GTM Innovators: Texting with Intent – Phil Portman on Smarter SMS for Modern GTM Teams

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In this episode of GTM Innovators, we sit down with Phil Portman, founder and CEO of Textdrip, to explore how SMS is evolving from a simple communication tool into a powerful, intent-based automation channel for modern go-to-market teams. Phil shares his entrepreneurial journey from flipping houses to building a scalable, compliant SMS platform designed for regulated industries. We dive into how Textdrip leverages AI (without losing the human touch), the dos and don’ts of SMS campaigns, and why deliverability and trust are the new battlegrounds in business texting. If you’re curious about how to integrate SMS into your GTM strategy the right way, this episode is for you. 

Subscript to GMT Innovators Series on the following platforms:

Transcript:

Kyle James (00:01.693)
everybody, welcome to another episode of GTM Innovators by 3Sixty Insights. I’m your host Kyle James and today we’re going to dive into all things business texting and how that fits into your go-to-market strategy. And joining me today is Phil Portman. Phil, welcome to the show.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (00:18.21)
Thank you for having me.

Kyle James (00:19.441)
Absolutely, I’m really excited for this conversation. You and I have just been kind of pre-gaming a little bit, just going all over the place, and I know that this will be a great show. We just kind of flow, and I don’t know where we’re gonna go fully, but that’s part of why it’s gonna be an interesting conversation, and everybody listening, buckle up. So, we will figure it out.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (00:36.622)
I’m excited, we’ll figure it out.

Kyle James (00:40.235)
Phil, you are the founder and CEO of Tech Strip, a high volume SMS automation platform built for regulated industries like insurance, mortgage, real estate. And you have a really cool entrepreneurial journey. Kind of how you left the corporate world, started flipping houses, launched and sold a food delivery company. I would love just to kind of give you a minute to kind of give your origin story, if you will, if you’re a comic book guy. Kind of how that led you into kind of founding Tech Strip

and then we can get into kind of like this crazy world of SMS and how that’s changed so much in the last, gosh, decade plus.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (01:18.52)
Yeah, absolutely. you know, I was in the corporate world making six figures, making good money. We just had our two children and I was traveling a lot. I was raised by a single mother, one of seven children. And I looked at my own life and I was like, I don’t want my wife being a single mother raising these kids on their own. So I quit my job.

I quit my job and I said, I will never work for somebody again. And I didn’t know what I was doing. I just decided that was it. I was gonna figure it out. I wanted to spend time. I wanted to be there with my kids and family. I wanted control of my life.

So initially I started with real estate, was flipping houses, had some rental properties, and we started this little side project. Now I gotta be clear, while I was flipping houses, I was doing all of these little entrepreneur gigs, like hey, let’s see what works, right? Like even going to the end caps of retail stores, looking at like 90 % off stuff, buying it and selling it on eBay. Like I was just looking for, hey, what am I gonna get into? I was buying pallets of stuff and selling it, all kinds of stuff.

Kyle James (02:18.218)
Yeah.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (02:33.228)
this food delivery company and it started taking off. I ended up franchising it. We operated across six states and then I eventually sold to delivery.com. The reason I sold to delivery.com was this thing had expanded and I was back to traveling all over the place, working out of an office and not seeing my kids again.

I said, that’s the whole reason I got out of the corporate thing. So yeah, I own this, this is my business, but I’m doing the same things I didn’t want to do.

Kyle James (03:04.906)
Yeah.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (03:06.144)
So this time around, I decided that, we’re gonna, you know, we’re gonna go the tech route. I’m gonna limit the things I will do. set the kind of the non-negotiables that I wanted. I started with a company called Argos Automation. We automated CRMs and that sort of thing. And while we were building this, we found this really big gap in communication, specifically with text messaging.

low deliverability, no transparency, compliance issues. We said if we could figure this out, like if we can figure out.

and be the absolute best in this single category, a category that is not only has the best response rate, but it’s the most preferred way of communication for Americans. If we can figure this out, I think there’s an opportunity here. So we honed in on it, understood the compliance thing, understood the complexities, and it’s exploded and Textrip has grown into the behemoth it is.

And then on a side note, two years ago we bought a 54 acre commercial horse farm, which is completely opposite. But it’s honestly, it’s my happy place. absolutely love it there.

Kyle James (04:13.045)
Ha ha.

Kyle James (04:17.227)
There you go, it’s good to have that balance. And it’s funny to hear you say like, how?

important and big SMS text messages, because even my mom, 78 year old, would rather text me a lot of times and call me, I don’t want to disturb you, I don’t want to get on the phone, I know you’re busy. She drops me texts all day. But I can also remember the day 10 years ago where I don’t want to text you because I don’t want to pay 10 cents for it. I’m like, mom, it’s unlimited now. How quickly that stuff started changing, and you’re right. It is to a point now where it has taken over email a lot of times, and we’re seeing,

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (04:39.874)
Yeah.

Kyle James (04:52.173)
for good and bad, I’d love you to kind of dig into this, like the spam adoption of it. You know, I probably got two today, just of random people texting me, like, how do you avoid that? How do you combat that? And I’m sure that presents its own challenges because people are now starting to try to block that stuff, right?

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (05:09.55)
That’s right, yeah. And unfortunately, there’s always gonna be random bad actors out there, but that’s really what they’re trying to fix. So in the past, texting was supposed to be done through 800 numbers or short codes. That’s how business texting was supposed to be done. However, people wanted a local presence in using what they call 10 DLC, it’s 10-digit long code.

Kyle James (05:15.914)
Gotcha.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (05:32.686)
So in 2019, they started rolling out regulations to figure out how they could map monitor this, this business, how they regulate it. And it’s really to prevent like these overseas scammers with like the COVID relief fund, click here, get a free Walmart gift card, click this link and enter your social security number, like that, that type of stuff. So they started rolling it out and we’ve seen a large improvement in that. And it’s, it’s clearing the pathway for legitimate businesses.

to do business through texting, to communicate with their customers, to communicate with their leads, and it’s been effective, but…

Because texting is so effective you’re still gonna have these bad actors and what they’re doing is they’re finding Some other route to do it Usually it’s hacking someone’s account or doing something like that and they text just long enough to get the message out there and then their accounts burned and they’re they’re on to something else so hopefully it’s gonna get better but In until people or companies improve their security. I think we’re gonna continue to have have

Kyle James (06:20.618)
Yeah.

Kyle James (06:31.455)
Got it.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (06:41.872)
issues with it. They’re certainly not legitimate. If they’re messaging you out of the blue, you can understand that they’re not a legitimate service, because if they were, that wouldn’t be allowed.

Kyle James (06:50.527)
Got it. So is that a large part of what you kind of work with with your clients in these regulated industries is establishing that, I guess a trusted number that it can come from that has the domain, whatever it is in the text world. You know, I’m very familiar with kind of email where you have like the trust of the domain and how it gets through filters and all. It sounds like a lot of that’s coming to text too.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (07:08.138)
Email, sure.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (07:15.126)
Yeah, that’s right. Yep. So if you come on board with us or any legitimate business texting platform, what you have to do now is register your business entity and then create a campaign. And within that campaign, you’re telling what you’re doing, who you’re communicating with, how often you’re communicating with them, all of that.

Fortunately, we guide you through all that, we automate steps of it, and we have live people that help you submit the campaign. They want to know that you’re a legitimate business operating legitimately. So that’s what you’re coming on board with us doing.

Kyle James (07:54.88)
Yeah.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (07:58.922)
So we help you guide that not only from the onboarding standpoint, but we also help guide you with what messages to send and what ones to stay away from. Because once again, they’re trying to find those scammers out there that are blasting your messages and they have filtering to stop that. What you may not realize is that some of your messaging in there may accidentally be getting filtered because it’s close enough to what they’re saying.

Kyle James (08:13.866)
Right.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (08:26.668)
So what I commonly hear from people is like, hey, I tried texting before and it seemed like it worked for like a week or two and then I just, it didn’t work anymore. Well, chances are you’re doing a few things wrong, either the way you were delivering, the volume you were delivering, or the actual message inside.

Kyle James (08:36.235)
Interesting.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (08:45.088)
Inside our platform, we really guide you with that and then you have somebody that helps you set up your account. We highlight like keywords that are going to get flagged or are going to get you blocked and then we help you rewrite the phrase that you’re trying to so you’ll get the best deliverability. And then on top of that, we give you the reporting to make sure that you know exactly what’s going on with your deliverability.

Kyle James (09:05.738)
That’s interesting. So there is a level of analytics, if you will, built out around this stuff now, because I guess that was always something that, I mean, once again, I know very little about SMS world. And I guess you have to work with what the big cell phone providers, the Verizon’s and the ATD’s world, because is this their networks that all of this lives on? Is that right? It’s not like the internet where it’s like open protocol. You really have to work with these big giants.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (09:17.909)
Yeah!

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (09:26.05)
Man, you got it.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (09:32.91)
It be amazing if it was. Yes. It would be amazing if they all had a standardization, but they don’t. They have different fees we have to pay them. They have different volume daily, like volume limitations that they have. Each carrier is a little bit different. And then they have different rules that you have to follow for each one of them. So yeah, it would be beautiful if they were standardized, but they’re not. And unfortunately, these things change regularly.

Kyle James (09:35.979)
Mm-hmm.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (10:01.346)
So we have an entire compliance department dedicated to keeping track of that. Not only what exists right now, but what’s coming out in the future and then what’s rumored to come out in the future. So we have everything set up in place for if that thing gets rolled out, we’re ready to go on it. A big thing that you talked about the tracking of messages that’s different by company.

Not all texting is the same. Not all texting companies are the same. Oftentimes you’ll get a deliverability rate from a texting company. I think just about every other texting company out there, the way they track it is they send your message off to the provider and they get a response that that sent off messages was successful or not. And they say, hey, you got a 99 % deliverability because we sent it off and they said, we’re good to go.

Kyle James (10:34.699)
Okay.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (10:59.896)
That’s not really accurate though. The problem is along the way, a lot of things can happen on your downstream. can get blocked by the carrier coming in, it can get blocked by the phone, can get blocked. So the way we actually do it is we track it all the way down to the handset from the delivery receipt and we wait for that to come back.

Kyle James (11:02.315)
Hmm

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (11:23.394)
And sometimes there can be delays on that. So when you look at your metrics, you sent out a campaign, throughout the day you’re seeing your delivery percentage change because we’re waiting to get back those receipts from the actual Hanseq area.

That’s the most accurate way to do it. That’s by far the most accurate. And you may look at our platform and somebody else’s and go, wait a minute, how come they have a higher deliverability percentage? Well, the answer is it’s not accurate. So we know we have the highest deliverability percentage because it’s accurate. We know what’s causing it. We understand what is going through and what is not, and we help our clients deliver that.

Kyle James (11:43.028)
interesting.

Kyle James (12:08.358)
It’s funny because it’s so similar to email marketing but absolutely fundamentally different too. And people probably think it’s the same but it’s not. I mean I could geek out on the tech but I got a feeling a lot of people that listen to this podcast are thinking more of the, I would love for you to share like.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (12:15.138)
He really is.

Kyle James (12:27.561)
What type of stuff are customers using this stuff for, right? Like what kind of campaigns are they running? What sort of intention are they doing? Is this more of like getting customers or are they using it for prospecting? Are they using it for customers? Is it using it for support? All of the above. Would love you to share some of those, what you’re seeing, maybe specific interest rates and how they’re using it differently.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (12:50.612)
Absolutely. Yep. Yep. So SMS shines for immediate responses Updates notifications flash deals. It has a 90 second Open rate 90 seconds. I mean it’s it’s there if you look at your phone right now How many unread text messages do you have versus how many unread emails do you have?

Kyle James (13:06.899)
Okay. Yeah.

Kyle James (13:16.395)
True. True.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (13:17.774)
If you’re like me, I have little to no unread text messages. I’m on this call right now, so if some came through maybe. Unread emails, I probably have 50,000 in there. I don’t know, right? Emails can be ignored. Text messages can’t. There’s just something about it you got to clear it. You got to go in there and read it. Knowing that, it’s like …

Kyle James (13:26.025)
Yeah, same here.

Mm-hmm.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (13:41.062)
push notification. It’s a powerful tool. It’s there. You have to respond to it. There’s good and bad to that. The good is that when you have something that’s of interest to that customer in that moment, you’re gonna get them engaged instantly. The bad side is if they don’t want to receive that, you’re gonna piss off that customer immediately.

So you have to understand that it’s a powerful tool, it’s a powerful weapon that needs to be used appropriately. So like what you were talking about with the email, email is great for nurturing the lead, for prospecting the lead. It’s great because I can easily ignore that or engage with it when it’s appropriate. When I’m going through my email and I say, yeah, hey, this is cool, right?

Kyle James (14:07.37)
Yeah.

Kyle James (14:14.314)
Got it.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (14:35.19)
Text messaging is like, hey, I got this thing for you right now, right? Like, hey, you’ve shown interest in these type of houses. This one, I think, is gonna be great for you. Or this plan is great for you. Or this thing just dropped in price. Let me know if you wanna get on it. Because it’s instant. They need your communication. They need your feedback right then and there. Email is like, hey, here’s an update on new housing market trends or new changes in insurance.

Kyle James (14:48.629)
Yeah.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (15:05.104)
industry. That’s your prospecting lead. So they’re different forms of communication. So keep that in mind when you’re sending out text messages. You don’t want to piss off your customers by sending out the wrong type of engagement.

Kyle James (15:10.379)
Sure.

Kyle James (15:18.453)
That makes total sense, right? It’s immediate action, quick wins, things that people can do fast. Don’t expect it to send them a link to a website to go fill out a survey or something like that from a text message. You’re not gonna get the same hit rate, open rate, as you would an email, but the likelihood they’ll sit down and do something like that is probably a lot more. That makes a lot of sense.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (15:39.493)
The response rate on texting is 45 % compared to 6 % in email. So it’s significantly higher. Significantly higher. And then there’s some other information around like.

sales in general. sales in general, 80 % of your sales require five follow-ups. 44 % of people give up after one attempt. So that’s where the automation sequence comes in. Say somebody goes on your website, they engage with you, they’re interested, you put them on a tech strip campaign. It’s automatically following up with them when they’re ready.

So like with your grandmother who didn’t want to bug you so she sent you a text message, it’s because it’s non-committal. You could like get back to her in an hour or a day. It’s just expected. Like hey, when you get around to it, you’re going to send a text message. And that’s one of the benefits to texting. It’s instant, it’s immediate, it’s read within 90 seconds, but you don’t necessarily have to respond right there in that moment.

Kyle James (16:47.189)
So talk to me more about that. What are some of the campaigns that people are doing? what are people seeing success in? We’ve kind of talked about the differences, but would love just to know some examples of things. Because to your point, it’s fundamentally different than how an email marketer would think about doing it, because this is a different channel.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (17:02.157)
Yeah.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (17:10.156)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, great, great. So.

Kyle James (17:12.073)
Am I freezing up on you? I’m sorry, I’m gonna jump in, but am I freezing up? There’s a giant storm thunder out here, so I don’t know if it’s showing up on your end too, and Ryan cut this out afterwards, but am I getting a little choppy up for you?

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (17:25.287)
There was a couple moments, but I still got what you were saying. So I think it was good enough. Yep. Yeah. I appreciate it.

Kyle James (17:29.427)
Okay, okay. Yeah, I’m sorry for that. I think we’re fine to keep powering through it, but as long as it doesn’t draw power here or something, but I don’t know. I just wanted to call that out, and Ryan, please cut this. Cool.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (17:43.158)
Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah, so once again the immediacy of something that you have going on you need to understand your customer’s segment

There is not a blanket advertising that you typically want to do. You want to segment your customers. Internally in our system, we do it with tags. So you’re tagging the customer based on whatever it is. And then if you have something that is in that moment immediate for that customer or that lead, you want to respond to it in that way. So that’s the first way that you want to do it.

So not, have houses within your market that would be a great deal for you. No, I know you’re interested in a four bedroom house with two baths on three quarter of an acre larger. This is, this house just hit the market. Seems to be at a great price point. Let’s hop on a quick call so we can schedule a, or what day are you available or click, you know, click here to jump my calendar and let’s go take a look at it together. Something like that, right?

Kyle James (18:52.169)
Yeah.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (18:55.584)
So you’re you’re you’re really pressing the immediacy of Getting on a call with you right now and the best ways to do that are segmenting your customers based on the tags and things like that We talked about also using merge fields that can help individualize those texts to that individual So it’s the equivalent of you sitting there on the device saying hey, I just saw this thing came up But we’re doing it in scale. We’re doing it with an automation platform using both automation

like tags and things like that and also using AI to help you craft that message.

Kyle James (19:30.345)
Right, I got it. So it could be you’ve scheduled a meeting with somebody for tomorrow and you send a quick text that morning or the night before to say, hey, just wanted to quickly confirm that we’re still on for tomorrow, respond to wife so it know if you need to reschedule. Quick things like that, that just like make sure you’re still on, get them thinking about you being mindful, but it’s in and out real fast.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (19:47.166)
Absolutely.

Yep.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (19:54.732)
Yeah, absolutely. And people forget things. mean, it’s busy lives and stuff. So one of the things that we often talk about when you’re engaging with somebody, because we have a beautiful mobile app, you’d be sitting on a golf course texting back with back forth, somebody could use their computer app. We’ve got a Mac desktop app that you can use. We’ve got all different ways to communicate with customers. So you can be communicating with the customer. And then what could happen is they could disappear. Right. I mean, no fault of theirs. Maybe they went on vacation. They had an emergency happen, whatever. And

It’s easy to forget about it and then two weeks later you’re like wait a minute whatever happened to that guy I was talking to he’s really interested right so what we recommend is every message you’re putting a ghosted campaign on there Acting as if they’re never going to respond again

Kyle James (20:33.578)
Yeah.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (20:44.606)
Our drips automatically break on response of the customer. So let’s say I’m having an interaction with you Kyle and we’re saying yeah Hey, let’s this this this house looks like a great deal for you. Let’s let’s get it scheduled Right after I send that message to you I put you on a ghosted drip If you respond back and say yeah, I can jump on, know, saturday at one o’clock. Can we go out and take look at it? You’re never going to see that ghosted drip

But if you don’t, that ghost of drip follows back up like, hey Kyle, you still with me? Like, you know, this thing’s gonna move quickly. Like we gotta get this scheduled. And then maybe a day later it follows back up with you like, hey, you know, they’ve already had three lists, showings on this thing or whatever. What are we doing about it? So it’s automatically nurturing that lead. The nurturing from the texting is fine if I’m already engaged in a conversation with them.

Kyle James (21:10.677)
Right.

Kyle James (21:33.163)
Mm-hmm.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (21:39.628)
The engagement that’s gonna piss off people if it’s not relevant to them is the cold outreach that you’ve gotten. Like you’ve described the spam messages that you’ve gotten. Those piss you off because they’re cold outreach. They’re not geared towards you and it’s not from a conversation you’re having with somebody.

Kyle James (21:40.138)
Yeah.

Kyle James (21:54.314)
Right.

Interesting. All right, so let’s go here. You were kind of talking about kind of.

the automated sequence there. So I’m assuming you guys must integrate in or with CRM systems and can be part of that workflow, Where, all right, here’s a email that might go, here’s where a SMS might trigger. Here’s some data pulled into it that says, hey, there three other listings associated with it, so you could kind of tie all that stuff together. Talk to me a little bit about kind of that piece, the integration piece, and what platforms do you commonly integrate with and all the good stuff.

You

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (22:35.242)
In this day and age, if you’re not working with a platform that’s integrating with everything, you’re working with the wrong platform. That started Text Strip. When we started Text Strip, there was two things we wanted. One was a drip campaign, a really clean looking inbox, and we wanted to integrate with everything.

Kyle James (22:41.568)
Yeah.

Kyle James (22:52.704)
Yeah.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (22:55.478)
Right. So that’s what you looked at with our UI. So from our API to our direct integrations with them to we have automation sequences that will connect with whatever your system is out there or the easiest method is we have a Chrome or Firefox extension that you can actually put in there and it will grab the data directly from whatever CRM, whatever, say hiring tool, like you’re using whatever that has the phone number on the webpage.

only can you apply them to a drip campaign it will pull up your inbox inside Textrip. So you’re not actually even having to go to the Textrip platform you’re not having to leave whatever it is you’re looking at in your browser you can use your inbox right inside there. Behind the scenes Textrip is automating things, applying tags, doing all sorts of things but inside your interface for whatever CRM whatever function you’re using you can have our inbox right there on that same page.

Kyle James (23:31.743)
I see.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (23:55.264)
Thank

We’re also on like Zapier and all those other platforms as well where you can connect things and make sequences go together. We also have an automation studio inside Tech Strip where you can connect it with thousands of different third-party platforms. So you want to connect it to Facebook, you want to connect it to Google, you want to connect it to Google Sheets, you want to connect it to Salesforce, anything you got out there, you can connect to Tech Strip both in and out.

Kyle James (24:15.072)
Got it.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (24:26.16)
On top of that we have webhooks so you can trigger a webhook sequence based on that so you could say hey Based on the intent to this customer, right? The this customer is interested. I want this trigger to happen

Kyle James (24:36.351)
Yeah.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (24:41.166)
it will pop into some other CRM or whatever you want to do so we can set up however you want and the beauty of it is We have live agents that help you do this You go on to their Calendly you schedule a link with them and say hey This is what I’m trying to achieve and they’ll jump on a zoom call with you and help you get it all set up

Kyle James (25:04.511)
Nice, nice. And I’m sure a lot of people abstractly understand this, but I would love, how do you feel about sharing some of your own dog food tricks? I know that this is a superpower of you because you built this platform, but also it’s gotta be something in your marketing and sales mix. Any campaigns that you could share or just examples to kind of help people think out of the box some of the ways they can use this in a more specific way?

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (25:32.076)
Yeah, marketing campaigns in general. the first thing I want to say is in marketing in general, the most powerful thing you can do is always be A-B testing. Always be A-B testing. Never think …

Kyle James (25:41.993)
Yes, always be testing.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (25:45.754)
One thing is working split test all of your stuff change it constantly adapt it constantly. That’s where we identify what what works and what doesn’t your industry is going to be completely different probably than mine. The throughout the year things change political environments financial environments everything changes constantly. That’s the only common thing is that it changes all the time. So if you’re not A B testing your marketing strategy on a regular basis you’re

Kyle James (26:11.563)
Sure.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (26:15.568)
probably missing out on something and we’re always not always but oftentimes we’re blown away at what our AB testing resulted in like that’s weird why did that word do better here I don’t know what it is but you know what I’m

Kyle James (26:30.687)
You got a story?

You got a story? You got a specific story there?

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (26:36.846)
The story one of the things that’s that’s interesting is like free we talked about this before free can’t be used in email and Texting like it’ll get blocked But on websites free is still doing really really well The word free it’s it’s still doing incredibly well on it And so as much as we try to work in other words, it continues to be a word that’s that’s working really well

Kyle James (26:47.359)
Yeah, yeah.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (27:05.25)
But back to like what we are finding that’s working is behind the scenes videos. Things like that that show some of your authenticity. We’re seeing that’s working a lot more. Our customers.

Kyle James (27:17.867)
So you drive them on their phone to a short testimony or case study or something like that related to their industry.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (27:25.64)
No, specifically they want to see the behind the scenes of our company so we’re seeing like the best the highest engagement in like social media posts or Any of our marketing campaigns are coming from

Kyle James (27:29.845)
Got it.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (27:41.514)
Scene behind the scenes employee promotions. What’s going on? What does work life look like things like that? And I think it’s because this is kind of my theory behind it with ai and everything that’s going on in this day and age You can create a website an environment that makes you look A lot more polished than you maybe aren’t right? Yeah

Kyle James (28:03.679)
lot bigger than you are, sure.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (28:06.348)
And so people kind of want to see like behind the curtain who’s back there like what’s going on right now? And so we’re seeing a lot that a lot more of that in our in our specific marketing campaigns, you know for that now for texting specifically There is one thing that will get you

Your campaign killed today and that you need to watch out for that you probably don’t realize If you’re doing this right now, I guarantee your engagement is incredibly low It is cold outreach in your messaging and i’m giving an example of what I mean by this This is something that all of the carrier algorithms are looking for the example would be Hey, bob or hey bob, whatever it is. I

represent customers in your area. Are you looking for my service? That’s a cold outreach and it’s getting flagged by the carriers. It’s getting blocked. Your response needs to be coming from a question or an inquiry. Hey, Bob, I got your information. Absolutely. Let’s get on a call and schedule a time to talk. Right. So you’re you’re responding to somebody.

Kyle James (29:03.167)
Yeah.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (29:24.062)
If your messaging is cold outreach doesn’t sound like that person has any idea who you are and certainly never contacted you They are blocking that left and right So that is probably the top thing right now that you can do to get a higher response rate Change it to a response to an inquiry instead of a cold outreach

Kyle James (29:44.747)
Got it. And with that, like, how are you using AI? Are you, or do you have tools that like offer up AI to kind of help you?

you know, I don’t know, maybe grade a message or tell you, hey, if you change it this way, it’s more likely to get through. Or, you know, if someone’s doing a mass campaign, they can take some of the data from the CRM, some of the conversations and tweak it all a little bit to kind of be more relevant, be more relational, be more specific to kind of, because it sounds like these filters are really set up to kind of watch intent, right?

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (30:19.438)
That’s right. Yeah, so internally we have our own AI systems that we built from the ground up. Things for like understanding intent, for understanding your data that we built from scratch that are not based on large language models.

However, we do also have some integrations with large language models on the front end. We’re using some of those to help you craft your messages better. And that’s really where that comes in really well. We send it to feedback and what we’re looking for, and it helps you rewrite your messaging that’s gonna work better.

So when you come in there and you say put in a message that we know is not going to work well, we flag that message inside there and tell you, hey, we suggest you write it this way and you’re to get a better response rate. And then you can.

Kyle James (31:06.655)
Got it.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (31:07.726)
You can send it out and track it for yourself and see the response rate. Because once again, even with our platform, you should always be doing A-B testing. Don’t just take our word for it. Test it out. See how it does. You can have up to 49 different numbers. If you wanted to, you could test one out in one number, one out in another phone number. See how it goes.

Kyle James (31:19.552)
Yeah.

Kyle James (31:26.603)
Talk to me about that piece, right? Like I’m sure there’s people out there that have burned a number maybe, right? Like they’re trying to something, they weren’t getting through the filters and you even mentioned that at the beginning where, yeah, we did it and then a week later it kind of wasn’t working. Is that the, what is the advice or tips for customers that are navigating through challenges like that? Is it just to spin up another number? Is it to get a platform like you guys that help you navigate all through all that for you? Or is it really just a write better copy?

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (31:56.994)
Yeah, yeah. There’s a lot that goes into that. Numbers are really tracked to campaigns now. So if you you burnt your number, a lot of times it’s too late.

So with our analytics, we are stopping campaigns that we see are going to be a problem before your number gets burned. So we’re stopping that and then we either require you to kind of go through a little tutorial that helps you fix what that is or you get on a call with somebody and they’re going to walk you through what you need to do differently in that.

The top one is that cold outreach messaging. Like that is the top reason we get on with people is just, you just need to change it. It looks like a cold outreach. We understand what you’re trying to say, but it looks like a cold outreach. And that’s why the carriers are flagging it. Right. Or another one is you’re trying to message dead numbers, numbers that no longer exist or they’re going to like a landline or whatever.

Kyle James (32:35.424)
Yeah.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (33:02.924)
We have a platform called Landline Remover where you can run your lead list through it and it will remove any non-textable numbers. It will show you who’s on the do not call registry and then most importantly, we remove known litigators. And known litigators are people who go on

and request your information and they’re trying to figure out a way to sue you. And they’re not actually going to sue you. They’re going to send you a letter saying send me $5,000 or I’m going to take you to court. And that’s just their job. They’re called known litigators. We track them. We have an entire database full of them and you can run them through there. if you’re.

Kyle James (33:38.43)
Peace.

Kyle James (33:46.923)
It’s kind of like a blacklist, it sounds like.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (33:48.974)
It is the blacklist. Yeah, so if you’re hitting a certain certain things with your leads Sometimes that’s the recommendation run it through landline remover before you message them and it’s going to weed out a lot of those non-textable numbers and then it’s so either that or your messaging quality is Is is the two things that you can do and we’ll help guide you on that

Kyle James (34:09.727)
Nice, nice. Yeah, I mean, this seems like a mix that everybody should be using on some level or another. Like, it’s another tool for the tool belt, and it gets conversations going, and to your point, anytime you get something that 90 seconds is the response rate on, you know, urgency, hey, we’re trying to close this deal today, how do you get in touch with somebody? That’s how.

What sort of tips or best practices do you have for people that are just now starting, like listening to conversation like this, like you know what, we need to introduce more or start doing at all B2B kind of SMS in our marketing mix. Like how do you get started? What kind of tips would you recommend to get started?

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (34:53.934)
Yeah, absolutely. first foremost, TextRip, if you do go through us as a platform, it’s completely free to try it. We do a free trial. You can come on board, test us out. Not only with the free trial, you can also schedule a free one-on-one with somebody who will help you set up your TextRip account to make it work. That is me saying, I’m putting my money where my mouth is. I know this platform is going to work so well for you.

I’m gonna give it to you for free with no contracts to try it out.

If you’re for some reason not willing to take that risk, I’d say watch our videos. We put out a lot of videos on this type of information. We have a YouTube channel. You can go on there and you can watch a lot of the tutorials and the things that we tell you to do and what to stay away from. So if you are using another platform, try that out. That’s a good way to start with it. If you do come on with us, please take advantage of doing a demo with one of our account specialists.

you

They’re really gonna help you understand it and the 30 minutes or an hour that you spend with them is gonna pay dividends in the increased deliverability, the higher response rate, all of it. And just the better understanding of our platform. So please take advantage of those if you will. But we put out a lot of great videos on it and the market is constantly changing. The industry is constantly changing. What works right now on this call may be a little bit different in six months.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (36:30.348)
be even different in three months. It’s constantly changing. So if you go on there, ask us the questions, watch the videos, at least you’ll be allowed ahead. then like I said, you can jump on it, go to techstrip.com and sign up for a free trial and test it out for yourself.

Kyle James (36:46.939)
And I’m curious too, maybe this is kind of my ignorance and maybe some of the listeners out there have the same thing, but how is it priced in this industry? I’m assuming it’s on a volume basis or something, or more than it is a number of numbers in the database, but what should people expect around pricing for this stuff?

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (36:58.754)
Yeah.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (37:05.217)
Yeah, absolutely. So if you’re on a 10 DLC business texting, you are paying per text message, right? It’s not like the old days where you pay a monthly fee for unlimited text messaging.

If you are on a service that is unlimited text messaging for a set price It’s what we call p2p or it’s peer-to-peer messaging That is designed for personal communication. Like let’s say like a google voice, right? Google voice is designed for personal communication. It’s not designed for business texting So if you’re paying a flat monthly fee for it

Kyle James (37:22.58)
Right.

Kyle James (37:44.213)
Got it.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (37:47.106)
There will be a point where all of a sudden your deliverability drops. You’re getting no response. It’s not. No, and the carriers, once they identify that you’re sending business texting on it, they’ll start blocking and throttling you. Your messages won’t go through. What we’re doing and any business texting is we’re paying the carriers to reserve bandwidth to make sure your messages are going through.

Kyle James (37:52.061)
It’s not set up for scale. Yeah.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (38:12.11)
It ranges people could charge three to five cents a message. We charge our retail price is 1.2 cents per text message You can get under a cent if you buy in bulk basically if you buy it by the messages in bulk Our mid-tier program that most people go with is like $34.99 a month for it So it’s $34.99 a month and 1.2 cents per text message

Kyle James (38:22.539)
Okay.

Kyle James (38:28.458)
Sure.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (38:40.118)
So most of your campaigns are pretty, it depends on the volume that you do ultimately. if you take advantage of the discounts that we offer, it’s under a penny per text message. And that’s probably the best retail pricing you will get in the industry.

Kyle James (38:57.619)
That’s competitive pricing. mean, from what I know about it, but anytime you can do, it’s cheaper than snail mail, it’s cheaper than a lot of other stuff. Phil, I’m trying to be mindful of your time, because I know you’ve got a hard stop to get out of here, so your wife doesn’t get mad at you, but what have I not asked you, like in kind of closing here, what have I not asked you that people should know as they think about getting into this and people that are doing it? Lots of good tips that you’ve already left, like A-B testing, intent-based, the way you communicate,

What if I ask that you want to kind leave people with the tips and advice?

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (39:33.422)
Yeah, absolutely. So AI does the grunt work. Sorting, tagging, flagging. But humans still close the deal.

Kyle James (39:41.78)
Yeah.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (39:41.91)
You still need to be involved use AI as a tool. Don’t get lazy with AI That’s really the message that I have for anybody today There is something that sets you apart in your business. You have a voice you have a unique brand Make sure that in your communication in the things that you’re doing not only in texting and marketing But on the internet as a whole that it’s coming through. It’s your voice. It’s your legacy It’s who you are and in the day where the internet

marketing is getting so crowded with this generic AI content, you’re gonna stand out far more if your unique voice is heard. So use it as a tool but it’s not a replacement for you.

Kyle James (40:27.051)
That’s interesting because it’s, you know, what I hear you say when I say it’s like, it’s okay to have run on sentences and not punctuation and things like that in your text message because it looks human. And that actually is a different differentiator in today’s day, unfortunately, right?

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (40:42.102)
It really is. the fact that we’re, you know…

Saying ums and ahs on this thing and stuttering and stuff, know, it’s it’s It’s a human, you know, it’s it’s people that you’re talking to and I am constantly looking for humans in Messaging now and communication with people Because so much of what i’m receiving through email linkedin social media I could see it’s ai generated right? They all got the dashes in there. You’ve seen those right like

Kyle James (40:52.042)
Yeah.

Kyle James (41:12.363)
Oh yes, that’s a- that’s… That’s how you tell. Dead giveaway. Nobody writes like that!

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (41:14.968)
Dead giveaway. Nobody use dashes that much, right? No. And your customers can see that as well. If you are using AI in your messaging, make sure you let your customers know. Because the moment that they determine it through something happen, which they’ll figure it out eventually. You’ll get some hallucination or some air or something like that along the ways. You will ruin the trust of them.

Immediately, right? So like Amtrak for instance has this virtual assistant. think it’s Julie Well, it’s you know, it’s AI and it’s a quirky way of doing it. You name it. Hey, I’m your AI assistant, whatever right? McDonald’s recently had a thing. Did you hear about this? They had a hack and they so they use AI for Recruiting so when you’re you submit your application it goes through AI and you’re communicating with AI

Kyle James (41:58.368)
Yeah.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (42:13.09)
Well, exposed millions of applicants because they had a password of 12345 that they got through and they hacked. Yeah, give it up for them. So the thing with the AI is that they’re very upfront that you’re interacting with AI, that it’s not a human. Don’t try to trick your customers into thinking they’re dealing with a human when they’re not.

Kyle James (42:19.839)
Leave it to McDonald’s.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (42:40.46)
because that’s a really quick way to break the trust. So use AI to help automate things and do all sorts of stuff. But if you’re going to use it to communicate with your customers, make sure that you disclose that to them or you’ll end up breaking their trust.

Kyle James (42:54.453)
That’s a great tip. I think that’s a great winner to kind of end with here. Phil, thanks so much for spending the time to talk to me today. And like, this is something new to me. I know very little about SMS, besides what I’ve done one-on-one for years for a business standpoint, it’s very different. So really great conversation. And I’m sure the audience found a lot of value in this too. Kind of in closing, how could people find you? Get a plug for your podcast. I know you’ve got a great podcast where you kind of interview people about what success means.

and what are the ways people can connect with you.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (43:27.956)
Absolutely, so you can connect with me on all the social media platforms. Look up Phil Portman my website Phil Portman calm Success is podcast if you look up successes I interview people and just ask them a simple question What does success mean to you and how did you achieve your version of success? Just that question and it’s interesting to hear just the different stories and different ways that people talk about success in their life Out of that and my own personal

Kyle James (43:54.4)
Yeah.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (43:57.433)
experiences I wrote a book called the three keys to success and in here yeah I kind of outlined some of the common themes that I hear from people doesn’t matter if they were a hedge fund manager or entrepreneur or author some of the things that we distilled and down to these three keys I will warn you it’s a workbook so there is a lot of exercises and things that you have to do inside this book it’s not just a read it throw on a shelf and go great I know what to do now if you

Kyle James (44:02.335)
Nice.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (44:27.376)
want to achieve your version of success you got to work at it. This is available on philportman.com as well as well as links to my podcast and all of that. If you are interested in learning more about business texting see if it’s going to work in your industry see if it’s going to work for your business jump on with us at techstrip.com. We’re not going to if you have something that’s not going to work we are very clearly going to tell you hey this ain’t going to work.

Because we don’t want you coming onto the platform. We pay for your campaign fees. We do all this setup and stuff and then it’s a flop. We’re gonna tell you, hey, this will work, this won’t work, or this won’t work in the fashion that you want to do it. This is how we would recommend you do it. All that is completely free. We’re not gonna try to pressure you into something because yeah, that would be bad on our part as well as yours. It has to work. It has to be effective because we don’t have any contracts.

Kyle James (45:04.149)
Yeah.

Kyle James (45:12.331)
Nice.

Phil Portman (Textdrip) (45:22.958)
So you’re going to tell us to kick rocks if it doesn’t work out. So go to TechStrips.com, schedule a demo with one of our specialists. Tell them what you’re working on, what you want to do, and they’re going to tell you, hey, this is what I’d recommend and this is how I do it.

Kyle James (45:36.619)
Very cool, very cool, get the whole white glove treatment from them. Well Phil, thanks again for sitting down and talking to me and for everyone out there, thanks for tuning in. Make sure, if you haven’t already, go out and give us a five star review and we’ll be back next time with another Go To Market Innovators. Until then, keep growing everybody. Take care.

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