Bradley Will 5:07
Yeah, so that’s a great question as a company we had worked with locally here in Milwaukee cents 2019. And the intention was to help grow sales and create more systems to bring more people in the door. So it’s always a tricky thing, Jeremy, like, you come into a business since like, Well, what do you do first? Like, where do you put efforts?
Jeremy Weisz 5:34
Why are they contacting you? What did they want, they just want more clients.
Bradley Will 5:37
I contacted them. As when I first had come here to Milwaukee and was reaching out and I was like, if there’s any one business, I was a customer. And, you know, I was like, if there’s any one business locally, because we do a lot of digital businesses. And so for me doing moving to local businesses was new. So that was it. It was literally like, if there’s any one business I could work with, who would it be? They came to mind, I send a cold email. And like, it’s probably like a 30 minute recorded video of like things to do to improve the marketing. Got me in a meeting with the owner, we sat down, and
Jeremy Weisz 6:21
let’s break that down for a second. So it was a cold email, right? So I want to know what you elements you put in that cold email to get their attention. And then obviously, you end up working with them. And just briefly, for people that don’t know what a float spa is, just describe what that what that means.
Bradley Will 6:39
Yeah, it’s a pretty cool experience. So it’s like a open pool, or a closed and closed pod like a hydraulic pod. And it’s designed to remove all sensory input. So that your body has the ultimate opportunity to be in the most relaxed state. See you the lights are out. The sound is it’s soundproof, the water is the same temperature as your skin, you float. And it’s like you’re literally sometimes can feel like you’re floating in outer space. That’s how is foster
Jeremy Weisz 7:16
phobic. Is that an issue or? No?
Bradley Will 7:18
It’s because they have open pools in the pods, you know, you can’t really see but yeah,
Jeremy Weisz 7:24
it sounds scary, like they close it over you, I have to try it one of these days.
Bradley Will 7:28
And yeah, it’s like, it’s like hydraulic, it’s like this, right. So like, you can literally push it up with two fingers got the lid, but the lid, it’s designed to keep the temperature controlled in there. So it’s, it’s a cool experience, you know, if anybody’s watching this hasn’t checked it out, go look at your local float centers. So you can say, I often say Jeremy, like, the day after, I feel like, you know, one of those times we sleep like 14 hours like, and you’re like, a little bit kind of exhausted from that. That’s kind of what I feel like afterwards
Jeremy Weisz 7:59
to try it. cold email. So what was in that cold email that got the owners attention, Then how’d that conversation go?
Bradley Will 8:09
I think, you know, it started with like, there was a mistake. And I was on the list of like a coupon code that was like given free stuff away. And I let them know about that. And he was very generous of that. And like gave me a free float and whatnot. So
Jeremy Weisz 8:26
so one is you opted into their list to see what they’re doing. I mean, you were also a real life customer. I mean, you were doing it genuinely but but that was the first thing you did, to see how you can help.
Bradley Will 8:39
Yeah, brands that I’m interested in things that I’m interested in that are they’re fun. And then second. From there, you know, when when that came up, I was like, this would be a lot of fun to break it up, because we’re doing email campaigns and all kinds of digital marketing. So this will be fun. And I think I just recorded, I put a little Google slide presentation, you know, just like, pasted in some stats and some screenshots and so forth and walk through and say, Hey, this is how I think you can, you know, get more people buying your stuff. And I know because I’m a customer, and if you have any interest in talking this stuff over, I’m happy to connect with you further. So it was really just focused on service and being helpful. You know, just add value.
Jeremy Weisz 9:29
And at first it was like some coupon link and then from there, you’re like you dug deeper into their, their website. What were some of the things you put in that presentation? Was it things in the email copy wasn’t on their website? I don’t know if you remember what were some of the things you included?
Bradley Will 9:47
That’s a really good question. I don’t remember what was in there. I could probably find the presentation and be super embarrassed about it. But I think it was, you know, focusing probably since I was on the medalist, and I do email marketing, it was focused on email, and I don’t think they were running ads at the time, you know, for Facebook ads. So it was like, really just kind of missed opportunities,
Jeremy Weisz 10:12
like stuff that they are doing, that they can improve on and stuff that they should think about doing as well.
Bradley Will 10:19
Yeah, and the website was a little bit out of, I won’t say out of date, but it was just on a, you know, just a weird platform, that it didn’t have much flexibility, it was very rigid on what they can do, and put content and stuff like that. So it was a kind of a bunch of suggestions made. So it was like
Jeremy Weisz 10:43
me some suggestions on the website, the email, and then other opportunities, like paid traffic that you saw that they that are, could help them expand, and then you go into the conversation. And you’re you know, I know you because you’re super generous, and you’re just there to help talk about that transition from okay. You know, I don’t know what the best analogy is maybe the friend zone, like I’m in the friend zone, right. So like helping as a friend and then getting to transitioning that to let’s work together.
Bradley Will 11:13
You don’t like for me, that’s been a really easy transition. And I say this, because when I go into something into like a project, I go into it, where I already am thinking like, can I work with this person for the next 10 years. So I’m in I’m thinking such a long term game. And I expressed that like, even to the client, like I’m, I’m willing to be in the trenches with you and grow this with you. You know, and you could see me as like a partner, but still an agency. So I feel like, you know, that really disarms people, you know, business owners, like, this just demonstrates trust, they feel like this is a person I can trust, and I don’t do it as a show, I do it because I truly care about these things, I’m interested in it. And I feel like they just feel that and I say, Look, if this is helpful, like, the this, when I do like webinars and such, the transition that I make is like, if you’re gonna sell anything, somebody’s got to be bought into the model of what you’re selling. First, the model is different than the solution, the model is likely contained in the solution, but they got to be bought into this concept of digital marketing, you know, doing things consistently over time, you know, closing some of these gaps, and that’s your way to success. And if they’re already bought into that model, it’s like, well, you can go out there and hunt down other agencies that do that, or, you know, if you want somebody local here that can help you come into the shop, then, you know, I’m your guy and where your team. And so it’s, that’s how I do any selling is sell the model, and then present the solution and let them make an educated decision.
Jeremy Weisz 13:10
Yeah. And then you kind of say, you know, I’m willing to wait around, like, you know, I can see us working for a while, so there’s no rush, you know, you, you give them add value and go listen, if you don’t want to work together now, you know, I’ll wait around for 10 years, and we’ll work together feature,
Bradley Will 13:27
that kind of, I mean, I laugh and it’s like, 100%, how it goes. And, you know, like when usually when we give a proposal out, it’s, you know, for the most time it’s accepted, and but we’re not putting blasting proposals out to everybody. We’re very selective and transparent. That will tell somebody if it’s not a fit up front. But you’re right. It’s like, Yeah, no worries, no stress.
Jeremy Weisz 13:52
Let’s talk about some of the email stuff specifically with the float spa. Yeah. Right. Because, you know, you’re an email savant, with automation, what are some of the things people should be thinking about? For their email campaigns?
Bradley Will 14:09
I think, you know, from a business owner, perspective, is, you know, number one, like take take it from somebody that’s been in this industry for over a decade. Is that emails for most of our clients and I’m sure Jeremy, you see, this email probably influences like 75% of sales, like hands down, there is nothing over time, it’s the most boring thing and it just continues to produce and like, I don’t see any drop off to where it’s like, you know, like engagement on Facebook versus you still gonna get you know, if you’re consistent at it, you can still get 30% open rates. Now, what other kind of distribution channel this is the The first thing is like viewing and as you know, the distribution channel, and it’s kind of like a bank account, right? And it’s like, you can’t just extract, extract, extract, extract, extract, and you’ll burn through that list so fast. And so you have to find the proper cadence for your business to keep the distribution channel open. What does that mean? It keeps open rates consistent, so that when you have a message, or a sale or promotion, because every business will have different schedules on how they promote, and you know, so forth. But for seasonal sale, you can say, hey, I’m going to do a once per month newsletter, and add value, value value, and then maybe once a quarter, you’re coming in with like a three email sequence that is focused on selling very transparent about it, talent, you know, and we have a whole cadence for just doing a, like a sales sequence and how we approach that. But I think that’s the first thing, you know, Jeremy is like how you view email as like distribution and communication and like really respecting it. And when you respect it, you maintain it? Well, like you take care of it, like you nurture it, you keep it well organized, because you know, it pays dividends, I think a lot of people just kind of burn through, you know, emails and email lists.
Jeremy Weisz 16:26
You mentioned those kids of value, your value, and then there’s a cadence of selling. Let’s talk about the selling for a second, because you said okay, whatever, let’s say it’s like once every two weeks, you have a really just adding value, here’s how you can relax in the crazy COVID world for the float spawn, there’s like actual tools and tips and things. And then the quarter comes around, and you’re gonna give some kind of selling, I don’t know what it is, maybe it’s a package or whatever it is, and whatever is compelling. And you mentioned, you don’t want to burn the list. So I love for you to talk about the selling because you mentioned a three step sequence. Some people may go well, rarely, I don’t want to burn the list. Can I just send one? Or like why? What’s the philosophy around that? And what do you recommend from when you are ready to sell?
Bradley Will 17:18
Yeah, I think we, you know, number one, it starts with data. So like, we dive heavily and do you know, like analysis on past sales. So we don’t we try to not come into something blindly, if there’s something that we can latch into, as far as like x sailed had x emails and you know, X, you know, revenue, right? Try to build a hypothesis from there on how to approach those emails, meaning, you only want to send as many emails as you have to. So like, on we had a really successful sale one time, and we had emails already written ready to go. And we went to the owner, say, Hey, we’re doing really well, you want to send this final email, we cut the last email, because it was enough. And knowing what’s enough, and now how many
Jeremy Weisz 18:06
sales is enough extra owner? Three,
Bradley Will 18:09
yeah, well, you know, shattering the goals is enough, you know, and it’s like, I’m satisfied and No, still new to where you don’t want to push so hard that you burn everybody out for the next one. So that’s more of like intuition. Enough. So you know, I say that because it’s not as easy for everybody to just say, like, I’m going to look at these numbers. And but, you know, number one, like that cadence is going to look like tell him it’s coming. So we don’t want to just blindside with an open cart, tell him it’s here. Tell him it’s closing. It’s a pretty simple three, you know, just if you’re going to do three emails and on a sales sequence, and nothing in between, you know, those three things announcing so they can’t have it building anticipation, you know, for the thing, allowing people to plan mentally to buy this thing. Now, not revealing too much of the details, you know, like all the details of it, tell them it’s here. Hey, so open, go ahead. And then tell him his closing maybe the day before or hours before. And then you know, adding on to that, you know, as you know, you can have emails in between whatever you want. But we try to, as sometimes business owners need to lengthen their sales window of like, we got to keep it open longer. So more people come. We try to condense it down as small as we possibly can have that sales window so there’s less time on sales, so we can focus on other stuff.
Jeremy Weisz 19:53
And also, it’s probably 8020 I imagine like 80% of people buy as it’s closing anyway, so people think they keep and longer more people are gonna buy. But I don’t know, if you have found the data showing, well, maybe some people buy in the beginning, but most people buy towards the end anyways.
Bradley Will 20:08
Yeah, I think that’s an accurate assessment, you know, like you’ve seen it, we see it, you know, like what we, what we do is like, for example, if like, there’s a sale, that’s like 14 days long, let’s say, Okay, how many sales came in every single day? And how much revenue was attributed to those sales and kind of look at it on like a little chart, right, and sales per day? And what we started noticing was that, you know, wow, there was like, barely any sales on like, four days, that I’m just making up this this situation? Okay, well, what if we just crunched the sale by four days? Like, what’s the point? We’re not emailing about it? In those four days? It’s just open, like, Are people randomly going to come to the website and find it? No, they’re hearing about it on social on ads on. So it’s a multi tiered approach, but we don’t try to drastically, like, create anything new or, you know, crazy, it’s like, let’s just try these three things, cut the sale time down, let’s, you know, send this email at a different time, let’s reposition this. But it’s kind of our approach is just linking back to the data. And when you do it year over year, then you have another benchmark to compare to, of like, okay, we did it, and then, you know, improving upon there to get a little granular with this Braley. So
Jeremy Weisz 21:32
what’s your philosophy on an unopened? Right? So let’s say there’s 2000 people that you’re sending this to? And like you said, you get 30%. Right. So 300, open it. Do you ever resend in this campaign to the unopened? Or do you just kind of let it, let it be,
Bradley Will 21:53
I usually don’t send to reopens. I don’t want to train people to be this annoying person in the inbox. I’m trying to train people to clamor to like, open that email. So we you know, like with the newsletter emails, we you know, like for this client in particular, over time, you know, it takes it’s taken years, but now the audience is we have spectacular open rates on these, you know, monthly newsletters, and you know, for unopened, there’s a lot of things to consider, you know, for a business owner to consider you got to consider like, Are you local? Are you, you know, like a digital business? Are these customers? Are these not customers? Because I’m not going to? I’m not gonna, you know, just keep blowing up customers inboxes their customers, you want to keep them engaged and on the list and not unsubscribing? So if it were leads, then maybe, and, you know, might, you know, or might try a different angle, like, you know, knock knock, are you still there, type approach. But that yeah, that’s kind of my, my belief is really good segmentation and knowing who’s on the list.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 23:09
Let’s talk about lists for a second, because I know when you talk about procedures, in an email campaign, you you get, you know, you talk about naming conventions, the client organization lists, tags, and then sales pipeline and automations. Let’s go in the middle with lists, right? Because you made a really good distinction of, if it’s a customer list, you may treat it different from a leads list. So if you want to talk a little about some of the naming conventions, and like, what will be an example of lists that you’d want someone to keep so they can easily shoot off emails to specific segments?
Bradley Will 23:49
Yeah, I think the one common piece across at least the businesses that I see is like you’ve got to have current customer lists. So meaning like updating or having a staff member, update, the CRM, excuse me, the CRM, to have the most up to date thing, or the most up to date client records, because we get into so many accounts and you know, talk to somebody the other day, and she was CEO, and she’s like, I don’t want to show you, I’m embarrassed on what’s you’re about to see. I’m like, You would be surprised on how messy business owners are moving fast like they’re CRMs, almost nine times out of 10 are a mess, and that’s okay. But you know, getting those principles in place to like, if you’re gonna have one, one principle, we’re going to keep immaculate records on our customers. We want to know who is a customer if you have like a retainer, business and inactive, actives. inactives And you know, if you can do any segmentation, if you have like variances and price difference, let’s say it’s like a $10,000 product or service versus like a $50, you definitely want to be able to, you know, segment out those higher tier clients, and then you’re leaderless people that have not purchased anything. Like if you do those two things, and like you mentioned naming convention, literally, every platform is gonna be a little different. But if you named it customer, literally the word customer or client, hyphen, product, called My naming conventions here on my screen. So it’s like the constant customer, the variable, which can be the, you know, product or the different service that’s offered. And then, you know, maybe if there’s any other relevant data, you know, after that, and then lead, you know, then or prospect and then hyphen variable, which could be whatever landing page or lead source that they came in, or phone call, or
Jeremy Weisz 26:09
would that happen automatically through this?
Bradley Will 26:12
I mean, yeah, like a lot of systems that we build, we try to automate as much of that as humanly possible. Obviously, if, you know, some people have like phone calls coming in, there’s, you got to merge the automations with a manual process, but we try to bring that, you know, the water’s edge, right? You know, close to the person that is going to be doing any changing of things.
Jeremy Weisz 26:38
So let’s use the example of active campaign. And maybe we’ll talk about a couple different ones, I’d love to hear what tools that you like, for for email. But let’s say someone buys a $10,000 product, you would have it. So it’s goes into that list, if someone buys this product, so it’s already you name, the convention, customer dash 10,000 product or something. And so anyone who buys that, you would automatically if they bought it, let’s say there’s an ad campaign, it goes into that list. Right? Same thing. Is that Is that accurate? Yeah. Yeah.
Bradley Will 27:15
Because, you know, like, Active Campaign, which is why I like it a lot. Just for small businesses. It’s a very feature rich platform for the cost. It’s very similar to HubSpot. HubSpot, it’s definitely a much, you know, more premium platform. Active Campaign doesn’t do checkouts. Right. So you can’t purchase an Active Campaign, you need to check out software ecommerce software. So let’s say you’re using something like Stripe or what’s one of the big ones out there censored car? Yeah. Or, you know, use something like Click Funnels or other, you know, shopping cart tools. Usually those can be passed together through something like Zapier, or like a direct integration so that when they purchase, you know, whatever software you’re using, you can either pass them directly into Active Campaign using Zapier, Zapier just sends the data between platforms. And then or you can, you know, pass if it’s something that you know, somebody’s using something that is not friendly. You can pass it to like a Google sheet, and then into Active Campaign and manage it from there.
Jeremy Weisz 28:37
Yep. Yeah. And I want encourage people to dig I did actually interview the founder of Active Campaign, Jason Van der boom on the podcast. So it was really interesting episode, where he talked about putting the customer experience first. And they’ve been growing like crazy, but that I could see that so
Bradley Will 28:55
yeah, I was gonna say on that note, they have fantastic customer service, and they’re right there in Chicago, and I don’t have a I have a little bias to them. But like, you know, we were having some issues, you know, with and this is a good thing too. When switching platforms. We just ran into this issue, which was new is that we had a huge open rates and moving to Active Campaign, and this is just a thing with any switchover. So not specific to Active Campaign. The deliverability dropped the open rate dropped significantly. Like
Jeremy Weisz 29:30
why is very, very low.
Bradley Will 29:31
What’s that?
Why is that?
There is a a long list of you know, reasons why a lot of different variables, which is probably probably too technical to go into, but usually like people, I’ll sum it up like people are trained, like, like if you’re delivering from MailChimp, you’re in like two Gmail accounts. They’re essentially like trained to receive it from this and now they’re receiving it from a new email service provider.
Jeremy Weisz 30:07
So it may go into one of the other folders it may go into social media or promotions because it’s used to a certain provider.
Bradley Will 30:14
Yeah, and I’m not an email deliverability expert, but their support team like wrote us a huge email and like providing all this insight and we’re like, do this is fantastic on the inside. And the reason excuse me the reasons why. Yeah, what’s happening? So what are the
Jeremy Weisz 30:32
other platforms you see people using? So Active Campaign HubSpot? Are there any others that are popular that you are you because you, you know, you’re agnostic, you’ll go in, you’ll help the clients whatever they’re using, obviously, I’ll make suggestions. Are there any others that are popular out
Bradley Will 30:48
there? I mean HubSpot, which I am talking about just for like CRM,
Jeremy Weisz 30:54
you CRM and email. Yeah, exactly.
Bradley Will 30:59
HubSpot, MailChimp. You know, a lot of our clients will be on like, kind of like a starter plan, I call them like starter platform like MailChimp, because you’ll reach some point, even with a large lists that there’s only so many things that you can do. And then we kind of migrate to Active Campaign from there. But you know, like for e-commerce brands, we use Klaviyo, which is a really cool platform, especially if you have a lot of SK use. And yeah, I mean, we’re you know, this besides like those three, that’s pretty much what we’re down to is like MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, HubSpot and Klaviyo.
Jeremy Weisz 31:44
So back to the naming for a second. So obviously, it’s ideal, it gets automated somehow, either there’s a direct integration or Zapier with someone purchases but but it seems like it’s kind of broken up into, you can get really granular with the type of product or it’s like, customer dash VIP, if they’re above a certain amount, or whatever the product is, and then maybe customer dash below a certain amount. So you can kind of segment the customer base, and then inactive. So customer dash inactive, I guess then you can push those to inactive. And then the lead list, so I’m not sure if there’s more segmentation that you typically Oh, I guess where it comes from. So it was lead dash form on the website, maybe it’s lead dash a landing page, maybe it’s lead dash, wherever it’s coming from, and that can also be go into a certain you may treat them differently. If someone called I guess, then someone came in from a Facebook ad from a landing page.
Bradley Will 32:44
Is that? Yeah, yeah, I think like starting with priority, like what is the most like, that’s kind of where we look at everything, right? Like, what is the highest value customers to the business. Like for a lot of businesses that could be subscription revenue, or, you know, like retainer revenue. And then like starting and work your way down to like the least, I won’t say the least important but least impactful on the on the business. And then for leads, you know, like, let’s say you have some kind of qualification. And that could be revenue qualification, or something like that. You could segment by having a list of just like, even if you start with just the best, hottest audience all the sudden, this like complex idea, like what we try to do is like serve it up on a silver platter for like the decision maker of like, wow, I’ve got 72 people that meet this criteria. Like, if I’m doing anything in my business today, I’m having conversations, either directly or in a email blast to these folks right here. So that’s, you know, that’s kind of how we segment it can get super granular also with, you know, Active Campaign is kind of cool. And HubSpot is the same as that you can do site tracking. So like, if you’re doing a promotion to people already on your list, instead of having them opt in, you can set up a smart list that will build a list of people that have visited a certain page on your site, and you just install a little piece of code to be able to do that and track that.
Jeremy Weisz 34:27
You know, it’s funny, because so I did an interview with Brian Kurtz. I know you know, Brian Kurtz as well. He send billions of direct mail pieces and he talks about this on the best ways to segment the list for a business he talks exactly what you said which is RFM, recency, frequency and then monetary and that if you do those, you look at the segmenting through that which is basically what you’re sort of automating with this process is the most recent most frequent buyer and then they spent the most money those are Your best buyers right in at 20. World. Yeah.
Bradley Will 35:02
So I liked it, I liked the way that you put it. That’s a much, much more intelligent way to put it.
Jeremy Weisz 35:09
No, I It’s not mine. Thank you, Brian Brian Kurtz for that. But um, but the way you broke it down is very actionable within someone’s, I mean, you’re sort of automating this piece, in a sense through what you’re doing with the campaign, which is cool, because then you don’t have to worry about it as much.
Bradley Will 35:30
Yeah, in into your, the RFM. You know, for us. And for business owners, really, it starts with confidence and trust. And if six months, a year goes by, of working on the lowest impact things and lowest result things, usually, you know, it’s going to create a little bit, maybe stress and frustration. So we try to, you know, by focusing on those segments, and let’s say having a successful promotion, it builds confidence between the two partnerships between the agency between the business and builds excitement, and builds excitement for us, because we’re always going into something new. Jeremy, you do deal with podcasts you want to see wins for your clients. And so we’ve just tried to focus on things that are going to create the biggest ones the fastest. Other certain,
Jeremy Weisz 36:19
you know, so we talked about lists, can naming conventions. I love to talk about tags, sales, pipeline automation. Start with tags, just Oh, really? What What should we think people should be thinking about as far as tagging goes? In their email? Or?
Bradley Will 36:39
Okay, so this is going to be very specific to Active Campaign. So number one disclaimer on this conversation, what you’re about to hear, needs to be relevant to your platform. But for Active Campaign, a tag is going to be something that so like lists, the way lists work in Active Campaign is they control like automations and deal pipelines. So the lists are like, you know, going to be customer and lead focused and you know, product ascension and cancel is canceled canceling things. So they’re going to be like the starting point, tags are, we use more so for, like dates, or things that are just like notes in the account, things that are gonna come off, on and off. And we’re not worried about losing? As far as like data goes, like tags can get very messing in accounts. So we find dealer. Right? Yeah, they get granular
Jeremy Weisz 37:47
will be an example of like a tag, you’d use that, because you really tag is there. So you could segment the list to send a specific population, right?
Bradley Will 37:57
Yeah, we use them a little bit differently. We try because every, I mean, yes, you can segment by tags, and segment, and it’s easy to find people. But what I find, and what our team finds is that tags really get messy. There’s not really a good convention. So we, we put most of our weight into lists, and then put as much data in the contact records as we possibly can, if that makes sense. And then what’s leftover, or if we need to, like do functional, you know, type thing, like something real quick to segment people, then we use tags. I know, I understand everybody’s gonna be different. It’s just like, there is no sense rhyme or reason to how people use are using tags in the CRMs. And so it’s just a huge mess. So we try to limit tags as much as possible. What would
Jeremy Weisz 38:48
be an example of like, okay,
Bradley Will 38:51
tag, like, that you’ve used? And, okay, it’s
Jeremy Weisz 38:55
tag. Yeah, like you saying gets messy. You don’t want to do it too much, because you really are segmenting it via the list. But what will be a tag that you’ve used? Like, okay, this is a good, good use case for a tag.
Bradley Will 39:09
For example, there’s a there’s a client, and then they do they do these workshops, leadership workshops. And we use, like, for example, you know, let’s say they do it once per quarter, we could say, October workshop, October 22 workshop or something like that. That’s how we would use data.
Jeremy Weisz 39:33
Um, and then what about thoughts on the sales pipeline? When you’re again, setting up it could be an active campaign. There’s a lot of different pipeline. CRM so
Bradley Will 39:46
you can use this thoughts on a pipeline. Yeah,
Jeremy Weisz 39:51
like as far as when you’re setting up a campaign. I know you. One of the categories that you think about is is the sales pipeline Are you setting up in Active Campaign also? And, and what are you recommending?
Bradley Will 40:08
Yeah, the so the sales pipeline is, you know, it’s like kind of like multifunction, it’s, it’s a great visual tool, it’s kind of like in stages, they see like, you know, lead, had phone call sales call, you know, like, develop out the stages. So it’s a really good visual way to see how much money is closed, how much is left on the table, because you can assign a deal to each contact record and say, Hey, this deal is worth 2000 bucks. And it for a business owner, like I try to go to like a CEO perspective, like Jeremy, if I’m organizing your business. And I make a tally of everybody that your team has spoken to on the phone. And let’s just say I don’t know anything about your business. But let’s say each is an average deal value of $2,000. And I can show you a visual list of all the people that you are yet to follow up with. And that’s like $100,000 in revenue. You might be like, Yeah, let’s have follow up conversations here. I don’t want to do anything else. Let’s get these people moving to the to the next stage or, you know, off if they’re not the right fit. So deals is a really easy way to navigate where somebody’s at in the buyers journey. And it works really well I think for for higher ticket, especially that one on one process.
Jeremy Weisz 41:42
Yeah, I mean, there’s various tools for that I’ve had the the founder of Pipedrive on and they do that. But ActiveCampaign actually also does that, which is kind of cool. You can set up the, the in the deal, you could set up the kind of a sales pipeline, right? So if it’s like a new per contact, or and then they schedule an appointment, and then you set the proposal, and then they signed it, you can set up all of those in move people along in that pipeline.
Bradley Will 42:09
Yeah, for sure. For sure. And you know, like active campaigns cool, because having it and I know, I haven’t used Pipedrive. And this is like the fun conversation everybody loves to have about the technology and what’s which is best. And for Active Campaign, I don’t have comparisons to it, it’s just, it’s nice to have it in there. And then I’m sure if like, there’s an advanced, you know, feature set of that it doesn’t cover. But, you know, then you explore another platform, but it yeah, it works really well for for those for the stages of the pipeline. And what’s cool is like, you can use automations to control the deals, too, as well. You know, so like, if somebody registers for like a free training, you can automatically open up a new deal in the sales pipeline, if they come in as a lead or something like that. Or let’s say you have three different tiers, to your programs, you have a third service, that’s 1000 5000 10,000. As soon as you close the sale on the 1000, you might automatically open up a deal for the next stage. If it’s a natural ascension, you know, to the next products or services.
Jeremy Weisz 43:25
Or some things when you go into someone, let’s say somebody’s Active Campaign, you’re digging around in there. What are some of the the low hanging fruit automations that people are typically don’t even know exist? Or they’re not using that they should?
Bradley Will 43:42
Oh, that’s a really good question. I would do a universal welcome sequence. All new customers and all new leads. And something that is profound. Like just imagine everybody in your everybody, all your competitors. Everybody is using like email. And it’s just like, in this case, kinda like in the same way. And it’s a really great opportunity for you to stand out and leave a mark as somebody comes into your ecosystem. And that email could really be more about your brand, no calls to action, what you stand for, you know, thanking them and really just, you know, talking about the mission and you know, how you can be of service to them. And I feel like that’s just like something that you can leave a mark and that they’ll keep in their inbox and maybe go go back to at some point and you could add additional emails to that. But usually, you know, you got to think for bigger businesses. That first email is the most usually the most opened email They have some really nailing it, like Welcome to our community or our business, I think is a powerful one. And the other one is I think we’ve had quite a bit of success with like customer review campaigns. And automating that process. So like after somebody comes in for a visit, or they purchase a product or just right at the right time, sending, you know, follow up with the next stages on, you know what to do. And we try to prevent as many negative reviews on like, let’s say Google, for example. So like giving him directing to the website, did you have a poor experience? Do you have good experience? Yeah. Good expires leaves a
Jeremy Weisz 45:44
review, the poor experience goes to the contact form.
Bradley Will 45:49
Yeah. Is that right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Um,
Jeremy Weisz 45:53
so universal welcome sequence. Do you think of that when you picture that you think of that is just the initial email? Are you picturing that as like, once a week for three weeks? What what would be a good cadence to start with? Start with one,
Bradley Will 46:07
most business owners this got to get get that one nailed. And just start with one because I know we, we think like, we got to build the sequences. And that’s where it gets, like, really overwhelming are like funnels and upsells. And this is like, you know, you know, who’s got a really fantastic, I’ve never had their product. But we were doing some research company called Mud water. Um, you just Google it. midwater? Yeah, I’ve seen the ads on Facebook. Yeah, their ads, get on their list, given a free endorsement, so I have no affiliation with their company. I don’t know anything about what they do. But I was really impressed with how they approach their universal welcome email. That’s what we call it universal welcome, email. And it is a beautifully short, like nicely crafted email from the I think the CEO, there’s an image at the top of it, which is a steal of a video. And then that video, the only link in there goes to a video on their YouTube channel, which is really like their Brand Story Video. And it’s like the popular emotional piece. And they did such a fantastic job with that. You know, so anything that can help communicate that brand story and help people fall in love with your brand. You know, whether it’s a personal or business brand, help them fall in love with you. Bradley,
Jeremy Weisz 47:34
I know, this could go on for another two hours. But we’re limited on time. Because there’s so much here that I wanted to ask you about the floats by now you’ve helped educational companies you’ve helped stuff with with Lewis house and in his company, and also a co working space in a book funnel. I just wanted to kind of end with some big mistakes people make, you know, obviously, not having a universal welcome sequence in general. But what are some of the when you go in and you like you have that owner? Go listen, rally? I have to warn you. It’s going to be messy inside? What are some of the big mistakes? You’re seeing that? Here’s, here’s what you should do off the bat, right? Okay, do the universal welcome sequence, what
Bradley Will 48:22
else are the big mistakes that people are missing? Or maybe they’re doing wrong, that we haven’t talked about? I say, clean up your account, whether it’s you or somebody else, or you hire a professional like us, like just clean up your account, because you gotta imagine if you want growth, like it’s got to be done at some point
Jeremy Weisz 48:43
to when you say clean up the account, you’re talking like segmenting, like getting the proper people on the right list?
Bradley Will 48:49
Yeah, because like a lot of our time, then you pay somebody, you know, high dollar to do you know, stuff that is it, you know, just common administrative work. Sometimes that can take weeks to like, sort through customer lists and segment and who’s active, who’s not so clean up the account. And, you know, I’m gonna go a little bit off track with the second recommendation, Jeremy is like, yeah, cleanup segmentation, but it’s like, it’s literally tried to go further into the future as possible, and make decision making from the long game. It’s like, had a conversation on marketing last night, and it was like, not about the funnel. It’s about where’s the where’s this going? Where’s this business going? What is the long game of it? Because it gives you more patience to like, like, for example, I mentioned that that switch over to a new email service provider. They’re like, hey, you’ll probably get back to normal but it’s going to take probably months to get back to your, your your numbers, and you might surpass it at that point. And sometimes when you zoom out, this technical conversation about email and everything like that, it gets a little less heavy, gets a little lighter and easier to navigate and play the long game of, okay, let’s focus on valuable content. And we know it’s not going to have an immediate, you know, dollar for dollar ROI. But we know that ROI is coming. You know, as part of the long game and strategy of where are we going? What is our mission? What are we doing 5 10 years down the road. I
Jeremy Weisz 50:25
love it. Bradley, first of all, thank you, everyone can check out more episodes of the podcast, they could check out Rise25 And you could check out Riseable.com And what Bradley is doing there. So Bradley, always a pleasure. Thank you,
Bradley Will 50:41
Jeremy. Appreciate you. Thank you
