In 2007, William and Teri Schroeder founded Just Mind, a boutique mental health center in Austin, Texas. After years of hard work and dedication, they grew it into a thriving group practice with more than 30 therapists. 

Unlike most medical practitioners, William and Teri are marketing-oriented and were actively looking for an effective way to organize the center’s inbound lead flow, which, as William puts it, “was getting to an excessive volume.”

"The volume of leads got to be “too much to manage in Google sheets. We needed something with more transparency. Something that would let us see the process of people contacting us and how we were responding to them,” he explains. 

“We also wanted to scale what we were doing with ActiveCampaign, and so we made Salesmsg a part of that process,” recalls William, “It gave us a way to text people and engage clients in a way that makes sense to them, especially younger people. While older generations generally prefer email or phone calls, texting has quickly become essential to our business. It helps us get back to people faster.”

“Salesmsg lets us communicate with and qualify inbound leads. It also helps us to understand peoples' needs better. The fact is, everything in today’s world is so fast-paced, and it speeds up that back and forth communication.”

“Instead of a longer, drawn-out cycle, as you get with email, we’ve found that the process of getting most new patients scheduled is twice as fast with text messaging when compared to other, slower methods.”

“Salesmsg lets us communicate with and qualify inbound leads. It also helps us to understand peoples' needs better. The fact is, everything in today’s world is so fast-paced, and it speeds up that back and forth communication.”
William Schroeder - Co-Director, Just Mind

Becoming a marketing and technology architect

During our interview, we asked William to tell us more about his role in the business. “I'm the company owner, and my wife is the co-owner," he explains, "I tend to be focused on marketing and work with our developers to groom solutions that meet our business needs.”

“I’m like a marketing and technology architect. I guess that’s what you’d call it. Anyway, that’s the role I’ve inherited,” he says laughingly.

Choosing the best CRM for a medical practice 

“When we were searching for a CRM, we needed something that was fully HIPAA compliant. We did a good bit of homework on it,” recalls William, “We looked at different solutions, including Infusionsoft and Salesforce, but when I looked under the hood of ActiveCampaign, I remember thinking, “I can do a lot with this.” It didn't seem like I would have to hire a developer, and it didn't feel like my wallet would be sucked clean by the experience, either. Salesforce felt very much that way.”

He continued, “You know, as soon as you say HIPAA compliance, prices explode! That's a frustrating thing that makes you feel somewhat powerless. Although a CRM can have all sorts of capabilities, most are out of reach when it comes to price. So that was something that I really liked about Active Campaign. Plus, it felt like I could develop a lot of stuff by myself.”

“Active Campaign also has a consultant marketplace, and after I built out everything, I hired consultants to go through and do some cleanup and optimization. We continue to do that. It’s an ongoing week-to-week process,” he adds.

Why ActiveCampaign and Salesmsg are an excellent fit

“Their pricing was very affordable. It's nice that it wasn't tremendously out of reach. So that was a big thing that drew us to ActiveCampaign. And now, three years later, I feel confident that we made a good choice."

“ActiveCampaign has invested a lot in their product, and their support goes a long way," says William, "Their agents are always available to chat with. And their enterprise team has answered different questions about how we can continue to evolve with their product.”

“Anyway, so we looked at Salesmsg. We looked at TigerText, and we looked at a few other apps that integrate with ActiveCampaign. When I reached out to you guys, you responded very quickly," remembers William, "So far, our experience with Salesmsg has been very positive. Although we haven't needed much support, the few times we did have questions, your support team was very responsive.”

“So far, our experience with Salesmsg has been very positive. Although we haven't needed much support, the few times we did have questions, your support team was very responsive.”
William Schroeder - Co-Director, Just Mind

Attracting potential clients to its website

As mentioned before, Just Mind’s primary growth driver is its continuous focus on improving results by using marketing and technology, not just providing mental health services. 

Look at other highly successful businesses, and you’ll see that there was usually a point when the founders realized they were in the marketing and sales business and not just providing a product or service.

“We have a big emphasis on local SEO and use tools like LocalFalcon to see how we're doing. It helps us see how we’re showing up when people search for us, and we can see different factors like organic SEL, PR, SEO, and other info.”

William continued, “We do lots of things to attract people to us. We've been featured in the New York Times on several occasions, as well as Harvard Business Journal. We've talked about different topics with American Express and appear on their small business blog talking about how employers can onboard autistic people.” 

“Sometimes people find us through different online resources that we’ve built, like a resource for affordable counseling options in Austin, for example. That site drives a lot of lead volume towards us.”

“Technical SEO has also been a big part of our focus,” he explains, “We do lots of things that other practices don’t do, things that help encourage inbound traffic and get site visitors to take action. For instance, we have different calls to action throughout the site to see what's working and not working using tools like CrazyEgg, Hotjar, and Google Analytics. We’re always looking for ways to improve things like site design, page load speed, and building a more efficient site framework.”

“I also try to look at things from a usability perspective. What would I be looking for if I were coming in as a new client and trying to make it easier and easier for site visitors? I feel that things like that have to be part of an ongoing process,” adds William.

How Just Mind handles scheduling and client feedback

Because scheduling is so important for medical practices, we asked William about how his team schedules new and returning clients, “We primarily use ActiveCampaign for that, and we have an electronic medical record system (EMR) that we use in the background.” 

“Once somebody is pre-screened, they’re put into our electronic medical record system, and they need to consent to all the required paperwork to become a client. That's the last step of the scheduling process.”

“We also use GatherUp for reviews and client feedback. Although we don't have it connected to ActiveCampaign, we use it to gauge customer satisfaction and see how we're doing at different customer life cycle stages. Plus, if people want to leave a review, it gives them an easy channel to do it.”

Organizing data and cutting administrative costs

During our conversation, William mentioned another key benefit, “We can easily organize information because it’s all captured in ActiveCampaign, which acts as a central repository. And we've synced it with Salesmsg for text message communications. Of course, our systems and processes are always evolving, but that’s how we’re combining both systems, right now.”

“By pairing ActiveCampaign with Salesmsg, we’ve cut our administrative costs by a significant amount. Mostly because there’s a quicker cycle of working with leads and getting people to come in, it helps us adeptly respond to any concerns people may have, and it enhances our ability to market to younger demographics that prefer SMS as a medium of interaction.”

“Another reason our administrative costs have gone down significantly is that when we first started, everything was through phone and email," explains William, "As you know, more stuff inevitably comes up during phone calls. Nowadays, we let people request a phone callback, but we also encourage them to come in through our CRM. We prefer the CRM when compared to having that first interaction by phone, which usually lasts 30 to 40 minutes.”

“Of course, we're always happy to talk with people by phone, but on the front end, it's helpful to understand if they can benefit from our services or not. Doing things through the CRM speeds up the process of lead qualification. When comparing our administrative costs to other practices our size, we’ve noticed that ours are substantially lower. And I’d say that a big part of that savings comes from using ActiveCampaign and Salesmsg.”

“By pairing ActiveCampaign with Salesmsg, we’ve cut our administrative costs by a significant amount. Mostly because there’s a quicker cycle of working with leads and getting people to come in."
William Schroeder - Co-Director, Just Mind

Communicating with clients the right way

“I think that reaching out to potential clients the right way is essential,” says William, “We hired a group of schedulers that's naturally empathetic in their style, so the back and forth communication with clients doesn't seem robotic or formulaic.”

“The schedulers go through and look at different things that have helped their interactions. Sometimes, they’ll use simple canned messages that don't sound canned. Over time, they've found which messages work best.”

Some examples are: 

“Hi, we're just reaching out after your inquiry.”  

“Do you have a few minutes to chat? 

“I know you said that text messages would be best. Would you prefer a phone call? If so, are you available in the next 30 minutes? 

“You know, things like that," explains William, "Then, there are times when we look at the data coming in and see the age of a person, and we may mention something about a phone call. If it looks like they're 40 or older.”

"We’ll say something like, “Do you have a few minutes to chat? If they want to continue the conversation, and they very often do, we'll see what information we might be missing and try to collect it that way.” 

‍Making customer interactions more flexible and fun

We’ve noticed that Salesmsg customers use different features based on their day-to-day workflow. When asked about his preferred features, William told us, “I think having the flexibility to float between a mobile environment like iOS and a desktop interface makes our interactions using Salesmsg feel playful.” 

“There's a lot built into Salesmsg that makes it fun to interact with clients,” he adds, “And the fact that the environment is so similar in both mobile and desktop is very helpful. Also, having different inboxes is great!”

“The interoperability with ActiveCampaign is nice because it lets you have all of those messages delivered there. I’m looking forward to seeing how the relationship between Salesmsg and ActiveCampaign continues to evolve.”

The software duo that's like a high-value employee

As William puts it, “Because of the information they hold, I feel like ActiveCampaign and Salesmsg have become one of our most valuable employees. Having all that key information in one place lets us go back through time and measure its effectiveness."

“When a good employee leaves your company, everything that person has goes with them. But, in this case, ActiveCampaign and Salesmsg have become that employee. You have them there helping you see patterns of what has worked well and why," explains William.

"On the other hand, when things don't work well, you can also see why. It helps you keep all of those efforts that have compounded over time. And that's why I believe it has become one of our most valuable employees.”

“Because of the information they hold, I feel like ActiveCampaign and Salesmsg have become one of our most valuable employees. Having all that key information in one place lets us go back through time and measure its effectiveness."
William Schroeder - Co-Director, Just Mind

Thanks for reading this story, and feel free to share it with your friends and colleagues. And if you’re not already using Salesmsg to grow your business, try it out for 14 days free.

‍

Written and published in collaboration with StoryOps