And just like that our first-ever texting summit, ConText, is behind us. We never imagined so many current and future Zipwhip customers taking time out of their busy days, in a year where time feels so intangible, to talk to us about texting. We can’t thank you enough. Your stories and ideas are what drive us to keep progressing our product, and what make our jobs fulfilling.
If you missed out on any session during the event, don’t worry! Every session is available on-demand in the ConText platform, and will soon be on our site, too. You can go back and watch these videos for the next six months. That includes all the industry and use case breakout sessions you weren’t able to attend.
Our ConText game winners
We had a heated competition for points over in the Games tab of the ConText platform. You all racked them up by participating in polls, live tweeting the sessions, posting hysterical memes and engaging with other attendees. And the time has come to announce our winners of the top prizes!
Here are our top three winners and some of our favorite posts from each of them.
🥇 First place: Zach Mcmorrough
Oop @zipwhip #ConText2020 pic.twitter.com/C9ElcJOM3R
— Zach Mcmorrough (@zachmcmorrough) November 19, 2020
🥈 Second place: Lachelle Teasley
Wow did you know this? Thanks for such great information @zipwhip #ConText2020 pic.twitter.com/M58n3OkCGq
— Lachelle Teasley (@lteasley2010) November 19, 2020
🥉 Third place: Lorrell Walter
When I think about where my business was technologically 4 years ago, I’m amazed at the leaps we’ve taken and the steps we’re about to take! @zipwhip #ConText2020
— Lorrell Walter (@lorrell_marie) November 19, 2020
And to all the rest of our players, if you had enough points to earn a prize, you’ll receive a separate email with your gift card, so keep an eye out!
Our highlights from Day 2
We got valuable communication insights from one of the largest broadcast TV networks in the U.S.
Ian Hill, manager of digital audience development at TEGNA, joined CMO Scott Heimes for an engaging conversation about the evolution of customer engagement and how TV stations have reacted. His top texting tip was simple: Make sure you advertise your text-enabled phone number everywhere.
1. Everybody texts. 2. Don’t make them work to find you. Two takeaways from this morning’s #ConText2020 session @zipwhip
— JJ Vincent (@stuffjjmakesal) November 19, 2020
In addition to using Zipwhip to engage audiences and promote user-generated content, Ian said texting has helped TEGNA spread reliable facts.
“One-to-one communication is vital to combatting misinformation, which has been a huge focus for TEGNA and all reputable news organizations this year. Zipwhip has made it easy for us to have those one-on-one conversations and spread facts.”
We heard from three businesses who view texting as an “essential” tool to get customers through the door
Zipwhip’s SVP of People, Kirsten Spoljaric, sat down with Zipwhip users from Painting with a Twist, 9Round and The Lash Lounge to talk about how they use texting to increase sales, fill available appointments and navigate today’s challenges relating to Covid-19.
Noelle from The Lash Lounge told us about how texting changed their business for the better. They primarily use it to confirm appointments and follow up with leads.
“Now we can confirm our appointments for the next day in like 15 minutes, so that really saves us a lot of time. When we reopened after the Covid shutdown, I tried to reach out to members by phone and gave up. I moved to texting and it was so much more efficient.” -Noelle Boyle, Business Owner, The Lash Lounge
Tim from 9Round said texting is becoming their unified platform to get in touch with both clients and prospects. Since switching from email to text for sales outreach, he says his conversion rate has gone up.
“I can send out an email to 4,000 prospects and I know the email open rate is 15-20%, but imagine the effectiveness of just being able to send targeted 100 text messages to people you know are very interested and get a 90% open rate.” -Tim Vettel, Franchise Owner, 9Round
And Brittany from Painting with a Twist said they use Zipwhip to communicate with guests about everything from event reminders to frequently asked questions, and they’ve been able to book more parties faster. It also helped them pivot quickly during Covid-19.
“We were hit pretty hard with the pandemic; however we were able to pivot quickly to offering our guests take-home paint kits with instructions, so having Zipwhip allowed us to communicate with our guests and let them know what we were open for and what offerings we had. The communication piece was huge for us because it’s just another channel to let them know what’s going on.” -Brittany Graff, Director of Marketing, Painting with a Twist
We helped you get more out of the Zipwhip platform
Jamal Mohammad, Zipwhip’s technical trainer, went through every tool Zipwhip customers have at their disposal—from our three apps, to our browser extensions, embeddable texting widget and API.
My favorite session from the event was upleveling my texting strategy with Jamal. Great stuff @zipwhip #ConText2020
— Zach Mcmorrough (@zachmcmorrough) November 19, 2020
We talked about what the future of texting will look like
We closed the day with a keynote from Zipwhip’s chief technology officer, James Lapic. He talked about some of the exciting capabilities that RCS, the next evolution of SMS, will bring businesses, such as real-time typing indicators, image carousels and more. He also talked about what Zipwhip is doing to keep the medium pure, so your text inbox never ends up like your email inbox.
Rich Communication Services (RCS) will replace SMS and change the landscape of how we text. @zipwhip #ConText2020
— Joshua Goss (@JoshuaGoss15) November 19, 2020
We were beyond inspired by all your participation and thrilled to see that you’re getting so much value out of Zipwhip. Thank you for making ConText 2020 a hit! We’ll see you at future events.
#ConText2020 is over 😭😭😭 good thing I can rewatch the sessions @zipwhip
— Lachelle Teasley (@lteasley2010) November 19, 2020
