Aaron Christopher (A.C.) Evans, Founder & CEO of Drips, was interviewed on Mission Matters Business Podcast by Adam Torres.
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Drips is paving the way for the world’s most well-known brands to use automated—yet humanized—conversations to convert customers. A.C. Evans talks with us about how conversational messaging is changing the way brands communicate with those they serve.
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What mission matters to you?
Evans says his mission is to help large enterprises solve big problems quickly through Drips’ conversational messaging solutions, focusing mainly on pivotal moments. His entrepreneurial journey began at an early age when he enrolled in a vocational school and took a digital design course. Although he says he wasn’t a top student leading up to that point, he soon hit his stride, earned an array of awards and scholarships, and launched his first online business at the age of 18.
What problems are companies facing in brand engagement?
Today, large brands are facing problems with brand engagement because consumers have everything at their fingertips, Evans notes. While most enterprises are trying to connect with consumers through email or direct mail, those messages can easily get lost in all the noise around them. Companies that use radio and TV spots often get overlooked because audiences are far more interested in the content before and after the ads and may even skip past them, given the opportunity.
Likewise, brands that use call centers to reach customers are often ignored since most people refuse to answer calls from an unknown number, and moreover, all of the above methods are time-consuming for marketers. In the end, these modes of reaching consumers are resulting in tremendous declines in ROI, Evans says.
How does Drips help with brand engagement?
Drips helps brands connect with consumers by communicating in an automated humanized way, answering questions, and establishing two-way conversations that don’t eat away at marketers’ most finite resource: time. Drips holds outbound, asynchronous conversations, at scale, at the most pivotal moments in the consumer journey. This aids engagement in a number of ways, from converting new customers to re-igniting older revenue channels that may otherwise have disappeared over time.
How did Drips start?
Evans says he saw a gap between brands and consumers and decided to fill it. When a colleague called him in to help after a push messaging follow-up system crashed, Evans brought in an API software company whose programming patched up the problem. From that experience, the concept for Drips was born in an effort to create a system that could deal with push messaging in a reliable, synchronized manner. The colleague who called Evans in to help was effectively Drips’ first client.
Before bringing Evans in to help, the brand was barely converting any leads through its messaging process, but once it switched over, the conversion rate shot up to 15 percent, mostly because Evans was using personalized quotes to cultivate relationships with potential prospects. Because of the bulk of inbound messages coming back, the system kept crashing, but clearing the hard drive to provide enough space made it possible to keep things running.
Drips gradually revised and refined its methods, designing personalized elements into every text and call. As a result, even the act of scheduling or rescheduling a call can take place automatically in a way that feels like a one-on-one human conversation. To date, Drips has helped its clients exchange more than 500 million conversations.
What kinds of companies/industries get benefit from working with Drips?
Drips handles all kinds of service-based businesses, from healthcare, home security, and insurance companies to the automotive, travel and hospitality industries and more. It also works with a broad array of companies to help them remind consumers about bills and payment issues. For companies trying to reach new prospects while keeping customer acquisition costs low, it offers effective solutions for exactly that. In general, Evans says, it provides a must-have tool for brands that want their customers to take some form of action.
What forms of compliance does a company like Drips have to consider?
Tons of regulations must be followed at both the state and federal levels, Evans notes. Before starting any business, he advises, it’s critical to understand and comply with state and federal laws to avoid even the appearance of harassment or impropriety, whether communicating with customers via push messaging or any other method.
The road ahead for Drips
Evans says Drips has been bootstrapped for a long time and continues to develop its team to become and remain a market leader. It recently partnered with the Blue Venture Fund and Accel-KKR, a top B2B SaaS investor, and Evans says his primary goal for Drips is simply to be the best in every category it encompasses.
To learn more about Drips, visit www.drips.com.
