Why the Phone Number Matters

Show Notes

• A key to successful online marketing is pinpointing a unique identifier for an individual. This allows you to be more aware of how they are interacting with marketing across all media formats.
• Infusionsoft uses an email address as it’s primary identification source.
• Most people have a "spam" email address to use when they need to give out an email address to someone that they don’t quite trust yet, but from whom they want to get information from.
• Consider how many cell phone numbers most people have. Most people just have one cell phone number.
• All the big online media networks know that most people only have one cell phone number and they use this to track what they do online and offline.
• A phone number is a singular point of contact that is unique to individuals and often stays the same over time.
• If you use a phone number properly and respect it, knowing a phone number can be a great way to connect with people.
• If you get a get a cell phone number and you have a Facebook ads account, you can upload those numbers to Facebook and Facebook can look and see if their users have that phone number as their principal phone number.
• You may think you haven’t given Facebook your phone number, Google or Twitter may have asked you for your phone number to protect your data and has associated your cell phone number with your Facebook profile.
• If you upload numbers to Facebook you can get about 70% match rate
• This opens up the opportunity to use Facebook for marketing.
• If you send an email, you may get a 20-30% interaction rate.
• This means for 70% of your market is not receiving the information you are trying to send them.
• Many people feel overwhelmed by the many emails they receive and don’t give their emails their full attention.
• Statistics are showing that more and more people are spending more time on FB and social media than in their email inbox.
• While email addresses are still valid, you want to put your message where people are spending their time.
• Your competition is probably still primarily using email addresses.
• You can also get a billing address from a cell phone number for a few pennies in the United States.
• If you can capture a cell phone number, you can market to people on social media as well as via regular mail.

Transcription of Episode

[00:00:00] Hello, this is Ryan Chapman with Fix Your Funnel and in today's episode, we're going to be tackling a question that may not even been on your radar, but it needs to be and that is the phone number. Why is it such a big deal? If you know anything about Fix Your Funnel, you may say I'm biased. If you knew anything about the reason that we created Fix Your Funnel, you realize that the reason I'm biased is because it's effective and it works.

The phone number is a big deal and you need to know why. I want to start with just a simple thing that you can measure for yourself. One of the holy grails of online marketing and marketing in general is identifying somebody, a unique identifier for an individual. If you have that unique identifier for an individual, then you can be more aware of how they're interacting with your marketing across all media formats.

Think about email addresses. For most people, even a system like Infusionsoft, which we're very familiar with and big fans of, the center piece of information that Infusionsoft works off of is [00:01:00] email address. Yet, I want to ask you a question and let's see what your answer is. How many email addresses do you have? If you're like most people, you would have at least three, and possibly as many as seven or ten or something like that. While most of those addresses may just be aliases for your primary email address, I guarantee that if you go and do your own little survey, you'll find that most people have what they call a spam email address. This is an email address they give out to people when they don't quite trust them yet, but they are still interested in getting what they have to give an email address up for to get and so they do that.

But if I ask you another question, the question would be, how many cell phone numbers do you have? For most people, the answer is 1. For a rare exception, there are few that have two, where their work has provided them with one, but personally they only have one cell phone number. Guess who else knows that most people only have one cell phone number? All the big players in online media. [00:02:00] Facebook. Twitter. Google. Instagram. All these different players know that you have one cell phone number, and they've been using that one cell phone number to unify the ability to track what you do online and offline.

This number is a big deal for those companies and it should be a big deal for your company because it is a singular point of contact that is unique to individuals that stays pretty much the same over time and will allow you to be able to really connect with people if you use it properly and you respect it.

Let's get a little bit deeper into why you want to be paying attention to the phone number. I just laid out for you the idea that there's only one phone number per person, and that's a really good idea. That helps you to know that if you get a cell phone number, you probably got the best contact information for that person. But there are deeper reasons, and I hinted or alluded to them earlier when I mentioned Facebook.

If I take a phone number that's a cell phone number and I have a Facebook [00:03:00] ads account, I can upload those phone numbers, whether they're cell phone numbers or landmines, whatever they are, I can upload those phone numbers to Facebook and Facebook will look and see if any of their users have that phone number as their principal phone number in their Facebook account. You may be saying, well, Facebook doesn't know my cell phone number. Chances are, they actually do and they got you to give it to them at some point.

One of the places where people do this is for two-factor authentication. This is where companies like Twitter or Google may have asked you for your cell phone number, or Yahoo, or any number of other companies are trying to protect your data. What they're also doing at the same time is associating your email address with a cell phone number. Believe it or not, if you go and type you cell phone number into the Facebook search bar, it will probably come up with your Facebook profile. If you have a friend, go put in their cell phone number and see if it doesn't pull up their Facebook profile. Maybe don't do it for everybody, but for good number it does. For this reason, if you [00:04:00] upload phone numbers to Facebook, you're going to get about a 70-80% match rate if you have actual cell phone numbers.

What does this mean for you as a small business trying to market? What it means is, if you get people cell phone numbers, you also open up the opportunity to target those people on Facebook for marketing. Why is that such a big deal? Well, let's look at emails. If you send an email out, on average, you're going to get about 20% interaction rate, maybe 30% if you're really good and you have a great audience. But, on average, it's 20-30%. What that means is that if I send out 100 emails, I'm gonna get 20 or 30 of the 100 people I sent that email to to actually interact with my email in some way. I might get higher rates on open, which don't really mean anything. If I'm tracking the thing that actually means something, which is clicks, I'm going to be in the three to five percent range.

What does this mean? What this means is if we had 100 people say, hey, I'm interested in what you're doing, here's my email address, only about [00:05:00] 30 percent of those people are actually even seeing your marketing message. For the other 70%, it's as if you don't even exist anymore, it's as if you've forgotten completely about them and you have discontinued marketing to them because they're not even seeing your emails.

The reason they're not seeing your emails may be a whole host of different things, but chances are, last time you were in your email inbox, you were not completely thrilled about being there. You were probably trying to get in and out as quickly as possible and you were probably wondering, how do I get rid of all these emails because I feel a little bit overwhelmed. You're not alone. That's how most people feel.

On the flip side where do people spend their time? If they're not spending their time, hours upon hours, in their email inbox, where are they spending their time? Statistics are showing that people are spending more and more time on social networks and, in particular, Facebook if you're in the area that is maybe 25 and up you're going to get a lot more people on Facebook. There are growing networks and things like Instagram, Snapchat, that are getting more time, but Facebook continues to dominate and this is why they're making [00:06:00] so much money.

If you could put your message in front of where people actually spend their time, what difference is it going to make in your bottom line? That's something I want you to be thinking about, and the cell phone number is at the center of that game. As you get the cell phone number, you're able to identify these people on Facebook and then put your marketing message in front of them where they're actually spending time and where they'll actually see it or the actually interact with it.

I'm not saying don't email people, but if you have the cell phone, you have a leg up on all your competition because your competition is probably still collecting only email address, and this is why the cell phone number is so powerful.

There's another thing that comes from the cell phone number, which you may or may not be aware of, and this is particularly of interest of people that are in the United States. I don't know about other countries, but in the United States you can now get a billing address off of a cell phone number for just a few pennies. That's pretty powerful. That means if you're able to capture a cell phone number, you're going to be able to market to people on [00:07:00] Facebook, but a good chance is, you're also gonna be able to market to them offline, which again, your competition isn't doing. If you can make the math work for your business, this can be a huge advantage for you in your marketing. This is Ryan Chapman with Fix Your Funnel. Keep moving forward.