Very good. Very good. Thank you everyone who joined us, we will get started right away here. So I am going to present my screen and when you are able to see it, uh, just give me the thumbs up, David. No problem. I can see your screen now. Perfect. Yeah. So welcome everyone to our first monthly product show and tells. We have a bunch of great features to jump into today. But uh, before I do that, I would love to really explain what these show and tells are going to be about and what you can expect and uh, how, uh, these hopefully will help you out with the way you Sales Message. So today. Um, myself Taohid Altwaedi. I'm a product marketing manager here. Sales message. And my dear friend David, uh, who is our customer support lead, is also here. Uh, so we are looking forward to this and excited to jump right in. So we started Sales Message, uh, with the notion that conversations are good for business. So our commitment to you is to help you create more conversations that drive growth to your business. How do we do that? We do that with high quality, predictable improvements and features that continuously expand the capabilities and of Sales Message and help you solve more and more business problems and engage customers in a much better way. So what happens? Every two weeks, we release new features, new bug fixes, enhancements and improvements. And every month, just as today, we do a monthly product show and tell where, we do a deep dive on some of these features, uh, and answer your questions and take your feedback. But this is not the only chance for you to give us feedback. There are many ways and I'm going to get to them in a second. But as you can see here, your feedback drives the features we build and release and then we show you every month. So it's a nice continuous loop that we hope is, uh, forever running. And uh, the rest of the team here at Sales Message is working hard to drive a platform that will help you solve your business problems. So how can you request feedback? So, it's very simple. Right in the Sales Message app, you can go to Request features and then it will take you right into our Feature Management and Feature Request portal. You can see all the features that other, uh, Sales Message customers have, uh, put forward and you can submit your own. You can upload features. And in the same portal you'll be able to see the progress, uh, which features are in planning, which ones are in development, and which ones have been released. So this I cannot stress how much attention we pay to this Sales Message. Uh, everybody in the team, uh, gets a slack message every time there is a comment and upvote a new feature request and it is really the driving force behind how we evolve the platform. So we love to hear from you. Uh, please keep these comments coming. So what are we going to discuss today? So, we have a list of great features that we're going to do a deep dive on, starting with group messaging. And then we're going to move into calling and we're going to specifically talk about how you can call across channels. Uh, we're going to discuss a couple of great features around contact management and sales message, how you can better manage, uh, your contacts and sales message. And then we will finish it off with, um, broadcast management. We added a few features here that will help you get a better grip on your broadcasts, especially those sent through a short code. So, group messaging. So I'm going to flip here to the application and, uh, let me know when you can see it. David, we're good? Yeah, we can see the screen. Excellent. So there are essentially two ways to start a group message. One is just like, uh, a regular, uh, way you would start a normal text message. You will just choose the contacts and then you can add multiple, as you can see here. So I'm just going to go ahead and do that. I'm going to add two contacts to this message. As you can see, a group message here was created. So I can just go say, hi group. And then both individuals in this group message are going to receive that group message. And I just got it here on my phone because I'm one of those recipients. So if there's another way to add people to a group message, and uh, that's if you already have a group message going that you want to add more participants. And to do that, you will just hover over the drop down here and add more people. One cool way, uh, about these group messages and the way they are designed is, uh, say, for example, I go ahead and add a new member here and I am going to add, uh, a new contact to our group message. You'll see that a new conversation will be created. Uh, this way the history of the flow of the conversation between these two recipients is, um, maintained and a new net new conversation with three participants is created. Now say, for example, I go ahead here and drop one of those participants, right, which is also something that you can do. What's going to happen is you're going to be moved back right into the conversation that you had created in the past. This avoids the confusion of having multiple group conversations with the same recipients and keeps it nice and clean. So I'm going to pause there for a second and turn it back to you, David. And my question to you is, how do you see our users using group messaging? So, one of the biggest use cases that I see is really in the realty, uh, industry and the home purchasing and selling space. It's so important for those folks to add all of not only the family members so that there's transparency on what's going on with all the parties involved and the family who's making this for a lot of people, once or twice in a lifetime choice. Um, but they can also keep all the professional contacts abreast of what's happening. So it's not just your loan officer, there could be inspectors who need to be involved. And this was a really big friction point for realtor industry customers of sales message when they were trying to communicate a status update. They have to proliferate it to so many contacts at once. Really excited to offer group messaging to those people to resolve that problem. Um, another fantastic way that, um, it's used is in that education, um, space. So for our customers who are proctoring an experience for a student and working with the families and keeping everyone aligned on what the status of that student's, uh, progress is with their, uh, scholastic stuff, it's just perfect. Yeah, I can feel the pressure with, uh, both my mom and dad being involved in the one conversation about my performance, but that's good. Thank you so much for that David. So, uh, next on the list we got calling, and it's more than HubSpot calling and, ah, I'm just going to quickly go over these features. So about a month ago, we rolled out a major addition to the HubSpot platform and that is the ability not only to text, but also to call your customers. As you can see right here, it's a very simple one click and you are already on the phone with your customer using your sales message number. So no more texting from a sales message number and using a different number for calling. It's all one and it's all there for you, but it's a little bit more than that. So, uh, one of the great ways, uh, that we designed and developed this feature is to give it the ability to record conversations. So sometimes some conversations are too important to lose and you want to keep a record of them. So you can enable automatic recordings. So if you are dealing with a customer and, uh, the situation is important and you want to keep every detail of that conversation, you can have automatic recording set up. So if I go ahead and make a call now, you will see that automatic recording is already set up right there. Right? And I just got the call on my phone here and I'm not going to take it. So what is going to happen? The timeline here of the conversation will be updated with all the calling activity as well. Uh, another way, uh, this calling is we designed it in such a way that it's omnichannel. What does that mean? So you can use calling, uh, in the Sales Message app itself in the Chrome extension, in the uh, uh, mobile app, Sales Message mobile app. And most recently, and this is a very big announcement for our HubSpot users, sales Message Calling is now natively integrated into HubSpot. It is super simple to set up. All you need to do is just a couple of clicks, choose Sales Message as the primary calling provider in HubSpot and then you will be able in no time, uh, start calling your customers right from HubSpot. Uh, one important thing to note is if you have multiple numbers in Sales Message before you make, uh, that call, you can choose which number to call from. And if you are working away in the CRM and you receive a call, you will also be able to pick it up from HubSpot itself. One of the key things for a lot of sales people who use CRM and Sales Message is keeping track of the taking notes, making sure every interaction with the customer is recorded and uh, is taken care of. And with this, as you can see, each call you make through HubSpot is added to the timeline here in HubSpot history. You can add notes about how that call went or whether it went to voicemail and so on and so forth. That way next time you come to this record, you know what the history of that conversation was. So I'm going to pause here for a second and flip it back to, uh, David. So calling is a big one. Uh, how do you see our customers using that one? Yeah, so I think to say that calling is a big one might even be understating how big calling is. So calling was so big for Sales Message because frankly, it was the number one requested feature by our users. So to kind of let her back up to where we started this call, we really are tracking our user feedback and making choices based on the feedback that's provided. Um, so where do I see our users using calling? Well, it's frankly as frequently as they use texting almost. Um, texting can be a great vehicle to open the door, but when a conversation becomes very nuanced or has lots of points to address in a short period of time, it's hard to, uh, replace, uh, a call with anything else. So the fact that we offer calling in an environment like texting, um, to bolster the communication support, and another way that it's really important that we've offered calling is just that one phone number relationship with you and your customers. No longer do you need to be concerned about picking up a platform like Sales Message or our platform in general and worrying about, well, now I have to give so many different numbers to my contacts, I'm just going to confuse them and cause more friction. That is all eliminated now that you can sign up for Sales Message. And on day one text and call your contacts at the same time. Excellent. Yeah, thank you so much for that. Explaination, David. Uh, yeah. So next on our list is a couple of ways that will really help you take the way you manage your contacts in Sales Message to the next level. So, I'm going to explain the features, then I'm going to quickly demo them. The first is simply the ability to export your contacts. A lot of our customers, especially smaller businesses, started using our Sales Message before even having a CRM. And over time, their list of contacts in Sales Message grew to the point where they were ready to use a, uh, full blown CRM and they just wanted to port over these contacts, their CRM. So now they have the ability to do so. Um, another reason people export their contacts is if they want to make minor modifications, uh, to a subset of their contacts. So that is also possible. You can export a subset of your contacts. The second feature that goes in line really nicely with this feature is the ability to, um, import and map custom fields. Now, every business is slightly different, every business tracks slightly different attributes about their customers. So hence the need for custom fields beyond your classic first name, last name, email, phone, and so on. So now you have the ability to import as many custom fields as you want and mapping them to existing or new custom fields. In sales. Message is a breeze. It's literally a few clicks away and you have an updated contact list or a net new list of contacts with as many custom fields as you want. So let me quickly demo this and how you can use it. So, I'm going to go to my contacts here and make a selection. So, as, uh, you can see, I can either export to the list of contacts I selected here, or I can go ahead and select all my contacts, which is, in this case, about 242 of them. And if I click Export, I simply can download the file and it's there for me. But I'm just going to do something slightly different here and export based on a segment which I have created previously. And segments are a nice way for you to partition your contacts if you want to treat different, uh, customers a little bit, uh, differently. So, there are two contacts in this segment. I created Show and Tell for this presentation, and I'm just going to go ahead and export those contacts. Uh, one thing that is cool about this is you can select which fields you want to export instead of exporting, uh, everything that is on the list, right? So, in this case, I'm just going to choose email tags and perhaps even job title. Okay, uh, I am going to export those contacts now, and as you can see, I will get a spreadsheet with those contacts on them. So let's take a look at what that spreadsheet looks like. All right, just give me a moment here. Uh. Yeah, certainly. Tau. I think, um, the mapping of custom fields on import, uh, the value is pretty clear there, where no matter what industry you're in or what data is important and relevant, with your contacts, you can ensure that it's right there at your fingertips when you're using Sales Message. And to have a custom property is not just something nice to add to the application for a visual reference. It's something that can be practically used in your messages. So if you save and compose or if you save a canned message that targets a custom property, as long as the value is present in your property, like job title, um, you will be able to use that in a templateized message to personalize those messages, um, that you send in. Agreed? Yeah. So as you can see here, I got my list of, uh, contacts that I exported and let me just zoom in. As you can see, there are two issues already with this. One is we have gaps in our database, right? So I can go ahead and add an email here and I'm going to add Job Title as Product Marketing Manager. We also see that there is a gap here and I'm just going to add also Product Manager or the Job Title. Perhaps you want to change the tags, right? So I can say demo complete and I'll just do the same thing here as well. But you can go a step further. You can start adding, uh, fields. So I'm just going to say, um, as favorite color and I'm just going to do red and black. And I'm just going to save this spreadsheet and go back to the application. So now what I'm able to do is I'm able to reimport those contacts. Right? Then we're just going to start a new import. Uh, I'm going to choose the same file and go ahead and click Next. Um, I believe that even if that, uh, mapping was not, um, there, you could probably copy paste to force it to show up. Yeah, so there we go. We got it. So, as you can see here, uh, I've got the spreadsheet I just imported with all the custom fields. Now what I can go ahead and start doing is just map them to fields that are already existing there. So, first name, last name, phone number. So as you see, like in, uh, my database might have been called Phone, but in Sales Message we have it as phone number, email was automatically recognized and then tag. So now, as you can see, I don't have a tag field here. I can just simply go ahead and create one, right? Oh, uh, Tyler, you have it. Who's called who? Oh, sorry. Apply tag right there. There you go. You are on it. So, job title, uh, let's say for the sake of argument, we didn't have job title. So I'm just going to go ahead and create a new field called Job Title Two. Right? And it is a text field and I am going to save it. Now I am able to map my new field to that newly created custom field. I'm, um, just going to apply and start import and we should have it there. So, as you can see, there the file import right there. It was successful to contact. Now you can go back to your contacts and see all that information was updated. Again, this is a great way for you to manage your contacts, make sure that you don't have any gaps. It's a great way for you to load that information back to your, uh, CRM. Anything else you want to add there, David? Uh, yeah, so, I mean, I kind of set it a little bit where the custom fields you add a sales message are not just there, uh, to add to the application to be referenced. Uh, there can also be used in a practical way in your messaging, whether that's a saved canned reply or it's a mass broadcast, uh, that you would send to many, many contacts. And then I think some of the other smaller things to note there are just that, um, how nice it is that in Flow. If I realize that I've missed a custom property, but I have a whole table of values for that property, that I could create it immediately without backing all the way out. And creating that custom field under the custom field pages that everything is done in Flow is very nice. Agreed. So this kind of brings us to the last feature we want to dive into today, and that is the ability to better manage, uh, broadcasts that are made through a shortcode. So let me go ahead and explain what that means. So when you create broadcasts, and I'm going to go ahead and create a new one here, you have the ability to choose where that broadcast goes out from either a specific inbox you have or a short code. Right. But previously, uh, it was not possible to see how broadcasts made through a short code are performing. In this latest release, we updated that. We made an improvement to give you a better grip on how your short code broadcasts are performing. So here's a sample broadcast that I sent prior to this meeting. It's a simple message, hope you're enjoying the show and tell. And I included two numbers in that broadcast. One was purposefully. I included a number that would not succeed, uh, just to showcase this feature. As you can see the results, the stats are there for you, how many successes, how many failures. And to take it even a step further, you can go ahead and see which numbers specifically was the shortcode broadcast successful in reaching, uh, and which ones it was not. So this is a great way to see really how your broadcast is performing, knowing that usually broadcasts are used to send messages to a larger set of audience where you're not expecting a reply. But, uh, david so shortcut, uh, broadcast, how do our customers use them and how does this going to change the game for them? Yeah, so the value of the short code, uh, is really pretty remarkable. So we can send to unlimited contacts with using this shared short code, uh, from sales message. But of course it has that notable limitation of where there are no stats, I can't tell how it's performing and now that we've added stats to it, that notable limitation is no longer present. So, uh, very nice to be able to send, uh, out this message from our shared shortcode with a call to action to see more traction on your links or on your promotions or more traction in the way of sales. Um, and of course, very nice that we are also tracking, um, all of these, ah, uh, outcomes, whether it's successful, failed, gained a reply or that contact opted out. And even better still, I think, is that when you drill into the failed, um, tell, if you don't mind clicking on the failed thing, if you look all the way to the right, uh, the last column, there is failed reason. And so that can be a very valuable thing, uh, for our customers to be able to cognitively tell, okay, this is why it failed. Now I can take corrective action, update this person's phone number, delete them from my contacts, whatever that appropriate action might be. Yeah, thank you so much for the information there, David, and uh, we're all ears. Let us know how we can further improve these, ah, broadcasts. So, uh, if there are no other things to add on your site, David, we can flip to Q and A. For the people that are watching. The Q and A is available below. If you have any questions, please do submit them. Otherwise, Kyle, please continue with some of our canned questions that we've been tracking. Uh, yeah, so one question we get, uh, how can I find show and tell link? It will be emailed after this webinar and you will have access to it to view at any time. Uh, so it will be there for you, but beyond the webinar. Uh, I just want to point your attention to our YouTube channel where twice a week, and sometimes even more, we post small little tidbits of videos that help you really get the most out of sales message. They are very directed towards one specific feature. It explains the feature and how you can use it. So it's a great way to learn about, uh, how to really leverage the platform and take the way you use it to the next level. So I'm going to share the link to this as well, uh, in the reply back to this, uh, webinar. So, again, a great way to learn about sales message. Uh, let's see, what else do we got here? So, uh, this is a good question, David. What is the cost for group messaging? Sure. So this is a really good question and you're charged for group messaging in a couple of ways. So the first way is obviously just by the messages you send. So if I send it so traditionally, in a one to one where it's my sales message account and I'm texting my personal cell phone number, well, that text message under 160 characters will cost one message credit. If I add a contact to the, uh, uh, thread between myself, my sales message number, my own personal cell phone, and then the next contact, well, now I've increased by a factor of one. So that's going to cost two message credits to get that message out to both contacts. And when they reply, it will be the same because we are proliferating to the many contacts. And then additionally, there is a charge for how many groups you do have. Uh, that charge is adjusted, uh, once monthly to your sales message account. While we are on the topic of cost, David, so how does that work for calling? For calling, uh, when you ever would receive or make a call, it is one message credit a minute while you are connected, uh, via sales message. And that cost is the same whether you're um, using the mobile application or using the Web application as a multi channel application. Uh. We are going to track your usage of the calling the same. There's only one notable, uh, exception, and that would be if I'm using the mobile app and uh, instead of dialing out from my sales message number, dial out from my device's satellite number, and. In that case there would be no charge. Is that correct? That is correct. Excellent. So in order to have more presentations like these, uh, the question is, how can I submit feature requests? So there are multiple ways to do that. Our favorite is what I just showed you here and I'm going to show it to you once more. And if you go to the app, if you click on your avatar, you will be able to see feature requests. So it will bring you right into the portal where we manage features. You can see, uh, this, for example, at the current moment, what is top of the list. So people really want to, uh, automate and their campaigns and add workflows team members and permissions, which is, by the way, coming really soon. So, as you can tell, you can see everything that has been requested. You can go in, see the conversation, add your uh, own thoughts to how this feature can further improve sales message. But also you can submit your own, right. So you can submit uh, your own feature. Uh, you can choose a category and if you don't know what the category doesn't matter, just put it as uncategorized. We will take care of that later at the details of your request. And here in the change log, you can see month to month what is being added to the platform. Right. Uh, we add a little bit of, uh, a quick explanation video and then we do a deep dive on the features. Right, so this is conceived for this month. We got group messaging, house, spot calling and so on and so forth. But there are other ways to submit feedback, whether you're on the app itself or by texting our number. Why don't you elaborate on that a little bit? David yeah, so leaving feedback is, uh, we try to make it as easy as possible. So not only can you in application open the feature requests and log your own, you could also open the live chat, uh, widget in the bottom right corner of your sales message screen and just start a conversation with the support team. Um, perhaps you're not sure, maybe this feature already exists and I just want to double check that it does before I submit a feature request. Or maybe I don't know what feature would accommodate the goal I'm trying to reach, but maybe the support team would have a good idea. And we certainly can be used as that resource to kind of help you figure out how you want to approach using texting, uh, channel in your organization or business. Um, and if there were any other ways, well, let's say we have the website for feature requests that you can access in app. You can talk to our team whether live chat, texting, sales Message phone number on the website, or submitting an email to support@salesmen.com. And this one is not as common, but I've put feature requests based on YouTube comments. So, a little bit of a convoluted way to leave feedback, but, uh, you're more than welcome to reach to us directly. But that is also something we keep, uh, an eye on and we track because really, at the end of the day, as I said before, the way we extend the sales message, uh, app is primarily driven by what our customers want to see. So we're not really kind of sitting in a room trying to dream up, uh, features and, uh, act as if we know how our customers businesses, uh, run. We really listen to them and their voice is kind of the driving factor in everything that we do. Uh, do we have any questions, uh, uh, from the participants? David we do not. Okay, so in that case, for our folks who are not current users of Sales Message, what I would say is go ahead and try our 14 day trial. It's risk free. We have a 30 day money back guarantee. Uh, it's a great way to engage your customers. Uh, texting is one of the leading ways to engage customers. Now, it's we hear up to 90% response rates from our customers, so I encourage you to try it. And as always, if you have any questions, uh, reach out to us, go to our feature request board, and, uh, we will see you next month. Any parting awards, David? Just want to, uh, extend gratitude to all the viewing participants and to stay tuned for our next installment. Cool. All right, uh, have yourself a wonderful day, everyone, and expect an email from us with the recording. And thanks for tuning in.
