[Top Agency Series & SaaS Series] Unlocking Lead Generation Secrets With Eric Evans

Eric Evans is the CEO of HyperTarget Marketing, a performance marketing agency specializing in generating leads for industries such as legal, insurance, and financial services. He is also the CEO and Co-founder of Pipes.ai, an AI-powered sales engagement platform that automates and optimizes lead follow-up processes. With a background in performance marketing and technology development, Eric builds innovative solutions that transform how businesses connect with customers to drive conversions.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [04:24] Eric Evans talks about HyperTarget Marketing’s unique performance-driven business model
• [08:43] How Pipes.ai was created and evolved into a sales engagement platform
• [13:46] Challenges businesses face with timely lead follow-ups
• [15:33] Key features of Pipes.ai that boost automation and conversions
• [17:03] What the lead generation process looks like from the customer’s perspective
• [23:02] How AI improves calls, voicemails, and follow-up processes
• [31:25] Resources, tools, and mentors that shaped Eric’s entrepreneurial journey
• [35:31] The importance of company culture and how Eric fosters integrity and collaboration within his teams
• [38:47] Key hires that helped scale HyperTarget Marketing and Pipes.ai

In this episode…

Lead generation and customer engagement techniques are evolving faster than ever, with technology transforming how businesses connect with potential clients. In an age where speed and personalization are critical, how can companies ensure they’re reaching the right people at the right time — and converting them into loyal customers?

According to Eric Evans, customer acquisition and AI technology leader, the key lies in leveraging AI-driven systems that combine speed, precision, and automation. He highlights that businesses often lose valuable leads due to delayed follow-ups or inefficient processes. AI-powered platforms like Pipes.ai can solve this by streamlining lead nurturing through automated SMS, calls, and voicemails. By integrating smart technology into their workflows, companies can enhance lead conversion rates while creating a seamless and effective customer journey. 

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz meets with Eric Evans, CEO of HyperTarget Marketing and Co-founder and CEO of Pipes.ai, to discuss how AI is revolutionizing lead generation and customer engagement. They dive into the importance of “speed to lead,” the power of automation to simplify workflows, and how personalized follow-ups can turn prospects into long-term clients.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Eric Evans on LinkedIn
• Pipes.ai
• HyperTarget Marketing

Special Mention(s):

• HubSpot
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni
• Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You by John Warrillow
• Jeff Carpenter on LinkedIn
• Donald Addington on LinkedIn

Related episode(s):

• “Building a Great Team and More Helpful Insights with Jason Swenk” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[EO Austin] How To Create Super Users” with Rich Walker on the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast
• “[Top Agency Series] How To Build People-Driven Brands With Rusty Shelton” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “EO Tulsa | Real Estate Investment With Mat Zalk of Keyrenter Property Management” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Automation Solutions with Wade Foster Founder of Zapier” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Pipedrive: Brain Surgery, Married, & Moved Company from Estonia to U.S. All at Once – with Urmas Purde” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Sweet Process Series] How to Build a Business That Can Thrive Without You with John Warrillow of Built to Sell” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Black Business Leaders Series] Insource: How to Increase Efficiency with Existing Staff and Rapidly Onboard New Staff with Owen McGab Enaohwo of SweetProcess” on the Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable Moments

• “We always sell exclusive leads by nature; we’re collecting that person’s information and then finding the best match for them.”
• “Attorneys are good at providing legal services — not necessarily experts at marketing or follow-up in a timely manner.”
• “I always felt like I was working as a free product manager for other companies, constantly giving feedback and feature requests.”
• “There’s so much horsepower put into just getting people on the phone to have good conversations.”
• “We wanted to keep the marketing team involved through the whole journey and allow split-testing of the follow-up process.”

Action Steps

1. Embrace “speed to lead” with automation: Implementing AI tools can ensure quick follow-ups with potential clients, increasing the chance of conversion by engaging leads when their interest is highest.
2. Integrate marketing and sales efforts: Use seamless integration between marketing campaigns and sales follow-up processes to ensure consistent communication and reduce lead losses.
3. Focus on high-integrity actions: Make integrity a core company value, ensuring transparency and trust in all business dealings. This enhances client relationships and the company’s reputation. 
4. Harness the power of AI for engagement: Utilize AI-driven tools to handle initial customer inquiries and follow-up processes, reducing strain on human resources while maintaining high engagement.
5. Continuous optimization of customer touchpoints: Regularly test and refine communication sequences to enhance customer engagement and maximize conversion rates.

Episode Transcript

Intro 00:00

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 00:22

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here founder of inspiredinsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Today is no different. I have Eric Evans. You can check out his companies at I and HyperTargetMarketing.com. Eric, before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out.

This is kind of like a combination, right? It’s top. I have a top agency series, which Eric is. I have a top SaaS series, which Eric is, and I have an EO series, which Eric is. So, you know, when you have these serial entrepreneurs, they fit into multiple categories.

So a couple top agency episodes people can check out. I did one with Jason Swenk. Jason Swenk built up his agency to eight figures and sold it. Then he started an agency group and helping agency owners. It’s kind of the group he wish he had when he first started.

And he also has been buying up agencies, which was interesting to hear. The space agency space. That’s a good one in that realm. And the EO profile one I had Rich Walker on, Rich Walker of EO Austin. Amazing guys.

You know, he’s got a great software. He really focused on customer support and service. His podcast so you can check him out. And Rusty Shelton was another one from EO Austin. And he’s got a great story.

Zilker media. And then Matt Zalk of EO Tulsa was also a great story from the SaaS side. I had one of the co-founders of Zapier on. That was a really interesting episode, how they built that up. And one of the co-founders of Pipedrive, you know, Eric, when I first had him on, I think they had 10,000 customers.

Now they have over 100,000 customers. So they’ve grown, you know, quite a bit. So check out more on inspired Insider.com. This episode is brought to you by Rise25. Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. How do we do that? We do that by helping you run your podcast. We’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. And we do the accountability, the strategy and the full execution.

And Eric, we call ourselves the magic elves that run in the background and make it look easy for the host so they can create amazing content, create amazing relationships, most importantly, focus on running their business. For me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking at ways on how to give to my best relationships, and I have really found no better way over the past decade to profile the people and the companies I most admire and share with the world what they’re working on. So if you’ve thought about podcasting, you should. If you have questions, go to rise25.com or email us at [email protected].

I am super excited to introduce Eric Evans. He’s the founder of both HyperTarget Marketing and HyperTarget Marketing is a performance marketing agency focused on legal. They’ve helped many different companies in legal, insurance, financial, all over the place. And we’re going to dig into that because I think, Eric, you have a really interesting business model from an agency perspective. Also, it is a cutting-edge sales engagement platform that automates the process of connecting with customers and prospects as well.

So before starting his own companies, he actually worked in Hollywood. He did special effects for blockbuster movies such as Pirates of the Caribbean. So Eric, thanks for joining me.

Eric Evans 03:52

Thanks for having me. Yeah, it’s great to be here.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 03:54

You have a very interesting journey. And even early on, you know, I’ve watched you’ve been doing this for a long time. I’ve watched videos of you from like 12 years ago. And even early on, you were building these sites that were producing like a couple thousand dollars a month, which is pretty amazing at the time. Just we’re going to get into that. But talk about HyperTarget Marketing first and what you do there.

Eric Evans 04:24

Yeah, absolutely. HyperTarget is an agency we’ve been around since 2009 as performance marketers. Started off in the paper call space as a mobile media buyers back. You know, when iPhones were brand new and, you know, learned how to drive phone calls for companies. And it’s since evolved and grown and changed with the times.

And now we own and operate a number of web brands. We buy our own media and work with a number of different partners to generate leads for companies. And we then take those leads into our own internal call center to further qualify them, get them on the phone, warm them up, and then deliver a prospect who’s, you know, very deep into their buying journey to our customers.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 05:10

With that we’ll talk about HyperTarget Marketing for a second. Are you working specifically with a company per niche? Because I know there’s lead generation companies that will serve up leads to like, here’s three potential, you know, companies that you can work with. Are you working more just with a specific company because this is you know, you’re putting your money on the line here for them. Right. So yeah.

Eric Evans 05:41

Yeah. No, it’s risky. I mean, we are proficient at what we do. And you know, we know we’re capable of doing a great job. And, and you know, and making it work from, from a profit perspective, obviously, in order to take that risk.

And so we work with a number of different companies. You know, we try not to overlap too much by geography, but, you know, different customers are looking for different things. And so we do work with a number of different companies and a few different spaces. But yeah, as you mentioned, legal and personal injury attorneys is one of our largest categories now. And we’ve got a lot of great customers there.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 06:17

Yeah, I want to dig into that because I know you work with them all over the country. But let’s take for example, like a PA attorney in California, would you when you’ll walk through kind of how it works. I’m curious if you get a lead someone who’s like a good, good prospect for the company, will you deliver that to three local companies or you’re like, listen, we’re working for this one company in this geographic area and everything we get in that geographic area, we refer to this firm.

Eric Evans 06:49

Yeah, we always sell exclusive leads, right. By exclusive nature. right? We’re collecting that person’s information. They’re requesting a follow-up from us.

We then follow up with that person, qualify them and find the best match for that person. And, you know, introduce that company. Warm, transfer them to the end person who’s going to service them. And those attorneys then have the opportunity to retain them as clients.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 07:14

I’m curious. You know, it seems like a no-brainer scenario, right? Like you’re basically putting in the money and the time and you’re qualifying them. What objections do you get from a firm with this scenario? Or maybe you’re just like, you could just choose who you want to work with and just go to them. Hey, do you want leads? And like literally you only pay for the leads that we give you?

Eric Evans 07:38

Yeah. I mean, it’s a really easy pitch, right? It’s definitely not it’s not a hard sell by any means. If someone says no, it’s you know, it’s really no big deal to us, right? It’s very low risk on their part, and we’re providing a lot of value, putting a lot of work in to get those people there.

I mean, the only objections we typically get are from people who just aren’t familiar with buying leads from third parties and might have an internal marketing team that, you know, feels like, rather than us coming in to supplement what they’re doing and help them grow, that we’re somehow competing with their internal marketing departments, that that can sometimes have some pushback to us. But at the end of the day, I mean, we’re not competing with those teams. We’re just providing additional value on top of whatever they’re doing for their own brand.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 08:24

Yeah, I want to get into the process and services because that’s kind of how I was born. So talk about let’s talk about the like a pie attorney in California, for example, and what you did with them. And then we can get into Pipes a little bit more.

Eric Evans 08:43

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, in the attorney space, attorneys are good at providing legal services, right? They’re not necessarily experts at marketing. And even if they are good at marketing, they’re not necessarily experts at following up with people in a timely manner. Or they get busy and don’t have the staffing or resources to follow up on those leads.

And so what we found, you know, was happening is we were, you know, we were driving inbound calls for companies or we were selling just leads. Like if someone had filled out a form and requested to be contacted by somebody, you know, we would then sell that lead to somebody. And, you know, oftentimes we would get the feedback that they weren’t able to get those people on the phone. And so, you know, they would come back to us and say, hey, you know, these leads aren’t quite working at the level that we were hoping. We’re not able to get these people on the phone.

And so we finally started digging in deeper and deeper over the years into why they weren’t getting these people on the phone. And there’s a number of different challenges that go into that.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 09:44

Maybe they weren’t answering the phone.

Eric Evans 09:47

They weren’t answering the phone, or they weren’t following up in a timely manner. Right. And so the, the, you know, it’s a direct downward graph from the time someone actually expresses interest and says, “hey, I need to talk to somebody, I’d like to get a call from someone.” If you don’t follow up with that person in five minutes. The odds of that person answering the phone keep going down.

And we found that, you know, people would get busy and they might not call until the next day, at which point that person’s probably already found another competitor to work with or made some other phone calls, filled out some other forms. And so that’s where we started putting more effort into doing that follow-up ourselves, not just selling the leads, but saying, hey, we’re going to generate this lead. And not only are we going to, you know, get this person information for you, we’re actually going to get them on the phone, make sure their information is correct, make sure they meet all the criteria that we know you would ask once we get them on the phone and kind of serve them up on a silver platter, and so they just need to make sure that they’re ready to answer the phone. And so we solve those challenges in a, you know, both a cost-effective and efficient way. Right.

You know, it can be expensive to hire resources to make outbound phone calls to follow up on these leads. And so that’s where types kind of came into the picture years later of finding ways to automate that through SMS and AI to make sure that we’re meeting those people right when they’re interested, getting them on the phone, qualifying them and getting them over in a way that’s super-efficient.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 11:19

I think, you know, Eric, this is instructive, I think, for any business. So I want to go through the process a little bit because it seems like the first step is obviously you became masters at paid search. It sounds like there’s some SEO as well. So do you build like custom pages for the company from like an SEO perspective as well, from a traffic perspective or like, what are all the ways that you, first of all, attract the person, the lead just to even sign up.

Eric Evans 11:49

Yeah. So we own and operate our own web brands in a number of different verticals and industries and, you know, drive traffic to our own websites that we can then optimize those consumer journeys. And, you know, get people through our own marketing funnels. And so we’re handling all of that in-house through our own web properties.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 12:09

And then those ways you do it are they combinations? I’m looking here at your page of people are watching the video but it could be paid search local listing SEO, blogging, social media, radio, all these channels display email, TV and web video. All these channels kind of to drive traffic.

Eric Evans 12:28

Yeah. So we’re yeah, we’re buying traffic and media from a number of different channels and funneling them all through our own call center and websites.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 12:37

Yeah. And so the next step is they fill out a form like you’ve created these optimized websites. Obviously you’ve been doing this back in the day in the early days. Once they do that, they go to a call center.

Eric Evans 12:51

Correct. Yeah. So they’ll go through both a combination of our live agents and Pipes to get them on the phone and make sure that, you know, we call it speed to lead, right. That we’re following up with those people immediately. And if we don’t get them on the phone right away, we’re automating a lead nurture sequence that’s going to send them text messages and make follow-up phone calls to make sure that we do get them on the phone when they’re ready to talk.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 13:17

I’m curious. So we’re here kind of in this process, in stage where you’re talking to someone, you’re in the call center. You could have just used Pipes as your superpower and never release it to anyone else to use it. Right. Because you’re using this internally, right? Speed to lead. Yeah. Why did you decide to release it? So that other people could use it, too? It’s kind of like a little bit of a secret sauce.

Eric Evans 13:45

It is? Yeah. No, it’s. That was, you know, something I wrestled with when we had built it. That, you know, should we just keep this for ourselves and continue to grow the agency side?

But I always had a dream of, you know, getting into the SaaS business and creating my own technology. You know, we were working with a lot of different systems to accomplish what we were doing at HyperTarget, and I always felt like I was working as a free product manager for these other companies. Right. And I was constantly giving feedback and giving feature requests. And, you know, I a lot of them got built.

Some of them didn’t. But, you know, in the back of my mind, I always felt like, you know, I have a knack for, you know, designing these, these marketing systems. And man, I’d really love to build my own right and bring that to market someday. So it was just something that was in the back of my head. And when we finally had Pipes to a state or, you know, pre-Pipes before, before it had its own name, where it was really working.

Well, you know, I decided to take the leap of faith and start a second company here and, you know, both to just diversify my own revenue streams and, and also, you know, be part of that journey of growing a tech company. It was always something I wanted to do. And I’m, you know, I kind of follow my heart. I mean, that’s my story, you know, from the movie industry to this to the next thing. So I, you know, it felt like the next adventure and something I wanted to tackle.

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