Conversational commerce is one of the most powerful trends shaping retail marketing media today, according to Michael Ricci, industry expert and Vice President of New Technologies at Sinch. In this episode, Michael breaks down the past, present and future of SMS and how the modern era of customer acquisition lies in trust building and the potential of chatbots.
Welcome to the The Voice of Retail , I’m your host Michael LeBlanc, and this podcast is brought to you in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada.
Conversational commerce is one of the most powerful trends shaping retail marketing media today, according to Michael Ricci, industry expert and Vice President of New Technologies at Sinch.
In this episode, Michael breaks down the past, present and future of SMS and how the modern era of customer acquisition lies in trust building and the potential of chatbots.
Together, we discuss the impact of personalized, accessible and streamlined conversation on the consumer buying process. Michael offers key examples of big brands that are pack leaders in utilizing chatbots, addresses common misconceptions about SMS and chatbot technology and talks about cutting-edge mobile strategies.
Thanks for tuning into today’s episode of The Voice of Retail. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss out on the latest episodes, industry news, and insights. If you enjoyed this episode please consider leaving a rating and review, as it really helps us grow so that we can continue getting amazing guests on the show.
I’m your host Michael LeBlanc, President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company, and if you’re looking for more content, or want to chat follow me on LinkedIn, or visit my website meleblanc.co!
Until next time, stay safe and have a great week!
Michael LeBlanc is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience, and has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career. Michael is the producer and host of a network of leading podcasts including Canada’s top retail industry podcast, The Voice of Retail, plus Global E-Commerce Tech Talks and The Food Professor with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois. You can learn more about Michael here or on LinkedIn.
Michael Ricci is a Highly accomplished senior digital marketing & business development executive with 30+ years of international experience in technology focused operations (B2B & B2C focused) ranging in size from $8/yr million SaaS businesses to $4.2/yr Billion global industry leaders.
• A well regarded Mobile CX architect who has guided some of the world’s most prominent brands.
• Clear track record of success in leading large, complex integrated solutions selling and business development programs and driving strong top line sales growth
• A well respected thought leader in the Mobile Marketing industry and past Chairman of the MMA's Mobile Analytics Committee
• Created the first successful “business to business sports sponsorship models and earned recognition as one of the Best B2B sports marketers in the world.
• Recognized track record of driving over $200m worth of revenue/contracts from global key events like the Olympics, FIFA World Cup, NASCAR, Super Bowl, World Alpine Skiing Championships, World Track & Field Championships.
Specialties: Mobile CX, digital marketing, email marketing, mobile marketing, analytics/data visualization, SMS, PUSH, mobile web, web design, business development, sponsorship marketing and strategy.
Michael LeBlanc 00:04
Welcome to The Voice of Retail, I’m your host Michael LeBlanc, and this podcast is brought to you in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada.
Michael LeBlanc 00:10
Conversational commerce is one of the most powerful trends shaping retail marketing media today, according to Michael Ricci, industry expert and Vice President of New Technologies at Sinch.
Michael LeBlanc 00:20
In this episode, Michael breaks down the past, present and future of SMS and how the modern era of customer acquisition lies in trust building and the potential of chatbots.
Michael LeBlanc 00:29
Together, we discuss the impact of personalized, accessible and streamlined conversation on the consumer buying process. Michael offers key examples of big brands that are pack leaders in utilizing chatbots, addresses common misconceptions about SMS and chatbot technology and talks about cutting-edge mobile strategies.
Michael Ricci 00:47
Consumers are tuning out of email; they're not opening it any longer. So, SMS became a new channel that brands were anxious to begin to communicate with consumers, maybe pass them offers, maybe send them those appointment reminders, maybe tell them their prescription was ready to pick up, if you will and since that point in time, it's become more and more mainstream and more and more relied upon.
Michael LeBlanc 01:12
Yeah.
Michael LeBlanc 01:13
Let's listen in now. Michael, welcome to The Voice of Retail podcast. How are you doing this afternoon?
Michael Ricci 01:18
I'm doing good, Michael. Thanks for having me.
Michael LeBlanc 01:20
Well, thanks for joining me, you and I had a chance to briefly catch up off-mic, get to know each other. But all it did for me, it's, kind of, whet my appetite for the conversation because a lot of what you guys are doing, I wish I would have had as, as, when I was a marketer, because it was just it's so powerful, I think and it's pretty cool. So, I'll learn all about it, but let's start at the beginning. Tell us a little bit about yourself who you are.
Michael LeBlanc 01:44
You bet. So, Michael, I’m Michael Ricci, I'm Vice President of Business Development and I oversee our partnership and channel programs in North America. I've been with Sinch about, almost two years now. I came out of the world of Oracle, where I was their mobile subject matter expert and also helped them take-to-market their new CDP, called CX unity. Prior to that, I was with a Salesforce partner called Digital Fusion, where I ran for, I was Chief Digital Officer and ran all of our client-facing engagements.
Michael Ricci 02:19
And then prior to that, was embedded with players like Markel and Webtrends, and a host of other technology providers. So long track record, and then the world of technology and during the course of that time, I've worked with some of the biggest brands on the planet, helped them solidify their mobile strategies and that's what I tend to focus on here at Sinch.
Michael LeBlanc 02:38
you've been kind of at this intersection of technology and the marketing world for pretty much your whole career by the sounds of it just by that pedigree of those organizations that you work for. Yeah, I mean, you must get a lot of change from massive many month projects to integrate some pretty what is now fairly simplistic marketing to where we're at today, yeah.
Michael Ricci 02:57
For sure, Michael. Yeah, actually, just to date myself, I go back to what we consider the dinosaur phase in mobile messaging, when the only option for a brand, there were no smartphones, we really didn't have the mobile web. So, the only option that you had if you were a brand, was to use SMS and back in those days, I was helping eBay evolve their auction strategy so that your text messages would show up letting me know that an auction was about to close and trying to reinforce traffic to that particular auction. So, I've been around since the early days of mobility, if you will, and I've seen the explosion of smartphones, the advent of the mobile web. App mania is, it's become known and now the latest trends which is conversational messaging, and it's super exciting. All of them brought new capabilities.
Michael LeBlanc 03:51
Yeah, I want to get to conversation messaging, conversational commerce, I think, as you guys call, now, where are you based, I forgot to ask you, where am I talking to you today?
Michael Ricci 03:58
I'm based in Denver. I actually live in a small mountain town called Evergreen, just outside Denver up in the foothills of the Rockies.
Michael LeBlanc 04:05
Very nice. Very nice and do you guys operate, North American, global, what's your scope for the, for Sinch.
Michael Ricci 04:12
We're a global player, based in Stockholm, Sweden, but North American headquarters in Atlanta, Canadian headquarters in Toronto, but doing business around the world, in virtually every country and growing at the speed of sound?
Michael LeBlanc 04:26
And give me a bit more background about the company, number of employees. I mean, you operate clearly globally. Is it, is it fast growing, what's the origin story behind it, how did it come to be?
Michael Ricci 04:36
Yeah, so Sinch started out as basically just a mobile messaging company in Stockholm and back in the early days of SMS, they played a necessary role, which is, carriers don't want to deal with enterprise brands. They depend on what's known as aggregators to aggregate messaging traffic on behalf of the brands and then transmitted via those pipelines. So, early on Sinch was known as CLX, was one of the key players in the messaging aggregation space.
Michael Ricci 05:10
But it's exploded and we've become literally one of the key players in what's known as the communications platform as a service space, or what we call it is sea pass. In that sea pass world, we compete with a variety of players, including the likes of Twilio. But we are the fastest growing player in the space, were regarded as a market leader by IDC, Gartner, Forrester and others, were recognized as about a $1.2 billion player, but when you consider our latest acquisitions, were more like a $3 billion player worldwide. So super-fast growing and made our way into the wall street journal last week too.
Michael LeBlanc 05:52
Great pedigree, great background and what I love about as I'm listening to, to you, reflecting on that is this global experience that's brought local right, which is so powerful, where you can help our retailers, all the listeners based on both what can be done here in Canada, in the US, and then around the world. We've touched on it here and there just as part of our introduction, but give us a short history of time, so to speak, in the development of SMS and text messaging, because it's come a long way and then we'll get to the future oh, actually, you guys are doing the future now I think in some ways, but give us a sense of, of how it's developed, and the ecosystem around it just so we understand, like, you know, where the where the platforms play your, your Facebook's, and all those kind of platforms. So just give us make sure everybody's on a level playing field and understanding what we're talking about here.
Michael Ricci 06:40
You bet. Yeah. So, SMS is it's known or short-haul message service. That's what SMS stands for, it has been around since, literally, the late '90s and it was introduced as a solution that would enable consumers to message each-, message each other. As it's evolved over time, it's become a staple of our daily lives and by that I mean if you think about it, via SMS, we get alerts from our airlines that our flight is late. We get alerts from Uber letting us know that our driver is approaching, and we'll be there in 30 seconds, if you will. We get notifications from our hairdresser, and our barber and our dentists that we have appointments that we shouldn't forget.
Michael Ricci 07:27
So, it's become literally a staple of daily life and by far and away is, sort of, the preferred way that most consumers have chosen to communicate both peer to peer as well as with brands that they trust. Back in the early 2000s, our enterprise brands started switching on to SMS as a better way to communicate with consumers and part of that was driven by the fact that consumer appetite for email is waning.
Michael Ricci 07:57
Most consumers regardless of spam channel, Gmail is certainly treating it that way now, and so consumers are tuning out of email, they're not opening it any longer. So, SMS became a new channel that brands were anxious to begin to communicate with consumers, maybe pass them offers, maybe send them those appointment reminders, maybe tell them their prescription was ready to pick up, if you will and since that point in time, it's become more and more mainstream and more and more relied upon
Michael LeBlanc 08:29
Yeah.
Michael Ricci 08:29
by business and enterprise. We get fraud alerts from our bank that let us know that we might have been the victim of a fraud or that we have an overdraft or what have you. Literally they become a staple by which business now communicates with its consumers.
Michael LeBlanc 08:45
You know what, 15 years ago I wouldn't have called this I thought I thought that people would find it just too intrusive and too overwhelming, but you're right it it's very useful, like, it's just I can't imagine you know, as you describe, you know, everything from dentist appointments to deliveries on the doorstep to whatever it's just become a very powerful mechanism.
Michael LeBlanc 09:03
And again, you're right about email. Email's still pretty powerful, but it's hard to break through the clutter and it's not as immediate, right, I mean, the email could languish there for four days whereas my SMS when I get a text, I'm looking at it and in seconds, it's funny, right, because it's, it's a, it's a bit of a human behavior thing, I was, kind of, it took me a little bit by surprise and as I was reading through your documentation, it's really interesting where the future is going.
Michael LeBlanc 09:29
So, let's, let's talk about that continued, ele-, you know, this continued evolution. So, it's, kind of, moved from a customer service vehicle and as you think of it, you know, chatbots that are powered by technology. Let's talk about the tech a little bit, as chatbots have evolved, you know, from the rudimentary you know, not a lot of math or science behind it, kind of, alerts to getting a little more sophisticated. Is this, is this the rise of, of AI and machine learning that's really going to be helping and help the rest of our conversation along, in terms of what you guys are working on?
Michael Ricci 10:02
It is Michael, it's, sort of, an interesting phenomenon, but let me ground our discussion a little bit, which is, we call this conversational messaging, and we did some research a couple of years ago, what we were anxious to understand is what are consumers looking for out of their messaging experience. And what they told us in no uncertain terms was a few things.
Michael Ricci 10:21
One, they wanted to be rich and app like they wanted pictures and videos and as a part of messaging, and when you think about that, today, a lot of enlightened retail brands are using what we call MMS in North America, which is picture and video messaging, to drive better engagement with consumers and honestly, they are. Consumers really relish those pictures, those videos and what have you, they tend to click on them and what have you more often. So, they're looking for those kinds of experiences.
Michael Ricci 10:55
The other thing that they told us is they expect their experience with the brand to be personal. If you think about it, SMS by its very nature is permission based, I have to opt in to receive messages from a brand, a brand can't go out and buy a list and start targeting me, that's illegal. We have statutes that govern text messaging worldwide, and brands that try that end up subject to huge lawsuits and fines. So, this is a permission based medium. Once I've got the consumers permission, I need to, let's say not violate that trust by over communicating or spamming them with things that aren't welcome. Consumers also told us that they want a two-way dialogue, they don't want to be blasted with messages, they have questions they want to get answered, they need help, they need support and what have you. So they're looking for this dialog to be two ways.
Michael Ricci 11:50
And so, all of that has driven us to the advent of what's known as conversational messaging and conversational messaging takes a variety of forms, depending on the market. Here in North America, Canada, in the US, were predominantly a Facebook Messenger marketplace, that's the preferred platform here. As a secondary platform, WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, has become very entrenched in this market elsewhere in the world, it can differ in Japan, for instance, online is the preferred chat platform. In Russia, it's telegram, and in certain markets, it's signal and in Korea, it's Kakao Talk. So, there's different strokes for different folks, they're using different chat platforms.
Michael Ricci 12:37
But these chat platforms invariably are two way, they are meant to converse with a client and not just by a live human being, Michael, in many cases, what you're talking to is what we call a chatbot, then that chat bot is AI driven. It's capable of, in our instance, conversing in 125 different languages. So, I can set up a user flow or user experience in English, but let's say I'm a consumer and French speaking Quebec, and I want to converse with a chatbot, and I start, start speaking French to it, the chatbot instantly recognizes that I prefer to be communicated with in French, and then as the same dialog in that language.
Michael Ricci 13:21
So, it's become super sophisticated, where we stand up these experiences, consumers really lean into them, they find them far more compelling and what you've alluded to is what we're calling conversational commerce. It's one of the most powerful trends that's shaping retail going forward. And, in fact, the Shopify is of the world and even Amazon with Alexa to a certain extent, are trying to enable conversational commerce, which is assisting the shopping experience making it frictionless, guiding the shopper giving them recommendations in real time, that literally drive bigger shopping, basket sizes, and bigger purchases.
Michael Ricci 14:07
And so, this is one of the most, most powerful trends not just in our mind, again, we're seeing this play out in the world of ecommerce, Shopify and square together have designated it their most important trend, it's the one that they're both marching towards and likewise, we're seeing big enterprise brands begin to switch on to it too and there's some really cool use cases that I'll be happy to talk about, but we're proving out that it works better.
Michael LeBlanc 14:35
Well, let's talk about those use cases so to speak, as you describe them because I'm, I want to envision this as part of this, you know, the customer journey, you know, another big powerful tool on the marketer’s toolkit. So, kind of, walk us through some of the best in class and, and what, what you've seen out there and give me a sense of, you know, when you say better performance, you know, what does better performance mean and, you know, what kind of numbers have you seen and your clients have said, wow, this this, this was great. I got this kind of results. Give me a sense of those two things.
Michael Ricci 15:06
You've got it. Before I talked about the use cases themselves, I want to move to some research that was done by Facebook. During last holiday shopping season, Facebook commissioned a study by Boston Consulting Group. Boston Consulting Group went out and pulled 50,000 consumers worldwide during the holiday shopping season. And what they discovered was that two in three consumers that they polled and participated in some form of conversational commerce experience during the holiday shopping experience.
Michael Ricci 15:36
They went a step further, they asked the consumers, what did you think, did you like it, you know, why did you like it, by far and away to the tune of 75%, in almost every market worldwide, said that they preferred it and they preferred it because 24/7, they could get questions answered without having to call a call center and sit on hold for an hour or what have you. They liked it because they could get product or pricing information on something that they were intending to buy. They liked it because they could get recommendations from the bots on other things that might accessorize with this, if you will.
Michael Ricci 16:14
What Facebook concluded in this study, and it's a study that's widely available online is that make no mistake about it. This is the future of commerce and they're beginning to lean into it. They're leaning into it principally with Facebook Messenger, and now WhatsApp and Instagram messenger. Those are their three chat tools that belong to Facebook. And they're powering up all kinds of great experiences and to speak to a couple of them.
Michael Ricci 16:42
One of them is something that Domino's the pizza brand introduced, and they call it pizza bot and, basically, the way that it works is I can go into Facebook Messenger, I can post an emoticon of a slice of pizza once that emoticon is posted it triggers, and this is in their Facebook Messenger page, by the way,
Michael LeBlanc 17:04
Yeah.
Michael Ricci 17:04
It triggers a chat bot experience that welcomes me, in the voice of the brand asks what I'd like to order and at that point, I can literally tell it, I want a whatever size pizzas, small, medium, or large. I can tell what kind of sauce, what the toppings are, or what the specific pizza name is. So, literally, I can customize my pizza order, I can give them my address and 30 minutes later it shows up at my door.
Michael LeBlanc 17:34
It's interesting that you give me examples like that, because I, I think about and I get this question a lot is like what's the difference between just a phone call, and I think you've touched on it a couple times with, with the MMS and the visuals and the conversational commerce and that would you like, which could be pretty powerful if you combine all these things together, right, would you like, you know, would you like fries with that, wedge fries with that pizza and you message with a picture of a delicious fries, that's a simplistic example, but are you seeing some of that going on as well, that kind of, well, if you like this, you'll like that or listen, I'm looking for a bed for my kid, what have you got, that looks like a race car kind of thing. Yeah, are you starting to see that, kind of, really value-added use of the tools?
Michael Ricci 18:18
Yes. In fact, another use case Michael, it's we're sharing is a big retailer in the UK called H&M and rolled out a conversational commerce experience where the bot can assist with shopping, I can tell the bot that I'm shopping for a dress, and it can ask me what color and then it will present various dresses. I want a floral pattern or what have you and same thing, it's a very visual experience for the consumer. So the body is actually assisting their shopping experience and guiding them and then literally has been programmed to recommend accessories that might go with that particular dress. Here's the kinds of shoes that others have purchased with us, if you will.
Michael Ricci 19:02
So, it's gotten very, very sophisticated. What's, from the consumer standpoint, yes, I could always visit a store, but, or I could always call. Unfortunately, in the era COVID if you've tried to call a retailer, you've sat on hold for quite a while, right, that is not a good consumer experience. Visiting a store, many of us still have apprehensions about shopping. So, that's why consumers are leaning into these experiences plus 24/7 it's live, what's not to like about that.
Michael LeBlanc 19:35
Yeah, right on. Now when you talk to retail marketers, what, what do they get wrong about your service, like, what, when they say, oh, I thought it did this and my assumption is that, what are the things that, that you'd want to say, listen, I hear this a lot and it's, it's a myth or It's a misunderstanding, what are you hearing in meetings where you, you say, well, that's that used to be the case and it's not the case anymore? Give me, give me a sense Then.
Michael Ricci 20:00
Yeah, well, good question. I think by and large, there's just misnomers about messaging in general and one of the misnomers is that it's fraud or spam and that's because consumers get spammed on their phones. Most of it is illegal practices, if you will, by not mainstream brands, but you know, political campaigns and other folks who are for spamming, but by and large, this is a permission based medium. So too is Facebook, messenger and WhatsApp and what have you, I have to agree or become a fan or a follower of that in order to get messaged people can't just start spamming me in these channels and get away it
Michael LeBlanc 20:43
And are customers, is it your experience that, I guess, one of the things would be, A, what customer is going to sign up for that, but I think more and more are, right. Is that a question you'd get, like, what, what kind of opt-in rates do you get our people finding that?
Michael Ricci 20:57
Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, that's the first question out of most retail brands minds, what do I need to do to fuel acquisition
Michael LeBlanc 21:03
Right.
Michael Ricci 21:06
and how do I put this to work and how do consumers discover it and so, if you think about mobile, mobile becomes a connective tissue for almost every element of the marketer’s word chess. So, mobile activates outdoor print broadcast, and it's being used in all those factions. Today, we see various text calls-to-action, text this keyword to this short code, either to download an app, activate an experience be transferred to a mobile web shopping experience, all those mobile calls-to-action are now embedded into what I would call mainstream advertising and communications techniques by retail brands, if you will.
Michael Ricci 21:48
So a lot of it is handholding, Michael and that's what we do exceedingly well at cinch we help guide our retail and enterprise brands in terms of what's the right strategy and how to think about it, and how to marry it into some of their other marketing efforts, how to use it to better activate email and get emails open, so on and so forth, and so that's one thing that cinch does that a lot of players in the space don't, is we guide those brands and in that evolution of their mobile strategy.
Michael LeBlanc 22:19
Well, let's, let's talk about that a little bit. So, what retailers these days, it's, you know, many retailers are struggling to find enough people to, to meet the customer needs. What retailer wouldn't want this kind of powerful technology behind them. But is, is, is there a concern that listen to this only available all this sophisticated technology must be pretty expensive, or must take a lot of resources to get going, is there, I, do hear concerns that I need to be a big enterprise client, like give me an idea of, of scope and scale in terms of using the tool, who can use it, if I'm a, you know, midsize retailer, is this accessible to me or is it just for the big multinationals?
Michael Ricci 22:59
Yeah, no, great question. So, the problem here to four has been the complexity of integrating with all these channels.
Michael LeBlanc 23:06
Yeah, yeah.
Michael Ricci 23:06
If I'm an enterprise brand, doing an integration with Facebook, messenger, and another with WhatsApp, and another with for the sake of argument, Viber, is costly and then maintaining those integrations is costly and it's complex, too. But what's happened, Sinch, for one and a number of other players have developed, what we call, modular API's that take all these channels, merge them together, make them available to enterprise via one convenient API.
Michael Ricci 23:37
So, doesn't matter whether it's SMS, MMS, RCS, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, we're able to use that API to communicate with the consumer in mass and that API is intelligent, it transcodes and optimizes for the channel and understands the channel capabilities and delivers the message in a channel appropriate way. So, we've made it super reachable by retail brands, and even principally by small businesses, if you will. So, we've taken some of the costs and complexity out of it and we've made it more of a mainstream technology. And, honestly, the only obstacle is really sort of the awareness of a lot of these brands and they're beginning to really switch on the work that Facebook did to pave that ground is super important. They showed that it works and consumers prefer it
Michael LeBlanc 24:31
Well, and as you said earlier in the interview, you guys are also there to help make sure that their retailers are successful, right. So, you've got a technology, what's the business model look like, is it a SaaS like service, is it cost per message, just give me a broad scope of, of how the revenue model works with how the business model works.
Michael Ricci 24:50
Yeah, the business model is pretty simple. It's honestly cost per message. Some of these channels that I alluded to are free, meaning that they don't impose messaging charges and therefore neither to Sinch. Not other channels like SMS and MMS. They are channels that there are messaging, if you will, so predominantly its cost per message and that's entirely based on volume. With our API, there's a small SaaS charge for the API. That's a de minimis monthly fee, but honestly, the, the fee is three figures, if that makes sense.
Michael LeBlanc 25:26
Yeah.
Michael Ricci 25:26
So, it isn't, it isn't costly at all and more importantly, it takes away all the complexity that I alluded to earlier.
Michael LeBlanc 25:34
Good word de minimis. Good word, well, we like to hear that when it comes to fees. No, this is really good, I mean, and of course, anyone who is using this platform would have permission from the consumer. So, they're not sending out millions and millions of purposeless communications and paying millions and millions for millions. They've got opt-in and easy opt-out, right, so it's, it's a high performing model, right?
Michael Ricci 25:59
That's it. Yeah. I mean, you alluded to this earlier Michael, but the beauty of all forms of messaging is they're opened almost instantly, unlike email, which either sits in that commercial box that Gmail now has or never gets opened and the vast majority and by vast majority, like 98% of all text messages are opened within 30 seconds were women programmed almost like laboratory rats to open up that message.
Michael LeBlanc 26:27
It's funny you say that, because I'm just looking at my email on my phone here. I have 213,349 unread emails, but I have no unread texts. So, there you go. Proof positive. Well, this is great. Where can, where can listeners go to learn more, first of all, probably see some case studies and some results and think it through maybe other brands who are doing some interesting things and then how do they get in touch?
Michael Ricci 26:51
Yeah, so first and foremost, welcome to visit the Sinch website. It's sinch.com. We've got all kinds of great use cases, case studies and other information there, on all forms of messaging. So, that's one stop. The other is, I have a colleague who oversees our interests in Canada, her name is Heather Garand, G-a-r-a-n-d. So, it's heather.garand@sinch.com, you're welcome to reach out to Heather. And also, we set up an email alias for all the people attending RCC, it's rcc@sinch.com. Feel free to ping us on any of those mediums and either myself, Heather or someone else at Sinch will be happy to follow up and answer any questions that anyone has, Michael.
Michael LeBlanc 27:43
Yeah, that's, that last point is a great one, thanks for and just let the audience know you're supporting Retail Council of Canada and the retail industry here in Canada you're supporting us by being a big sponsor of our Retail Marketing Conference that, that we're having and had depending on when you're listening to this so, thank you for that.
Michael LeBlanc 28:00
And it's a great way to introduce yourself to retail marketers and, and thank you for the time we spent today. I mean, I think we've, it feels like we've done a great service of trying to understand this very powerful technique. We've probably only scratched the surface, so it's great you got lots of other resources and people can reach out and do all those great things. So, Michael, thanks again for being on The Voice of Retail. It's a real pleasure chatting through with you and, and look forward to, to more successful campaigns and, and I wish you guys continued success.
Michael Ricci 28:30
Thank you, Michael. Really appreciate your time as well.
Michael LeBlanc 28:33
Thanks for tuning in to today's episode of The Voice of Retail. Be sure to follow the podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you enjoy podcasts, so you don't miss out on the latest episodes, industry news, and insights. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a rating and review as it really helps us grow so that we continue to get amazing guests onto the show.
Michael LeBlanc 28:51
I'm your host Michael LeBlanc, President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc. and if you're looking for more content or want to chat, follow me on LinkedIn or visit my website at meleblanc.co
Michael LeBlanc 29:01
Until next time, stay safe and have a great week!
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
consumers, sms, brands, conversational commerce, michael, messaging, retail brands, retail, works, players, call, technology, marketers, channel, api, enterprise, world, literally, facebook messenger, sinch