Dr. Jeremy Weisz 15:11
Yeah. And you knew what you wanted to and maybe, you know, you wanted certain features. So at that stage, at what point? So they could talk to someone or Pipes. What were some of the key features you discovered you needed, you know, within Pipes to serve HyperTarget Marketing, which obviously helps the other companies on the platform?
Eric Evans 15:33
Yeah, definitely. It’s been a you know, it’s been an evolution where Pipes initially was designed just for my own purposes, right? For the things we needed at HyperTarget. And as time has gone on. You know, we’ve built features and it’s taken a life of its own to, to service our customers at Pipes that are, you know, much, much larger companies that have different needs.
And so it’s, it’s evolved and to where there’s, there’s new features now that are, that are much broader than, than just the needs of HyperTarget. But, you know, some of the things that set us apart initially was not just a sales engagement platform that we really needed to make sure that the leads we were following up on were good leads. Right. And so we built a whole function on the frontend of Pipes for data validation to make sure that we’ve got good working email addresses, good working phone numbers. You know, we’re managing our duplicates properly.
You know, we’re segmenting people into campaigns properly. We’re making sure that people aren’t on any kind of known spam list or litigator lists and things like that. And so, you know, to make sure that anybody that we’re going to follow up with that we’ve got the right information from the form they filled out.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 16:46
So someone calls in, how does it work? Like what’s happening on. So they call in and they, you know, get routed into Pipes. They don’t realize that. But what’s what happens from the customer’s perspective.
Eric Evans 17:03
Yeah. So whether they call inbound or were so they’re filling out a web form initially typically as they’re filling out a form that data gets sent into Pipes. Sometimes they are making an inbound phone call off a phone number on a website. But then that data is running through our validation process. If we find that it’s a bad email address, it’s going to get kicked back.
But if it passes all our validation checks, it’s then going to get assigned to what we call a pipe flow, right? And that’s a nurture sequence that our customers can design themselves. It’s a combination of SMS, follow-up phone calls and voicemails that we leave. And so, you know, you can test out a lot of different cadences to follow up. And that was one of the things that I really wanted to focus on with Pipes as well, is that we were, you know, we were doing all these follow-up sequences and trying to figure out the best way to get A hold of these people, but none of the platforms we were using really allowed us to do the kind of split testing that a marketer would do, let’s say, on their website.
Right? Like testing out different landing page combinations the way that, you know, different, you know, layouts of buttons and colors and, you know, there’s so much effort that goes into optimizing a website or optimizing an ad campaign. But then we found that a lot of times someone would fill out that web form and they would just kind of hand that lead over to the sales team. And there was this break between these marketers that are optimizing and what the sales team was doing. And so we wanted to try and bridge that gap and say, hey, we want to keep the marketing team involved through the whole journey here and allow them to split test that follow-up process and say, “hey, you know, when someone fills out that form, should we follow up with the text message initially, or should we call them immediately?”
And if they don’t answer the phone, should we send them a text message afterward? And you know, we were designing all these different sequences to find out the best combination of ways to follow up with these people. And when you boil it down to it, like, you know, we’ve had some customers say that, you know, for every percentage point that we can increase their contact rate, that’s an extra million dollars in revenue for them a month. Right. And it seems like a, you know, a small increase.
But when you think of, you know, how far it boils down to, you know, initially you look at, you know, your click-through rate on your ad and your conversion rate on your landing page. And you know, you’re looking at your win rate on the sales side. But just that small increase in getting someone on the phone makes a huge difference in all this, this media spend that went into getting that person to fill out the form.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 19:33
So when they fill out the form, Does the person determine what gets initiated? So for instance, they could immediately set an email. They can immediately send a text and they could immediately call dual Pipes, do all three at once. Or will the someone say, “well, I really want them texting them first.” I don’t know what’s your advice around how they should use it?
Eric Evans 19:59
Yeah. So there it’s not a one size fits all thing right. So we’ve got customers now in a number of different industries. And so what works best in, you know for example for HyperTarget, following up with people looking for attorneys might be a different process from someone who’s looking to remodel their home or someone who, you know, needs a pest control company to come out to their house immediately. Right. Like, what’s going to work best is different across those industries and also the media channels they came from.
Right? Like the way to follow up with somebody from a search ad is going to be a little different than how you’d follow up from someone who saw like a banner ad on Facebook or something like that. And so our customers can do as much or as little as they want, right? Our team will help them design these sequences and set up the split test. But a lot of people, once they get their hands on it, you know, they want to start tinkering and doing it themselves as well.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 20:48
Well, let’s talk about the Pi example. Will, will someone or when you’re setting it up for someone because you’re running them on the you’re running Pipes on the back end for them. I’m curious do you, you know, automatically initiate the email sequence and the text sequence and call or how do you like to do it?
Eric Evans 21:09
Yeah. So our software will automatically initiate the sequence. Yeah. It’s a trigger-based system right. So we’re integrating very deeply with people’s CRMs or whatever system they’re using.
And you know, whatever trigger points, they want us to follow up that they don’t necessarily have the staffing or the resources or the time to do on their end. You know, we’re going to automate those follow-up processes and not just on the sales and lead gen side too. And so that’s where things have evolved to be more on the customer success side as well. And you know, it’s everything we designed initially was for customer acquisition. But what we found that even after people acquire their customers, they still have challenges following up on the customer success side, like doing customer satisfaction surveys like in the home improvement space.
You know, when a job is completed, a lot of times they weren’t following up those customers just to make sure that, you know, everything was great before all their subcontractors get paid. And almost like an NPS score, right? You can use Pipes to do that to keep these people engaged and additionally with renewals. Right. Like if it’s a subscription-based model, you know, there’s so much reactive work that needs to be done by customer success reps that a lot of times they don’t have time to do that proactive work.
That’s arguably more important of scheduling those follow-up meetings and just seeing how people were doing, doing those check-ins and so they can use Pipes to automate those follow-up processes that maybe they get distracted or they get busy and they just don’t have time to do.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 22:44
Yeah, I could see how it’s super valuable because it sends an email, but it also sends text and like, I don’t know, at least for me, I check 100% of my text messages, so I don’t like neglect the text message. Will it also call — like how does it work as far as the calling piece goes?
Eric Evans 23:02
Yeah. So it’s really focused on everything with your phone, right. So we integrate with email systems. We don’t natively send emails. We’re really focused on those phone engagements through sending text messages and making phone calls.
And so yeah, it’ll make a phone call. We’ve got an AI voicemail detection that we’ve built. That’s one of those like under the hood, really cool features that, you know, isn’t necessarily something that people think about a whole lot. But, you know, we’ve got some really great technology just to determine if, if a human answers a phone or not, and what action we’re going to take with their voicemail, what action we’re going to take when they answer the phone. But yeah, when you answer the phone call, it’s a, you know, very realistic sounding voice that has a great personality and can handle objections and, and function just like, really?
That’s crazy. Or a call center rep would do. Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 23:51
So they’re having a conversation with the AI voice.
Eric Evans 23:55
They are. Yeah. I mean, so typically our scripting on those calls will sound something like, you know, hey, this is, you know, Jeremy, I’m the AI assistant for rise 25, and I’m just looking to get some information from you. And that can go a lot a few different directions. Right.
If you’re trying to qualify that person for an appointment, you might eventually want to transfer them to a live person. Or if it’s just kind of a follow-up survey, there might not be a transfer at the end. It’s more of a data collection tool to say, hey, you know, how was your experience with our podcast? You know, can you give us a rating on 1 to 10? We can then collect all that information and post it off to your CRM.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 24:35
That’s really cool. I want to hear the different use cases with it because there’s so many different use cases I could think of. Because it saves a lot of time and energy. And we were talking at one of the conferences we were at, and I had taken my car in or trying to make an appointment for service for my car, and it started off with like one of these kind of AI voice things, and it wasn’t really executing that good. And so, you know, I’m like, they should probably use Pipes actually, but use case-wise so I could see it for my attorneys.
Like someone fills out a form, they can immediately call and gather information. They can text. The person feels like, wow, I mean, I’d be impressed, right? Like they emailed, they texted, and then they immediately called me. And then they can obviously transfer to a live person or just I mean, they already know the questions that a live person is going to ask at this point.
So I could see what attorneys you’re mentioning Vivint when we were talking before what they talk about and how do they use it.
Eric Evans 25:46
Yeah. So they’ve been using our software for a long time, one of our great customers. And they have their internal marketing teams that are running advertising all over the internet and driving traffic to their websites. And they use us to handle that initial follow-up process to make sure that they get those people on the phone in a timely manner. And basically change the experience for their own call center.
Right. To go from an outbound call center to an inbound call center where, you know, one of the kind of things that’s hard to quantify is like the morale-boosting effect that Pipes has for call centers, where they spend a lot of time chasing people oftentimes and hitting voicemails or getting wrong numbers, or they finally get someone on the phone and they say they’re not interested. And so there’s so much horsepower that’s put into just getting people on the phone to have good conversations. And Pipes kind of flips the scripts for those companies where it’s — Pipes is doing that hard work on the front end, and they’re just taking these inbound phone calls now that Pipes is able to send to them.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 26:51
Interesting. Yeah. And then you were mentioning moving companies as well.
Eric Evans 26:57
Yeah. That’s been a huge success story for us is, you know, really all home services. But the moving and storage space has been great. We’ve got some awesome customers like Ken Cohen from JK moving that have been with us for a long time and have really taken Pipes to new heights and done things with it that I never even envisioned. Right.
It’s awesome to build something like this and have customers engaged and seeing success with it, and start utilizing it in ways that you never even thought of.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 27:27
From the SaaS perspective. Eric, I’d love to hear, you know, obviously as people start to use it more and more in different industries, use it, you probably get a lot of feature requests. Some of them you can actually do. Some of them are like, well, let’s put it on the roadmap. It’s only for you.
Not everyone wants this. What are some maybe 1 or 2 feature requests that you were like, that’s a really good idea. And they helped you kind of expand the product.
Eric Evans 27:55
Yeah, that’s I mean, that’s a challenge of every SaaS business is figuring out what lane you want to be in and where you want to stay. Right? If you try to be everything to everyone, all of a sudden you’re just mediocre at everything, right? And trying to really hone in on what, you know, we’re, we’re going to be great at and what we want to provide, you know, the most value for. So yeah, we’ve gotten a lot of great feedback from customers.
A lot of times, you know, some of the best feedback we’ve gotten for customers has been, you know, improving the way we integrate with other systems. Right. Where for initially we were kind of a, you know, we would say we were like a point solution that was really easy to set up and kind of lived outside of what they were doing. But we’ve really found that the biggest success for us is when we’re really deeply integrated with their systems, and we’ve got a really great webhook solution that we’ve built that’s come out of that to make it so that really non-technical people can hook up Pipes to work back and forth with what they’re doing to make sure, you know, for example, if someone tells our AI that they don’t want to be contacted anymore, that we connect with their system so that they’re not following up and vice versa, right? And getting these synchronous loops back and forth so that we work seamlessly with their, their own efforts.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 29:13
Yeah, I could see that the different integrations people want and then the communication between all the systems to make sure it works seamlessly. What are some challenges, you know, going in that you’ve discovered that if someone’s like, you know, the Holy Grail, I want a holy grail of a SaaS company. Obviously, there’s a lot of — sometimes I’ve heard people talk about the grass is greener there, and there’s still a lot of challenges, even though they accomplish the holy grail of having a SaaS company. What are some of the challenges that you wish you would have known before starting?
Eric Evans 29:53
Yeah, that’s a great question. You know, there’s a lot that happens under the hood that I didn’t know about. And so, you know, learning about DevOps, right. And all the things that go into scaling a software company. Right.
It’s not easy. But once you’ve got a working solution to the, the what needs to happen to go from, you know, just a couple beta customers and a couple small customers to saying, hey, we’re going to bring on some larger enterprise clients that clients that are going to be doing this at a much different scale. And everything that goes into the architecture around that was a huge undertaking and a big learning curve for me, along with all the security that goes into it. Right. Making sure that we’re compliant and, you know, up to date with all the everything we need to do for larger companies to be compliant and integrate with their systems.
So it’s a lot and that’s a whole other part of it that isn’t quite as it’s not really something you see. Right. It’s not the customer-facing part of it. But it was a big undertaking and it’s still part of our growth journey, is making sure that the infrastructure is rock solid.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 31:05
I’d love to hear Eric, some of your some resources, some of your favorite resources. The resources could be software, it could be tools. It could be books. You know, what are some favorite resources that have helped you on your journey?
Eric Evans 31:25
Yeah, I mean, I’m a huge fan of HubSpot these days. We use it ourselves, and we’re building some really cool integrations for Pipes. You know, one of the things that’s going to be coming out soon, is a native integration on the HubSpot marketplace to use Pipes for your own data there. It’s not quite ready yet, but it’s something we’re working on. So, yeah, they’ve been a great ally and resource for us as far as books go.
I mean, you know, I’m really a big believer in, you know, growing teams and building culture properly. And so yeah, there’s a handful of books that stand out in my mind. I mean, probably my favorite book is one called The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. You know, there’s a lot of concepts in there that stuck with me, and it’s just a great kind of storybook, you know, in a similar vein is another one called Built to Sell. And I really like books that are kind of these simple stories to follow along with as opposed to, you know, very detailed, kind of academic type books.
Right. Like, there’s a few books out there that just tell a great story and it’s easy to read.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 32:34
So yeah, those are really good ones. I also like the Patrick Lencioni one because it’s I think if I remember, it’s much shorter. So it’s quick to get through. And yeah built to sell is fantastic. I did have John Warrillow on the podcast so people can check that episode out with John who wrote that.
Which is fantastic. As well. What about mentors wise? It could be colleagues to like colleagues you learn from in EO. But who are some of your mentors. And we could talk about maybe some of the best advice or experience shares we should say that they gave you?
Eric Evans 33:15
Yeah, I mean, EO has been an amazing resource for me since I joined about. I mean, close to four years now and just getting access to people who have been through it. You realize that a lot of your challenges are not unique, right? And so many businesses, despite industry size, you know, segment whatever you want to call it, like there’s so many of the same challenges that people face. And so yeah, it’s been great.
There’s a gentleman named Nate Little, one of the advisors to our company, who’s been a huge help for me and learning, you know, how to operate our company better. What does he do? Yeah. So he, he yeah, he, he actually had an exit a couple of years ago and it’s now, you know, consulting with some businesses and starting his own new ventures. But you know, he’s someone who did it right.
Started a company, built up a SaaS business, you know, found his niche and you know, was able to have a successful exit. So it’s great to learn from people who have done it right. And that’s one of the concepts of EO is experience sharing, right? Not just not just giving advice, but actually telling your story and just sharing your own experience.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 34:28
Nate Little is a good one. Who are some other maybe EO Austin people we could see? Here’s Rich Walker here. Quick forms and he’s got the Customer Wins podcast. Who are some of the other EO Austin people you’ve learned from?
Eric Evans 34:44
Oh man there’s a lot. Another gentleman named Jeff Carpenter has been a huge help for me. And a lot of guys in my forum. You know, I’ve had a great experience learning from them. You know, Forrest Higdon and Donald Addington, a number of guys that, you know, we all have such different companies.
But just seeing the struggles that they’ve gone through and the things that they’ve learned have, you know, helped me grow both as a person and in my businesses as well.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 35:14
You know, Eric, I want to talk about team. You mentioned culture and team is really important to you. What are some of the things you do in Pipes and HyperTarget Marketing to help maintain and foster great culture?
Eric Evans 35:31
Yeah. You know, it’s evolved over the years. You know, years ago we had an office. And so it’s the way you interact with people when you’re all coming into the office every day is, you know, it’s a little easier to have those, like those water cooler conversations. But, you know, since the pandemic hit, we’ve gone fully remote and the team is spread out all over the country and, you know, all over the world now.
And so being able to maintain, you know, good working relationships while everyone’s spread out on different time zones, different schedules, different, you know, life experiences and places like that, that’s the biggest challenge, is being able to maintain a unified culture. You know, distributed. And one of the things that didn’t mean a lot to me years ago and has become a much bigger part of, you know, how I maintain that culture. And it might sound simple, but it’s establishing core values that you really believe in. And core values that you as an executive can, can actually demonstrate.
Right. Where I think those things tend to fall apart and culture can fall apart is when, you know, you tell your, you know, employees about these core values that are important to your company. But if you don’t demonstrate them right, if you’re if your actions don’t demonstrate them, then your words fall flat. And so that’s been a really big part of it is that, you know, we think hard and believe in those core values and live them.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 37:02
What’s one important core value that was a must on that list for you?
Eric Evans 37:09
Yeah. So high-integrity actions is probably my most important thing. And that’s, you know, something I say kind of sets us apart. You know, it’s I’d say especially in the lead generation industry where unfortunately, it doesn’t have the best reputation all the time, is that, you know, we’re always going to behave with integrity, right? That’s one thing we stand behind and not just talking about it but actually doing it right.
And that goes to how we behave with each other, how we behave with our clients, with our vendors, just treating people with respect and higher integrity and doing what you say you’re going to do.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 37:44
Yeah. I’d love to hear some of the key hires you put in place from the agency perspective, what you know, because I know it started with just you. You created some websites. You made a couple thousand I love we won’t get into it now, but your thought process on really it speaks to your core value of high integrity and the way you chose the niche. And maybe at the time you didn’t identify it as that.
But you’re like, at the time I’ve heard you talk about, okay, there’s these. Acai green tea like kind of pills and supplements. Or we can help like, you know, an actual large company get leads for the financial services or law firm. And, and I’m sure you maybe could have made some quick and easy money on some of these pills and potions, and you chose against that from a probably just a long-term view. But at that time, it was just you, right? Talk about your key hires. Some of the key hires you put in place.
Eric Evans 38:47
Yeah. You know, I think initially most entrepreneurs have a tough time delegating. And when you’re first starting off, you want to try and do everything yourself. And, you know, eventually you’ve got to start trusting people, right. And offloading work that’s that, that they can do independently and not just, you know, like these, these initial lower level tasks, but how do you start offloading some of these higher level tasks that if they don’t go right, you know, could have a negative effect on you and your business?
And so, yeah, you know, a couple, you know, key hires I made were just, you know, account managers. I realized that I’m a builder. I’m not really a maintainer. And so, you know, maintaining those relationships with customers, you know, sometimes I would, you know, I’ll admit, like, even for what Pipes does on the customer success side, I was struggling to, you know, to keep those relationships and follow up with people in a, in a regular basis. And so hiring, you know, account managers that were more relationship-focused that that really liked doing that, you know, was a big step for us to growing and taking these not just bringing on these key accounts, but growing them as well. And then on the operations. Oh, sorry.
Eric Evans 40:09
Go ahead.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 40:10
On the operations.
Eric Evans 40:12
Yeah. I mean, I, you know, I’m a creative person at heart. You know, I came from, like you said, the movie industry. And, you know, I like building and tinkering. And so that doesn’t always mean I’m great at, you know, writing down all of these processes and establishing SOPs.
And so I didn’t really see the value in doing that for too long. So if I could go back in time, I would hire people who are, you know, much more aligned with documenting processes and streamlining things and making things more repeatable that can kind of hone in on all these crazy ideas I have and create processes out of them. So those were — that’s probably the biggest, you know, I would say if I could go back in time, I would hire ops people earlier before I realized I really needed it.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 41:00
Yeah, I love it. There’s an episode I did with the founder of SweetProcess, which they’re — so there’s a software that helps document SOPs. So if people want to check that episode out with own, it was a really fun one talking about just, you know, documenting process and how we process ourselves. And so we love it.
It’s just an easy way for the team to find and create SOPs. So I love that, Eric. I want to be the first one to thank you. Everyone should check out Pipes.ai and you can check out HyperTarget Marketing to learn more. And just I really appreciate you sharing your journey with everyone and we’ll see everyone next time. And Eric, thanks so much.
Eric Evans 41:48
All right. Thanks, Jeremy. Glad to be here.
