281: Differentiate from your Competition in Unique Ways - with Arian Radmand

I know we fall into such a trap of when we're working with closing a deal, we want to just email them email, that email, email, and it becomes so easy so that us and even our teams are just kind of pounding emails. And eventually they stop working and people don't care and they start deleting emails. And that's why we're not closing deals that we should Well, I talked to Arian Radmand. He's from IgnitePOST. And he has found a really unique way to kind of separate and differentiate from the group that's just pounding with emails trying to get deals closed. And what he does ignite post, they send personalized letters, but they do it at scale, because they have robots that write it out with an actual pen. So it's not perfect, it doesn't look like a perfect font that a printer printed, it looks like a real handwritten letter. And what they're doing is you can put in what you want it to do, and it'll send out mail it all out for you so that people feel like they're getting that amazing personal touch. And it's really differentiating people are using it are differentiating in a big way. He calls it moments of surprise and delight, which I love. And I think you're really going to like this, there are ways that you can differentiate in your marketing you may not have thought of yet and Adrienne's got some great ideas for you definitely check this out if you want to close more deals.

Welcome to Scale Your SaaS, the podcast that gives you proven techniques and formulas for boosting your revenue and achieving your dream exit brought to you by a guy who's done just that multiple times. Here's your host, Matt Wallach.

I'm doing awesome. This is great. Thanks

And welcome to Scale Your SaaS Thank you very so much for having me. much for being here. Really glad you're here. Thanks for coming in. Listen, and we're here to help you scale your SaaS exactly what the show is called so that you can learn how to sell more. You can learn how to close more deals, grow your company and all the fun things that come from that. And I am elated to have one of my own clients with us today. Arian Radmand. Arian, how're you doing? Absolutely. I really appreciate you being here. Let me make sure everybody knows who you are Ariane. So Arian is the CEO and president at IgnitePOST. And IgnitePOST is a service that helps brands create magic moments for their customers, their real pen and ink handwritten notes cut through the digital noise to surprise and delight customers exactly where they are in their shopping journeys. They do some incredible stuff. I can't wait for you to hear about it. He's also the former co-founder and CTO at coach up Aryan knows his stuff when it comes to growing a business. So Arian, I'm so glad to have you here. Thanks for coming on the show.

Oh, thank you. I'm excited to dive into this. I'm sure there's a lot of good stuff to get through.

Oh, for sure. For sure. So tell me what's been going on with you lately? And what's coming up?

Oh, wow. So do you want to know on the personal side, professional side anywhere, it doesn't matter?

Either, either. Whatever you feel like.

Well, on on the personal side, super excited. I'm getting married later on this year. So getting married in a couple of months here. So I'm in the throes of wedding planning. So you know how, how that is. So a little bit crazy.

If it's a couple of months away, it's definitely crazy time.

Yeah, I'm super excited. So I've got that going on. And then with the business with Ignite post Q4 is typically our busiest. So right now there's a lot of prep going on, in terms of getting ready for Q4. So you know, we've got Black Friday, Cyber Monday coming up. So we've got some things in the work there some some prep going on there. And then obviously, around the holidays with, you know, Christmas cards and Thanksgiving and everything that gets super busy. So right now I'd say you know, kind of end of summer is a lot of prep work. So a lot of a lot of stuff going on. On in that realm, I'd say. I would imagine for sure. Yeah, definitely. Now that you mentioned, and I bet it's a huge time for you. I want to go back, though. So how did this whole idea for Ignite posts come about? Yeah, so the whole idea with Ignite post is really to help brands develop relationships with their customers at scale. And actually, the kind of concept came more moreso when I was at my previous business at Coachella, essentially what we were doing, we were connecting athletes and private coaches in about 30 different sports all across the nation. But from doing that, what I really what I realized is that the athlete and coach pairs that really performed the best and did the best, there was a reason and it was because they developed this really strong bond and this really strong relationship over the course of their training. And so what I wanted to do is I kind of wanted to replicate that aspect of the relationship building, but give brands a way to do this at scale. And I really noticed that there were there were two major trends happening, which was the whole idea of why I thought it was so important. And the two major trends were number one digital saturation. Right now everybody is crushed in the sea of what I like to call digital noise. Whether that is you know, an email inbox that just is exploding on a daily basis whether It's you know, digital ads that get pushed our way on literally every device and screen that we own SMS messages, you know, you name it notifications, and I didn't see that trend is declining, if anything, it was going to get worse, right, there's going to be more of all of those things. So that was number one. And then the second thing I saw is that brands were actually losing the ability and the credibility to connect with their customers in a way that they can get their message across that their customer would actually believe and trust them, right? The first thing that you do, if you hear of any new brand, or any new product or anything that you're thinking of using, what do you do, you go and you read reviews, or you see what everybody else is saying, but not what the actual flip brand is saying. So that means that the two big major problems out there were one, being able to actually reach your customer and cutting through the noise. And then when you actually reach them, having touchpoints that will actually develop the relationships so that they trust what you're saying, so that when they decide to come back and purchase, again, they purchase from you, and they don't just go somewhere else. So you know, I guess that's a long winded way of of kind of the journey of how I got to where we are. And so with Ignite post, that's essentially what we aim to do. We aim to help brands develop a relationship, a deeper relationship. And the way the product works is really aimed at solving those two major problems, those two major trends that we saw. So that's what we built. And the way that we went about it is we've done we are our platform is part hardware and part software. So the software is designed to integrate into marketing automation platforms, e commerce platforms to meet our customers exactly where they are. So they don't have to go learn a whole new tool. So it's really designed to integrate into the platforms that they already use. And then on the other side, our hardware, so we have a fleet of robots that will hold real big ballpoint pens and will write out real handwritten notes and an actual handwriting style. And the combination of the two allows any brand to create a very perfectly timed and crafted moment that really drives users to action. And so that was the whole, the whole idea was kind of putting those two together. And that's really where the power comes from.

I love it. It's so wild for me to think of these robots writing out letters. And the fact that it's with a real pen means it's not perfect, because I think we've all seen it where we order these cards, and we get it in a certain font that looks like handwriting, but it's printed out perfect. And there's no mistakes and there's nothing. And so, you know, it's not really handwritten, but these look legitimately handwritten. So you're, you're literally personalizing at scale, right? Oh, wow, look at that. For those of you who are seeing the video, you can see them all right there. It looks like a real handwritten letter. You're personalizing at scale. And I think that's a big thing. You're, you're you're impacting. Yeah, look at that. That's insane. That's amazing. I love that you brought some visual aids, that's perfect. Yeah, if you're listening on the podcast right now, go look at this on YouTube, and you'll see it there. And he's got the the writing there on the card. It's really cool. I mean, personalization, it's a great way to, like you said, get buyers to kind of believe in you and trust you. And it shows that you care about them. It's not just some mass blast thing. And I think that that's really special. I'm sure that people using ignite posts are seeing benefits of that, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And it's interesting, too. So when you say personalization, there's so many different layers, like an onion, you can pull back the different layers of personalization.

And to your point to Yeah, we actually, when we talk with customers, we actually don't even call our solution direct mail, because it is so different. And a lot of times, if you say, Oh, we're a direct mail service, people do think of that kind of mass marketing, mass mail. And they do a lot of what you mentioned, right? Having these fonts that kind of look handwritten, but you can really tell this just came out of a printer, you're not fooling anybody, if anything, you're insulting me. So. So, you know, we purposely don't even call this solution direct mail just because it's so differentiated. And then the results are different as well. So you know, when we compare ourselves to, you know, if we work with a company that has done direct mail, before in the past, our barometer, so we typically perform about 10 times better than direct mail. So just to kind of give you an idea of where where we fall. So those are just some some kind of quick stats. But yeah, I'm happy to dive in more.

I love that. I mean, 10 times better. I think that that's echoed if you were to look at say you're doing an email campaign, right? If you were just to do a mass blast, email campaign and spray and pray and hope you're probably going to have results that are 1/10 as strong as if you actually went and looked at somebody did some personalization showed them that you care about them and really aimed at one person that is much stronger. Same thing here this field

was very personal people get it, they see, hey, this this, this person cares about me I didn't even realize it. I'm not just one of several 1000. And I think that's exactly pretty big. And it's, it's a way to differentiate, right? Totally weighted to differentiate. And, you know, keep in mind when we talk about personalization. Nowadays, everybody views themselves as a VIP, right? Everyone wants to be treated like a VIP, everyone thinks they're, you know, that they're special, and they deserve to be treated as such. And so a lot of the things we do when we work with brands is figuring out how do we inject those points within the customer journey, to give people that feeling, right, there's a very easy way to make somebody to stand out from the rest of the brands, because nobody's doing it. And to make your customers feel like a VIP, that leaves a lasting impression so that you can turn you know, a first time customer into a raving fan that comes back again and again, and even refers you right? So, you know, a lot of the work that we do with brands is really examining the customer journey, and figuring out where are these points that we can inject some of these these personalization. But really, how do we inject some some points that really hit home with people. And the way we actually do that, as is actually using a lot of human psychology and some like putting a little bit of science behind it as well. So there's a few principles that we like to follow when we're examining the customer journey and giving our advice as to where we should, you know, put these touch points in. So one of the things along the sides of personalization that you you kind of asked about is, when you say there's actually a lot of data out there that shows that as a brand, if you can connect your customer with the artisan behind your service or your product, that it creates that kind of emotional connection and bond that gets people to come back again and again, right. And this is this is kind of how humans have evolved over time, right? In the past, what happened is, if you wanted to go and buy, you know, a chair table, you actually went and talked to the artisan and said, I want to I want to buy a chair table, and you actually talk to the person that made the thing that you're going to buy. Now fast forward in the age of you know, Amazon, you can go and buy, you know, a blender or anything, I never even interact with a human being right you go, you can search, you can buy something, and it will get delivered. And you have no idea of the effort or who went into actually making that product. So one of the things that we do, one of the most effective things that we do with brands is figure out points along the customer journey where we can actually connect them with the people behind the company that actually are performing the service or making the product. And what we found is that that humanizes the brand a little bit more. And as people we want to buy from other people, right. And so if you can do that, and this is a very simple, easy way to do this at scale is to simply have a note come from whoever the artisan was at the brand that was went into actually making the product or packing the product or whatever you want. It's a very simple, easy way to scale connect your brand, humanize the brand, with the with your customer. And then the customer becomes a customer for life because they feel they feel that bond. They feel that connection. So but to your point, it all starts with this this idea of personalization and how do we go deep? And how do we really give someone that unique VIP personalized experience.

We'll be right back.

Scale Your SaaS is supported by Torowave.

Lots of software leaders I talked to are looking to scale their SaaS and I keep hearing over and over about one major struggle getting ghosted by buyers after the demo. How frustrating is it when you have a great demo? You're feeling good they like it. It seems like a done deal. And then crickets nothing reach out they're not responding to you at all. And when these software companies they asked me to dive in, I noticed that the sellers are following up the wrong way or actually I should say with the wrong medium. What they're doing is they're hammering emails over and over again. I got a newsflash for you email effectiveness is dwindling down and down every year. So why beat your head against the wall losing all kinds of business start texting mixing texts along with emails and calls and watch your conversion rates go up in fact conversion rates go up by about 50% When you use texting as part of the follow up people are used to it and did you know though response rate on texts is 98% 98%. So why throw emails into a black hole knowing that they're never gonna get returned text buyers and get results but don't use your own phone all kinds of security and compliance issues if you do also none of that data is with your company. That's not good. Instead use this system Toro wave Toro wave is designed for sales. It makes texting with buyers super simple and fast and it helps drive more deals deals that you've been losing until now for being a listener you get 50 per send off your first month of using Torowave 50% off, just go to Toro wave.com/scale It's t o r o wav.com/scale get signed up and start winning more deals like Tracy who closed $170,000 In three days after starting again go to Torowave.com/scale Catch up and win by texting with Torowave. And we're back. I love that, I totally believe in that. And that's something we talk about a lot is how do we remove the feeling of this as this corporate a amorphous brand that people can't really connect with, to there are people here and you can connect with those people. And you're right, when you feel connected to them, the buying is much stronger, much more often much higher. i One example I think of is when I was in college, we lived in an apartment. And there was one shop that was right downstairs that was a little more expensive. It was like, like a convenience store like drinks and whatnot. Yeah, a little more expensive. But then there was another one up just a block away. Not far, that was much cheaper. But my buddy, my roommate would always go to the more expensive one because he had a connection with the owner of the shop. And he totally just like taking care of him. And, and so it was so funny, even in college, when you're poor, and you have no money, he was willing to spend extra money just because of that personal connection. And it, it really resonated with me. And when you talk about it, it's so true. And you know, we talk about it with our members and our clients. How, how do we tell that company founding histories, we can connect people to the founder to the people at the organization, as opposed to just hoping that they like a brand? That's, that's a very difficult thing to do to get them to like a brand. Give them like the people there is much, much easier. I'm glad you guys are doing that sounds like that's really, really working. Totally, it definitely working. And you know, it's interesting, too, because a lot of the recommendations that we give brands when we work with them really stemmed from just how human behavior, right? How do humans behave. And that's really where we start, and then everything else flows from that. So it's interesting, because people forget, you know, this thing called the internet has only been around screens right have only been around for a couple decades here. But humans have been around for millennia. And so as humans, we have not evolved to, you know, operate on online and everything. We are social creatures and beings that learn about our environment by actually interacting and experiencing it and touching it, you know, tact tactile feedback. And so that's one of the things that we also talk with our customers about a lot is listen, this is just how humans have evolved, right? If you put something in the hands of a person, it's going to mean more to them. Because the, you know, our reptilian brain kicks in. And when you get tactile feedback on something, and you actually can hold something physically, it actually connects with you subconsciously, more, so it strengthens that bond between whomever sent you this thing. And, and the actual recipient. So, you know, a lot of the stuff that we do starts from human psychology and kind of looking at, well, what is human behavior? And how do we leverage some of those things, because those are just things that are innate as humans that we can't turn off, because that's how we have evolved over time. So a lot of a lot of the techniques that we use, and even kind of some of the other examples that I gave them really stem from that of all right, as a human, we're already hardwired to really value things that get sent to me. So how do we, you know, super personalize those things? And how do we position it and time it so that that moment really becomes something that's super impactful, because as a human, we can't shut off that area of our brain and kind of ignore it and have it not be impactful. So if you're a little bit thoughtful with your timing and what you're sending, it's, it's very valuable for Brandon for business. I love it. I totally agree. We sometimes we forget about that human side of it. But that's what buying and selling is. It's all about that human interaction. I want to know if this is I'm loving this conversation. But I want to know, I mean, you did a great job of getting this company off the ground, taking it forward serving a lot of people becoming successful. What were some of the early things that you did Ariane that really helped you guys kind of get going and get some momentum?

Yeah, talking with customers, for sure. That's something that I feel is understated and everybody says it but it actually making making a point to talk with, especially when you're early and you only don't have that many customers really developing a good relationship with them and really getting as much information out of them as as possible is something that's super critical. So that's something that that I would do for sure. And even like to this day, I still have that kind of built into my routine or even On my way home every now and then I'll just pick up the phone and call a couple of customers with no other reason other than to just kind of check in and see how things are going. But I can't under like, understate the value of just talking with customers and just not even not even probing and kind of looking for more business just in general trying to understand what are you doing, what's working, what's not working, and just kind of telling me more, and just uncovering and kind of peeling back the different things they're doing. And from that, taking some of the learnings that you find from talking with customers, and then, you know, putting it into your product, or using that as data points when you are making decisions as to what to build and how to build is super important. Like, I'll give you like, One great example is a lot of the things that we actually built with Ignite post in our software has very little to do with the actual, with with our actual technology. So one of the things that we did is we found that a lot of the people we were talking to were marketing folks, and they weren't like software engineers, they weren't developers, my backgrounds in software engineering. So a lot of the integrations and everything that we built, were, were designed to be kind of more deep integrations that work really, really well. But a lot of times were a little bit too technical for the people that were actually using the product. And so what we found is that we needed to scale that back a little bit. So what we, what we did is we talked to a bunch of people and found that everybody who was a marketer, they were used to the world of emails, right, they could create and send emails and trigger emails whenever they wanted. But to get them to actually use our integration or use our API that was something that was just unfamiliar with the to them. So what we did in the product is actually built away, like we kind of met them where they weren't. So we built a way that as a marketer, they could trigger our handwritten cards, simply by triggering emails that they were already used to doing whenever they needed card set. And so, you know, to your point, like some of the early things that we did that helped us grow, were just removing friction points. And sometimes it was just kind of thinking outside of the box of okay, well, you don't know how to use this, this interface fine. What do you know, and hear what we'll give you will make it super easy for you. So just talking with customers, understanding what they're doing, and just be willing to do things that are unconventional just to make things easier for people, I think was was a huge help getting started on getting off the ground. Yeah, I mean, I think that's amazing. I've preached, talk to your customers, talk to your customers, talk to your customers. And it sounds like you guys have learned a lot about how to improve the product, and also maybe how to sell them more. But my guess is that you've improved your churn rate and your retention rate, because these conversations, people feel like, Oh, I know, Ari, and he's the CEO, you know, they feel like they know you and are more connected. So have you seen that? Have you done any studies on that? Or is it just more anecdotal that you feel like the churn rate is better is lower? Because you have that connection with your customers? Yeah, so I don't have any data. Anecdotally, I can tell you that, that seems to be the case, especially when people will start to get to know you. And they start reaching out for some other suggestions of like, Hey, I'm thinking about doing things XY and Z. What are your thoughts, right? So anecdotally, when people start just reaching out and kind of wanting to engage with you to just riff on ideas, and just think about what are some other things we can do, anecdotally, that that's how I can tell those things are working. However, we have definitely worked with customers, and help them increase their retention rates and reduce their churn rates, for sure. And that we actually have a lot of hard data on. So that's an interesting segment as well, because our solution is really a retention solution. That's our bread and butter, a lot of the brands we work with, that's exactly what they use this for is to help reduce churn to help extend customer LTV, by developing that relationship. And by injecting those points of surprise and delight at a time where it would it would make sense so that we have a lot of data on for our own business. It's more anecdotal, but we definitely are seeing people come back again and again, and then also look for other opportunities. Once they kind of get their initial experiences set up. They look for other opportunities to expand as well. So those are the trends that we like to see.

Fantastic stuff. As we wrap up here. What advice would you give to other early stage software leaders as they try to, you know, grow their company and make things happen? Yeah.

There's probably a bunch of advice, I would say. So one of the things that I have found super useful is putting together a mentoring counsel in areas that you know, I'm deficient in. So you know, you can't be an expert in everything. And so one of the biggest pieces of advice I would have is figure out what are the main pieces of of your business that are going to be important or critical to your success, and then go and look for the best people that you can possibly find to mentor you and give you counsel in those areas. So that was one thing that I did early on that was a learning actually from my previous business that I carried into this one is to make sure that for all of those kind of critical areas, I have somebody that I can literally just pick up the phone and call and talk through, that knows a lot more than I do. And then I guess, to piggyback on that point to the other thing is being able to figure out how to delegate and shift responsibilities as you grow the business, to your team members. And so having a team, being able to know what team to put around you, and trusting to shift responsibilities to them is also critical to grow, like our team here is amazing. Everyone at the company, in their role is much better at the role than I was, but you have to start by by doing it all yourself, because you don't know what roles you need. You don't know, you know who to hire unless you actually start doing it yourself first. So you've got to start there. But then you know, as as quickly as, as you possibly can, getting people the right people in the right place that know a lot more than you do about those specific rules. Super important. So like that's, that's my whole concept is, how do I go and put better people than me in the roles that and then set them up for success?

I love it. Super great advice. That's an awesome way to scale is to figure it out yourself and then put somebody in place who's better than that. And wow, now you've got a team of experts who is absolutely crushing it, and it's a great way to grow. And also, everybody out there, you heard him say basically just go find Matt and help him. Have him help you Exactly. Right. Right. That's what he said. Okay, cool. Yeah. Verbatim. Well, this is great. This is great. All right. And I've learned a lot. I really appreciate you coming on. Obviously, I think we have a great relationship already. But it was fun to hear your story and and share it with our audience. How can our audience learn more about you and ignite post?

Yeah, well, so the easiest way, one of the coolest things is I would actually say visit ignitepost.com. And you can have one of our robots write you out a sample and mail it to your house. So if you visit ignite post.com, you'll see there's a button that says get a sample, click on it. Fill out your info, and one of our robots will write and mail your samples. That's the easiest way to get in touch with us and to see what we're all about.

That's super cool. I definitely recommend that it's some really slick stuff that they're doing over there, Arian. This has been great. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Hey, Matt, thanks so much for having me. This was awesome. I was always love chatting with you. Likewise, everybody out there thanks for being here. By the way, we are looking for reviews. If you think this show is helpful for you. Please give us a review on Apple or Spotify. That's really helpful for us let us know what we can do to improve but also shows other people that this is a great show that's going to help them Scale their SaaS. So thank you very much for coming, and we will see you next time. Take care.

Thanks for listening to Scale Your SaaS for more help on finding great leads and closing more deals. Go to Mattwolach.com