Samcart is an e-commerce platform that lets creators build sites to market their digital products and services, convert more visitors into customers, and grow the value of each sale without worrying about technology. 

Based in Austin, Texas, Samcart empowers more than 22,000 creators who’ve generated a combined total of over 2.5 billion dollars in sales with the company’s easy-to-use suite of e-commerce tools.

Always on the lookout for customers using Salesmsg to get extraordinary results, Justin Zimmerman, director of partnerships at Salesmsg, heard that Samcart recently had a successful promotion, and he wanted to know more about it. So he hopped on a call with the co-founder of Samcart, Scott Moran.

Finding the best-of-breed SMS solution 

During their conversation, Justin asked if Scott could explain how Samcart's team found Salesmsg and how they're using it to grow their business. Here’s what Scott said, “We were going to do a monthly promotion. It wasn’t super big, but when we’re promoting something new and start closing it down, we always want to be on top of every possible lead. We also want to have multiple touches.”

He continued, “It’s great if we can be in your email inbox, but it’s even better if we can be on your phone, too! My brother Brian has had lots of success using Salesmsg to grow his mother-in-law’s ballet studio. After she started using it to engage the parents of prospective students, she started smashing it when it came to new signups!” 

“It’s great if we can be in your email inbox, but it’s even better if we can be on your phone, too!”
Scott Moran - Co-Founder, Samcart

Putting Salesmsg to the test

“At Samcart, we've been using Salesmsg to let people text us questions after demos, and those messages get sent to our sales team,” explains Scott, “So we thought, why don't we try sending a text broadcast to a bigger list?”

“During our upcoming promotion, we were planning to broadcast emails to several hundred thousand people. But we wanted to use SMS to add extra touches, so we tested different tools. The first tool was ManyChat. We sent out a message to about 8,000 people and got a 13% failure rate. In other words, 13% of the texts didn't even get delivered," he recalls, “and we got just a 1.6% click-through rate.”

“For 8,000 text messages sent to peoples’ phones, we lost 13% right off the top. And the click-through rate was way too low. I mean, 1.6% is a tiny CTR, especially for text messages.”

“The second tool we tested was one of the more popular HubSpot plugins. Of course, Hubspot connects well with Salesmsg. It’s been a great integration and helped us automate things on the sales side.”

“So we tried using the HubSpot plugin to do the same thing we did with ManyChat. We sent the same message to a group of people whose phone numbers were already in HubSpot. The delivery rate was better than ManyChat. We didn't lose 13% from failed deliveries, but the number was still in the low single digits.” 

“Furthermore, our click-through rates were only about 3 or 4 percent,” recalls Scott, “Now, that was better than what we got with ManyChat, but when compared to the open and click-through rates we got with Salesmsg, the difference was like night and day!”

‍Unlocking a hidden door to more traffic, leads, and sales

“Tnen, we used Salesmsg to send a text message to 44,000 numbers which resulted in about 3,000 clicks,” says Scott, “The open rate was okay, but what was surprising was the 6.8% click-through rate. Yeah, that was about double what we got with the other best option!”

“And those were what we consider “warmish” leads. It was not our sweet spot of people or our customer list. They weren’t exactly our hottest folks,” as he puts it, “They were people who subscribed to our list a long time ago, but had never taken action for one reason or another. So re-engaging them with SMS was powerful!”

“We were so excited to be able to unlock this hidden door to more traffic,” Scott said smilingly, “We didn't know it was there. It was sitting in our back pocket, and Salesmsg was the secret to unlocking that door. We were thrilled with how everything worked out. And using Salesmsg was a big part of turning what would’ve been a regular promotion into a great one!”‍

“We were so excited to be able to unlock this hidden door to more traffic. We didn't know it was there. It was sitting in our back pocket, and Salesmsg was the secret to unlocking that door.”
Scott Moran - Co-Founder, Samcart

Creating an extra $20K in sales with 2 simple text messages

“I think it's fair to describe the people we were reaching out to as a sort of reactivation audience,” explains Scott, “They were people who watched a webinar. Or they went through our sales process before, either live or automated, but for one reason or another, they never signed up for a trial.”

“To have those people engage so strongly with text messaging was nice to see,” he says, “We're a SAS company, so our sales cycle is online. Creators come to us on the front end, and our frontline sales team engages them via live chat. The next step is to get them to a demo. It'll be either a live or video-based demo if they don’t want human interaction.”

“On the other hand, if they prefer human interaction, we have people on our team who’ll give them a live demo of the platform. After that, we have different kinds of follow-up. And that's where SMS kicks in for us. At that level, the people we’re engaging with have already identified themselves as someone with an established business who’d be a great fit for SamCart.”

“If they choose a live demo, we ask for their mobile phone number. And so those were the people we sent the test message to. Out of 44,000 numbers, we got about 3,000 clicks and a 6.8% click-through rate.” 

“Looking back, we realized that 2 simple text messages helped us generate an extra $20,000 in sales revenue," recalls Scott, "That’s because we were selling yearly packages, which are really valuable to our business.”

‍“Looking back, we realized that 2 simple text messages helped us generate an extra $20,000 in sales revenue. That’s because we were selling yearly packages, which are really valuable to our business.”
Scott Moran - Co-Founder, Samcart

Making multiple touches

Scott continued telling Justin how Samcart is using Salesmsg to accelerate growth, “In the past year, we’ve been communicating with prospects and customers with email and SMS. We’re even trying to make our emails feel more like text messages by making them shorter and to the point.”

“If you're going to send a direct mail letter to someone, it’s only good if it gets opened, right? Well, it’s good to think about email and SMS the same way. It’s not your job to sell things there. It's your job to create curiosity and take people somewhere where they're going to learn more or dive in deeper.” 

“In that way, SMS is a great way to grab people’s attention, show them a big benefit, and sell the click. Get them to click and drive that traffic. Then, you can take them somewhere with a bigger conversion. For example, “We’ve got a free demo here. Or, we’ve got a special promotion going on here. You know, things like that.”

Scott looped back to what Samcart did during their successful promotion, “It was a 4-day sale, and we took one of our most popular plans and offered people a yearly discount. We only promote annual discounts every once in a while. We also added a bunch of bonus training to the offer. SamCart is a great e-commerce tool, but it’s even better when we throw in lots of extra training that shows people how to use the more advanced features.”

“In the training videos, we show what Samcart's top sellers are doing strategically. We show which features they use to close more customers and make more money. Essentially, we created a bundled offer with a great tool at a great price. And we included all this awesome training stuff.”

“So, leading up to the promotion, we created lots of anticipation. We talked about the big challenges creators face and how SamCart can help them solve those problems. We basically got everybody excited about the promo, which was scheduled to run Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.”

Scott continued, “Strategically, we wanted the last SMS message to go out on the same day we were closing down the promotion with enough lead time before the actual closing time, which was midnight. So we wrote the message about 12 hours beforehand, got it cued up, and sent it out at noon.”

“I think it’s very effective for people to get one or more messages by email, plus SMS messages on their phone that take them to a page where a countdown timer is rolling. There’s a real scarcity element to that.”

“We touched people through various channels where all the messages were converging on one offer that was closing at midnight,” he remembers, “Later, we realized that was a big reason our conversion rates were so high and why the promotion was such a success.”

“We touched people through various channels where all the messages were converging on this one offer that was closing at midnight. Later, we realized that was a big reason our conversion rates were so high and why the promotion was such a success.”
Scott Moran - Co-Founder, Samcart

‍Short messages can have a big impact 

At that point, Justin asked Scott how many messages they sent. “Well, we sent two short text messages. We sent one on the day the promotion opened and a second one on the day it closed. You know, we didn't want to hammer people with messages every day. I think when it comes to SMS messaging, the less you use it, the more powerful it can be.”

Scott continued, “As far as the actual messages were concerned, all we did was create curiosity, like “Did you see this yet? These courses are huge. Check them out! The second text was short. It just mentioned the deadline.”

Using SMS to overcome objections and close more sales

In the sales profession, there’s an old saying that goes, “The person who overcomes the most objections wins.” And when you can move prospects to the end of their objections, assuming they’re qualified and have the money, you’ll usually make the sale. That’s how it works whether you’re selling products and services online or offline. 

As Scott puts it, “Generally, someone is at a point where they’ve checked out the demo. They’ve read a few customer case studies. They’ve seen a few videos, and they’re just a couple of objections away from buying. And that's when we use SMS messaging. With it, we can open up an easy pathway for our sales team to overcome those last objections quickly.” 

“During promotions, someone may be one question away from buying. So we send a text message to give them a chance to ask that one last question. It's funny because that’s how Salesmsg gets used by a software company like SamCart as well as small businesses like the ballet studio I mentioned earlier.”

“It's the same thing,” he says, “At the ballet studio, they put a simple SMS form on their site that says, “If you have a question, just text it to us.” Answering those questions helps them bring in lots of new customers.” 

“And we answer the same types of questions at SamCart. “Hey, do you guys work with Braintree and Stripe? Yes. Bam! They sign up. “Hey, do you guys help people sell digital and physical products? Yes, absolutely. Another signup!. This approach works well because timing is everything.”

“I think everyone can understand the power of an SMS conversation that happens in moments compared to an email where you reply and get the objection hours or days later. By the time that happens, the excitement may be gone. On the other hand, if you handle the objection in real-time, it’s a powerful thing!”
Scott Moran - Co-Founder, Samcart

Adding more tools to the toolbox 

In case you haven’t noticed, at Salesmsg, we listen to our customers and build many of the features they tell us they need.  For example, lots of people have been using Bitly to shorten links in their SMS messages. So, after seeing that, our dev team added a built-in link shortener.

“We recently rolled out inbound and outbound calling,” says Justin, “We have lots of customers, especially sales teams that love our texting features, but when it came to talking with prospects, they had to use a different number. That’s why we added basic call functionality that lets our users call, text, and leave voice recordings all from the same number.” 

Taking an omnichannel approach to faster growth

Experienced marketers sometimes giggle when they hear people using buzzwords like “Omnichannel.” Who knows, maybe the word gets thrown around a lot because it sounds cool or because it makes people feel smarter? Nonetheless, when you see the impact that combining two channels like email and social media marketing has on your business, you’ll know the value of having multiple channels with subscribers and followers in different places.

As Scott puts it, “If you know the value of having multiple channels, the next logical next step is to add SMS and layer it on top of whatever you're already doing. Finding intelligent ways to use more channels is only going to add to your success if all you did before was send an email every day.”

“We never thought to layer on SMS messages every couple of days during big promotions, but when we finally did, we unlocked a new source of traffic, clicks, and eyeballs that drove peoples’ attention to what we're trying to get them to look at.”

As Scott puts it, “Think of it this way. The kind of traffic you're going to drive using SMS will probably be the most engaged traffic you can get."

"After all, most people guard their phone numbers more than they guard their email addresses. That’s why SMS can have a massive impact if you're not currently using it in your marketing and sales efforts. Anyway, once you start doing that, you can truly say you’re omnichannel,” he says with a smile. 

“If you know the value of having multiple channels, the next logical next step is to add SMS and layer it on top of whatever you're already doing. Finding intelligent ways to use more channels is only going to add to your success if all you did before was send an email every day.”
Scott Moran - Co-Founder, Samcart

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Case study written and published in collaboration with StoryOps