Exploring voicemail marketing with toufic mobarak, president of mobilesphere

​Read the transcript
 
Alex Rector: All right. So recently guys, I shared a post about marketing through voicemail and some different cases where it might be a good thing to drop a bulk voicemail. I thought it would be an interesting topic because a lot of people have strong opinions about voicemail in general.
 
In my career, I’ve worked with two camps, you know, people who think it might be worthwhile to spend and try out voicemail drops and then folks that think voicemail is just out of the question and they would never stoop so low as to drop voicemails in people’s mailbox.
 
So I’m curious to explore what other businesses and marketers were doing. Today I’m joined by someone who’s an authority on the subject, the President of MobileSphere, Mr. Toufic Mobarak and please correct me if I completely butchered your name Toufic.
 
Toufic Mobarak: Close enough, close enough.
 
Alex Rector: Close enough. OK, great. Toufic, thanks for hopping on today. To get started, could you just tell us a little bit about yourself and your business. MobileSphere does ringless voicemail but that’s not the only communication service in your lineup.
 
Toufic Mobarak: No. Actually they are the inventor, the patent holder of ringless voicemail. We started this back in, yes, 2010, 2008, 2009, around that and we got the patent I would say 2014, a few years later and so the first app, we did the ringless voicemail, was an app called SlyDial. It was extremely popular, front page on the New York Times articles. It hit it very hard but then once we get that, we said, well maybe we need to do it as more a business tool versus just a consumer product.
 
Then this was when we launched SlyBroadcast which is kind of a service – a software base, web base and an app base targeted for businesses to be able to send voicemails to a larger audience. The advantage of voicemail is it’s personal. People’s voice is a signature. It’s very personal versus a text. You can pretend it’s you but it’s a text. Your text will sound and look exactly like mine. There is no difference.
 
Alex Rector: Right.
 
Toufic Mobarak: So that’s – what is my voice and your voice are very different, very unique.
 
Alex Rector: I got you. So everyone understands SlyDial – now what’s the difference between SlyDial and SlyBroadcast?
 
Toufic Mobarak: OK. SlyDial is an app, a smartphone app and it’s for one-on-one communication, right? So let’s say I want to leave you a voicemail. I want to call you and leave you a voicemail. I don’t want talk to you. Just I want to leave you a voicemail. I would use SlyDial one on one. That’s on the phone. It’s integrated with the contacts. You just – SlyBroadcast is a web tool where you can record the message and upload lists and it gives you reporting in addition, et cetera, et cetera. So it’s one to many versus one on one plus significantly more advanced features as well as reporting. So you get how many people delivered, what the cause of the failure, et cetera, et cetera.
 
Alex Rector: Got it, yeah. And, you know, I’m familiar with SlyBroadcast as a marketer and my background.
 
Toufic Mobarak: Yeah.
 
Alex Rector: We’ve talked about using SlyBroadcast in our campaigns, ahead of events. There’s all sorts of use cases we’ve considered SlyBroadcast. Now whenever you look at your lineup, what is your – kind of your bestselling different services that you offer?
 
Toufic Mobarak: So – and then let me finish with the – and then we have a texting platform called SlyText which we launched maybe four years ago, five years ago and it’s a two-way communication and you can send videos, you can send text.
 
In addition, we SMS-enable your business VoIP or landline. So now the text messages can come from your landline or so people are familiar with it. Let’s say you are a real estate agent or you are a small business shop or you are – you have a law office. You have your landline and then now the text messages can come from your landline versus some random number. And it’s – all our services are voice-enabled. So if somebody wants to call you back, they can call you back.
 
Alex Rector: OK, yeah. That’s great.
 
Toufic Mobarak: You see, so it’s not like – or they can text you back. So it’s more communication, two-way communication. So the lineup and then we have – we just launched a couple of other products for overseas market which integrates with WhatsApp but it’s for mostly Europe and Asia. So I will not address those here. I mean they’re all – you know, each product has a fit in our product line. Like SlyDial, it’s an extremely popular app. It’s free with ads and what we use Sly Dial, we advertise our other services.
 
Alex Rector: OK.
 
Toufic Mobarak: So for us, it’s a lot of – a lot of our customers come from using SlyDial. It’s free. I mean you have a premium version if you don’t want to get the ads. But most of our customers use this for free and it’s kind of a marketing vehicle for us for the other products we have.
 
Then we see a lot of use cases where people want the voicemail and texting, right? So for some instances, voicemail makes sense. It’s more personal. You know, more the human element that’s much, much more important whereas text, it’s more informational, right? So let’s say – again we go back to real estate or real estate agents can send you voicemail and then send you a text. Hey, the house opening, it’s 125.
 
So in cases where the information is important, you know, whether I’m giving you an address, I’m giving you a date, I’m giving you a phone number. Texting is a better vehicle. The other one where it’s more the emotional aspect and the storytelling aspect if you will of the – then voicemail is significantly more important because it’s you. It’s your voice. Your voice is you. It’s your signature.
 
Alex Rector: Yeah, and I think that’s definitely the biggest selling point for using something like SlyBroadcast. You can state what you’re trying to state away that you want to say it and really if – there’s some kind of complex idea you’re trying to communicate or there’s some – there’s a certain way it needs to be delivered, then using your voice is clearly a great way to do that.
 
Toufic Mobarak: Yeah.
 
Alex Rector: Are you typically – like whenever you’re working with businesses, who are you usually talking to? Is it usually marketing folks or are you looking for service folks?
 
Toufic Mobarak: It depends because – it depends on the nature of the business, right? So our product is used – marketing obviously but not only marketing. Notification. In the healthcare, we use it because it’s HIPAA-compliant. Text is not HIPAA-compliant. People use it in political campaigns.
 
So it depends which organization and the type of – what – the type of use case they’re going to do. It depends. It can be marketing. It could be people responsible for logistics. It could be people responsible for internal human resources. A lot of companies use us internally to communicate.
 
So again it all depends on what the use case are. So marketing is one of them, an important one. I’m not underestimating that. But it’s not the only one.
 
Alex Rector: Right, that makes sense. Those are some great examples too.
 
Toufic Mobarak: Yeah. And the way we can – you know, and any communication we have, there is always – kind of communication have different – so you have different components if you will. You have the emotional component, right? You know, humans who are not just communicating information. It’s the storytelling, the emotional component of communication is critical.
 
Then you have the pure informational component if you will. Let’s say I’m telling you meet me at 12:30 at 25 Main Street. There’s no emotion in it, right? Or I can tell you, hey, meet me up, you know, and then even if the same component, the same informational component in it, the emotional component can be very, very different and for humans, emotional is much, much more emotional than anything else. So text messaging is great for just if I want to communicate with the information. Emojis can add some emotional contact to it but voice is definitely – in addition to having the content of the information, the emotional component is so much more enhanced.
 
Alex Rector: That’s great, yeah.
 
Toufic Mobarak: So it’s, you know …
 
Alex Rector: Super important. I think that people won’t remember what you said or who you are but they will remember how you made them feel, right?
 
Toufic Mobarak: Yeah.
 
Alex Rector: So …
 
Toufic Mobarak: Oh, yeah.
 
Alex Rector: Depending on how you deliver the message. That could be very important and that’s a big reason to tap into and potentially consider voicemail or a kind of recording of a message as a vehicle for communication. But whenever I bring up like SlyBroadcast or I’m trying to pitch this as part of something that we might use in a marketing campaign, working with the executives, working with other decision-makers. I get a lot of objections and I’m just curious. You know, how do you overcome some of the stigma around voicemail that you …?
 
Toufic Mobarak: What kind of objections do you get?
 
Alex Rector: So I run into people that are – you know, they’re worried that voicemail might hurt their reputation, if we did a voicemail drop and they just have a negative …
 
Toufic Mobarak: Versus what?
 
Alex Rector: Versus just doing something like email or doing like a mobile text messaging. They just have a negative connotation about voicemail. I’m just curious what you see out there.
 
Toufic Mobarak: Everything, we are comparing A to A, right? B to B or orange to apples. So if you are comparing a text message to a voicemail, voicemail is a lot less intrusive. It’s more personal. You know, where you get a notification and you jump and it’s oh, you know, and the other thing is not – and we would like to keep it this way. It’s not as used, right? I mean it might be counterintuitive for our business interest, right? To say, you know, what I tell my customer, less is more. With us, less is more. So it’s not – don’t send them 500 voicemails every day.
 
No. Send them once. Even though it’s against our pure financial, selfish financial interest. But for the long term, we believe that’s a sustainable way is less is more. Versus texting, you know, you get a text. I don’t know if it’s more annoying or less annoying but definitely annoying versus there’s a voicemail. You can listen to it at your own leisure and as I said, the emotional content is there.
 
If you don’t like it, you don’t like it. This way, don’t answer. If the content is relevant to you, you can always call this person back. But it’s definitely the – it’s not intrusive. Non-intrusive versus a call which you have to call and you say, “Oh no, sorry. You know, I’m not interested,” and to relay the information, you relay what they’re talking to you about. It's not heavily used like the email. I mean how many emails you get a day honestly? It’s like 90 percent goes – 99 percent probably go to delete.
 
So there, listen to it and again I repeat. With us is less is more and the value of the voicemail is that it’s there when you need it and it’s not – you don’t have to listen to 500. Usually it’s two or three days, this is what you get and that’s it. I would like to keep it this way.
 
Alex Rector: Yeah, and I think that’s really the power of the voicemail these days. Whenever I look into it, voicemail doesn’t happen as much as it used to. People are not leaving messages all the time whenever they go to voicemail anymore. So …
 
Toufic Mobarak: That’s correct.
 
Alex Rector: And people aren’t getting a lot of voicemails in general. So whenever people get voicemails – I know I listen to all my voicemails.
 
Toufic Mobarak: Oh, you – absolutely and this is what – the biggest objection we got is not what you mentioned the biggest objection. But nobody – I don’t leave voicemail. That’s exactly the point. When you get a voice maybe sent, it must be very important. Somebody left me a voicemail, you know. So yes, out of – look at it from your personal view, that you are calling somebody, a friend, and he or she doesn’t answer. No big deal. But if you have something important and he or she doesn’t answer, you leave a voicemail. When you do, you know, they’re going to listen to it because scarcity equals value. Scarcity equals importance.
 
Alex Rector: And that’s how I look at this too. That’s really what my argument is whenever I’m talking about using voicemail. I think that there’s one other issue that comes up that I had a question about and that’s the challenge of kind of like the ambiguity or not knowing where a phone number is going to go. Like if they have – like if I’m working marketing, right, and I’ve got a database of contacts and we split them up into different groups that we want to reach through different channels. Well, how can I guarantee that I’m going to deliver these voicemails to these people? Is there a way that I can – like a method for me to figure out? Like if the voicemail is going to go where it needs to go, if I do like a bulk send?
 
Toufic Mobarak: Oh, well, it goes where the phone number is. I mean that’s – if your phone number is not accurate, there’s nothing we can do about it, right? But the phone – and then we – the report will tell you if it was delivered or if it was not delivered.
 
Alex Rector: OK, yeah.
 
Toufic Mobarak: So if it’s delivered, that means it’s 100 percent delivered. It’s not like oh, yeah, no. With us, it’s 100 – if we tell you it’s delivered, you can take it to the bank. It’s delivered. If it’s not delivered, we give you the reason why, whether the phone is disconnected or it’s full, the voicemail is full, the voicemail is not set up, et cetera. Like three or four cases where the voicemail cannot be delivered but the reporting will tell you.
 
Let’s say you have 100 numbers. You send 100 voicemails. Let’s say 90 got delivered. These are 90. You know they are delivered and the 10 that didn’t get delivered, then you know they didn’t get delivered for whatever reason. If the voicemail is full in that setup, then you know you have to use another alternative or if the phone is bad, then you know hey, this is a bad number. Remove it from the list.
 
So we allow you also – you know, it’s kind of use it as a clean-up tool. This is not what we market it as but it’s a side benefit, right? You know, hey, if the phone number is disconnected, remove it. That’s the person no longer has this number. So that’s an additional value provided in the reporting. But again, the reporting tells you the story.
 
Alex Rector: Yeah, that’s great. Yeah. We would definitely use that to help clean up the database as well. At least we would do some due diligence to figure out the numbers are right, right?
 
Toufic Mobarak: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
 
Alex Rector: But yeah, I mean I think that’s probably the other thing that comes up the most whenever I start talking about SlyBroadcast with other marketers and folks that are involved in the decision-making process on that. They just don’t have confidence in their own database with the mobile numbers, right?
 
Toufic Mobarak: Yeah.
 
Alex Rector: So there needs to be some cleanup done ahead of time usually or some kind of ops work. It has to go into it before we would actually even try it, right?
 
Toufic Mobarak: Yes, absolutely. As I say, all attitude – garbage in, garbage out if you have – you know, so I mean …
 
Alex Rector: That’s so true.
 
Toufic Mobarak: You know, so you have to – the starting point has to be good.
 
Alex Rector: And so thinking about marketing and sales, what are some different and like interesting ways that you’ve seen your products used or integrated into like campaigns or sales processes? Does anything come to mind, that sticks out?
 
Toufic Mobarak: I keep saying it. I keep coming back to the same thing, personal. It’s a personal message. This is not the radio ad. This is not the Facebook ad. This is a personal message. So you are reaching and today, the world we live in, the personal contact is huge. It’s missing. It’s missing in all the – like all the promotional campaigns. You mentioned whether it’s email, whether it’s text message, whether it’s social media, Facebook, Instagram or TikTok, whatever social media.
 
The personal aspect, the personal connection is missing and I think this is – if you tell me what is the single most important element to our success is that as well we provide the personal connection to your customer and there is nothing more powerful – for me, there is nothing more powerful than this.
 
Everything else is – yeah. Everything else is qualifications, modifications, but the single most important element is we provide a tool to be personal with your customers and I don’t think of any other tool that allows you to do this.
 
Alex Rector: Yeah, and I think – yeah, when I thought about using like SlyBroadcast, some different like options where we could integrate it, where – you know, like something like ahead of an event where we’re having like an exclusive event, you know, high-level decision makers. We need to have onsite somewhere and we want to deliver like a really kind of – a more personal invitation. So like record the message from the CEO of the company.
 
You know, then he could really put the – communicate it in the best way possible as a personal invitation to the folks receiving the message. I think we – like the challenge is like you can’t really personalize it through this specific person so much if we’re doing like a broadcast, right?
 
Toufic Mobarak: But it’s personal.
 
Alex Rector: But yeah, I think there are ways to make it sound like it’s more like a personal message, right? We just left it for them.
 
Toufic Mobarak: Yeah.
 
Alex Rector: So I mean that’s the way that – that’s one example that I’ve had discussions about in the past.
 
Toufic Mobarak: My favorite example of a use for our technology, we had – we donate our service to Make-A-Wish Foundation, to all their chapters. Make-A-Wish Foundation functions – it’s a national organization that is divided in chapters and the chapters act fairly independently.
 
So we had – and we give it – you know, I don’t know how many we have. We have maybe 30 chapters right now using us and they were doing a fundraising, the chapter in Arizona, Phoenix. They were doing a fundraising and to have the children record a message, to have a group of children, five – I don’t know, a small group of children and …
 
Alex Rector: Wow.
 
Toufic Mobarak: Yes, and then they had – the message is sent to the donors, thanking them and inviting them for their annual event that was taking place. And the chairman of the organization for Make-A-Wish of the chapter in Phoenix got the message and he was giving his speech on this and he played the message that he had received from this child and everybody was in tears.
 
So go back – you know, everything is personal, is emotional, is – all this is kind of – all what we have been talking about comes – it’s all reflective in this message that these kids have sent to their donors because it addresses the emotional, it addresses the personal, the personal connection, et cetera. The other one that was very popular is Ryan Reynolds. You know, the movie star.
 
Alex Rector: Yeah, of course.
 
Toufic Mobarak: OK. Ryan Reynolds owned a mobile company called Mint Mobile.
 
Alex Rector: OK, yeah, yeah.
 
Toufic Mobarak: OK. Mint Mobile did a campaign with us when COVID started and they – Ryan Reynolds sent a voicemail to all his customers saying that we are going to give you a free – it was a free month for data or something for COVID, right? I don’t recall what the offer was, but this was free data. I don’t know if it was free in gig or free month. I don’t recall the details but it was a bunch of free data they were offering to their customers and you should see the reaction on social media. You know, oh my god, Ryan Reynolds had left me a voicemail. Oh, yes for this. I’m going to – you know.
 
Alex Rector: That’s so great, yeah.
 
Toufic Mobarak: Yeah.
 
Alex Rector: I love that.
 
Toufic Mobarak: Yeah. So all this – again, all this personal connection that voice creates, it’s unmatchable, unmatchable.
 
Alex Rector: Yeah, I think that’s a really interesting use case. Both of those are great. I think you got the emotional element. You’ve heard it with the children. That’s very powerful. Awesome idea, you know. Whoever came up with that, that is so great. Ryan Reynolds. I mean if you could get an influencer, someone huge and famous like Ryan Reynolds to do something like this and do a bulk send, you know, for a marketing offer, I think that is a great idea. I love that.
 
Toufic Mobarak: Yeah.
 
Alex Rector: I didn’t think …
 
Toufic Mobarak: Cool. You should too. Cool, cool reaction. You should see Ryan – do a Google. Ryan Reynolds voicemail, right? And the reaction on Twitter, on all – it was hilarious. I mean a huge success for them. It was not – because they gained two things. One is the voicemail they delivered and the other thing is the reaction, the expanded media they get on the – and social media. It’s huge. Yeah.
 
Alex Rector: I mean that’s great and you know, you compare that with some of the other things out there too. It’s like you got – like Cameo is doing this now. Like they’ve got the cameo, little celebrity cameos. You can hire them through the online and have them come on. I’ve seen a few folks using that for marketing now too. I think it’s something like that paired with a voicemail from the same actor. That could be a really powerful marketing …
 
Toufic Mobarak: Yeah, absolutely.
 
Alex Rector: … option there.
 
Toufic Mobarak: Absolutely.
 
Alex Rector: But that’s just really cool. Yeah, and it would definitely start a social firestorm, right? If you just nailed it just right.
 
Toufic Mobarak: Oh, yeah.
 
Alex Rector: So it’s really …
 
Toufic Mobarak: And it happened during COVID. So everybody had nothing to do but to be on social media. So they got the double whammy here.
 
Alex Rector: That’s so good. So clever. Just good, you know. So I also wanted to talk to you about like the technology side with the products that you have on your line-up. As a – working in marketing, a lot of times I work on the ops side, dealing with the tech stack and that kind of thing. The questions coming to my mind is like how can we really best leverage this and I’m curious. As far as like integrations go and working with other – like CRM systems and things like that. How does that work with your products?
 
Toufic Mobarak: We integrate with a bunch of them. HubSpot, Salesforce.
 
Alex Rector: Right.
 
Toufic Mobarak: I mean I don’t know. Maybe 10.
 
Alex Rector: OK.
 
Toufic Mobarak: Ten or fifteen. We love integration. We love – we are honestly – if you ask to define MobileSphere, we’re a bunch of geeks. You know, we’re a software company. We’re a bunch of geeks working here and doing products that hopefully people like and found useful and beneficial for their business, personal, whatever they want to communicate, right?
 
So integration for us is important. So any company that comes to us, we do the lifting, the heavy lifting. We will integrate with anybody. So then we have done quite a bit and we will continue to do those. So that’s a critical part of our – strategically important, strategically. We don’t have ego. We don’t want them to come to our product. As long as they use it through other channels, it’s music to our ears.
 
Alex Rector: OK, yeah, yeah. I mean that’s great. You hit the nail too from right there. You know, HubSpot and Salesforce are huge. Definitely going to be questions about that if we start bringing this up and like so if you were working with HubSpot or Salesforce in the integration, how does that like – what do you see with – if we were to do like SlyBroadcast? Is there just like an update on the contact timeline or …?
 
Toufic Mobarak: You know what? They integrate them with their campaigns. So we are just another way in their campaign flow. They just send a voicemail and we integrate with them.
 
Alex Rector: Oh, wow. OK. Yeah, that’s even better. That’s great.
 
Toufic Mobarak: Yeah, yeah.
 
Alex Rector: That’s really great.
 
Toufic Mobarak: Again, yeah, it’s part of the campaign flow. They can send …
 
[Crosstalk] [0:27:04]
 
Alex Rector: They sent like a nurturing flow and put it together. They can have your – like a voicemail drop as part of that.
 
Toufic Mobarak: Got you. Yeah, yes, exactly.
 
Alex Rector: That’s really cool, that’s really cool.
 
Toufic Mobarak: That’s exactly right.
 
Alex Rector: Yeah. I think that – you know, I think if more marketers knew about that, they would love to know that they could do that, you know.
 
Toufic Mobarak: Yes, yeah. We try to tell them. We try to tell them. It’s on our website. So …
 
Alex Rector: Yeah. Having like a variety with the marketing …
 
Toufic Mobarak: And then the other thing we agree with, we integrate with is Zapier. I don’t know if you are familiar with Zapier.
 
Alex Rector: Yeah.
 
Toufic Mobarak: So Zapier we have integrated with them. I don’t know a couple of years ago. So any tool that integrates with Zapier actually integrates with us. So that kind of – that’s kind of – your door just opened. It just kind of eliminated the …
 
Alex Rector: Sometimes my critters can open my door. So you get some intruders every once in a while, so sorry about that.
 
Toufic Mobarak: No problem. No worries and then the – like it integrates with everybody that integrates with Zapier. We have another couple of companies similar to Zapier that are on the website. But Zapier is by far the largest one.
 
Intechra [0:28:13] [Phonetic] I think is another one that we integrate with. A similar tool like Zapier but Zapier – again, as I said, it’s so – so we don’t know how many companies. I can tell you how many we have done but that many other companies that have integrated or users have integrated through us, through Zapier because they use tool A that integrates with Zapier and we integrate Zapier and the user. So that has been a great, great solution for us.
 
Alex Rector: Zapier is probably the most well-known and in my experience, widely used like middleware.
 
Toufic Mobarak: Yeah.
 
Alex Rector: Software. So I’m totally – I would be excited to know that you can integrate with Zapier. I think that there’s a ton of different things you can do if you can integrate through Zapier. So …
 
Toufic Mobarak: Yes.
 
Alex Rector: … that will help with overall dealing with the different tech stack challenges and that’s great, you know. I would love to hear that you guys are working on integration. You’ve got different things. So I think we’re kind of getting close on time here. So I wanted to ask you before we wrap up here. Like is there anything we should be looking forward to with your products upcoming this year? Are there any bigger leases on the roadmap? Is there anything else you would want to share?
 
Toufic Mobarak: Well, I’m not going to release too much but for us, tracking is the next, tracking.
 
Alex Rector: OK.
 
Toufic Mobarak: I think a layer of tracking. That’s what we’re working on.
 
Alex Rector: OK. Yeah, that’s always great. Have a little tracking going on. I think that’s good. If you are – with our viewers, is there – do you have any like ongoing promotions? Where should they go to learn more or …?
 
Toufic Mobarak: SlyBroadcast.com for the broadcasting site. SlyText.com for texting.
 
Alex Rector: OK. All right. You guys heard it. Is there anything else you would like to add Toufic?
 
Toufic Mobarak: No, thank you for your time.
 
Alex Rector: Thank you so much for joining us today and best wishes to MobileSphere and SlyBroadcast. We will tap in and hopefully this has been helpful for everybody.
 
Toufic Mobarak: OK. Thank you Alex.
 
Alex Rector: Thanks.
 
Toufic Mobarak: Bye-bye.
 
Alex Rector: Bye-bye.
 
[End of transcript]