Keith Ferrazzi, CEO of The Relationship Masters Academy and founder and CEO of Ferrazzi Greenlight, is no stranger to the consulting, training and sales lecture circuit. He is good at it: when he leaves a speaking engagement he receives many requests for follow-up from prospective leads. Which got him thinking: how to capture these informal requests and translate them into actionable leads and, hopefully conversions?

The answer Ferrazzi and his marketing firm Piece of Cake Social Media eventually opted for was a text-to-subscribe service, in this case, Delivra's newly-offered service. Ferrazzi was one of the beta customers. The service - in which an audience member texts a number and is automatically subscribed to Ferrazzi’s email list - allows him to capture the immediate energy after the speaking engagement and quickly get the leads in the marketing funnel, Kristen Bassick, head of Piece of Cake Social Media, tells MarketingVOX.

"In the past we would put up a web address for people to sign up, but in the intervening hour or day until people could get to a computer, they would lose the momentum. But sitting there in the audience with their phone and giving them a text number is an immediate solution." The problem with a lot of text solutions is that they are manually intensive, Bassick says - you need to figure out the integration of the email subscription piece separately.

ROI

So far Ferrazzi has done two trial runs with the technology. Over time he plans to track the email addresses that come in through the text number to see if they eventually convert to paying customers. In the meantime, the cost per acquisition per person is very inexpensive, Bassick says. "The program’s cost is $100 per month for 500 subscriptions, which comes out to 20 cents per name."