Russ: This is the Businessmakers Show heard here and seen online at www.thebusinessmakers.com. And now with me I have Chris Clements, Founder and CEO of YeeZ Mobile. Chris, welcome to the Businessmakers Show.

Chris: Thanks, Russ. It's good to be here.

Russ: You bet. Well tell us about YeeZ Mobile.

Chris: Well, YeeZ Mobile is a text message marketing platform that we built for small to medium-sized companies. Basically what we do is we allow companies to communicate with their clients, their prospects, and their employees and any stakeholder that they may have.

Russ: Okay, now I noticed you mentioned kind of a small/medium-sized company, and what's going through my mind is some of these big company text messaging applications are extremely expensive. How can you build one that works for a small/medium-sized company?

Chris: Well, basically what we've done is we've taken all the different tools and actually added onto them that are available for the large companies, Coca-Cola and, you know, American Idol and those sort of things.

Russ: Right.

Chris: And we've basically scaled down the text messaging part and we use what's called a "long code" for most of our clients instead of a short code. A long code's much, much more inexpensive than a short code is. Basically brought the cost way, way down.

Russ: Okay, now when you talk about a short code you're talking about some of those things that we see, like on American Idol, where it's a five-digit text number that you text to, and you're not doing that; you're using a long code. And are you saying that a long code you can do it more inexpensively?

Chris: Well, to have a short code, you know, something like 313131, which is a short code that we use with some of our clients, we've got those capabilities, but that's not our sweet spot. Something like that costs, you know, several thousand dollars a month just to have it.

Russ: Oh, okay.

Chris: So that's not affordable for Joe's Pizza Shack or, you know, the bar down the street or something like that. So what we've done is we've actually gotten ten-digit numbers, 978-242-5800, for example, is one that we use in our company. So basically you text a keyword into that number, just like you would 313131, and the same interaction happens. The cost is just, you know, probably less than 10-percent of what it would cost to do it through a shortcut.

Russ: Okay. Now what did you mean when you say you text in a keyword?

Chris: For example, you know, you can text "radio" to 978-242-5800, just to give an example here, to get more information about YeeZ Mobile. And that would basically automatically send back a response to your cell phone via text message. So now a communication starts happening between, you know, the company and its prospects or its clients.

Russ: Okay, now since we have a pretty big audience here, if they did text that number and say "radio" do you have that wired up?

Chris: Yes, that's set up so they can find out more information about us.

Russ: All right, that's cool. Well, go ahead and say the number again and how they do this.

Chris: All they have to do is from their cell phone text the word "radio" to the number 978-242-5800.

Russ: Okay. All right, now we've got that cleared up. But now let me ask you this, if your secret of really being able to do this and do it for a small/medium-sized business by using a long code, can just anybody do that then?

Chris: Well, basically there's a lot of compliance and stuff that needs to happen, so people try to do that from their cell phone, but text messaging is a purely opt-in/opt-out permission-based marketing system, so you have to have the ability for somebody to opt-in via a keyword, get a response back that gives them, you know, how many times a week to expect messages from you, the cost of the messages, all that sort of stuff, so basically just kind of your disclosure, and they also have to be able to text in the word "stop" or "end" to get off your list automatically, so that way they're not receiving unwanted messages.

Russ: And what this sort of regulates, it means that a person with just their regular text number can't send out mass volumes without doing that, is that correct?

Chris: They can't do it legally.

Russ: Okay, can't do it - they can do it, but they couldn't do it legally.

Chris: There are lots off lawsuits right now of companies that have tried to do that without permission from - you know, 'cause you can get a list of all the cell phone numbers in, you know, the country. But if you send a text message to them you're spamming and you're looking at, you know, big fines and lawsuits.

Russ: Okay, so let's go back to the beginning. Let's imagine that here on the Businessmakers Show we decide - we're a small business and we decided we wanted to do some of this cool texting marketing. First thing we'd do, we'd come to you, and tell us how that process would work and what we would get. Do you bring me a bunch of numbers or how do I get the numbers from all my listeners?

Chris: Right. And that's a great question. That's one of the questions that everybody that I talk to asks, "How do I get the list in the first place? Because I can't buy it".

Russ: Right.

Chris: Well, what we do is we focus on different ways of interacting with your listeners, for example, so we may help you run a contest. We worked with Ford and the Houston Texans and we gave away a truck for them, and so people in the stadium would text in, you know, "Ford" to the number, they'd be entered into a contest where they could have a chance to win a Ford truck. You could do the same sort of thing on your show.

Russ: Okay. And that's a key part of a successful texting program, right, is building your database, right?

Chris: Building your database; you've got to figure out a way to incentivize somebody to, you know, get on your list in the first place. You know, discounts, coupons are a great way of doing that.

Russ: Right. And YeeZ is - you have expertise in that category, and if somebody really wanted to implement a program that might be step one; you would say, "Well, do you have a list?" If they say "No" you would say, "Well, why don't you try one of these types of things? We've found them to work".

Chris: Well, depending on the industry, we've got examples of what has worked in the past. And so what we'll do is show them how to run that same kind of campaign within their company. You know, for pizza companies, for example, running text message coupons, taking their paper coupons and doing a text message coupon with that has been you know, a huge success.

Russ: Okay. All right, so if I did one and I send it out, these people would respond back in, but then immediately they would have this opportunity to opt out of future text messages from me, right?

Chris: Absolutely.

Russ: Is there kind of a standard of how much people tend to opt out of those programs or does it vary?

Chris: Well, it varies across the board. And that's another question, you know, how often should I send a text message out. Well, the question is what are the people on your list expecting. If they're expecting the daily lottery results and you don't send it, they're going to be upset, but if you send them, you know, if they expect a once-a-week update from you and you send them five text messages in a week, they're going to be upset also.

Russ: Okay. Okay. So you've convinced me that I need to do this contest. I get a database, so let's say I get 5,000 people, pretty big database. So then are you equipping me with software or something on my computer that broadcasts these? I mean obviously I'm not going to sit at my-

Chris: Right. Right. Right.

Russ: All right, how does that work?

Chris: Everything's hosted on the Web, so all you do is sign into our website, and you can send a text message, you know, put your text message in one time, send it out to one or many of your lists. You've got the ability to have separate lists so you can kind of segment your market and target your audience.

Russ: Okay. Could I send a message out to 50,000 people using my long code text deal through you?

Chris: You could do it, but the thing is, you know, if you've only got 5,000 you can't send it out to 50,000 people. But there's a couple stipulations on long codes, and one is that you've got the ability to only send or receive 500 text messages per hour, and that's a lot for most small to medium-sized companies, but, you know, some of our larger clients, like Rice University and you had the Texans and Ford, what we use is short code with them. And so you can use the same capabilities if you're going to have a large volume of people texting in all at one time, you're going to want to use the short code because then you can send and receive thousands of messages, you know, per minute. But the cost is going to be a lot more.

Russ: Okay, but I could also use the long code and just sort of time it out over a four or five-hour period, right?

Chris: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And that's why we say segment your list and send your message out to a portion of your list and target them very specifically. So if you had a list for different advertisers or different segments of the show, you could then target those lists very well.

Russ: Okay, now obviously a key part of YeeZ is the software that you've built that you host and people log on and use it. Do they offer software like that off of the shelf somewhere or are there other services that say, "Hey, just send us your business over here and we'll broadcast your long code text message?"

Chris: Well, there's not a lot of companies that are doing what we do with long codes. Most of our competitors are using short codes only. You know, they've got the ability to send out text messages, but what they're really missing is how do you build the list in the first place. And that's where we really specialize, is helping you build a list in order to send out your message, because, you know, sending out a message to all your clients and them knowing about, you know, a promotion you're doing is a huge value.

Russ: Absolutely.

Chris: But if you don't have that list in the first place you can't use it.

Russ: That's right. That's right. Okay, so building the list and then being able to have a texting program without spending an arm and a leg that you would do if you had a short code would really - that's your sweet spot?

Chris: Right. Right.

Russ: Okay. Okay. We're talking with Chris Clements, the Founder and CEO of YeeZ Mobile, and we're going to be back with more with Chris after this. You're listening to the Businessmakers Show, heard here and seen online at www.thebusinessmakers.com.

[Commercial]

Russ: This is the Businessmakers Show, heard here and seen online at www.thebusinessmakers.com. And continuing on with Chris Clements, Founder and CEO of YeeZ Mobile. Now, Chris, texting just seems to be taking over the world. I mean and maybe it's just my world, but I thought it was just my kids for a while, and then now all of a sudden it's my friends too. Is that just happening right now, bigger than ever?

Chris: Well, it is definitely taking off. Text messaging has been around for a few years now. You know, the United States is a little bit behind the rest of the world as far as adoption of that, but, you know, the great thing is for businesses is that it's not a cluttered media right now. For example, e-mail; I mean e-mail, if you're sending out an e-mail you're lucky to get 10, maybe 20-percent of the people that you send an e-mail to, a marketing e-mail, to actually open the e-mail.

Russ: Right.

Chris: The great thing about text messaging is that 97-percent of all text messages are opened and read.

Russ: Okay, wow.

Chris: So if you send a text message to one of your clients you're pretty much going to get your message in front of them. So that's one of the things that just really, really excites me about this stuff.

Russ: Right. Right. It's almost like a phone call, and there's this obligation when you receive one that you think you have to look at it. Plus you know it's going to be kind of short too, right? What's the limit on a text message?

Chris: You've got about 160 characters per text message.

Russ: Okay, so you know you're not going to open up this novel and have to kind of read it and stuff, so that's pretty darn cool. So let's move forward, so you've been doing this how long now? How old is the company?

Chris: We're coming up on our two-year anniversary.

Russ: All right. I would assume and hope that in that period of time you might have a success story or two in there. Do you?

Chris: We definitely have a few. One that comes to mind is I mentioned a pizza restaurant earlier, and what they did was we took all the coupons that they were putting out there - pretty much everybody buys pizza with some sort of discount or coupon. Well, all the coupons they were putting out, instead of having people bring in the coupons, in order to activate the coupons they would put a keyword in the coupon.

Russ: In order to activate it, okay.

Chris: In order to activate it. So, you know, to get a $9.99 pizza, text "pizza" to their number and then the actual coupon comes on their phone with an expiration date and, you know, the actual coupon.

Russ: Right.

Chris: But the great thing is, one, that person gets added to the database, so now they can market to them again. And two, it keeps them from using the same coupon over and over, because the second time somebody tries to use that same coupon it sends back an alternative message saying, "Sorry, you've already received this promotion". So what it's done is it has allowed them to give better specials and build that list very fast.

And another great statistic about text message marketing is a 20-percent response rate to a promotion is not unheard of. We've actually gotten them probably 30-35-percent before. Once you build a list of 1,000-2,000 people and send out a text message promotion, it can actually fill a restaurant; it can really sell product.

Russ: Wow, that is impressive. So give us another example. I mean I love this because it just - it's so obvious that it has impact, you know.

Chris: Well, another example is a restaurant that has a bar in it that we work with. They had been building a list for several months. One of their suppliers came in with some Steelers tickets, this was up in Pittsburgh, and gave them some Steelers tickets. They decided to give them away. They sent out a text message that morning to about 800 people; it was a portion of their list. Twenty-two-percent of those people or thereabouts came into their establishment that night to win.

Russ: 'Cause they had a shot at Steelers tickets.

Chris: They had a shot - people really like their Steelers

Russ: Right. Absolutely.

Chris: They came in for the promotion. The sign-up was between 8:00 and 11:00 and the giveaway was at midnight, and in between 8:00 and 11:00 they were having Happy Hour. Between 11:00 and 12:00 it was normal prices, but they had to stick around in order to see if they won the tickets. And they did several thousand-

Russ: A record night at the bar.

Chris: Oh, they did several thousand dollars more that night with that promotion, and that's one the just thought of that morning.

Russ: Real, real, real cool. All right, so before we let you go, let's say you've got somebody watching that's real interested. What's your website address?

Chris: www.YeeZ.com, it's Y-E-E-Z dot-com. And our phone number is on the site and you can give us a call.

Russ: Okay, and then go ahead and tell them this text thing that you've got lined up.

Chris: Okay, and if you want to find out more about a promotion that we'll do for your show, text the word "radio" into 978-242-5800. So just go to your cell phone, text the word "radio" to 978-242-5800 and we'll do it special for just those listeners of your show.

Russ: All right. All right, Chris. Really appreciate you telling us your story and we wish you good luck.

Chris: Thanks a lot, Russ. I appreciate you having me on.

Russ: You bet. That's Chris Clements, the Founder and CEO of YeeZ Mobile. And you're listening to the Businessmakers Show, heard here and seen online at www.thebusinessmakers.com.