Ben Ard (00:00.475)
Okay, so let me do a couple things real quick.
Ben Ard (00:06.299)
And okay, I think we are good now. Perfect. Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Jessica. Jessica, welcome to the show.
Jessica Thames (00:18.974)
Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
Ben Ard (00:21.529)
Yeah, Jessica, I'm excited. I think this is going to be a fun conversation. I've really enjoyed getting to know you so far before we click record. But before we dive into it, let's get to know you, your work background, history, all that kind of fun stuff.
Jessica Thames (00:34.326)
Yeah, absolutely. So I am the Director of Marketing for Assurance Financial. I've been in a marketing space for 20 years. I can't believe I'm saying that number. 20 years. I jokingly like to say that my first marketing job was when I was the unofficial official sticker putter on her for my family's small trophy company back in the early 1990s, pre internet days. My first marketing job was sticking the stickers on the bottom of every trophy to help
you know, grow and scale our business. At the time, obviously I didn't realize what I was doing, but now looking back, you know, I'm super grateful for that experience because I really do think that that kicked in my career in the gear. went into journalism in college, marketing after college. I was in higher education marketing for about 12 years before I went over into the mortgage and origination space.
Ben Ard (01:22.539)
Love it. And the sticker putter on her, that's like guerrilla marketing at its finest. Like that is the definition. I love it. And it works. And I think that's awesome. Right message, right time, right place. And you got the mix right there. I think that's great. Well, Jessica, what we're going to talk about today, we were discussing before we clicked record about the fact that there is so much noise when it comes to...
Jessica Thames (01:25.326)
Yes.
It really does.
What? Yeah.
Ben Ard (01:47.023)
Honestly, every single day of our lives, I mean, we were even joking around. I had to pause notifications right before we recorded, because I was getting too many messages. What are your thoughts on this? mean, are we really inundated with so much, and how is that affecting content marketing?
Jessica Thames (01:54.248)
Bye.
Yeah, I think it's probably the biggest challenge in content marketing. think the biggest challenge that we face is that there's so much communication. How do we make our message stand out? How do we make our content impactful and purposeful and hitting the right audience? Because we do get so much every single day. Email, social media, text messaging, notification pops up under your laptop, your cell phone. I mean, we are just getting hit all the time from a marketing standpoint.
your content marketing standpoint, it's really important to make sure our message is not just hitting the right audience, but cutting through all of that noise. And I would say that's probably the biggest challenge that I see in the, in the marketing world, not just to the space that I'm in and lending and mortgages, but just in the marketing world. That's such a, such a challenge for us today.
Ben Ard (02:50.779)
Yeah, 100%. So with that, and I agree, like I get notifications on any and every device. get just after the break, I mean, I had 60 emails that were, you know, purely garbage, 100 % of them. And, you know, that's hard to sift through those garbage ones to find the handful of good ones that you actually need to pay attention to. What are you doing to cut through the noise? Are there any strategies or efforts being made?
Jessica Thames (03:05.582)
You
Ben Ard (03:20.101)
to really kind of mix it up and do something different than kind of what everyone is seeing and getting every day.
Jessica Thames (03:26.854)
I mean, I think that is the golden question, right? I think when we find a solution to cut through the noise for everyone, that will be a billion, trillion dollar technology. But I think, know, understanding when you're in an organization that has employees all across the United States, right? Or potentially the world, you have to have scalable content, that's required. You have to have scalable content that feels custom, right? We never want...
our audience, regardless of who that is, what industry you're in, to have the feeling that they've received something that is automated. So even though it is automated, because we have to have that, we need to make sure that the content feels custom. So how we've accomplished that at Assurance Financial is by building so many customer journeys that are triggered by, you know, whatever that customer and client is experiencing at that time.
so that when that message hit, not only does it hit at the right time, but it's the right message at that time. So not everyone, you're not going to have a customer journey, know, five, six, seven customer journeys. You're going to have five, six, 700,000 customer journeys to make sure that that messaging is hitting. And I think that's where your marketing department is so incredibly valuable is having, you know, really strong content developers on the backend who are building those scalable journeys that hit.
the messaging that feels personal to the audience.
Ben Ard (04:53.211)
So the personalization rather than obviously just using tokens and stuff like that for names, it sounds like you can use automation because it's so relevant to who they are based on what they're actually going through. That even though it may have some artificial intelligence and things like that behind it, individuals don't mind because the message is so spot on. Is that kind of what I'm hearing here?
Jessica Thames (04:58.862)
Right.
Jessica Thames (05:08.302)
Right.
Jessica Thames (05:12.494)
There you go.
Jessica Thames (05:18.926)
Absolutely, when you bring up AI, that's such a buzzword that we hear every single day in our world, right? Especially in the marketing world. How are we implementing AI? How are we implementing AI? How are we using AI in our CRNs? To make our CRM smarter, right? How can we, this thing that I think a lot of folks are scared of right now is AI, right? We have a lot of hesitancy on the user and the consumer perspective, but how can we actually use this technology to
make our messaging intentional, purposeful and meaningful to that person because I don't know about you, but just what you said earlier, you had 16 emails. felt the same way. I how many of us have an email address that we know that's where we send all of our spam content, right? Whenever a pop-up comes up and I'm asked to fill out my information, I'm putting in that email address because I know I'm going to get blasted with junk mail, right?
But when we flip that script and we change the messaging to be incredibly intentional and we have the technology in the background through AI, through our CRM to, you know, let's take lifestyle, life journeys, right? Like moments in life when things are happening in someone's life, we can build a journey relative to that. You know, of course I'm in the mortgage space. So I'm thinking, you know, if someone has recently been married.
Right. I want an automated communication message to talk about, you know, the, the home buying process when you've recently been married, right? You know, I'm, I'm customizing that message. And again, we have thousands and thousands of journeys based on what the technology is telling us and what is going to be most meaningful to the client in our database. and get that messaging through all the noise. Let's cut through all that noise and really get that messaging in front of them when it matters and when it's timely.
Ben Ard (07:10.703)
that. Sorry, I'm gonna cough real quick and I will cut that out. Just give me one second.
Jessica Thames (07:13.12)
yeah, that's okay.
Ben Ard (07:24.251)
All right, there we go. I love it. Jessica, when you're talking about this, I know I've been in businesses where I can barely manage three or four journeys. How are you actually doing thousands of like, is it all technology based or what does that look like?
Jessica Thames (07:43.018)
So, you know, it is technology based, but there's definitely that human aspect, right? We are constantly analyzing, you know, our journey cadence and frequency in our audience. And, you know, again, we have, we have employees all over the United States, so they're not touching journeys. The great thing for our employees is that these just show up in their CRM. Our backend team, our marketing team, we have very strong content writers and graphic designers who are building strong
graphically driven, email communications, technology communications, app notifications, all of those things that, again, that can be noisy if the messaging isn't timely and is inaccurate to that person at that time. So we have a really strong team in the backend who is just making sure that that content is, while scalable, feels personal to that audience. So again, full credit to our backend.
team of marketers who are just phenomenal at what they do so that our loan originators throughout the United States can have this in their database and their audience is getting touched on their behalf and they're staying in front of their audience without having to stop their day to stay in front of their audience.
Ben Ard (09:01.211)
I love that. So is this content that is being created on the spot for that interaction or is it creating content and then populating a library that can be then used down the road? So there's a human touch. Which one of those does it look like?
Jessica Thames (09:17.89)
So it's a little bit of both. think there has to be a balance, right? You have to have the responsive communications. have to, otherwise again, it's not going to feel personal, but then you have to have those communications that are automated on the customer's behalf or on the loan originator's behalf, whoever that audience is. So it's a split, but I would say about 80 % is pre-populated by our team in the backend and the other 20 % is manually manual responses.
from the loan originator. But again, our goal, because my team, my audience is my loan originator, right? If I'm helping the loan originator communicate better, and then they're growing their business, and that's how we continue to scale. So my audience is my loan originator. I want my loan originator to have a huge library full of automations. I don't want them to have to get into their CRM every day.
Ben Ard (09:52.709)
Mm.
Ben Ard (10:12.762)
Yep.
Jessica Thames (10:12.866)
I know we hear that a lot in sales and what are salespeople the most resistant to? Sitting behind a computer. They didn't get into sales just sit behind a computer. They got into sales to go be relationship developers, right? I want to help them do that. And the way that I can help them do that is create content that works for them. So our team spends a lot of time in that backend, again, creating content that they can automate, but that is purposeful, full of intention and hits again, their audience at the right time.
and cuts through all of that noise. And therefore they can go out, focus on the relationship development side while their client is still getting relevant, important communications to keep them, know, abreast of what's happening with their loan in the backend. The loan originator never has to touch that, but those communications are so incredibly important, whether they come from email, texts, social media, know, app notifications, however that notification or however that communication comes.
that's all built on behalf of the one originally. There's about 20 % that obviously we can't automate, but about 80 % we can.
Ben Ard (11:16.752)
Yeah.
Okay, that's incredible. when you're doing that, so I love the process for creating the content, understanding where people are at in the journey. And I love the overall overarching message that relevancy is what cuts you the noise. Notifications are annoying if they're not relevant to me right now. But they're not annoying if it's something I actually need and care about. if I get that email and it's promotional, but guess what? It's actually something I care about.
Jessica Thames (11:22.476)
in
Jessica Thames (11:36.302)
Right.
your gifts.
Ben Ard (11:47.611)
I don't mind that in any way, shape or form.
Jessica Thames (11:50.282)
No, of course not. I mean, we just got through Black Friday, right? If you missed out, if you bought something the week before and you missed out on a deal because you didn't get a notification that this was going to be on sale and you paid $100 more, you're probably going to be pretty upset that you missed out on that $100. So again, it's all about the timeliness. It's all about the messaging they get at the time when it's important to them. We can't be mind readers. I know we as marketers want to be mind readers so bad.
Ben Ard (11:53.466)
Yep.
Ben Ard (12:07.856)
Yep.
Jessica Thames (12:16.494)
It would help us tremendously. However, you know, we can look at, you know, the life cycle of a client or a potential client, a past client. We can look at life cycles. We can look at life events and curate content that is meaningful to them to cut through all of that noise. We don't want to get a Starbucks notification when we're in middle of nowhere where there's no Starbucks, right? Starbucks uses that location to send us that...
Ben Ard (12:41.913)
Yeah.
Jessica Thames (12:45.292)
that notification when it's been a few days when we're in the proximity, right? So using the technology to be really impactful with that communication, those are the notifications, the communications we don't have to cut through because we're hitting that target, we're hitting that time.
Ben Ard (13:02.309)
Yeah, love that. So one final question, because these episodes go by quick. We're almost out of time. How are you collecting the signals and the information to know where someone is at in their journey? Have you found any good techniques or strategies? I love what you just said. We wish we could be mind readers, because if I knew, you're completely focused on something else, I'm just going to shut up for a little while until it's relevant. I wish I could know that.
Jessica Thames (13:05.292)
Yeah, sure. Wow.
Jessica Thames (13:26.808)
Yeah.
Ben Ard (13:29.007)
How are you kind of finding out where they're at in their journey and life cycle?
Jessica Thames (13:33.152)
Yeah, absolutely. So we do utilize life events, know, public data to help us trigger appropriate journeys at the right time. Right now, whether someone changes that journey path, we're not always going to know that. But a lot of times in our industry, a lot of times we will know that because we have those constant conversations. Our loan originators, again, they are relationship managers. So they're managing relationships. We'll use their target audience of realtors.
So if we have a realtor journey based off of life events, let's make up a scenario where someone has a new little one in the homes, right? And we have a journey that will automate on behalf of our learner originator congratulating them, right? It's scheduled the task for our learner originator to give that person a phone call. And then based on the outcome of that phone call, that journey will split into 15 different paths based on the outcome of a phone call.
Right? The tone change, the message change, the times change based on what our loan originators are inputting into the system after a task triggers for them to make a film call. So while we as marketers can't be in tune necessarily with the clients every day, our loan originators are. And again, that we are creating that messaging that helps that loan originator send the timely messages based on the outcome.
that they choose. So we're really utilizing our CRM, the technology in our CRM, AI within our CRM. We have a great CRM partner for the Luxbird and they have recently implemented AI. We've been part of that pilot since June. So utilizing that technology to help us make better decisions in journey building, in the timeliness of when we send something, utilizing location data in some instances.
It's been really impactful to implement that technology into our strategy for our loan originators to help them grow and scale their business.
Ben Ard (15:38.435)
I love that. And what I love is, you know, rather than trying to go out there and be really creepy and try to like get around things to find out where people are at in the journey, you just have the step of, Hey, this life moment happened. Call them. And then when you talk to them and have a real human connection,
Jessica Thames (15:56.62)
Yeah.
Ben Ard (16:01.069)
You can come back in and you can tell us where they're at and what they need. And we've got the journey for you. And like you said, it might be 15 different pathways. That's great. But I love that kind of those moments where it's like, Hey, this is a good reason to reach out. And then you can tell us where the journey goes from here and we'll prepare the rest from there. And I think that's sometimes so underutilized, especially in marketing. When you don't have access to a sales team to do this for you, things of that nature, there is a lot of value.
Jessica Thames (16:01.646)
We'll take another look it in a
you
Jessica Thames (16:12.568)
Right. Right.
Ben Ard (16:30.733)
in picking up a phone, having a conversation, and then saying, great, now I know where you're at in your journey, and let's get you what you need, and now we can get you right on the back on the right track, which I think is so cool.
Jessica Thames (16:42.414)
And we're a service industry, right? We're not a product. We're not, we are a product, but we're not product marketing, right? We're going to be very different than what your traditional digital marketers are doing. We're very much focused on that relationship. And I think in this time where people are over-communicated with, people are very tired of all of the noise all the time. When we come back to that relationship, especially in an industry like ours, when we come back to that relationship as that central point that's driving the growth of our business,
Ben Ard (16:48.155)
Yeah.
Jessica Thames (17:12.33)
with the assistance of content marketing, automations, and timely messaging, then you can really grow and scale your business, whether you're a small business or a nationwide worldwide company, whatever that is. When we come back in the service industry, when we come back to look at what is the core of our business, what is really driving us, and it comes back to that relationship. And then everything around that, everything built around that is just there to lift it up even more. So content marketing is a huge piece of that.
but it is driven by that relationship.
Ben Ard (17:43.353)
Yeah, I love that. And relationships matter. And I think that's so cool. Jessica, thank you for your time today. This has been amazing. If anyone listening would like to reach out and connect with you online, how and where can they find you?
Jessica Thames (17:58.038)
Yeah, absolutely. So please reach out on LinkedIn. I think that's probably the platform I use the most. So it's just LinkedIn.com. So Jessica.Lee.Spencer. So Jessica.Lee.Spencer on LinkedIn. We'd love to connect with you.
Ben Ard (18:13.145)
Very cool. And we will link to Jessica's profile in the show notes below. So it's nice and easy for everyone to click and connect. Jessica, thank you, thank you, thank you. This has been amazing. Really do appreciate your time.
Jessica Thames (18:15.202)
Thank you.
Thank you, I appreciate your effort. Thanks so much.
