Visit with Commio 1-to-1, Stop by Booth #201, and Attend VP Scott Navratil’s Panel Discussion
If you’re involved in your company’s omnichannel communications and plan to attend LeadsCon in Las Vegas March 13-15, there’s no better time to meet up with Commio! The team is excited to visit with customers, prospects, partners, and fellow marketers.
LeadsCon is the best conference for performance marketers who need to optimize lead generation, nurturing, and conversion. And it’s a great opportunity to learn more about Commio—the uniquely customizable, cloud-based communications API platform that makes it easy to deliver integrated voice and text messaging. We’ll be in booth #201 near the main entrance! Or, to schedule a 1-to-1 meeting with one of our experts, simply email us.
Commio’s Scott Navratil, Vice President of Customer Retention & Expansion Sales, will be speaking as part of a panel discussion on a very timely topic:
“How Can Growth & New Compliance Initiatives Coexist?”
Wednesday, 3/15, at 10AM
We asked him for his insights on both the conference and the effects of increasing legislation around calling and texting.
For starters, why LeadsCon? What makes it unique?
Scott Navratil, Commio VP
Scott: LeadsCon is where you go to excel at performance marketing—period. There’s no better show out there. A lot of the big companies attend, so it’s a good place to see what other companies are doing, interact with people at the forefront of the industry, and generate marketing leads. Commio’s voice and text messaging solutions power many of the LeadsCon vendors’ solutions, from call centers to 2FA and short code campaigns, and more; we love to get together with them and ensure we’re meeting their communications needs. It’s also a great opportunity to meet companies looking to improve or expand their omnichannel capabilities, such as call and contact centers.
A lot of attendees talk to Commio just to better understand how cloud communications can support their marketing, or find out what’s new in the industry. At the same time, there have been a lot of new legislation and compliance requirements over the past couple of years—hence our panel discussion—and attendees are concerned. The good news is that companies that stay up to date on best practices can really optimize their lead gen and customer experiences with voice and messaging.
Are voice and SMS/MMS still strong marketing tools, given all the new rules?
Scott: There’s nothing better than messaging to communicate your brand and maximize conversions. It has an average open rate of 98%, and most people open a text within minutes! It also provides marketers with a variety of choices, depending on whether you want to build your brand, appear local, share authentication codes, keep recipients up to date, and more.
Likewise, there are times when nothing will work but voice for fully conveying your message in a timely and personal manner. Ideally, you want numerous options for communication—also known as “omnichannel”—because each one has different advantages in different situations. And of course, different people prefer different channels. At the end of the day, you want to make it as easy as possible for your prospects and customers to reach you.
Unfortunately, any time something is effective, someone will use it to make money illegally. We’ve all gotten car warranty calls and texts asking for our account information. As a consumer, we can’t fault the FCC or the carriers for clamping down on illegal calling and texting, but it does complicate the work of legitimate marketers.
That said, there is a well defined set of industry requirements around building your opt-in list, what you include in your message, and so on, and they haven’t changed much. They’re mostly just common sense criteria that align with the types of calls and messages most of us would like to receive! And well-designed communications are more likely to convert.
I’ll be talking about some of these requirements in my panel discussion. If your company is using best practices for legitimate calling and texting, you will rarely have a problem. Commio is committed to helping our customers learn and follow the rules.
It seems like the biggest issues are around brand and campaign registration for Long Code/10DLC, and the rules change daily. Are other forms of messaging better for now?
Scott: It depends on your goals. If you want your messages to appear local, which increases the open rate, long code is your only real option. The down side, of course, is that a lot of campaigns are being rejected, oftentimes for simple data mismatches. There are some tricks to brand and campaign registration that I’ll cover in the panel, but the biggest reason we see for rejections is just senders editing their message after it’s been approved! Don’t submit your campaign till it’s absolutely final.
The most common changes in rules and fees are around campaign management, such as T-Mobile’s new charge for inactive campaigns, plus the variances between carriers. They’re a pain to keep up with, but they don’t usually affect whether a campaign will be rejected. But you do need to stay on top of the latest requirements if you want to guarantee your messages will be delivered and avoid any penalties. At Commio, we email our customers and post updates on our website as soon as we’re aware of them.
If you could give readers just one tip for success, whether voice or messaging, what would it be?
Scott: Excellent question! I alluded to it before, but I’d say that regardless of whether you call or text—really, across all types of marketing—the most important thing you can do is know your customer. If you understand what they want, the language they use, and what drives them to buy, they’ll take your calls and open your messages. It sounds simple, but sometimes we get caught up in the details and lose sight of the basics. I guarantee you that if you keep your focus on the customer, most of the issues around calling or even long code messaging will be irrelevant.
If you don’t? Your calls don’t get answered. Your messages aren’t opened. Worse, your numbers get blocked or even reported, and that creates further problems. There’s a lot of upside to omnichannel communications, but only if we do right by our prospects and customers.
Great advice for all of us marketers! Last, why should someone talk to Commio vs. another voice or messaging provider?
Scott: Commio voice and messaging has had a proven track record in this space for well over a decade. Some of the largest marketing platforms in the world trust Commio with their business-critical communications.
We are a carrier, not just a reseller. We’re technically a one-of-a-kind Virtual Local Exchange Carrier. A next-generation CLEC (Competitive Local Exchange Carrier). We offer a superior cloud API platform with more carriers, and better scalability throughput, so we can deliver more calls and texts with a higher conversion rate. And our flexible, programmable APIs mean that you can add Commio voice and messaging to your existing platform within minutes as a Bring Your Own Carrier (BYOC) solution.
Our Messaging API powers high-capacity text messaging. From brand & campaign registry to sending through every major gateway, if you can dream it, we can send it: short code, 10DLC long code, toll-free, SMS, MMS. Likewise, our Voice API is powered by Intelligent call routing with 40 redundant carriers, meaning less worry and more happy customers. See beyond the Voice API to gain visibility into every call, and more.
As an important bonus, all of our support is US-based! This includes messaging compliance and campaign registry expertise to help guide you through the ever-changing SMS landscape.
If you’re a Commio customer attending LeadsCon, or you’d like to find out more about how voice and messaging can help take your marketing efforts and customer experiences to the next level, stop by booth #201 or email tim@commio.com to set up a meeting with one of our team. We hope to see you there!
