Tech Talk Tuesday with Shamir Cohen from BrandBot

For those of you new to our Tech Talk Tuesdays, this series is aimed at inviting specific software experts and industry pros to chat about the benefits of having certain boutique fitness software that can really help your studio thrive. Today we spoke with Shamir Cohen, Senior Strategic Account Executive at BrandBot, a marketing communications platform that is designed specifically for boutique fitness.

I’m glad that you could join us today. Shamir, why don’t you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what BrandBot is and how it can help transform a fitness business.

I am in sales for BrandBot. I work for multi-location clients as well as smaller studios. Brandbot is a communications platform—it’s built with auto-campaigns, email builders, landing pages, forms—all sorts of different communication, including two-way text.  Our goal is to help move clients through the stages of their customer journey with your business as quickly as possible and we really help automate a lot of that process. Ultimately, we want business owners, especially small studio owners, the ability and space to not have to worry about handling all of those touch-points themselves.

There are so many things that BrandBot offers. It’s an automating answer to many of your problems! I always talk about it as fitness studio email marketing and text, which it is, but it has a lot of other features. Personally, I’ve seen that when studios use it, they quickly realize they can eliminate other software because BrandBot checks so many boxes. From the livestream manager sending zoom links if you’re doing virtual classes to waivers, landing pages, newsletters, and more—all of those things are huge. Ok, next question: What are a few of the immediate wins that studios typically see as soon as they sign up for BrandBot?

A lot of studios are having a hard time nurturing leads; maybe there is a delay from when the lead comes in to when they get the first touchpoint of an email, text or a phone call. Most businesses will feel an immediate result after implementing specific campaigns, like a lead campaign, which can be streamlined in BrandBot. A lot of businesses are using a lead form that comes with their email like Mailchimp or Wix, which isn’t automated. If they don’t have the front desk team to handle those leads, those leads fall off and might go to a competitor. With our system you can embed the lead form on your website, and automatically push the lead into an auto campaign, which will send them a text, an email, and can even automatically create a phone call task for your front desk. From there, our lead campaign can nurture the lead into making a purchase of the business’s intro deal. As soon as that contact makes the purchase of the intro deal, that can put them into the intro deal campaign. For example, in a 30-day Intro campaign, it can guide them into booking their classes, and then upsell them at the end of the campaign based on their behavior during the 30 days. 

The software can really support you through your clients' customer journeys. Each campaign can be personalized so that it feels like it is coming from you. From a very simple text message, so many people respond, thinking it's actually the person sending it. It allows so much connection, and it allows you to enhance the customer experience throughout the customer journey. 

I also love that you can create campaigns that trigger certain entries, and a set of emails based on behaviors. Take this scenario, for example: a client enters the campaign with a 30-day intro offer. During those 30 days, they visit more than 6 times, which will funnel them into another path of the campaign designed to upsell them to a membership. If a client visits less than 6 times, however, they will be channeled into a different series of emails, upselling a class package. So it can be really intelligent, but along the way you have full control over what the campaign is doing and how you’re interacting with your clients. This is one of the main benefits of BrandBot that so many fitness marketing email campaigns don’t have— others don’t integrate fully with your booking system and don’t allow you to fully customize in so much detail.

Exactly. One of my favorite things about BrandBot is the flexibility within the campaign and that not everybody is getting the same message. It’s really based on their unique behavior from purchases to visits and other interactions with your business. You know, as a business owner, that an authentic message is going out— emails and texts that reference their behavior, so the client feels like you took the time to look at their visit history and recommend something specific for them. You can automatically have their name and other details fill into the email or text, for example, “Hey, Catalina, I know you visited 20 times on the 30-day intro deal so we thought a membership would be a great next step!” 

I received the first visit text and I didn’t realize it was BrandBot! I was thinking to myself, that was so nice of them. The message said, “Hi Shamir, how did you like your first class? Do you have any questions?” We sync everything 30 minutes to an hour with all of our integrations, so we see very quickly when clients make purchases, and we can have those automations fire, fairly rapidly.

That’s awesome. That first visit text is one of my favorites. I was wondering if you have any powerful stats or impressions that you’ve had working with BrandBot and studio owners over the past year? Any different trends or patterns, or ways that you’ve noticed people have reacted when they have started using it?

After the first visit text from BrandBot, we see about a 50 percent response rate. This message goes out right after class, so somebody’s endorphins might be up and they are excited to share how they felt about their experience. 

With all of our campaigns you have analytics so you can see the conversion rates. For instance, if you have a 3-month win-back campaign, it will funnel them in when they reach 3 months with no visit. At that time, you can offer them off-line pricing options with our landing pages, and if they make another purchase, or visit, the conversion rate on that campaign will increase. We see a lot of people that have tracked their retention in their core software like MBO or Mariana Tek, and their retention is quite low, but once they start implementing some of our campaigns, especially the win-back campaign, they’ll see those report numbers improve. 

I really like that you have the abandoned cart, or the profile follow-up option in BrandBot. Essentially, when someone creates a profile in MBO or Mariana Tek and they don’t purchase anything else, BrandBot follows up with them and invites them to purchase—it’s the equivalent of the abandoned cart for the fitness world. For businesses that don’t have it you’re basically leaving money on the table. 

Yes, one of my favorite features is the landing pages. Instead of sending people to your software buy page, which they might get through your website, we can help you create a landing page that’s sole purpose is to sell a single pricing option. This creates a sort of tunnel vision for your client, so they only see the one pricing option you want them to see. Often, if a client has to sift through a buy page on the website to try and find a specific type of purchase, you may lose the sale because they get lost or frustrated. So being able to email them and give them that call to action, essentially directing them to that landing page, is so valuable. And we have the cart abandonment feature you mentioned, so if somebody starts purchasing a membership through your landing page, and they don’t complete the purchase, they can get their cart sent to them later. And I’m a stickler, whenever I get a cart abandonment email.. I’m like, ok, I guess it is a sign..

What are some of the booking systems that BrandBot integrates with?

As of today, we integrate with Mariana Tek, MBO, and Pike13. And we are working on more integrations like zingfit, which will be coming in the future, and Clubware. 

I get this question a lot. In terms of frequency of communicating, studios often ask me, “How often do people want to hear from me? I’m worried they will unsubscribe because I’m overdoing it. I also worry that I’m not engaging because I’m under-doing it.” What do you think is the sweet spot here?

In general, we have templates in place that have a good cadence already built-in. But what we generally see is that a good mix of email and text performs the best. If it’s all text, clients are going to be put-off just because nobody wants their phone going off all day. Having a mindful balance is definitely helpful, and also making sure that you use the personalizations in the email and text so they think you are literally referencing their behavior and sending them a personal message.

So to recap: Make sure you personalize by referencing their name or the last time they did a class, or the instructor that they last saw (and making sure that is up to date), and make sure there is a nice combination of text and email. I tend to recommend trying a specific frequency, so lets say twice a week, and if the open rates or any kind of analytics that BrandBot directly provides you start getting worse or better, then that will be your answer in terms of frequency. For the most part, what we’ve seen is that most people are not sending enough messaging and that consumers are wanting to hear more from the businesses that they interact with. Text is an interesting beast because it's more intimate and allows for more of the relationship-building piece, but you don’t want to overdue it because people tend to feel more bombarded. So, I recommend reserving the text messages more for the “Hey, how are you feeling?” messages, and then leaving the more salesy, more content-heavy stuff for email. 

Let's talk about the auto alerts and tasks. Can you talk to us about those? I feel like it’s an underutilized tool.

I’ve found that multi-location clients use this tool the most. Maybe it’s because they have a bigger front desk staff, but either way, it’s extremely helpful. For example, a studio owner can say, “I want all leads called as soon as they enter the campaign,” so that as soon as a client creates a profile in the booking software and doesn't buy anything, you can create a lead and call them. That task can even have a script so that the staff knows exactly what to say. But it doesn’t have to be a phone call task. We can auto-create tasks in our milestone campaign, too. For instance, “Catalina hit the 100th milestone, have a gift bag waiting.” Your staff can focus on the to-dos from the BrandBot screen, which can be phone calls, having gift bags waiting, etc.. so that they can be automatically done.

I also think it’s a very powerful feature for studio owners to consider when they are thinking about bonus pay schemes or when you're using your front desk as more of a sales force and you’re trying to reward them based on conversions. You can track that through the auto alerts as well. It’s a really cool feature. I wish people used it more. It’s doing so much of the work for you.

A lot of BrandBot is automated so you don’t have to do much work, but the auto tasks will tell you those random times you need to add a personal touch like a phone call or task. 

Thank you so much to Shamir for joining us! We appreciate you.

To discuss whether Mariana Tek is right for your business needs, please e-mail Catalina at catalina@telomereconsulting.com.

Catalina's consultancy, Telomere Consulting, provides 1:1 coaching, strategy consulting and marketing services ('done-with-you' and 'done-for-you') to fitness businesses looking to serve their purpose and become even more profitable. Catalina also coaches her clients on strategies for sales, pricing, and the creation of new revenue streams.

Telomere Consulting provides business consulting and marketing services to studio owners in the boutique fitness and yoga space. The Telomere team helps you navigate business strategy from conception to implementation. We provide end-to-end marketing support and would love to hear from you. Click here to book your free intro call. We want you to treat your business the way you treat your body – making the right choices now to optimize its potential for a long and healthy life. Visit us here to learn more.