In Episode 2 of Back for More, host Amy LaVange sits down with home services expert Gary Burch. Together, they tackle one of the biggest challenges facing service businesses today: designing customer lifecycles that feel personal, even as you grow.

From HVAC to pest control, Gary shares real-world examples and actionable insights. Watch the episode to learn how brands can use behavior-based marketing to create intentional, loyalty-driven customer journeys.

Bonus: Put what you learn into action. Download Automating Personalized Customer Experiences with ready-to-use workflows for service reminders and post-purchase engagement.

Transcript
Speaker A:

Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Back from Wear podcast.

Speaker A:

I'm your host, Amy.

Speaker A:

Today's episode is all about a challenge.

Speaker A:

We hear from brands of every size, especially in service industries like H vac, pest control, plumbing, lawn care.

Speaker A:

How do you scale personalization and design an intentional customer life cycle without losing the human touch that makes your brand so special?

Speaker A:

Here to help us explore this, I am very excited to bring with us Gary.

Speaker A:

Gary Burch.

Speaker A:

Gary is a seasoned expert in the home service space.

Speaker A:

He's worked with dozens of brands on modernizing their marketing, designing smart life cycle journeys, and creating experiences that actually deepen loyalty.

Speaker A:

Gary, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker B:

Thanks, Amy.

Speaker B:

Happy to be here.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

We're so excited to have you.

Speaker B:

Hey, this is such an important topic.

Speaker B:

I literally talk about this topic every day, so I'm excited to be able to dive into this with you.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

There's a lot of vocab that we use as we're talking about this industry that maybe not all of our viewers will understand.

Speaker A:

So I thought we could start by kind of touching on some of that vocab and making sure that we are speaking about it the same and our viewers understand what we're talking about for sure.

Speaker B:

I agree.

Speaker A:

Great.

Speaker A:

Okay.

Speaker A:

So there's a few of them.

Speaker A:

One is customer experience.

Speaker A:

And we use that kind of interchangeably with customer journey and customer journey and customer experience.

Speaker A:

We speak about at Cinch as every touch point that is happening with your customers from the very first moment they hear about you until they're a raving fan of your brand or for whatever the end of the life cycle is.

Speaker A:

And so that's how I look at customer experience and customer journey.

Speaker A:

Any differences there with the way you think?

Speaker B:

No, I think it's crucial for every business, but especially in home services, especially when you have people, technicians or service members coming to your home to do something for you.

Speaker B:

You have to have a great relationship and you have to understand and know what to expect from the customer experience side of things.

Speaker B:

And that's pre appointment.

Speaker B:

That's during the appointment, and it's what happens afterwards as well.

Speaker A:

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A:

So all of those things, all of those touch points together is the life cycle design.

Speaker A:

And really, when we talk about life cycle design or designing a customer life cycle at Cinch, we mean being intentional with the way that you plot out those touch points.

Speaker A:

So rather than just one off promotions or things like we need more reviews, so we're gonna send a review email asking people to leave us a review.

Speaker A:

Designing the lifecycle means that we're saying, here's how we want people to come in, here's how we want them to progress through this journey that we're building for them, and here's what we're trying to have happen.

Speaker B:

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

You can't just focus on one piece and just hope that everything else works right.

Speaker B:

A lot of companies will say, hey, we want to do a really good job of getting this customer.

Speaker B:

They get the customer and then nothing happens after that.

Speaker B:

They're like, oh, our job's done, we already got them, we're good.

Speaker B:

But it's not like that.

Speaker B:

There's just so much competition and so much visibility for businesses out there and so many ways to get in front of customers.

Speaker B:

You have to keep that journey going and map out the entire customer journey to, to keep them increase their value and help get more customers just like them.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

That intention, I think, is really the name of the game in marketing in general, but especially in people centered industries.

Speaker A:

Okay.

Speaker A:

The last one that I think we should kind of define together is personalization.

Speaker A:

Personalization is not at all what it used to be before, I don't know, five, 10, 15 years.

Speaker A:

I'm starting to date myself here.

Speaker A:

So when we're talking about personalization, we're talking about something deeper and cinch specifically, which is the company that we work for.

Speaker A:

Of course, the software that we're using.

Speaker A:

Personalization means that we are actually paying attention to so much more than just whatever might be in the point of sale.

Speaker A:

We're paying attention to how frequently are you transacting and how much are you often spending and do you come back on time or when we expect you to, do you respond better to email or text?

Speaker A:

And all of those things make up what we refer to as behavior based elements.

Speaker A:

And you use those behaviors to really add a deeper level of personalization, which of course, as we believe, makes all the difference.

Speaker B:

Well, and it does.

Speaker B:

I mean, if you think about, I love this example of think about the companies that you opt out of text messaging or you unsubscribe from with email.

Speaker B:

It's typically those companies that send you messages all the time, but that are completely irrelevant to your interests or buying habits.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

That's where we separate things.

Speaker B:

That's where we see in marketing and communication these days, you separate yourselves is by going in and saying, hey, let's look at the behaviors of this customer.

Speaker B:

What services or products do they buy, when do they buy them?

Speaker B:

And when are some opportunities to insert promotions based upon their specific behaviors.

Speaker B:

That's so much more than Just their first name as part of a token in an email, it's you.

Speaker B:

You're catering all your communication around their behaviors, and it's different for every customer.

Speaker B:

That's powerful.

Speaker A:

Now that we've gotten the definitions out of the way, we're all on the same page.

Speaker A:

Let's start to talk about some of the challenges.

Speaker A:

As you know, a lot of businesses are not personalizing their marketing the way that they could or should be.

Speaker A:

So what is the biggest challenge when it comes to brands actually using personalization?

Speaker B:

Yeah, I think as they grow, as companies grow, what happens, what tends to happen is there they've been able to keep a really nice personal touch.

Speaker B:

Think of in terms of service businesses.

Speaker B:

In fact, I actually had this conversation earlier today.

Speaker B:

An owner has.

Speaker B:

This company is doing really good.

Speaker B:

It's scaling, it's growing.

Speaker B:

He's sending out emails and text messages and personal phone calls, and the customers love it.

Speaker B:

It's great.

Speaker B:

But he starts getting a lot of business.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

Then what happens is, well, how do you keep up with all that communication?

Speaker A:

And.

Speaker B:

And naturally you drop some balls.

Speaker B:

It just happens.

Speaker B:

So you've been following up with them, but now you're so busy that you can't thank them after your initial appointment or whatever it may be.

Speaker B:

So things just start to fall off.

Speaker B:

So then the tendency is, okay, well, now I gotta hire people to do this.

Speaker B:

And so you hire a bunch of people that now you have to train.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

And again, what drops off are the luxuries.

Speaker B:

It's the extra communication, the extra touch.

Speaker B:

So what you see is that companies that have that mindset, they're like, oh, I want to be so personalized that they end up sacrificing efficiency for that.

Speaker B:

And therefore, eventually you get to a breaking point.

Speaker A:

Right, Right.

Speaker A:

So you're sacrificing consistency and longevity, too, not just efficiency.

Speaker A:

Although definitely an efficiency problem.

Speaker A:

Yeah, you can't respond to everybody forever.

Speaker A:

As your business grows and you have.

Speaker B:

More and more customers.

Speaker B:

Absolutely.

Speaker B:

Absolutely.

Speaker B:

Well, and then the amount of employees it takes to communicate as you scale, I mean, you can't just keep hiring more and more employees because then there's a lot of variation in how those employees work and how effective they are.

Speaker B:

So you need a tool that can manage the automation without sacrificing the personalization.

Speaker A:

Right, right.

Speaker A:

So tell me, what would you say are the biggest opportunities that are missed by brands who don't figure this out?

Speaker A:

Because it is a big problem.

Speaker A:

And we know that they're saying, well, we're a product person to person.

Speaker A:

Business, we don't want machines to handle this, so we're going to try to do it ourselves.

Speaker A:

It starts to fall apart.

Speaker A:

It's not done.

Speaker A:

Consistency, consistency, consistently.

Speaker A:

And so then they just start to not do it or do it poorly.

Speaker A:

What's the threat there?

Speaker A:

What are the opportunities are missing?

Speaker B:

Well, yeah, I think the threat, the problem is disjointed customer experience.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

Where maybe you're focusing on, you know, you've got your customers and then you focus on getting new customers so you don't keep, keep in touch with your current customers.

Speaker B:

So you risk losing customers and retention goes down.

Speaker B:

You, you risk not communicating well to your customers and letting them know what you offer and how you can truly help them.

Speaker B:

And then just, just the lifestyle life cycle overall, it just, it's very clunky and customers feel that and they, it.

Speaker B:

There's just too much challenge within what you're trying to do because there's too much to do.

Speaker A:

Right.

Speaker A:

That makes sense, I imagine.

Speaker A:

I mean, I unsubscribe from a lot of marketing, promotions and communications.

Speaker A:

I imagine that not putting in the effort for that personalization, whether you're doing it manually by hand or whether you're using a system and there you're sending the wrong message to the person, or you're maybe sending me three emails instead of one, I'm gonna unsubscribe.

Speaker A:

And so I think not only are you decreasing the impact of the stuff that you are doing now, you're potentially setting yourself up to not have anybody to do it to down the line when everybody starts to unsubscribe because you're sending them irrelevant messages at the wrong time, or they're telling me to go to the location, you know, five cities over, because I went there last time, but really I live in this city or something along those lines.

Speaker B:

So it's inefficient for them.

Speaker B:

They're going across multiple towns.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

I think that's super important.

Speaker B:

The life cycle design.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

I think companies, when they're getting started, they're excited about things, but do you really think about the entire path for your customer?

Speaker B:

And I think that's what's missing for a lot of businesses is they're like, I got the customer.

Speaker B:

Now what?

Speaker B:

You know, you can plan this out and you can do it really easy and efficient and you can start very simple with it too.

Speaker A:

Yeah, I think it's very scary for people to talk about, but if you just sit down and start to really map it out, it's not that difficult.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

You know what you want your customers to be doing.

Speaker B:

And I think it takes away the fear and the anxiety around it.

Speaker B:

And what happens to your customers.

Speaker B:

You're like, okay, we've got a plan here.

Speaker B:

We've got a plan to not just get them, but, but to keep them and to increase their value over time.

Speaker B:

I mean, studies show, especially with home services, if you offer multiple services, the more services they have, the stickier they are and the more likely they are to recommend their friends and family.

Speaker B:

So we want them to be customers and we want them to be invested into your business, and that's by taking good care of them.

Speaker A:

Definitely.

Speaker A:

Back to the point.

Speaker A:

Seems like a really big threat, a little.

Speaker A:

A really big opportunity that they're missing out on, for sure.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

So in your experience working with all these businesses that you work with all day, every day, what are some examples of a brand or even just a single business that's doing this?

Speaker B:

Well, yeah, I think for me, it starts in the very beginning.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

Setting clear expectations with your customers.

Speaker B:

I think this is so important because a lot of times, again, going back to what we talked about earlier, where you have somebody coming out to your home to do a service, whether it's H Vac, pest control, whatever it may be, a lot of times they don't know what that process looks like.

Speaker B:

So if somebody could be added to your schedule and you can automatically send out communication of, hey, welcome to our company.

Speaker B:

We're so happy to have you.

Speaker B:

Stay tuned for more info about your first appointment.

Speaker B:

And then you wait a certain amount of time, a week or two or two days before their appointment, say, hey, hey, here's what to expect at our appointment.

Speaker B:

Your technician is going to be here and he's going to do this, this, this, and this.

Speaker B:

And this is what you should see after.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

Like in pest control, for example, the pesticide can take up to 24 hours to do its job.

Speaker B:

So let's say a technician sprays and then you see, it stirs things up.

Speaker B:

You see more bugs for the next couple hours.

Speaker B:

If you don't know that, you could run to Google and be like, terrible experience.

Speaker B:

There's more bugs than ever before, and.

Speaker A:

They just worse than it was when I called you.

Speaker B:

How.

Speaker B:

How bad is that?

Speaker B:

And you as a, as a business, that's not how it works.

Speaker B:

Like, but if you didn't set that expectation, then that's what a customer believes.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

So I think that's one big example, is just setting clear expectations.

Speaker A:

Do you find that when you bring people into Using a platform like Cinch, they are not doing that.

Speaker A:

And then they start using a tool that allows them to.

Speaker A:

Is this a piece that's often missing?

Speaker B:

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker B:

I would say good chunk of the time it's missing that they just.

Speaker B:

Because I think it's kind of a luxury where you're, you know, you have so many other things going on.

Speaker B:

You could send them an appointment reminder.

Speaker B:

That's happening for sure.

Speaker B:

But are they going as far as saying, here's what to expect?

Speaker B:

Some companies I've seen in the past actually will even put together a video of hey, this is what we do when we're at your home.

Speaker B:

And that worked phenomenally.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

And if you can have a way to send that automatically ahead of the appointment, even better.

Speaker A:

Oh, I love that.

Speaker A:

So really when people, pest control specifically in this instance start using a tool that will allow them to do this stuff, those before the appointment pieces are something that they should set into place at the beginning of that lifecycle design that they're trying to think through.

Speaker A:

Okay, so then what are good brands doing after that?

Speaker A:

What does the lifecycle look like after that point?

Speaker B:

Absolutely.

Speaker B:

So then of course is the piece of gathering even more information.

Speaker B:

So you could talk about Google reviews, right?

Speaker B:

We have some really large pest control companies that have done phenomenal things with Google reviews, targeting specific segments of their customer base.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

Their highest value customers to get good reviews and then leveraging those great reviews to get referrals.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

So five star review comes in.

Speaker B:

You can automatically trigger communication to say, hey, hey, we appreciate you so much.

Speaker B:

We appreciate your business.

Speaker B:

We'd love to take care of your friends and family and then offer them some sort of discount to refer friends and family.

Speaker B:

Just awesome opportunity, right?

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Use your best customers to get more customers.

Speaker B:

Just like that.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

Your customer life cycle marketing becomes your prospect marketing 100%.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

And who are the customers that you want the most?

Speaker B:

It's referrals.

Speaker B:

In any business, any business will tell you that your best customers are referrals.

Speaker A:

So what I'm hearing from you is that in an ideal situation, the life cycle that you're designing is not just do this, then do this, then do this, then do this.

Speaker A:

It's back to our point about personalization and behavior based marketing.

Speaker A:

That life cycle journey can split off based on who they are or how they're interacting or what you start to know about them.

Speaker A:

So like I think you were talking about Google reviews if you send a survey.

Speaker A:

Oh, that's not what you were saying.

Speaker A:

You said if they do A good Google review, they then you can send them a message and ask for a referral.

Speaker A:

But it could go the other direction too.

Speaker A:

I send a survey post service and if they give me bad feedback, then I address that and then after that has been addressed, then I can ask them for review or if they leave me a really great survey, then I say, hey, would you mind sharing your experience online?

Speaker A:

So that life cycle journey can really split off into different directions.

Speaker A:

I think you were saying something about your high value customers a minute ago, which in other industries, you know, some of the brands that I have seen be really successful, they are treating their high value and their low value customers differently.

Speaker A:

Put more money into some, you, you know, send more messages or less messages, just whatever you have found to work best for your business.

Speaker A:

Personalizing that life cycle, the journey of that life cycle can be very different.

Speaker B:on, well, Everybody knows the:Speaker B:

20, 20% of your customers bring in 80% of your revenue.

Speaker B:

So that, I mean that goes into it like you want to focus on your high value customers and find more customers just like them.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

And that's another way that companies are utilizing their data and that personalization is they're saying, okay, we have this customer who's been a customer for four years, but they still only have one service.

Speaker B:

We offer all of these other services.

Speaker B:

Have we at least let them know that we offer this?

Speaker B:

And I hear it every single day, especially in the pest control space of like you go out to a home to do like just a general pest control service and you see a flag in the lawn, that's Mosquito Joe or mosquito Squad.

Speaker B:

And you're like, as a company, we offer mosquito service as well.

Speaker B:

But the average customer thinks they have to call the company that has mosquito in their name or termite in their name instead of just understanding that what pest control offers.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

But that's not their job.

Speaker B:

It's your job, a company to get that in front of them, let them know and do that consistently and seasonally or you know, when the promotions matter most.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

Kind of like what you're talking about with the deals and when you're highlighting those high value customers.

Speaker A:

Yeah, I imagine that would be even more important if you're the type of brand that offers different services.

Speaker A:

Like we have some pest control companies that also do landscaping.

Speaker A:

Yes, they're not gonna know you do landscaping.

Speaker B:

100% weed control, landscaping, you know, rodent control, wildlife removal.

Speaker B:

But that applies to other things, Right?

Speaker B:

Like if you're an H Vac company and you're taking care of somebody's heating, you know, remind them that you take care of cooling in the summer as well.

Speaker B:

Right?

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Are you going to let them know all the things that you offer?

Speaker B:

Because let's prevent them from going to Google and finding another company when you could do the thing that they, they are looking for.

Speaker A:

Right.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

That's interesting.

Speaker A:

I guess that really comes back to the need and we don't have to go into this, the need to know things about your customers and having a system that makes that data available so you know who your high value customers are.

Speaker A:

Put all this work into nurturing your low value customers.

Speaker A:

To become high value customers, you have to have a system that's going to allow you to see that and then segment based on that in order to create a really personalized journey.

Speaker A:

But that's getting off onto a whole new podcast.

Speaker B:

All exciting stuff though.

Speaker A:

Yeah, very.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

Okay, so now we've been talking about all the different types of messages you can be sending, some best practices for designing your life cycle, types of segmentation.

Speaker A:

Now we're using a tool to do that.

Speaker A:

We have a tool that can do that.

Speaker A:

How do we prevent our messages from sounding stuffy, kind of circling back to the point at the beginning of the podcast, we're concerned about keeping that personal touch.

Speaker A:

How do we use all of this segmentation and audience, not audience creation, automation without sounding like a machine?

Speaker B:

Yeah, I think that's, that's the challenge and I think it's kind of an exciting challenge.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

Because the thing about it is you don't want to be that company that says the same thing to every person all the time.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

We call it spray and pray.

Speaker B:

Or you just, just, just blanket everybody with everything all the time.

Speaker B:

You want to say, hey, this person in this situation is going to get this message based upon how they do certain things.

Speaker B:

So within that, you don't want to be the bot, you don't want to be the company that just has a canned message all the time.

Speaker B:

I think it's important to have a personal touch to it.

Speaker B:

I think it's important to be human and to be real.

Speaker B:

Depending on who it's coming from, the messaging.

Speaker B:

I think, I think people want to be able to relate with you.

Speaker B:

So what the language is changing.

Speaker B:

You have to change your approach and you have to adapt.

Speaker B:

Like what worked 10 years ago in, you know, email and text marketing isn't working today.

Speaker B:

And you have to be at the forefront of adapting to that.

Speaker B:

But not only that, but I think I see also a Lot of companies will because they take that blanket approach.

Speaker B:

When a conversation starts with the customer, it's very.

Speaker B:

You can end up talking yourself out of a cell.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

If you don't handle it the right way, and if you have the human element in there, where humans are handling every interaction, then it can get a little bit convoluted.

Speaker B:

So I think the power right now is in the predictive analytics and saying, let's get in front of the right person at the right time based upon their previous behavior.

Speaker B:

And.

Speaker B:

And then that message is more impactful.

Speaker B:

And then you can make it more personalized because it's specific to them and their behaviors as opposed to trying to talk them into a cell afterward.

Speaker B:

So you do the work ahead of time instead of having to do all the work on the back end and you close more.

Speaker A:

Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker A:

The phrase the right customer and the right channel at the right time with the right.

Speaker A:

Some formula of that particular statement has been used for so long, but it really has not been possible to actually make sure it's the right message, make sure it's the right time.

Speaker A:

And now you can.

Speaker A:

And brands should be, yeah, when in.

Speaker B:

Just simple things like AB testing, different types of messaging, you know what, what works like getting ahead of it, Fine.

Speaker B:

But then you can try different messaging and see what works better.

Speaker B:

And like you said, if you don't have a system that can help you do that, it's all harder to do.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

But if you can do that and then, oh, no, this approach is working now, let's go this route for a while and then you can change up down the road a few months down the road.

Speaker A:

Yeah, I imagine that gets super lucrative when you're talking about promotions or discounts or things like that where you can make sure you're only delivering a discount that somebody's going to care about.

Speaker A:

I know that my beauty needs are not the same at all as a pest service.

Speaker A:

But when my salon sends me, they send me promotions for stuff that I would never in a million years use.

Speaker A:

It makes me want to unsubscribe to their messages that you don't know me.

Speaker A:

You don't know that I only go in for these two things every time.

Speaker A:

And sometimes it's annoying.

Speaker A:

It might ruin the sale before they.

Speaker A:

Even before they even get me there.

Speaker B:

Yeah, if they're giving you a promotion, I use the example of you get messages from Maverick or a gas station.

Speaker B:

They're like, hey, here's some Red Bull energy drinks.

Speaker B:

I'm like, red Bull's disgusting.

Speaker B:

No, thank you.

Speaker B:

I don't want that.

Speaker B:

If you had said ghost, yeah, I would have been there.

Speaker B:

But you didn't.

Speaker B:

So you said something else.

Speaker B:

I'm not, I'm not going to buy an I. Unsubscriber.

Speaker A:

Shout out to you, Maverick.

Speaker A:

Just shout out.

Speaker B:

Shout out, Maverick.

Speaker B:

Don't send me crazy mess.

Speaker B:

I'm just kidding.

Speaker A:

Promotion on Ghost.

Speaker B:

Yes, yes, Ghost.

Speaker B:

All the time, all day, every day.

Speaker B:

No, I, I, I think that's, it's just so powerful.

Speaker B:

It's fundamental these days.

Speaker B:

And, and you want to do what matters most to your customers.

Speaker B:

And, and you really need a tool that can do that.

Speaker B:

You mentioned promotions.

Speaker B:

Do you know which of your customers are sensitive to coupons or promotions?

Speaker B:

Do you know that?

Speaker B:

Yeah, when you send them out, they're going to take advantage of it, but then others, they don't.

Speaker B:

So you can be more targeted and specific with who you send promotions to and when.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

And if you think about that, you know, can you do that with the tools that you have right now, or are there tools out there, like Cinch, for example, that can help you with that?

Speaker A:

That.

Speaker A:

Right, right.

Speaker A:

Knowing do they activate their coupons or do they never activate their coupons?

Speaker A:

Do they only spend this much?

Speaker A:

And maybe we could do a promotion that will help them kind of kick over that level of spend.

Speaker B:

Yep.

Speaker A:

Interesting.

Speaker A:

And the AB testing, I think is interesting too, because, you know, some people respond better to an email or a text versus a postcard or some version of that.

Speaker A:

Being able to say if they responded to a text, then send them a message this way.

Speaker A:

That's not the type of personalization that you think of when you think of personalization, but it is personalization.

Speaker A:

Oh, I know.

Speaker A:

Amy prefers a text.

Speaker A:cleared since, I don't know,:Speaker B:

Yeah, for sure.

Speaker B:

But on the flip side, there may be some people that still use email and you don't have to send them a text message.

Speaker B:

There's a cost involved with texting and mailers, pretty much with any platform.

Speaker B:

So it's, you can get ahead of that, and if it works for them and that's how they communicate, great.

Speaker B:

Then for everybody else, we try something different.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

Yeah, love that.

Speaker A:

Okay, we're going to do some rapid fire Q and A.

Speaker A:

Are you ready?

Speaker B:

Let's go.

Speaker B:

Okay, let's do this.

Speaker A:

All right.

Speaker A:

Just whatever Comes to the top of your head.

Speaker A:

If you're wrong, you're kicked out.

Speaker B:

Okay.

Speaker A:

Okay.

Speaker A:

Question number one.

Speaker A:

Biggest mistake brands make when they're scaling.

Speaker B:

Personalization is one size fits all.

Speaker B:

Like just the same message for everybody all the time.

Speaker B:

I think that's.

Speaker B:

That's it.

Speaker B:

Rapid fire.

Speaker B:

I'm done.

Speaker A:

All right, well, I, I don't, I don't want to make your rapid.

Speaker A:

Less rapid, but just, I think that it's so easy to have a problem and you're like, let me just send out a promotion about this.

Speaker A:

I don't have enough Google reviews.

Speaker A:

Let me just send out an email rather than actually putting some thought into it.

Speaker A:

Rather than just.

Speaker B:

Or you blast it to your entire customer base and then half of them are mad because they already have whatever.

Speaker B:

You just.

Speaker B:

Whatever promotion, you just blast it out.

Speaker B:

That's the, that's the danger in just the one size fits all.

Speaker A:

Yes.

Speaker A:

Or I left a Google review last week.

Speaker A:

How do you not know this about.

Speaker B:

Yes.

Speaker B:

Yes.

Speaker B:

That's a big one.

Speaker A:

Yeah, that would be annoying for me.

Speaker A:

Like, fine, I'm taking my Google review away.

Speaker A:

Okay, sorry.

Speaker A:

I digress.

Speaker A:

Question number two.

Speaker A:

One, life cycle stage.

Speaker A:

Home services brands often neglect.

Speaker B:

Ooh, life cycle stage.

Speaker B:

Oh, this is rapid fire.

Speaker B:

I will say they're.

Speaker B:

We'll say existing active customer that's on a regular service.

Speaker B:

Does that make sense?

Speaker A:

Okay, so you can expect them to come back in.

Speaker B:

Yeah, they're coming back.

Speaker B:

They have their regular service and, you know, they seem happy, they're fine.

Speaker B:

So they kind of just leave them alone.

Speaker B:

But then you're ignoring, like, what we talked about.

Speaker B:

If you offer weed control or you offer lawn services or you offer other.

Speaker B:

If you're not letting them know that that's great that they're continuing with the service that they have, but who knows if they've gone elsewhere to get those other things taken care of.

Speaker B:

And we've seen that with, like, mosquito cross selling with certain companies.

Speaker B:

This is so not a rapid fire answer.

Speaker B:

But just my brain just kept going.

Speaker B:

I'm done.

Speaker A:

So funny.

Speaker A:

We love to have you talk.

Speaker A:

You can talk as long as you want.

Speaker B:

We could cut that one.

Speaker A:

Questions are rapid fire, but your answers.

Speaker B:

Don'T have to be rapid.

Speaker B:

Yeah, perfect.

Speaker A:

Okay, so as a cinch expert and a home service expert, what is your favorite cinch feature for Lifecycle?

Speaker B:

Favorite cinch feature.

Speaker B:

Ooh, I'd say segmentation works.

Speaker B:

I'm a firm believer in getting in front of the right people at the right time based on their preferences and behaviors.

Speaker A:

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A:

And you know, I know this is not an infomercial, but as a marketer, I've been using marketing automation systems for a very long time and segmentation is something a lot of people talk about.

Speaker A:

But it wasn't until I really got into like understanding what cinches and cinch does that I realized that there's segmentation and then there's segmentation.

Speaker B:

Yes.

Speaker B:

You know, well, also, and I have to add, this is a lot of companies that I talk to in the home service space.

Speaker B:

They have somebody that spends hours a week exporting reports from their management software and manually segmenting like hours.

Speaker B:

Can you imagine that?

Speaker B:

It's crazy.

Speaker B:

So when, when you just tell them right away, you can set parameters, you know, five different parameters, and the system automatically pulls it from your system and creates a list for you.

Speaker B:

Done.

Speaker A:

Oh, you must be people's favorite as soon as you.

Speaker B:

Oh, always.

Speaker B:

I'm always the favorite.

Speaker B:

Let's be honest.

Speaker A:

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A:

Gary is a big hit here at Cinch.

Speaker B:

Stop it.

Speaker A:

Okay.

Speaker A:

This is, I think, my last rapid fire question.

Speaker A:

Yes, it is.

Speaker A:

So you ready?

Speaker B:

I'm ready.

Speaker A:

Okay.

Speaker A:

First step for brands that want to improve their life cycle strategy.

Speaker A:

First step, first thing that they're going to do tomorrow, maybe get cinch.

Speaker A:

Okay.

Speaker B:

Obviously, no, come up with a plan.

Speaker B:

Let's lay out the life cycle plan.

Speaker B:

If you could.

Speaker B:

Even if it's just really simple, just, just do this exercise with.

Speaker B:

If it's just you, if it's members of your team, what do you want it to look like?

Speaker B:

From first touch point to.

Speaker B:

As long as they're a customer with you.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

If you map that out, stages within, in between, whether it's, you know, it's Google reviews request, when do you request referrals, when do you try to cross sell, you know, all those things.

Speaker B:

If you just do that exercise, then you can come up with steps along the way that are incredibly powerful and impactful to every single customer, no matter who they are.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

And you can always optimize it as you go.

Speaker A:

There's a phrase that I use a lot in marketing, especially when I work with a lot of creatives.

Speaker A:

We want things to be perfect, you know, and the phrase is just hit publish.

Speaker A:

And it's because it's never going to be as perfect as you want it to be.

Speaker A:

I used to always be like, I'm going to sleep on it.

Speaker A:

I'm going to do this.

Speaker A:

And I think that for people who might want to have a really strategic marketing strategy, part of the reason they don't is that they're a little intimidated.

Speaker A:

Where do I start?

Speaker A:

And I get that way sometimes, too.

Speaker A:

But a good way of starting is sit down.

Speaker A:

Let's just write out what we know right now.

Speaker A:

Well, I know that if they're going to fill out a form on my website, I want them to see an email.

Speaker A:

And if they don't respond to that, then I probably want to send another email within three days or whatever that might be.

Speaker A:

And if they schedule an appointment, I want to make sure I remind them and I want to send them this message.

Speaker A:

We were talking about what to expect.

Speaker A:

Don't have time to make a video right now, but I'm going to start with that.

Speaker A:

And then I know after their service, I want to make sure I send them a survey.

Speaker A:

You don't have to get all crazy and branchy right off the, right off the bat.

Speaker A:

So then launch it this way.

Speaker A:

Start to do it, do it manually if you must.

Speaker A:

And then until you realize you need a new tool.

Speaker A:

And then get crazy and watch what happens.

Speaker A:

One of my favorite things in Cinch is the real time view of where customers are in the journey.

Speaker A:

There's like a little bubble.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

That says 17 people have hit this email and then three people have hit this piece of the journey.

Speaker A:

And you can just watch people like, this is working.

Speaker B:

Let's go.

Speaker A:

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A:

So add more branches, see what happens.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Firm believer.

Speaker B:

That action creates momentum.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

You've got to map it out first.

Speaker B:

And then I always say you need a vehicle to deliver the type of communication that you just imagined.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

And thankfully, there are tools out there that can do that.

Speaker B:

And Cinch being one of them.

Speaker A:

Yeah, Cinch being one.

Speaker B:

The best.

Speaker A:

The best.

Speaker A:

Yeah, whatever.

Speaker A:

All right, well, if there's one thing that our listeners can take away from this interview with you here today, what would you say that it is?

Speaker A:

Maybe it's the same thing you've already said.

Speaker B:

Yeah, I, I would say get started and, and let's work smarter, not harder, necessarily.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

There's, there's a way.

Speaker B:

The, the companies that I've seen grow and, and be the most successful are those that combine personalization with automation, or I'll replace that word with efficiency.

Speaker B:

It's like you have to find a way to scale.

Speaker B:

We've talked about that.

Speaker B:

So there's a way to do that.

Speaker B:

There's a way to.

Speaker B:

You know, it's funny, in home services, you get some companies where they are so set on that they have to call their.

Speaker B:

Like, these are old school companies.

Speaker B:

But we have to call our customers because they really want that.

Speaker B:

And I always, the way I would combat that is I'd say, do they want that?

Speaker B:

Is that or is it just what they're used to?

Speaker B:

Because that's how you've done it.

Speaker B:

Right?

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker B:

And I would tell you that company or customers and consumers, we are in an age of communication and so many touch points that you want to make those touch points valuable.

Speaker B:

And you do that by understanding who they are and what their behaviors are and getting ahead of that.

Speaker B:

That's what makes the impact.

Speaker A:

I love that.

Speaker A:

You've taught me so much today.

Speaker B:

You've taught me a lot.

Speaker A:

Oh, great, great.

Speaker B:

I love that a lot more, actually.

Speaker A:

Well, thank you for joining us.

Speaker B:

It was fun.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Good time.

Speaker A:

Thanks for being here with us.

Speaker A:

And for those of you listening, if you want to learn more about how Cinch helps brands scale personalization through behavior based lifecycle Design, visit Cinch IO.

Speaker A:

Thanks again to Gary and thanks to all of you for listening.

Speaker A:

We'll see you next time on the Back From Word podcast.