How Greg Hickman Boosted His Webinar Attendance By 15% Just By Sending a Few Texts

Tim:Welcome to ConversionCast, the only podcast that gets to the heart of the metrics. Now here’s another data driven case study.   Hey fellow marketer, happy Monday. Now it’s that time, time to discover a killer marketing tactic that you can implement in your business. Today you’re going to discover a rarely used but incredibly effective way of improving your webinar show up rates while simultaneously giving your audience exactly what they want. We have the screenshots of the landing pages used in this tactic available at our website so visit ConversionCast.com/GregDownload to download it right now. Again ConversionCast.com/GregDownload to get the screenshots of the landing pages used in this campaign.   Now I’m super excited to be sharing this episode with my good buddy Greg Hickman from MobileMixed.com. Greg is the mobile guy. Anywhere he goes, he’s bombarded with questions, requests for consulting, and any guidance or advice he can give on how to effectively utilize mobile marketing to get more leads, sales and engagement. Beyond that, he’s a fellow bearded gentleman so you know he knows what he’s talking about. Greg and I got to speak at The Podcast Movement Conference a few weeks back and I was blown away by what he shared so I had to have him come on the show to discuss how to use mobile to increase webinar show up rates. It’s so simple that if you’re anything like me, you’re going to feel like a complete idiot for not doing this before and you’ll rush to do it now. You can see the screenshots again of Greg’s campaign by going to ConversionCast.com/GregDownload and then make sure you listen to the episode. I’m Tim page, the conversion educator here at LeadPages. This is ConversionCast and here’s Greg Hickman from MobileMixed.com.   He what’s up Greg, how’s it going today man?   Greg:It is great my friend. Happy to be here.   Tim:Yeah, happy to have you here. Dude, so I’m excited about this. This is something that you are an expert in and people now have been coming to you more and more to get advice on how to use mobile to grow their business whether it’s you know, leads or sales or any other number of things. But this one thing that we’re going to discuss is something that is clearly near and dear to my heart. We’re going to be talking about webinars and how to use mobile to enhance kind of the webinar experience and how to improve that. So I’m excited about that and can you kind of share with us the results that this one particular tactic has gotten for you?   Greg:Yeah, absolutely. So by using this tactic that we’re going to talk about, I’ve seen an increase in my show-up rate to the webinars, my live webinars about 12%. Some of the other people that I’m helping execute this, they’re seeing anywhere from 10 to 18 thus far. So definitely if you’re running webinars, this is a great thing to incorporate into your process so you can get more people on your webinar.   Tim:Yeah this is —  I love this and first some of the people you’re talking about, you know, obviously you’ve got some great people you’ve been helping implement this tactic and there are people that have big webinars and do big revenue from webinar. So it means a lot to be able to see such a big show-up rate.   Greg:Yeah.   Tim:I think this is one of those metrics that unfortunately a lot of people forget about when they’re doing webinars right? I mean we talk about you know, our registration rate and you know, our conversion rate to sales and all that stuff but really if we’re really focusing on revenue then show rate is almost one of the most important metrics of all. Isn’t that right?   Greg:I think so and I think for a lot of people the reason that they run webinars in the first place is that it’s in that hour block of time typically that people have and host a webinar, it’s a really good opportunity for the listeners and viewers of the webinar to get to know the host. You know, especially when we use webinars mainly to sell something at the end, you know you get to build a little bit of the relationship. They get to hear your voice, they get to get a better feeling of who you are as a person, which makes that sale a little bit easier at the end. So the more people you get on, the more people you have the opportunity to build that relationship with.   Tim:Yeah that’s exactly right. I mean we’re finding that the conversion rate on live webinars where you know, we’re actually there and answering questions and people can talk back and forth with the host is the conversion rate is sky high compared to you know, a recorded webinar where maybe it seems like it’s live but it’s not and people you know, people can kind of tell right. They’re asking questions. It’s not getting answered and it really having people live there is huge for the conversion rate. So I love that. So tell us a little bit briefly before we get into this tactic tell us a little bit about kind of who you are and you know, why you are now the world’s foremost mobile expert. [Laughs]   Greg:Well so I host a site called MobileMixed.com and it’s a blog and a podcast where I teach small business owners and entrepreneurs how to use mobile to really build their email list, connect with customers, connect with our audience and drive sales. [0:05:13] You know, I’ve been involved in the mobile marketing space since about 2005 so very early in the game before the iPhone even existed. So the tactic we’ll be talking about today really doesn’t even require a smart phone because we’re talking about text message marketing today and it’s just one thing that you know even some of the biggest brands to this day use as one of their primary mobile marketing tactics. You know, again just been speaking on it for years now and worked with a handful of big brands myself and entrepreneurs like you mentioned earlier. So it’s just something that I really see as an opportunity and I think kind of before we dive in this topic I’ll just say that you know, a lot of people when they hear mobile they think apps, they think mobile websites and stuff and like that. They think it wends there. But I think where mobile has the best kind of opportunity that we need to start understanding as business owners and marketers is the multi-channel component of that, which is kind of why this tactic that we’re talking about today is so powerful. Because the way that we use our mobile devices it’s not like we’re doing one whole task completing one whole task on our phone. Maybe we’re doing one task but that’s really just one step of the puzzle. Like I might look for a restaurant on my phone but then I actually go to the restaurant and eat there. So you know, the phone is just one step in that funnel so to speak in the kind of customer engagement process that gets me closer to the sale.   I think we need to think about that no matter what type of business we have, you know, whether it’s brick and mortar or it’s an online based business, how can we use this device to get the person one step closer to this transaction which is kind of what we’re going to be talking about today.   Tim:Yeah that’s brilliant. I mean this – I thought of you the other day when I got a text from Redbox and they were like you know, hey enter your email address and get on our list and we’ll give you a free movie rental. I was like yeah buddy I’m going to do that right? So now they’ve got my email and in order to get the rental I had to go check my email and confirm and then of course like you mentioned you know it kind of took me to the Redbox and now they’ve got that connection with me which I think is big. And one more thing before we talk about this tactic that I think will be pretty powerful. We spoke together a few weeks ago at the podcast movement and you had – you shared a few kind of stats about mobile and you know, things like how long it takes for people to read a text message and that kind of stuff.   Greg:Yeah.   Tim:Can you share a couple of those stats if you have them on hand?   Greg:Yeah well I mean the most important one for this topic is that 90% of text messages are read within three minutes. So you know, from an immediacy perspective, if you have something important to deliver, you know, there’s really nothing faster than sending a text message to your audience, to your customer, your prospects. One thing I will caveat that with though is that the Redbox example at some point in the line you had opted in to receiving that message. I think just like email it’s really important to know that text messaging is permission based. So you need to get the customer to opt-in whether that’s through like a web form which we’ll talk about and/or them texting a keyword to a short code. So you know, if you’ve seen American Idol where they’re like vote by texting idol 1 to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, idol 1 is the keyword  and the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 that 5 or 6 digit number is called a short code. So there’s a couple of ways that you as a customer can opt-into this or into a campaign by any business and it is just you have to know that it is permission based. So don’t start sending text messages because someone maybe wrote their phone number down on a piece of paper. You know, there’s some disclaimer stuff that you want to make sure that you have in there. But again just like email whether it’s double opt-in or whatnot, you want to make sure that they’re consenting to receiving these messages.   Tim:Right. Yeah and they got me to do that but by offering again another you know, discounter. It’s like a coupon for a rent 1 and get 1 free or something like that. So for a movie fanatic, we’re like yes. So awesome, all right. So today we’re talking about really how to get people to show up for your webinar, how to get more people to show up for your webinar. So tell us a little bit about kind of how this works.   Greg:Yeah. So I think one of the main challenges that people have that host webinars is that you know, say for example I’m running a Facebook ad or you know, I’m driving traffic to this registration page, and people sign up on a Thursday then my webinar is not until the upcoming Wednesday. You know there’s a lot of things have happened in a registrant’s life between when they register for your webinar and when they actually have to show up. Quite frankly, a lot of people forget and you know, they may not be near their email when they get the email reminder whatever cadence you send that out. [0:10:01] You know I know a lot of people do a 24-hour reminder and then a 15-minute reminder and then sometimes even a hey we’re going live right now. But again if they’re not by their email, and they’re not notified they are likely to forget. So by incorporating a text message reminder into the registration process then you’re able to send a text message and/or even a voice recorded phone call whatever point before the webinar to remind people.   And you know, I do a voice call which is 30 minutes before the webinar. They receive their phone literally rings and it’s a recording of me saying something like hey it’s Greg from MobileMixed.com. We’re getting ready to hop on this webinar in the next 30 minutes. Be sure to visit you know, URL.com whichever, wherever the webinar is being hosted.   And then in 15 minutes up to the webinar, they get a text message that says hey it’s Greg, you know, we’re already in the chatroom chatting away. Be sure to click this link and join us in on the webinar. That link you can incorporate links into text messages. So they literally can click that link and I use LeadPages obviously so when they click that link, they go to a mobile friendly webinar page. I definitely have people that you know, want to catch the webinar and maybe they forgot and they’ll actually listen to the webinar from their phone or their tablet wherever they might be which is one benefit of working with your platform is that you have these pages that are very mobile friendly that play nice with the text message. So ultimately it’s send some sort of other text message reminder or voice call you know, minutes or maybe within an hour leading up to the event to remind them. I say up to an hour because again we mentioned 90% of text messages are read within three minutes. So you don’t want to send a text message the day before and say hey don’t forget webinar is tomorrow like that’s not capitalizing on the immediacy of this channel. So you really want to make sure that it’s not that last minute reminder, that last maybe that one last touch to get them on to the webinar I’d say 30 minutes, 50 minutes is pretty ideal. I probably wouldn’t go more than an hour out. But definitely increase my show-up rates I guess by 12% and across the board and people that I have been working with it’s anywhere from 10 to just over 18.   Tim:Yeah that’s insane. It’s funny because I think this is one of those things that when you hear it right the first time you set it out was like fully done. Like why is everybody not doing this? I think we get caught up in the idea of you know, we’re doing this internet marketing right? So we need to be marketing on the internet and internet this and internet that. But we don’t think –you know, there are so many other ways doing it. It’s you know, it’s the same thing where when people are trying to sell their products and services, they think oh I need to do just the webinar and I need to do this and that. But they don’t think wait, why don’t I pick up the phone you know, and call somebody and do that kind of stuff? Why don’t I have an in-person meeting that kind of stuff? So I think this is really big and I think we kind of forget about it. So it’s huge and it’s important but how do we do it right?   Greg:Yes. [0:13:11] [Indiscernible]   Tim:What do you use? What technology, what steps do you take to make this happen?   Greg:Sure. So there’s a couple of tools from the text messaging side that you can use but the one I use and recommend is called Call Loop, CallLoop.com. They’re really great and they integrate but the reason I use them is they integrate with InfusionSoft and they’re rolling out some really great integrations with like MailChimp, AWeber, all the other email platforms that most of the listeners here are probably using for email. Basically how it works is I use LeadPages as my webinar registration page and when someone enters their first – I always do first name and email to register and on the thank you page and I’ll kind of come revisit it, why this is important. On the thank you page, there’s the message that says hey you’ve been registered. I know we all get busy but if you click the link below, you can sign up and receive a text message reminder and a voice message from me on the day of the webinar to make sure that you don’t forget about the event. Then I say something just because I’m a mobile guy, I say even if you don’t want the text message and you want to see how mobile can help you increase your webinar show up rates you know, try subscribing. So I kind of give them the other thing like hey check this out there’s a new thing you could be doing also. So then they click one button and then it powers a lead box which comes off a button again powered by LeadPages. They enter. It’s just one field, their mobile number.   So the text reminder is kind of a secondary thing and not everybody has to enter their mobile numbers. So they register then they have the chance to subscribe for the text reminders. From my experience I’ve seen anywhere from 40 to 55% of registrants actually sign up for the webinar, the text message reminder.   Tim:Oh my god.   Greg:So again not everybody is going to do it but you know, a lot of people sit there and say oh yeah like this thing is five, six days away. I’m totally going to forget about this. It’s like let me get a text message reminder. It’s convenient right. It’s a utility. So again 40 – mine was like 44% and a few other people have I’ve seen have 55% of registrants will subscribe to the text message reminder. So again that’s a good portion of people. [0:15:19] Now the reason we don’t do that upfront in the registration is that it does kind of create a roadblock. So again if only 50% of people you know, are going to do this, there’s 50% of people that don’t even want that text message which is fair that’s fine, not everyone has to do it. but if you require it or you put it in that, in the first form where it says first name you know, email and mobile number, we’ve actually seen a huge decrease in registrations. So we obviously don’t want to impact the number of people registering so make it kind of on that back end on your thank you page and say hey thanks for registering now you can get the reminder if you want. Click here and here’s how you do it.   Then that’s been the best way that we’ve seen getting that 40% to 50% of registrants to opt-in.   Tim:That’s just insane. And so the kind of funnel for this is they hit a webinar registration page. They register for the webinar with first name and email right?   Greg:Yup.   Tim:And then the thank you page instead of just taking them to a thank you page where they can print out the date or whatever, it takes them to a different thank you page that says you know hey thanks you’re all registered. By the way if you want a text message reminders click this button and then a LeadBox pops up. They can enter their phone number and now is it just they get – for you in this case is it they get a phone call 30 minutes before and a text message 15 minutes before and those are the only texts?   Greg:So right when they enter their mobile number, they will get a confirmation text. This is something that some people don’t do but from a mobile marketing best practice perspective, it’s something you should do. Because when people give you their mobile number to receive a message, you should give them something immediately. Basically you want to send them that confirmation that says hey thanks for registering for the mobile reminders, stay tuned on the day of the webinar and you’ll get you know, we’ll send you a confirmation. That’s all it has to be but so right when they enter their mobile number into that field within a matter of a minute or so they’ll receive that confirmation text. Then on the day of they’ll get the 30-minute voice call and then the 15-minute text reminder.   Tim:Got it.   Greg:And I will say that you know, on the backend, I mentioned earlier that it’s connected to InfusionSoft so you know, a lot of us have a lot of the stuff automated. So on the day before they get an email, they get tagged a certain way. But not to dive too deep into those specifics but when they’re registering because it is connected to InfusionSoft on my end you know, that mobile number and the email are now added as a contact record. They’re put into this automated funnel that will also send them email. So they’re also going to get the email reminders 24 hours in advance. They’ll also get an email reminder 15 minutes in advance. But again they’ll also get the text message if they opted into that. So it is mostly automated from once you set it up if you choose to do so using the tool like Infusion Soft.   Tim:Right. So for you the tools to implement this are basically [0:18:15] [Indiscernible] LeadPages and InfusionSoft.   Greg:Exactly.   Tim:Okay. And you know obviously it would be pretty difficult to you know, describe the exact setup with Call Loop and LeadPages and that kind of stuff with in the podcast but I know that you’re working on something and you’re probably going to provide a lot of information. So if somebody wants to kind of see maybe some more details on how to specifically link the tools together how can they do that?   Greg:Yes. So one we can put in the show notes I put a – I wrote recently a step-by step tutorial for how to do this and it was targeted more at podcasters but it’s really you know, the same steps apply. So there’s a really in depth blog post that we can put in the show notes here. But like you said yeah I’m working on a course that teaches people how to do this mainly because of all the interest coming out of our presentations at a podcast movement. So if people are interested in learning more about this and the training that I’m working on, you can see how this works by actually just texting the word convert to the number 38470. So you’ll just text to the number 38470 and the message will be sending will be convert.   Tim:Awesome and then they’ll get a chance to see kind of how that process works and stay kind of updated on what you’re doing. Is that right?   Greg:Exactly. Yeah.   Tim:I love it. Man, this is going to be amazing and we are actually in the process of implementing this for our webinars at LeadPages so I will definitely report in a future episode of the podcast how this is working for us. I’m just really excited about that. So this episode was definitely worth the price you paid for it and hopefully a lot more. So thanks so much Greg for coming on and sharing this with us. I’m really excited to see how this works out.   Greg:Thanks man. I really appreciate you having me.   [0:20:01] Tim:Thanks for listening to this episode of ConversionCast. If you liked what you heard here today, we have something awesome that we want to send you. Our amazing team has created a free reference guide for you with every single split test and piece of conversion data that we have access to here at ConversionCast. This free booklet is packed with incredible case studies and real metrics from real people to show you what’s really working across multiple industries right now. This is the kind of information you won’t find anywhere else. As one of our listeners, we want to give you a copy of this book absolutely free. You can get your copy right now by going to ConversionCastGift.com. Again that’s ConversionCastGift.com. Go there now and pick up your copy and we’ll see you next time.