In this short tutorial, I'll show you how to use CLOSEMS, reusable message templates to start messaging your contacts. Your CLOSEM account comes with a variety of message templates written by our professional sales and marketing communications team that you can customize and personalize however you like. And of course you can add new ones of your own at any time. In the template section, you'll see a number of messages in a variety of categories designed to keep your leads, prospects, and customers engaged and ready to work with you. To see these messages organized by category. Simply click on text to see the text messages or email to see the email messages. Here are the included text messages organized by category. You can see the categories and the number of pre-written message templates within each category included. You don't need to feel limited to the categories we've created, and you're always able to create your own at any time. Simply click add category, give it a name, and it will appear as a user category in a different color to help differentiate it from the prewritten included categories. Click on your category, click on add template and create your own custom series of messages in that new category.

(01:18):

Let's dig a little deeper now and click on one of the categories to view the messages included. Each text message has a reference title so that you can easily refer back to it without having to open it up and read the entire message. The reference title is not sent with your message. It's just for reference later. This comes in really handy when you want to send a message to a contact or when you're creating message sequences, which we'll cover in the next tutorial. All the message templates can be personalized. So elements like your contacts name as well as your name, your business name and other details are automatically inserted into the message body. You'll want to take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with all the included message templates and all the categories. Click on the, send a preview message link, and you'll see the message. If you want, you can send that message to your phone, to review how it looks enter a phone number and send. Keep in mind preview messages won't be personalized since there's no contact to refer to. You'll find some of the messages we've provided are marked RTG, which means they're ready to go and don't require any work on your part to use them. Other messages are designed to be customized by you so that they perfectly suit your business needs and personal style.

(02:42):

Here's one of our RTG messages from the referral and review request category called can I use you as a reference? This message is ready to use with no need to modify it. It reads first name. We really enjoy working with you. We hope that you're truly satisfied the results. Would it be okay with you if I used you as a reference in the future? It would really mean a lot. Thanking you in advance. My name and business. So you can see this message is ready to use as is, and you can send it to any of your customers to ask if you can use them as a reference.

(03:18):

Here's another message. And this one needs a little customization from the same category of referral and review requests. This one is asking your customer for a positive review on your Facebook page, and it needs a link to that page. Click on the pencil icon to customize the message. Where it says here's the link and the word, the link is in brackets, you need to insert the link to your Facebook page, highlight link, including the brackets and insert your link. In this case, I'm going to insert the link to CLOSEMS Facebook page. And it now reads here's the link with the URL to Facebook. A really important thing to consider is the length of your text messages. You shouldn't treat them like emails or long letters. They're immediate, personal and should be kept brief And to the point,

(04:10):

Text messages are limited to 300 characters because practice has shown us that longer text messages get poor responses. And as you can see, there's a helpful counter on the left to show you how many characters you have left in your message. The beauty of text messages is that they get read right away. There's no email filtering your message goes directly to your recipient's purse or pocket, or it gets read immediately. So you want to keep your message short and sweet and to the point. You can see that my Facebook link is pretty long. In fact, it's 50 characters and that can get you bumping into your character limit quickly, but there's a way around that.

(04:50):

There are a number of link shortening services available for you to use and at no charge, you copy your long URL in and you get a short link in seconds. One service I've used is bit.ly. That's B I T dot L Y. There's a link to bit that late here in CLOSEM Academy. Here's what my 50 character Facebook link looks like now. It's only 22 characters, less than half the original. This comes in really handy when you want to include links to articles or other web contact with really long links. To finish up, drop your short link in, click save and this template is ready for immediate use to send to one customer or a whole list of customers or to add to a followup sequence. As you can see, there are a number of tags available to personalize your message. Just click on the handy tag, which will copy it to your clipboard.

(05:45):

So you can then paste it in your message. The available personalization tags include the first and last name and full name of your contact, the email of your contact, their cell phone, as well as your business name, as it appears in your CLOSEM account and your business cell phone. Since you can assign contacts to users, you can personalize using the assigned contacts, full name or their first and last name, their cell number and email. Keep in mind that these messages can also be used as part of an ongoing campaign of messages sent over time. So you don't need to tell the whole story in one message, as Shakespeare said, brevity is the soul of wit. And as that master of promotion, PT, Barnum always said, leave them wanting more.

(06:33):

All of your text messages will be sent with an opt out message at the end that says text stop to stop. That way folks that don't want to get any more of your messages can easily opt out and you won't alienate anyone. You really need to have permission to text your contacts. If you're going to send text messages to groups all at once. If you've already been exchanging texts with a prospect or customer, no problem. If you aren't sure we have a number of text messages available in the compliance category. You can send these messages out to ask permission, to continue texting, and this way you won't alienate potential prospects.

(07:17):

Let's look at your email templates. You'll see email messages organized in the same categories. And as before you can modify these to suit your business and style, as well as create new ones at any time. Email messages also have a reference title, and that's not the same as the subject line. And it isn't included in the message itself. It's just to make it easy to find the right message later, As with text messages, there are emails marked RTG that are ready to go and don't require any work on your part. Here's an example of an email message you need to customize. We'll take a look at this message in the prospecting for new business category and the message labeled worry, keep you up. This message is designed to capture interest with someone you don't know when you are prospecting for new business. This message begins by asking. Does a worry about business problem keep you up at night? And you'll see that business problem is in all caps and bracket.

(08:19):

If you're an insurance agent, it could be worried about your family's financial future. If you're a solar contractor, it could be the high cost of electricity. If you're a fitness center, it could be worried about your health. If you're a digital agency, it could be worried about not being found in Google search results. Now, most people write something about their product or service or some feature, but proven best practice is to send messages that are more about your recipient than about yourself. We've designed these very carefully to make sure CLOSEM helps you stay miles ahead of your competition. Keep thinking about the problems you solve or the ways that you make your customer lives easier, better, faster, more efficient, or less costly. This will help you make all your messages more powerful. We suggest you take a look at the bonus content in CLOSEM Academy, specifically the CLOSEM positioning statement guide, which will help you with this process, as well as our CLOSEM direct mail secrets guide, where you'll learn some of the secrets I've used over the years to generate tremendous response.

(09:29):

If I were to customize this message for CLOSEM, it might read my company offers, CLOSEM to help hardworking business people close more sales. And our users typically increase close rates by more than 50%. For features and benefits the rule is for every feature you mentioned, make sure you also spell out the benefit again. If our writing for CLOSEM here are a few reasons why our customers love us. CLOSEM is unbelievably easy to use and takes very little time to get results. CLOSEM comes with professionally written message templates so you don't have to be good at writing to get tremendous value.

(10:12):

We've highlighted those areas you need to customize in yellow. As you can see, the email editor has a full featured interface so that you can embed hyperlinks and format texts exactly how you want. Tap the three dots icon on the right to see more of your formatting choices. Of course, we recommend you remove the yellow color and just like the text editor, all the personalization tags are right there for your use. Just click on the tag to add it to your clipboard and paste it in the email wherever you like. You'll notice most, if not all of our emails have a PS or two at the end. If you read the direct mail secrets guide, you'll learn why and all your email messages will look like a master professional wrote them. We'll cover voice messages in its own tutorial. So as far as text and email messages, you're good to go.