ve been concentrating on SMS and there is a lot of background information and terms that we’ve discussed over the last two episodes. It’s been a lot of detail, this episode is the payoff.
We’re going to talk through from an organization or marketers point of view, what SMS is good for and how an organization should use the channel. These are not the only answers, but they are pretty comprehensive and we’re talking at a high level, so it covers a lot.
I’d love to discuss all of this or answer questions. So if you disagree, or are thinking about a use case that I don’t mention, please connect on Messenger so we can discuss. CTA.
Let’s talk about the cold hard facts. First and foremost, SMS is the most ubiquitous channel of communication on the planet. I’d imagine there are more phones on the planet than any other type of device and every single phone has SMS. Like every one. Almost everyone on the planet has one.
I’ve helped to launch campaigns that were focused on homeless populations and SMS was the obvious and only channel. You might be thinking that you’re a marketer and the homeless is not in your target demographic, but young people it’s their only channel in a different way. They just don’t use email even if they do have to have an email address for some reason. I don’t think anyone really uses email until they have a job that requires it.
Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. First factor is the ubiquity of SMS – absolutely everywhere.
The second factor is the importance of the channel. Text messaging is the way that people talk to their parents, children, best friend and significant other. It’s simply the most important channel out there.
Now this is still true, but I feel it’s slipping a bit. I have some friends that moved out of the country and we use Facebook Messenger. I have one friend in the UK and we use Whatsapp. Most things that are group messages we’re doing on Messenger. And of course I have friends that work in the messaging space, so we use Allo ironically. Although I do like it a lot.
For now, SMS is still king. When anyone here’s that sound they automatically & instinctively look at their phone. It simply can’t be helped. In fact I’d argue that the messaging ping, SMS or your messenger of choice, is the number #1 trigger in the world. If you’re a marketer and want to get someone’s attention there is nothing that grabs attention like the message ping.
What the ubiquity and importance of the SMS channel means is that when an organization sends a message, it’s going to be read and it will be read quickly. That’s something easy to say and easy to hear, but the numbers that are floating around are that messages have a 99 percent open rate and the average test is read in 90 seconds. This is just simply insanity. I bet for the average link on the internet, 99% of the people that click, don’t actually make it to the page. That’s how crazy a 99% open rate is.
NOW, there is a chance these numbers aren’t exactly true. It’s really hard to tell. It’s just way too much of an echo chamber out there. If you google for it, there are a million hits, all the numbers are impressive, but they are all companies sell or promote SMS campaigns or news stories talking about SMS campaigns. It’s unclear what the source for this data is and/or who a credible source would actually be.
BUT even with that uncertainty, SMS is ubiquitous and an important channel for almost everyone. Because of those facts open rates are very high and opens happen very quickly.
What is SMS good for from a marketing/communication channel view? First, let’s review what it’s NOT good for. Remember, SMS requires an opt in, so it’s not an advertising channel. By advertising channel I mean that a brand can use the channel to find new people. They can pay to get their message in front of people. This is not possible with SMS. You cannot just send a user a text, they would have had to message in first. And if they messaged in first, that means the brand reached them somewhere else and asked them to message in.
This is actually a common question. It’s not possible to buy a list of numbers and send them a text. That’s a big reason why you, as a text message user do not get spam texts often.
SMS is not an advertising channel, but it’s great as a response channel to advertising. This is actually the first big super-power of SMS. If you do a tv commercial and the call to action is to join, call 1800 or go to www.com or text join to 12345, the text message call to action will beat the 800 number and website. From a call to action someone is more likely to text in rather than call in or visit a site.
Let’s even take this a step further. Once someone texts in they are more likely to provide their email address over SMS compared to the phone or URL response channel. The first superpower of SMS is as a response channel (response to a brands ads and media) and that means that the brand gets more people, more leads from all of their advertising efforts.
Here’s a theoretical example. We’ve all seen heard and read a one hundred Geico commercials. Whether it’s cavemen or the lizard, they all basically say that I can save 15% or more on car insurance by getting a quote from Geico.com. From what I’ve seen with clients if Geico added or text the word GEICO to 12345 each commercial would drive more people to get a quote.
I’ve seen many different tests and they usually work something like this. Let’s stick with the Geico example. In order to give a quote, Geico needs to understand zip code, make & model of the car, age of the driver and miles driven each year in order to give a quote. So sending the user to the website is just the first step of this process. Same with the user texting in, it’s just the first step of the data collection process.
With test I’ve run in the past the SMS channel will drive about 3 times more leads than the URL call to action from a TV commercial. That’s huge. This ratio will change depending on the advertising medium. For a TV commercial, viewers will probably be near a computer or they’ll have a phone with a browser. If someone were to stand up at an event and do the same call to action… a person would be much more likely to text in rather than go to a URL.
Basically, the further away a viewer/listener is from a computer, the bigger the ratio will be.
Think about a scenario where Bruce Springsteen wants to help a charity…
Another big advantage for SMS as a response channel is that it’s an instant subscription. If a user messages in, but doesn’t provide the information asked for, the organization can follow up. If a user goes to the URL and just leaves, that user is gone.
Again, the best way to describe this value is that SMS works as a response channel and will drive MORE PEOPLE – whether that means leads, donors, customers etc.
Super power number 2 for SMS has to do with activation. When a message is sent, it’s going to be seen and it’s going to be seen quickly. The best use for messages is to drive action from the recipients.
In the Geico scenario, it would be better to send an activation message such as “remember that you need to add a credit card to the account before you’re covered” rather than an information message like, “Geico was rated #1 by JD Power and Associates.”
Texts are great at getting people to do things. Sometimes that means replying with data, sometimes it means a real world action and sometimes it can lead to long term behavior change. The one thing that I’ve seen over and over again is that the mobile list will take more action compared to any other list a marketer can access. Most of the time we’re comparing the mobile list to email.
I’ve seen campaigns where people on the mobile list are more likely to vote, donate or even quit smoking. This activation idea is a big deal for brands – Geico wants people to buy their insurance, Amazon wants people to sign up for Prime and a presidential campaign wants people to donate and vote. Everything comes down to activation at some level.
Here’s where it gets interesting. People will probably not finalize their insurance on the phone most of the time. They probably don’t sign up for Prime on the phone and they definitely can’t vote on the phone. But the people on the mobile list that receive a text will be more likely to take the action even if the action isn’t on text or even the phone.
An example that I used all the time. It’s a trick, but just think through it with me. Let’s say that you are the marketer for a CRM company like Salesforce. People come to a webinar and give their email address to attend the webinar. After the webinar there are automated follow ups over email. The whole point is that we want to nurture the leads that attended the webinar and get them to signup for salesforce give a credit card etc. So let’s say 100 people attend the webinar and Salesforce has email addresses for all of them. How many people signup for Salesforce through that email???
It’s a trick question. Zero people sign up through the email. It’s actually impossible to do that. People signup on a webpage. The email will link people to the webpage or simply remind them to go to the page and signup. SMS works the same way.
It’s slight of hand because email is definitely a direct route the signup page. With SMS it’s tough to link out and get the person to signup on their phone. With SMS it’s also probably that people get the text, but then signup on the desktop computer. And it’s also common that the text would actually capture the person’s attention, increase the chances that they open the email and then convert.
Whatever the route, the data is pretty solid. We would regularly see the mobile list convert 3-5x better than the non-mobile list. Just to get really specific, the text campaigns are usually working in the same department as the email campaigns or CRM. So the cohorts that are being compared are the email + SMS list vs the email – only list. In that scenario, the mobile+email list will usually do 3 times better.
It’s not surprising, right. The mobile phone number is a sign of interest. I mean when you’re single, you’re more likely to go out with someone if you get their number. This is a little like the business equivalent.
There’s one more thing to talk about quickly. I sold SMS capabilities for almost 8 years. When an organization would reach out they would always have one of these benefits in mind. So I’d get a call saying something like – we have this opportunity to partner with a rock back. We think it makes sense for the band to tell their fans to text in.
Or they would be thinking about the second superpower – we want to text people and get them to do X.
In order the campaign and organization to be successful both benefits, both superpowers need to be used. If you’re thinking of a great way to use SMS as a response to media, you still need a long term plan to activate the people that respond to the media.
If you have a great idea to text people and get them to purchase, or show up for an event, you also need an idea of how the person will join the list in the first place. That opt in is a requirement.
It’s really similar to the approach of email – an organization needs a way to grow their list and something to say to the list they’ve grown.
Lastly, I boil down the benefits of SMS to More People and More Action. In terms of direct marketing, not brand marketing, these two benefits are about all there is.
Elliott Golden joins the pod to talk about using Facebook Messenger to help people contact Congress. Civic Shout walks the user through a quick conversation and then sends a fax to the user's legislators.
Elliott created most if not all the technology and he helps clients promote their campaigns. So the conversation focuses on the details of building the interaction and strategies for promotion.
Hope you enjoy.
We’re going to stick with SMS campaigns on today’s show and talk through the different terms, definitions and service providers in the space. This is a follow-on to the last episode where we talked through the different types of SMS campaigns. Now, we’re going deeper with broadcast messaging and mobile donations.
If you’re thinking about doing an SMS campaign or are new to the space, this background will be helpful. It’s a little dry if you’re just listening for fast-paced, thrilling messaging chat (that’s a joke). When I was selling SMS campaigns, these questions came up a lot. I hope it can be a reference to some people looking for answers.
Let’s jump in.
Long Codes and Short Codes: We touched on this last episode. If you’re doing SMS campaigns in any manner, you need a phone number to send and receive messages. As an organization or business you can choose between a long code and a short code.
A short code is a 5-6 or 6 digit number, that was created specifically to do high volume SMS campaigns. The carriers created this entire system to license short codes, approve campaigns and keep an eye on everything so their customers are not getting spammed. This is the way the MAN wants you to do it and most legitimate companies doing SMS will use a short code.
They are expensive and they take a little while to set up. The big advantages is that you can get more data around deliverability, send messages a lot faster and the organization has some protections about not being shut down.
There is one vendor for short codes in the US - CSCA - http://usshortcodes.com. You can go there to see if your number is available and reserve it or lease it. You can only lease a short code you can’t own it.
Withing short codes there are vanity numbers and random numbers.
Vanity means that the organization chooses the number and the lease is $1,000 per month. Random means that a number is randomly assigned and the cost is $500 per month to lease. There will usually be a setup fee and to launch a new short code it will take 8-12 weeks for the carriers to turn it on. I’m also going to bring up a shared short code. We’ll talk about this more when we get into the vendor breakdown. For most organizations the shared short code is the way to go. There is no cost and no wait time, but other organizations are using the short code.
A long code is another option for SMS campaigns. Long codes are meant more for the 1 on 1 campaigns or small businesses like a reminder from the dentist. Long codes are just phone numbers and then connect to APIs to send or receive SMS.
Long codes are cheap and fast. The downside is sending messages through them is really slow. With a short code you could send a million messages in an hour or two. With a long code it would just be impossible. So they are good for 1 on 1 messaging type stuff. So when your uber is arriving they would send a text from a longcode. They actually probably have thousands of long codes in different area codes so it seems, like it’s the driver texting.
On an upcoming show I’ll give all my opinions, but a big question from companies that want to do SMS - should we do a long code or short code? How about random or vanity? The short answer.. Big brands should get their own vanity code. If you have a special use case you might want your own random code. For instance clinical trials might require their own number, but they don’t care what it is. Most companies should pick a vendor that provides shared short code - my opinion.
If you’re a small business or doing 1 on 1 messaging, it’s OK to start with a longcode, but as you prove out the channel, think about leveling up to a short code.
Finally on this, if you’re going to do real world calls to action, get a short code. Billboards, flyers, events you don’t want to be telling people to message in, to a 10 digit number.
Let’s talk about the different players in the space. Obviously, we have the phone companies - Verizon ATT etc. They deliver the messages directly to the user. Below them there is this layer called an aggregator. We’ll dig in a bit there, but for an overview, they can be thought of like a hosting company for SMS. So they way you need to host a website, you can host your short code with the aggregator. Horrible terms, I know. Below them on the stack you’ll probably have a platform. This would be where you loging to manage campaigns. Finally there is the company that is creating the messages.
We don’t need to talk about the carriers other than there is an interesting insight that the short code system is completely separate from the P2P texting system. That’s a little surprising. They aren’t even related from the way that I understand it.
The aggregators are this middle-layer business. The carriers want to let businesses do SMS, but they are huge companies and networks - they don’t want to just open an API so that anyone can connect to them. They built this layer of businesses called aggregators. The aggregators connect to the carriers and then platforms or businesses connect to the aggregators. It’s actually 1000x more complicated than this.
No aggregator connects to all of the carriers directly, but they connect to at least 1 or more than one. For the carriers they don’t connect to, they have deals to trade traffic with the other aggregators. OK who cares.
The aggregators host the shortcodes. So if you lease a short code, you’ll want to provision it with the aggregator so that you can start sending messages. This is the setup that takes the 2-3 month process. In reality, you’ll only work directly with an aggregator if the messaging volume is large. An organization should be doing at least a half a million messages per month before an aggregator will even return your calls. If you do start a relationship with an aggregator, you’ll sign an agreement that includes a short code hosting cost, minimum payment per month that includes a specific message amount and a cost per message on top of that.
I wasn’t in the business then, but aggregators feel very 2005-ish. You need to be a big company to work with them and they are a part of the infrastructure. Once aggregators became established, people started building platforms to actually execute the campaigns.
A really dumbed down version of a platform or ASP would be something like mailchimp for SMS. A business could license mailchimp or they could build their own software and connect to their own email server. It’s the same with SMS, you could build your own software and connect to an aggregator, or you can sign up with a platform.
In my opinion the platform route has a lot of advantages. They’ll offer a lot of flexibility with short code options. They will help you get your own short code if you choose or they may offer a shared short code. A platform will have multiple customers and the platform can pay for the short code once, and then include short code use to their customers. It’s definitely a benefit.
Platforms range in price from almost free - $10 or $50 per month all the way to thousands or tens of thousands per month. There are some vertical specific platforms and more agnostic ones. Basically if you’re searching for a platform, you should set a budget and talk to a number of vendors, watch demo’s etc. I would recommend looking for
- Shared Short code option
- Setup, training and strategy help
- Some level of connection or integration with other systems - like CRM or email
- Keywords, webform and upload capabilities.
There are many more things that will become clearer as we discuss messaging strategy soon.
Just a few more types of vendors in this space. There is a company called Twilio. The best way to think of them might be a platform. Twilio is basically an aggregator, but they are very flexible and modern, where the aggregators are older feeling businesses. Twilio is a product created for developers to build apps for phone and SMS. They do short codes, but one of their major contributions has been introducing long codes as a flexible option.
The aggregators are for big businesses, and contracts. The platforms completely abstract the infrastructure. Twilio is for companies that want to build their own logic or platforms that connect to or send SMS. Again to use Uber as an example, they build into their system that when the driver is two minutes away, trigger a text. They could never use an ASP because it’s uber’s logic, they can’t code that into another system. They use the Twilio API to simply trigger a message.
Last week we talk about text donations. All that is really happening there is that there are just a few aggregators that can set up short codes in a certain way - to be premium SMS channels. The biggest such aggregator is the Mobile Giving Foundation. They have shared short codes or you can get your own. The MGF requires that organizations connect with a special type of ASP to help launch and manage mobile donation campaigns.
There are a lot of intricacies, but to sum everything up. If you are in product or operations you’ll probably want to check out Twilio to incorporate texting into your product. If you’re in marketing or a comparable field you’ll want to find a platform that can do what you want it to do.
Let’s talk about some terms that you’ll come across.
We talked about short codes and long codes. If you know what they are, you are way ahead of the game. Keywords are also important. A big value of SMS is that you can tell people to text in and they will. As an organization you have this one short code and you want to be able to source people as they are texting in. In a call to action you’ll say text KEYWORD to SHORTCODE - so text JOIN to 12345. This allows the ASP Application to know where the person heard to message in, and most ASPs can respond with a different message based on a different keyword.
Also, a keyword is needed to make the call to action make sense. Maybe it just caught on and it sounds right, but there should be something that we’re asking the user to send in. It’s weird to simply say text in to 12345 - telling people what to text where, just feels better.
MO - mobile originated. This is a message that is coming from a mobile phone.
MT - mobile terminated. This is a message being sent from a mobile phone.
Opt-in - there is a formally defined opt in process, but essentially opt in means the user is subscribed to messaging from this organization on this short code. A user has to give the opt in, in writing so that can be a text message in, or a webform - or I guess a paper form. It might be a violation, but it’s a regular practice that if someone says they want to opt in, that is fine too. Really they just need to agree to receive texts before they are texted.
Opt-out - There are some magic words required for SMS campaigns to unsubscribe people from the list. These words are STOP, CANCEL, END, UNSUBSCRIBE. The carriers require that when someone opts out, the organization needs to send a message confirming the opt out. This was actually part of a funny lawsuit a few years ago. I think someone sued Facebook because they opted out, but then Facebook sent a text confirming the opt out. Even though that’s what the carriers require. Facebook won the lawsuit.
Double Opt-in: When someone opts in, it’s the business's responsibility to confirm it’s the person that owns the handset that is opting in. If the user texts in, that’s fine. We know that the text was sent from the phone. But if the number is entered into a website there is no connection to the phone. I could be entering an enemy’s phone number in every webform that I find. The double opt in serves as a check, to make sure that a confirmation is received from the phone that is opting in.
Generally, when the first opt in happens, the system will trigger a double opt in message that asks the user to reply YES to confirm the opt in. The user is in a pending state, not fully opted in until they confirm.
This double opt in can really hurt the opt in rates, so it’s in a gray area. Some people skip it, and are just sure to make it really clear that the user can opt out in the first messages that are sent to them.
Character Limit - texts are limited to 160 character and that’s including spaces. This can sometimes be confusing because tweets are 140 characters. The limit can be an issue. Messages have to be concise and texts cost money, so the answer isn’t always as easy as just sending 2 messages.
OK, that’s a lot of detail. Just thinking through all of this for the first time in a while I could probably add 100 things to the list, but this is enough info to be dangerous.
We’ll get more interesting on the next episode and I’m going to talk about the two biggest benefits to adding the SMS channel to an organization.
On the previous Solo episode we listed the different type of messaging apps. This episode we are going to dig a little deeper into SMS. It’s a little strange because it’s such a simple thing – a text is only 160 characters, can’t even have a picture and maybe it can have emoji… but in application there are a number of different ways that companies and organizations use SMS.
I worked with SMS campaigns for a long time and have a lot of opinions. As we do more episodes I’ll be more opinionated, but right now we are going to keep everything fact-based. Although I’m sure that a few opinions will creep in.
Just to reset, we are talking about SMS specifically for business or non-profit communications. So this is about SMS for B2C communications and what’s available. And in that world, there is this really horrible acronym(?) that people use called A2P. Is that an acronym? Initialism? I really don’t know. If we had a bigger budget I would get a producer to check that out.
Anyway, A2P stands for application 2 person. So that means that it’s software sending a message to a person, not two people talking.
Let’s start with the type of messaging that could be considered the standard in the space, and the best name for this is probably broadcast messaging. This can sort of be compared to email marketing where an organization builds a list of people and then the organization can send broadcast messages to that list.
It’s a little strange because this is simply SMS marketing messaging and then all of the other campaign types popped up. This broadcast approach was never really given an official name, like some of the other types of messaging. So again, this is like email marketing where you build a list and can then blast out text messages to that list.
There are a few parts that pop up regularly for broadcast messaging. One of the most critical is this idea of opt in. A user needs to opt in before they are actually on a list and can be broadcast to. Users can opt in by texting in or filling out a webform with their phone number. When you see the phrase Mssg&DataRatesMayApply and Text STOP2stop, this is all part of the opt in process.
The opt in/opt out process is actually pretty well defined and the guide is online. This guide is written by the CTIA – Cell Tele… and they oversee the short code ecosystem. That’s another characteristic of broadcast messaging campaigns. Short codes, which are basically 5-6 digit number that were created for A2P SMS campaigns are usually sending and receiving broadcast message campaigns.
We’ll get into a lot more detail on future episodes, but the rules and standards for broadcast SMS campaigns are pretty well defined. The carriers – ATT, Verizon, Sprint etc don’t want their customers getting SMS spam, so they created the CTIA to create and enforce rules for the channel among other things. It’s an established space, and there are very legitimate companies and vendors that can help to conceive, launch and manage broadcast campaigns.
When companies think about SMS they are most likely thinking about broadcast campaigns. We’ll go through a lot of this in great detail in future episodes. Moving on right now, or actually we’re going to take a step backwards.
Before there were SMS broadcast campaigns, there was this idea called PSMS – premium SMS. This also happened with short codes, but what made it Premium SMS is that these messages would add a charge on the user’s cell phone bill. It was a few dollar charge, not just the messaging charge. If you remember early American idol shows, viewers could text in to vote and really early on, that vote would cost money. There’s a chance this is an urban legend, and there really wasn’t a cost, but you get the idea.
I think this is like 2003, 04, 05 and SMS is just totally new. Nobody knew where it was going and it probably made a lot of sense to trigger charges on the phone bill. But it seems so weird in retrospect. What ended up happening is this shady layer of companies slid in. There was this whole ringtone and wallpaper phase where you might text in to pay for a ringtone or get a wallpaper. In this really scammy situation, the carriers would allow for recurring billing. These companies would launch where they text your horoscope. They would end up charging $10 per month and it was sort of a hidden charge on your phone bill. You don’t have to worry about this anymore – the whole process was called cramming and it’s not allowed in the US anymore.
I have a funny-ish story. My wife, when we were dating we lived in NYC. And I woke up at her house and a remember I was insanely hung over and just couldn’t move. She had like a 19 inch TV and just the basic channels because we weren’t in the nesting/Netflix phase of life yet. It was still party time. Anyways, I’m lying on her couch, can’t move and I flip through the 13 channels and on CSPAN some Congressional panel (I probably should know that) is debating cell phone cramming – they are talking about people getting ripped off an how it should be outlawed. I’m hungover, can’t move and just absolutely fascinated by the most boring shit ever. It’s the tech equivalent of tripping and staring at the wall.
Anyways cramming is illegal and all premium SMS is illegal in the US… except for mobile donations. And that’s a perfect segue, because mobile donations are the next type of SMS message.
We’ll probably do an entire episode on this, and I might even be able to get them as a guest… So I’m just going to do an overview right now. I think the full story is interesting, or at least as interesting as the CSPAN Congressional debate I guess.
When Hurricane Katrina happened a few guys took this premium SMS idea and decided to launch a product or campaign where people can text in and the charge on their phone bill is actually a donation. Back in those days, the carriers would take a percentage of the premium SMS charge and for the donations, the carriers would actually waive that fee. So the first campaign happened in 2005. It probably took a while to get everything organized, get the carriers on board and to officially launch. So in 2008 or so, the Mobile Giving Foundation became a thing.
So a non-profit, a 501c3 could apply to the MGF and get approved, and then the non profit could launch a mobile donation campaign. Basically the organization can select a keyword and a dollar amount. (We’ll get into a keyword later), but basically the call to action would be, text DONATE to 12345 to donate $5 to Katrina victims. The charge would be added to their mobile bill and then the funds would filter to the non-profit.
It was all tough and tricky and took a little bit to set up. But I worked for a company and we helped an organization launch a campaign in Nov or Dec 2008. Then the Haiti Earthquake happened in January 2009 and text donations really became a thing. It was craziness, I remember working all Saturday at this coffee shop called Blue Stove in Brooklyn and just being so jittery from so much coffee – but there were just so many non profits that wanted to launch these mobile donation campaigns.
But this isn’t a memoir. Mobile donations is the only and last type of premium SMS campaign in the US. It’s for non-profits only and it’s fairly rigid in that it can only be set dollar amounts - $5, $10 and potentially $25 dollars. The basic situation is for any innovation to happen, all of the carriers have to agree and it’s been hard to make that happen. So innovation is slow.
The next type of SMS is called Peer 2 Peer. This is pretty new, it’s maybe a year and a half old. The debut of P2P messaging happened with the Bernie Sanders campaign. I actually did an interview for the Chat Bubble Podcasts – Episode 5 from February – with Daniel Souweine who is the founder of Relay and he was the person at the Bernie campaign that managed P2P messaging. We should also mention that Hustle was the vendor for Bernie at that time and those are the two companies that I know do Peer to Peer campaigns.
Remember with broadcast campaigns people need to opt in and then you can message them. The CTIA oversees this and the entire short code system powers messaging and it’s also police-able. P2P Messaging is an attempt to get around this opt in requirement. So the P2P company makes software that powers an application on a phone. The Bernie campaign, for instance, would have volunteers install this app on their phone. From this app, the volunteers would text people, like just a list of numbers one at a time, directly for the Bernie campaign.
Because there is an actual person “texting” and I‘m using quotes, the opt in is not required. So if you’re Bernie and it’s the New Hampshire primary, you want to text all of your supporters and remind them to vote. Ideally, they have opted into your mobile program and you can just go into your SMS marketing program and press a button and everyone gets the message. But now let’s you didn’t opt anyone in to your mobile list. With P2P you can buy a list of phone numbers and then get a bunch of volunteers to text this list of numbers. You don’t need the opt in because it’s not an automated text, it’s coming from a person. The CTIA, shortcodes and potentially the law only outlaw the automated messaging.
It’s really interesting and a little risky. These campaigns don’t use short code messaging, so it’s coming from a regular number so the carriers would have a tough time policing it. It’s hard to tell what the carriers might think about this, but P2P definitely isn’t in the spirit of the rules.
It seems really powerful, but at the same time it might also be expensive, and you need people to actually push the buttons. That’s a good point the P2P company app actually allows the volunteers to send texts with very few clicks. It’s not like they are typing out every message. There are default messages set, but it’s also possible to have direct one on one conversation.
Last but not least is simple alerts, reminders and 2FA. So my dentist texts me appointment reminders and when I log into certain websites they send me a code to confirm that it’s actually me. I’m sure that when it’s all added up, these reminder texts dwarf all of the campaign type texting.
These reminders and alerts are kind of in their own space. Many times it’s a regular phone number sending the message and it’s not marketing necessarily. It’s a cool use, and fits the channel perfectly, but I don’t really have thoughts.
My last point is the difference between companies that do SMS and non-profits. My work with SMS has been mostly with NPOs, and I understand it might skew my view, but it seems to me that NPOs are way ahead of companies on this stuff. Obama was doing texting campaigns in 2008 and Haiti donations were in 2009. I could be wrong, but there haven’t been man interesting marketing campaigns via SMS for companies.
Don’t get me wrong, Uber probably sent 1 trillion text between 2011 and 2015, but telling me that my car is arriving isn’t as cool as Hillary telling me where to vote and asking me to confirm that I’ll do it. It might just be my vantage point, but I just haven’t seen that many interesting campaigns from companies.
Next time we do an overview like this we’ll get a little deeper. We might need to do an overview of all of the terms and players involved in mobile campaigns. All of these episodes seem like they’ll be really quick, but I guess I can talk a lot about this…..
Ishay joined the podcast to share a few different projects that his agency has worked on, as well as a perspective of what's happening outside the US. Ishay's firm, Initech, has been in business for about a decade and within the last 2 years they've begun to focus on Facebook Messenger applications.
They are based in Israel and Ishay travels regularly through Europe and provides some anecdotes about what's happening outside the US.
Here are a few links for contact or campaigns and examples mentioned in the show.
Ishay's contact information. ishay at initech.co.il -- http://www.linkedin.com/in/tentse
Israeli Chatbot Meetup: https://www.meetup.com/TLV-Marketing-Chatbots/
Here is a presentation on bots. https://www.slideshare.net/IshayTentser/messenger-as-a-new-marketing-platform-70853206
Finally, a demo of the internal Messenger Loyalty bot mentioned at the end of the episode. https://www.facebook.com/messages/t/341778542908006
This week, we have another solo podcasts that discusses messaging in detail. I'm calling these types of episodes, the Solo Series, because I can't think of a better name. We're going to alternate in the feed - interview then solo, etc. Here are the notes on this episode.
Solo Series with my thoughts on Messaging, terms and best practices. On the last episode we talked about Messaging as a channel and compared messaging to other communication channels like email and phone calls. All of this is from the aspect of an organization looking at Messaging channels. We’re not talking about consumers using these channels. One this episode we are going to pull it all apart, and talk about all of the different options within Messaging.
Let’s start with the first Messaging Channel, SMS. You should all know that SMS is a text message on a phone. I’m not going to go into the full history, but basically SMS was invented 25 years ago in 1992. It was created as a backchannel so that the cell phone could talk to the satellite. SMS is restricted to 160 characters and it works on every cell phone, even flip phones.
We are going to talk a lot more about SMS in the very near future, but that’s it for right now. Actually, it’s also important to think about SMS as a standard or protocol. It works across different vendors. At some level it’s the same for an organization when they send a text message to a Verizon phone and an AT&T phone.
Closely related to SMS is MMS. MMS is picture and video messages. Also available on all phones. MMS is a protocol and it’s basically built into the SMS capabilities on every phone.
Moving on from SMS and MMS to other types of messaging. I guess we have to mention RCS - Rich Communications Services. The best way to think about RCS is SMS 2.0. The cell phone carriers used to make a lot of money with text messaging. Remember when it was part of the plan that you had to choose? So they really liked SMS, but then all of these messaging apps that we’re about to talk about started popping up. And these messaging apps have more features than SMS, and they are free.
So the cell phone carriers decided to make RCS, which is SMS with more features. It shouldn’t be that hard right, because all of the messaging apps can have features, so why can’t SMS. But the problem is that SMS is a protocol and it works across all the carriers and the phones. So getting all of the carriers to agree and move forward together is the biggest issue.
RCS became a project in 2007 and the initial release was 2012, but it’s been 5 years and no one is really using it. It seems like the carriers are getting on board now, but they might not matter all that much now. Android and google are backing RCS, but I don’t think Apple is. So if the idea is that RCS is SMS 2.0 and it works on every phone, that just can’t happen without Apple, they have iMessage and a billion iPhones out there. Google and andoid likes RCS, but they have their own messaging issues.
Overall who cares, no one really needs a new messaging app, as we’ll see.
So RCS is a nice bridge for OTT Messengers. This means Over the Top which is a pretty dated term that means an app is using data to pass messages rather than SMS. iMessage is probably the most unique OTT Messenger.
So Apple makes the iphone obviously and the iphone has an SMS app. iMessage is a little sneaky because it lives in the SMS app and basically jumps in front of the SMS and sends an iMessage if both the sender and recipient have an iPhone. It’s unique because they just started doing it - basically faking SMS messages and no user even knew it was happening. And now they are building out iMessage features, it connects to desktop and they are opening it up as a platform in 2018. So developers can build on it.
It’s kind of genius how they got a billion users. I should say that I switched to Android, so I don’t even know what’s new with iMessage, and iMessage is only available on iphones, which probably sucks.
The other big, unique OTT is Facebook Messenger. Obviously Facebook Messenger is connected to Facebook. Where Apple took all of their devices and pushed people into iMessage, Facebook is taking their social network and pushing people into Messenger.
They are also one of the first & biggest OTTs to open up the platform to developers. So in April 2016 they launched the Messenger platform, and that allows developers to build applications that connect to Messenger. This generated a ton of buzz and hype and brought into vogue the word bots or Chatbots. I hate that word, and it’s a big reason that I’m doing this Solo Series - to show Messaging separate from bots.
Anyways, the other interesting thing about Facebook Messenger is that it plugs into the Facebook Ad network. So there is a clear, trackable and target-able way to drive people into Messenger - and that way is Facebook Ads.
Moving on - some of the stuff I said about Facebook was a lie. They weren’t the first & biggest OTT to open a platform. That might be WeChat. WeChat is a Messaging platform in China and it’s supposedly the biggest thing there since rice. With the Facebook platform release, supposedly they are copying features and approach from WeChat.
I’ve never used it personally, but the story is that in China everyone uses WeChat instead of apps. So when you need to call an uber/car service or do anything on the phone, it’s through WeChat.
The other big OTT is WhatsApp. They are owned by Facebook, and absolutely huge. But there isn’t anything special about them other than they have a lot of users.
There are probably 50 other OTTs. The big ones are Telegram, Kik, Viber, Google Allo (so why do they have RCS) and there are country specific OTT in India and Japan. It’s just huge and I’m sure there are differences, but I don’t know them.
The next big category is probably Enterprise Messengers. Here we have Slack, Skype and maybe Linked In. Slack is a darling of the tech space, but it’s much more for internal communications than B2C. I don’t have many thoughts on these enterprise messengers right now other than they seem different from SMS and the OTTs discussed above.
There are a few messengers left that are hard to categorize. Twitter Direct Messages are a thing. They should be similar to Facebook Messages, but they just aren’t. I don’t know why. Twitter just released a platform so that developers can build DM applications, but I haven’t seen one ever. I worked on a Twitter DM application a long time ago and the APIs were just not ready. I had a specific tech question and there was just no documentation and I couldn’t get any response.
I don’t mean to badmouth them. DMs are probably a messaging channel, but really different from something like iMessage and I’m not sure where DM fit in.
The other messaging channel that’s hard to categorize is Snapchat. So this is really tricky. I don’t know that much, but I think you can be a brand on Snapchat and create stories, but to do anything with Snapchat is really expensive and more like media or partnerships. I don’t think a company could really build a messaging app and connect it to Snapchat.
I’m sure that I missed some. Would love to hear…
Next we’re going to dig a little deeper into SMS. There are many different approaches and some terms that are SMS 101, which we’ll talk through.
Arte Merritt joins the podcast to talk about Dashbot and analytics for conversations and bots. Dashbot helps builders track what's happening on their messaging and conversation applications. Dashbot works on messaging channels like Facebook Messenger and SMS as well as voice devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home.
The most impressive thing about Dashbot has been their growth. They've processed 7 billion messages for 10's of thousands of bots and messaging applications.
You can find them online at dashbot.io and on twitter @dashbotio.
We're starting something new with The Chat Bubble. This is the first episode in a series that will explain terms, share best practices, strategies and benchmarks for messaging and how organizations' approach to the channel. We're keeping these episodes short and of course we'll still be interviewing people in the space regularly.
This episode talks about messaging as a channel, and why it's worth understanding.
I look at messaging as one of only 5 communication channels in existence (Face to face, mail, phone, email and messaging). It's a natural progression along the timeline of personal and business communication and messaging will be the primary communication channel on new devices (VR, AR, autos).
Hope you enjoy.
Wow what an episode! We're chatting with Paul de Gregorio. He is the Director of Digital Engagement at Open - a full service creative agency in the UK that also builds messaging technology. Paul is a true believer in the power of messaging and he's also designed and executed amazing messaging campaigns for organizations.
I edit every podcast after recording it and when I re-heard Paul's description of the Break Through Breast Cancer campaign, it blew me away. It is a perfect campaign in the sense that all parties involved receive value and it works better on messaging than any other channel out there. It seems very simple, but it takes great strategy and planning to make it seem so simple. http://opencreates.com/2012/10/you-know-right/
We also discuss One Love Manchester and the fundraising from the benefit concert for the attack in Manchester. http://opencreates.com/2017/06/one-love-manchester/
The big news which was just announced today... the Stand for Rights Facebook Live campaign was nominated for an Emmy. http://opencreates.com/2017/07/what-do-ru-pauls-drag-race-benedict-cumberbatch-open-have-in-common/ Here is the longer description on the Open blog. http://opencreates.com/2017/04/stand-for-rights-stand-for-freedom/
Finally, Paul writes a regular newsletter focused on activism and the use of messaging in activism. Signup at https://tinyletter.com/pauldegregorio and follow Paul on Twitter @pauldegregorio
This is a live, in-person chat with Kate Myers from Shop or Not (https://toshopornot.com/). We talk about SMS as a channel to make purchases and her journey from video and picture apps to the world of messaging.
It's just me telling a story about some amazing stats in a Facebook Messenger campaign that ultimately was a failure.
Tact is the company that built Mogli, which is an SMS program administered inside of Salesforce. Mogli focuses on Impact work, both in the US and globally. Stevan shares some great campaign examples and we get into some detail with regard to international SMS campaigns.
Visit Tact at http://tact.global/
I loved chatting with Seth about roadtrips in your 20's, moving to tech centers and everything that's happening in the messaging space. I feel like I've really made it as an interviewer when I can get a guy like Seth to admit his infatuation with Christian Gray bot.
This is a fun, fast moving conversation about the current situation with Messaging and where the space is heading. Hope you like it.
On this episode of The Chat Bubble we talk to Danny Freed, the creator of Facebook Messenger campaign, Joy. Joy helps you track your mental state, the same way that Fitbit tracks your steps. Joy has been featured in several publications and in the Facebook Messenger list inside of the app. We discuss how Joy came about, the state of the messaging space and where everything is heading. Find Joy online here, http://www.hellojoy.ai/ or search for Joy on Facebook Messenger.
On this episode of The Chat Bubble we talk to Danny Freed, the creator of Facebook Messenger campaign, Joy. Joy helps you track your mental state, the same way that Fitbit tracks your steps.
Joy has been featured in several publications and in the Facebook Messenger list inside of the app. We discuss how Joy came about, the state of the messaging space and where everything is heading.
Find Joy online here, http://www.hellojoy.ai/ or search for Joy on Facebook Messenger.
Adelyn was one of the first people I found online when I started focusing on Facebook Messenger. She's a thought leader in the messaging & AI space and if you do any research, you'll probably stumble on to one of her articles. We pack a lot of great information in a relatively short episode. Adelyn has great insight into how young employees can pick a successful startup to work for. We discuss growth ideas and the basics for bots. The conversation ends with some ideas on where the whole space is going. As always, if you're interested in messaging you can subscribe to The Chat Bubble on itunes or your favorite podcast app.
I first discovered Qwazou in the Messenger Platform Developer Community Facebook Group. Qwazou is a bot that helps people discover other bots through categories or search. They've launched on Faceook and are looking to be the go to directory for all Messenger bots. In this episode I speak with Anicia Gau about the space and where it's going. We talk about the best experiences available in Messenger and of course, the name Qwazou. As always, if you like what you hear, please subscribe to The Chat Bubble podcast on itunes and check out Qwazou at https://www.qwazou.com/
In my opinion, Purple has been the most successful Facebook Messenger campaign since the start of the Facebook Messenger platform. They started as an SMS campaign to explain 2016 election events clearly and in a non-partisan way. In the Summer of 2016 they migrated to Facebook Messenger and have grown a large and engaged list. Purple didn't end after election day. They send 1 or 2 daily messages to keep people up to date on US politics and there is a large initiative to help more people become trusted sources using Messenger. This episode is an essential listen if you're interested in messaging as a channel for communications.
This is an amazing episode. Daniel has been in the messaging space since 2009 and has been a driving force for some of the most notable campaigns. He's currently heading a company focused on P2P SMS, which is the newest and most interesting development for text messaging in a while. Go to Relaytxt.io to chat with Daniel yourself. To subscribe to the podcast on itunes click here. https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-chat-bubble/id1191382024 or message us with Facebook Messenger http://m.me/thechatbubble [iframe width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/306434156&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false"][/iframe] ["]
This post is a little different. There is no interview - just Michael, the host of The Chat Bubble. I'm talking through a really important Facebook Messenger feature release, Messenger As a Destination for Ads. This episode is a companion piece to a blog post that I published in Chatbots Magazine. Hopefully that between the post and the episode I'm conveying some intelligent thoughts about this new ad-type To read the post, message us on Facebook and use the hashtag #destination, or just click this link and start the conversation on Facebook Messenger http://m.me/thechatbubble?ref=destination As always, we'd love you to subscribe on itunes, or wherever you get your podcasts. https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-chat-bubble/id1191382024 [iframe width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/305353161&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false"][/iframe]
Sean McDonald is the CEO of FrontlineSMS http://www.frontlinesms.com/ Frontline uses automated SMS to streamline complex problems at large organizations. Sean and I had an amazing conversation talking amazing campaigns that Frontline as powered, and getting in to the future of messaging. I love chatting with Sean and hope you enjoy the episode. Be sure to reach out to Frontline if you have questions about text messaging or would like to understand more about launching a campaign. If you like what you hear, subscribe on itunes. https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-chat-bubble/id1191382024
Hey there podcast listeners. Here is a conversation with Austen Levihn-Coon. Austen and I probably worked together for the first time in 2010 or 2011, so we go way back. He's the Chief Innovation Officer at Fission Strategy and has worked on many progressive campaigns. This episode was recorded way back in November, so it's a bit of a time capsule to see how we were thinking right after the election. You can check out Fission at http://fissionstrategy.com. We also mention http://Attentive.ly, which is now part of Blackbaud. If you like the episode, please subscribe on itunes. https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-chat-bubble/id1191382024 [iframe width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/302620888&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false"][/iframe]
Chris Lundberg is the Founder and CEO of Frakture - a company that helps non-profits get their list done. Frakture helps non profit organization work smarter by moving data and integrating process across systems. Prior to Founding Frakture, Chris was the co-founder of Salsa Labs, a platform that powers data, actions and donations for non-profits. Check out Frakture at http://www.frakture.com/ Subscribe to The Chat Bubble Podcast on iTunes. https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-chat-bubble/id1191382024
I'm very excited to publish the first episode of The Chat Bubble. In this episode we discuss what the podcast is about and how we got the name. At the time I'm publishing this post we already have 6 more episodes recorded. Future episodes include an conversation with Purple - the Messenger campaign that started with election news, and has a really interesting future. We also chat with the founder of Relay, who was the point person for SMS at the Bernie Campaign. Subscribe on itunes or your favorite podcast app. https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-chat-bubble/id1191382024 [iframe width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/304567138&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false"][/iframe]
I'm very excited to publish the first episode of The Chat Bubble. In this episode we discuss what the podcast is about and how we got the name. At the time I'm publishing this post we already have 6 more episodes recorded. Future episodes include an conversation with Purple - the Messenger campaign that started with election news, and has a really interesting future. We also chat with the founder of Relay, who was the point person for SMS at the Bernie Campaign. Subscribe on itunes or your favorite podcast app. https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-chat-bubble/id1191382024