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Discover new WordPress opportunities through stories told using Gravity Forms. WordPress developers and agency owners rely on Gravity Forms to solve complex problems for their clients. Breakdown explores their stories to extract the most useful lessons for our listeners.
Join podcast host Matt Medeiros with special guest appearances from the team behind Gravity Forms to stay up to date on the next opportunity for Gravity Forms + WordPress. Whether it's a new Gravity Forms add-on or a new way to use our e-commerce features, Breakdown is the WordPress podcast you want to be subscribed to.
[00:00:00] Matt: Five, four, three, two, one.
[00:00:18] Hey, Gravity Formers, it's Monday, October 2nd. The fall chill is already permeating the air, but this episode is going to be like that favorite warm sweatshirt of yours. We'll get an update on Gravity SMTP Beta, and you'll hear from a world class email marketing coach that uses Gravity Forms. At the heart of her business, it's Breakdown, a Gravity Forms podcast.
[00:00:47] All right, as I mentioned at the top, we're going to chat with Adam Pickering to get an update on Gravity SMTP. This is going to be a whole new product for Gravity Forms, and we're excited to get it in your hands. Just a reminder, if you want to try the beta of this and other future products or add ons, head to gravityforms.
[00:01:04] com slash beta and sign up to get. Here's Adam getting us up to speed on SMTP.
[00:01:19] Hey Adam, welcome back to Breakdown. Hey Matt,
[00:01:21] Adam: I'm glad to be back. I'm really excited to share what I've got.
[00:01:24] Matt: Last time you were here, it was June. I think Gravity SMTP was Alpha 1? Just hit alpha one at that
[00:01:33] Adam: yeah, I think so Yeah, we're up to we're gonna be starting to release alpha 5 very soon So very excited for
[00:01:39] Matt: that as well at the time of this recording you and I would have sat on a webinar that showed off some of those cool features of gravity SMTP Unfortunately, we can't go into a time machine but if you want to stay connected to all the things that we're doing for live streams In other videos, head on over to YouTube and search for Gravity Forms, we're the number one result.
[00:02:04] Right? As we should be for our own branded keyword. So head on over to YouTube or check the show notes in the podcast, click the link and subscribe to our YouTube channel. Occasionally I do some videos there alongside of Dustin. Gravity SMTP is shaping up to be a fantastic new product. I was thinking the other day, it's the first new product from Gravity Forms in ever.
[00:02:31] Well,
[00:02:31] Adam: apparently, I was looking in the repo of Gravity Forms, or Rocket Genius, and apparently a long, very long time ago we did work on another product, and this is like, I think, Eight or nine years ago. I'm not even sure I'm supposed to say this, but it's, it's,
[00:02:49] Matt: um, We'll run it by legal and see if we, if we can, if we can get this clip in.
[00:02:52] So
[00:02:53] Adam: technically in, yeah, it is the latest product. It was, it is the standalone product from Gravity Forms. Like we obviously have tons of products. We have, you know, all of our add ons are individual products. Some of them are very detailed and, and difficult, you know, like very. advanced, I was going to say, right.
[00:03:14] So yeah, but yeah, this is, this is truly the first standalone product from us. Yeah.
[00:03:20] Matt: We didn't talk about this last time, but now that you said you've been in the annals of the rocket genius GitHub repo and going back in a historic fashion is Creating gravity forms or does, or excuse me, does creating gravity SMTP come with a different weight for you personally, as a, as a product creator?
[00:03:44] It's,
[00:03:45] Adam: I think it's okay to say that it's freeing in a certain way. Because you don't have all of those same restrictions in terms of backwards compatibility. There's no one used the plugin before, right? So there's no such thing as backwards compatibility, right? There's, there's, you know, there's not certain things that we have to We can be a bit more liberal in terms of what we can do in terms of design, we can do, we can get feedback instantly from our beta testing group and say, Hey, actually, that wasn't a very good idea.
[00:04:16] We can switch it and because they know it's in alpha still, right? So it's not like a fully polished product at this point. So yeah, we have a lot more. How would, how would you say it? Like more freedoms,
[00:04:29] Matt: freedom, a little bit more freeing. You don't, you don't have to worry about like the ecosystem of other add ons and conflicts.
[00:04:37] I mean, you know, technically you do, but from a product standpoint, creating this, I can imagine is, you know, is a, is a different kind of feeling for
[00:04:45] Adam: you. It's fun. That's why I would as well. It's fun to dream up something and come up with. A UI and do it differently to, to what is out there
[00:04:55] Matt: already. It's been fun for me sort of sitting on the sidelines and watching people give you, and by people I mean like the folks who are in our beta testing program.
[00:05:05] By the way, gravityforms. com slash beta. You can apply to become a beta tester, even though that this is an alpha. You might be able to get your hands on the next alpha thing we launch, or at least into the beta versions of Gravity SMTP as we march forward with it. But it's been fun for me to see the feedback.
[00:05:24] And the excitement from our customers who are like, yeah, I want this. Yeah, give it to me. And here's all the cool things I want in it. When we talked in, in, in June or July, I forget, I think you only had like postmark and send grid as the add ons at the very first alpha. How have you received feedback, and how much has that changed over the last few months?
[00:05:52] Adam: Well, thanks to the marketing department at Gravity Forms, We've gotten... Never heard of them. Yep. Wonderful folks over there, and yourself. We've, we've gotten quite a bit of feedback. So we got, first of all, we got loads of people joining the Facebook community, which you already just promoted. So that's great.
[00:06:12] We got a lot more people on there. Originally, it was like, you know, like 15, 20, or I think over 200 now. And so that's great. And then we also have our product roadmap. So I think Megan in the marketing department, she wrote an email. An email blast went out that basically said, Hey. Give us your input on what you want to see in the plugin, what integrations.
[00:06:36] And we got a ton, I can even maybe share some of those, those insights. So we got a lot of people voting on those integrations. Some surprising actually, I was like, Oh, I would have thought, you know, this one would have, you know, won out over that one, but it, you know, obviously. I don't use, you know, all of these services.
[00:06:55] So, it was interesting to see which ones were more popular than others. What
[00:06:59] Matt: was the biggest surprise for you?
[00:07:02] Adam: Well, I think back in the day when I had my own business and used, like, these transactional email services, the biggest one was Mandro, which is kind of defunct now in a certain way. It's like... I don't know if it's defunct.
[00:07:17] I don't know if that's the correct word, but it's, it's been under the umbrella of man, MailChimp, I think. And so I would have thought, you know, that they're pretty popular still, but actually not at all. It's actually the larger, like, services like Google Workspace, like Gmail, and Microsoft 365 Outlook is, is very popular.
[00:07:39] So, that is, and how we've built the plugin, in such a way that we've... You know, Bill, a lot of these integrations already, it's, uh, according to our integrations team, it's very simple to just add another one quickly, so that's exciting.
[00:07:55] Matt: That's always a tricky, a tricky line to use with product development, right?
[00:08:00] It's just easy. We can easily just add another, another one, so everyone listening to this is going to start forking over all of their different SMTP services that they want.
[00:08:10] Adam: Yep. So, I mean, it may be easy, it's not the right word, but it's, it's simple enough in terms of the structure of how we've built the plugin and how to write a new, new integration.
[00:08:21] Unless there's certain, I'm sure there's some APIs out there that maybe I'm not going to quote who, but there are. You know payment gateways that are quite hard to integrate with. I'm sure maybe there's one in the You know track transactional emails, uh realm that that aren't so good But so so far so good.
[00:08:40] We're excited to continue on and getting this beta out soon. Yep
[00:08:45] Matt: Have you have any of your initial? gut feelings on how the product should operate, how it should look and feel. Has any of that changed? I know we're still in alpha, but it's been a few months. Like when you first started developing the product, has it changed it all with over the last couple of months with feedback that you received or just A new direction that you, you, you took it in any surprises with developing the product?
[00:09:08] Yeah,
[00:09:08] Adam: we've, we've added a feature like actually in the alpha four that we had only built like, so we originally, we designed the product a while ago, quite a while ago. And. Only in the last, you know, three, two to three months is we've built a whole new idea in the plugin that I didn't even consider, which is basically disabling emails from being sent to the API provider.
[00:09:35] So like, though, the, the email is being like processed through the SMTP service, you can block it so it doesn't go out to, you know, whichever. API service that you're using, why you do that, apparently, according to our customers in the beta group, as well as some folks in the ops team is that when you migrate a site, a large site to, you know, one from one site to another, you know, you don't want to send all like, sometimes there's emails that get generated through that process or, and things like that.
[00:10:07] And you just want to basically stop it from happening, but you still want it to register that, you know, you can see them in the email log table. And then you can go once, once your migration is done, then you can go into each of those, uh, emails that were, were sandboxed as we're, we're calling it. And then you can click the button that says, you know, resend or send.
[00:10:30] And then, so that's, that's something I didn't even consider. And yeah, we, we've reached, we, we've actually built that just recently.
[00:10:40] Matt: That's fantastic. And that's even more of a reason for those of you listening who have, you know, You know, mission critical sites, everyone's site is important, right? Every, even from the most basic contact form to the most complex 700 field, you know, insurance form.
[00:10:57] And folks are using gravity forms on every site is mission critical, but that's why it's important you should get involved with the beta program. Start testing this stuff early because not only can you start testing it early to see if it works in your environment, but also, Give some feedback, right? If there's a killer feature in there that you think is, is really cool or really important to you, you know, perhaps Adam will build it over the weekend.
[00:11:19] Hey, you never know, right? You just never know if you're nice to Adam, sometimes you get something.
[00:11:25] Adam: Probably not, but
[00:11:29] Matt: listen, I've been building a nonprofit website for a foundation that I'm helping my friends start, and I've been really neck deep into. How a non profit website functions with GravReforms at the core.
[00:11:44] From thank you messages, to donation form, obvious, the obvious win there, to member registration. Really starting to seep myself back into building a website on WordPress powered by Gravity Forms. And receipts! Who would have thought it? Receipts from donations and other transactions, merchandise and stuff like this, this non profit's going to sell.
[00:12:08] Very important. And, you, it's kind of overlooked in the process because everyone's excited to just get this thing going, get donations coming in, and then you're like, oh god, a branded receipt. Now, with the Stripe. add on integration with, with Gravity Forms. You can toggle check mark and Stripe will send a default one.
[00:12:28] But I'm looking forward to a day where I can use Gravity SMTP on this site and send these transactional emails with some branding and from a secure source, right? Because, yeah, I mean, of course, Stripe is massive. But who the heck knows if the person's actually getting the receipt, tracking the receipt, making sure that I can, or the foundation, can look at this and say, Yeah, your donation was received, because there's some pretty big donations coming through, and we want to make sure that there's a literal digital paper trail for this stuff that we can see and track.
[00:13:03] So, I'm excited to use Gravity SMTP on this site. Anything else coming down the pipe that you can hint at?
[00:13:11] Adam: Basically at this point, like, making sure that there's no critical bugs, like fatal errors, you know, when you're sending, you're sending an email or whatever. It's a good thing to not have to ship with it.
[00:13:21] Yeah, then we're, we're, it's sort of the final push now to get to the next, to get the beta out, which is to get the setup wizard done. So, that's what we're looking to build over the next few weeks now, is the setup guide, which will basically allow you to... Go through the plugin, get your license in. And then let's say you have Gravity Forms and one of our mail add ons, then what it will do is basically migrate all that data that you've put into, you know, Mailgun, SendGrid, Postmark.
[00:13:55] It will migrate all that data over to the, the SM, sorry, our Gravity SMTP plugin. So you don't have to, you know, Oh, what was it? Let me copy it over. Don't have to do any of that. It'll do it automatically. And then. Yeah, you're, you're, then you're on the way to, you know, starting sending it through that plugin instead of Gravity Forms add ons.
[00:14:17] So that's kind of exciting. And then it's just sort of a bit more tidy up and then we'll hopefully get it out in the next few. A few weeks.
[00:14:26] Matt: Fantastic. Mid October, one might cross their fingers to say, hey, there'll be a beta release of this available to download in the dashboard of gravityforms. com.
[00:14:38] Adam: I'm hopeful.
[00:14:39] We can, well, as long as we're not running into any major bugs or anything like that, then yeah, we can just, we might have to push it a week or two here or there, but yeah, definitely. It's on its way.
[00:14:50] Matt: Fantastic. Again, one more final reason to sign up and in the beta group, gravityforms. com slash beta. Get your hands on gravity SMTP beta.
[00:15:01] When it comes out, start sending those transactional emails using gravity SMTP, a core product from your favorite contact form plugin team on the planet. Adam, thanks for hanging out today.
[00:15:15] Adam: It was my pleasure or is your pleasure. I'm not sure which the, but it was fun. And, uh, yeah, I hope to come back, you know, maybe another time in the future where we've got it, we've got it out and we can talk about some more stuff.
[00:15:28] Matt: KPC is our featured guest today. She runs a coaching and digital business at slickbusiness. co, serving the ActiveCampaign audience. There's a lesson here for everyone, even if you're not using ActiveCampaign. From her approach to running her coaching business, to marketing herself, and all the way to the top of partnering with others.
[00:15:47] I could have taken up a whole hour talking to Kay. To steal the most overused line in podcasting history, without further ado, here's Kay.
[00:16:01] Hey Kay, welcome to the
[00:16:02] Kay: program. Hey, lovely to be here
[00:16:04] Matt: with you, Matt. Slick business. Something tells me that you didn't dive into the niche world of active campaigns straight away. Were you an agency owner? Prior to this, designing websites and building proper WordPress sites?
[00:16:20] Kay: No, the backstory is a bit of a weird one.
[00:16:23] One of my friends from literally the kids at preschool, one of my friends is actually a website designer. She needed somebody to work active campaign. I seemed like a likely suspect. She pointed me at it and it was love at first sight.
[00:16:37] Matt: All right. Was it, was it all, was it like all of the, so I use ActiveCampaign way back at a previous company that I worked for and it was super powerful.
[00:16:47] Like you could do the segmentation, the conditional logic stuff, like you could build, I believe there was like a, like a, like a flowchart you can build with like a. the automations and stuff. And back then, this is, um, five, six years ago. I was like, wow, this stuff is pretty powerful. Was it that that drew you to, to ActiveCampaign?
[00:17:05] Kay: Yes. The, the automation build and my mind just exploded with the possibilities. I'm a systems thinker, an efficient person, and also really lazy. I love stuff that will get things done for you. So you don't have to do them. Why would we not let the machines do that? An active campaign is effectively the most epic machine that you can instruct to be a clone of you in this highly effective, highly intuitive and very accessible way.
[00:17:33] And it's like a great leveler. It lets the teeny tiny businesses right the way up through to the global corporates compete on a level with each other. That is liberating.
[00:17:44] Matt: So the branding I was telling you before we hit record. And the reason why I go there is because I know a lot of people coming up in the WordPress space.
[00:17:52] They were designers, developers, and they evolved their Their brand and their presence, like through their client work, they got really good, like designing client websites and all of this stuff. And then they transitioned to, I'm going to, you know, this client stuff is pretty difficult. It's not as wonderful as everyone says.
[00:18:10] So they create these. Yeah, they create these products and these productized services or training courses on the side, and that actually ends up being the, the primary business for them. Your branding is great. Did you just partner up with, with the designers that you met with, like you're, you're for ex for example, for those just listening, uh, go to slick business.co after this podcast.
[00:18:30] Even your stock photography is you , right? Right. Like head down on the desk, you know, and then you smiling like this is. There's a lot of thought that went into this. So design wise, because this is something that people miss. How did you refine all of this? I'm so
[00:18:45] Kay: glad you asked me that, that friend that I just mentioned, who actually got me into active campaign in the first place.
[00:18:50] That's Melissa Love, who is the founder of the design. Face, who creates and designs the most incredibly beautiful and accessible website templates. Um, and also has a membership called the marketing fix. She taught me everything I know about design, about marketing, ready websites, about how to connect with people, how to turn up or, I hate the word authentic, but how to be a person, a human in your own business.
[00:19:15] She taught me everything that I know. And it was like, it was, we just clicked on it. We leaned in and we ran with it and we still work really closely together. She still designs my website, huge influence on the way that I present myself in the business world. And that has paid massive dividends in the way that business people from all over the world feel a connection really immediately, because we're talking directly to their problems.
[00:19:39] We all know what it feels like to have our head on the desk. If you work with ActiveCampaign or any email marketing, you know that feeling, right? So that's why it's there on the homepage.
[00:19:50] Matt: I was, and, and again, we're, we're gonna get a little deep into the weeds for this little moment in time right here, but I was on a, a webinar yesterday, somebody in the space, I'm trying to say this without, like highlighting who it is, and, and it was, you know, a lot of people get into selling courses and community.
[00:20:09] Be because they think, well, this is going to be easy. This is going to be something that I can just pitch and, and people will buy. And if, if, look, I can understand. If you're just starting out and you're just starting out and there's gonna be some bumps and bruises along the way, like totally makes sense.
[00:20:25] When you come across with a strong brand, a great presentation, it's packaged well like you have@slickbusiness.co. There's like this immediate level of trust that goes up. So, you know, it just helps the buying process the whole way through. And so many people just get into it. And, you know, selling products and community can be cringy for some people, but your stuff just builds a level of trust and authority.
[00:20:51] I don't really have a question there. It's more of like a soapbox moment for you. Like, I just look at everything like resource library, training courses, academy, and I don't feel like I'm being sold to let, let a lot of like courses feel like these days.
[00:21:03] Kay: I'm just, I'm just soaking this up as a massive compliment because trust is very much where I come from.
[00:21:07] And just to say about where I came from in terms of creating the academy, I'm actually a trained teacher. That was my thing. I've always taught. Right the way through my life. I learned stuff. I teach someone else how to use it. So when I was, um, I learned ActiveCampaign in order to help Melissa, I took to it like a duck to water and was excited about it.
[00:21:24] She started farming me out to her business buddy saying, Hey, I found someone who can do this stuff. I was the world's most reluctant business person. I tell you, I was digging my heels in, hanging on to anything I could to not do that. didn't want to. I was 45. I thought I was destined for the scrappy, but that's absolutely true.
[00:21:43] And I'd been out of the workforce for a long time. This was scary stuff. She made me do it anyway. So I started working with a lot of clients and it got bigger and bigger and bigger because I'm smart and I can do active campaign and I can teach people how to do active campaign. Eventually it dawned on me.
[00:21:58] I was doing a lot of teaching. Um, and that that was the mainstay of what I did with my clients. And also I was helping a lot of people in active campaign communities. Primarily on Facebook and solving problems for them because I'm a teacher. That's what I do. So like it made sense for me to do it. In the end, I made a free training called accelerated active campaign.
[00:22:18] I wasn't even selling it. This is why it doesn't feel salesy because I wasn't selling it. I had no intention of selling it when I made that training and just give it away because it's like, everyone needs, it's not fair that you don't know this stuff. So here have this, you need to know this. Yeah,
[00:22:31] Matt: and I think that's where maybe a lot of creators and digital product people, and I'm trying to give the benefit of the doubt to, you know, a lot of folks who start out because, you know, I know what it's like to, to start, let's say a podcast or an agency or something like that, and everyone sort of has to kind of learn as they, as they fall a little bit, but sometimes the, uh, the sales process for digital products can, can be that, that cringy level.
[00:22:54] And I think, yeah. Your advantage and it sounds so obvious and this is why I don't do like products and training, uh, like, like the way that you do it because I have imposter syndrome for that same thing. Like, I'm not a teacher and I immediately go to that. Like, I, I can't teach people and I feel like I don't have the.
[00:23:13] Maybe like say accreditation or, or like the capacity or like, how am I going to create a curriculum? Like I was a terrible student when I was in school, like I can't do this. And I immediately retract from that. But a lot of people will just go, you know, full force into it. And, you know, Hey, I guess that's, that's the benefit.
[00:23:32] Yeah. Because you're a trained teacher. Is there anything that you, that, that you learned that was a surprise in the air quotes, digital world? Doing this like something you, you transition to from like traditional education to this.
[00:23:45] Kay: Ah, well, I was in at the really early days of online education. So I've always had a solid foundation in it, like literally the days of dial up modem.
[00:23:51] I was working, I know that's how old I am. I was working with the open university. And so I've, I've been doing distance teaching all my life. I've been doing project management all my life. Marketing and sales didn't know what I was doing. That was all completely new to me at that time. But teaching it's like in my bones, but here's something that really surprised me when it came to actually creating the active campaign academy.
[00:24:12] When I started it, and it was Melissa again, who pushed me over the edge and said, you have to do this. I'm going to set a date for you. You're doing it. We got some beta students in and in my head at that point, it was going to be all about the courses I had planned. Recorded a lot of course content of what I thought the optimal active campaign course looked like courses plural because active campaign is huge.
[00:24:36] It involves technical, strategic, practical, teamwork, change management. So, so many things, systems thinking. Anyway, I thought it was going to be a big set of courses when we got 10, 13 people who were amazing. My beta babies, they came in and they taught me what they needed. to have access to. And it turned out that that was courses.
[00:24:57] Some of them are courses, self contained, you go away, you learn it. But it's actually a lot about our community. You can ask me anything, any day, working day, obviously, you can ask me anything. If we don't already have it there as a tutorial, a screenshot or a discussion, we will make it and put it in there and bank it into the library.
[00:25:14] So the community became this amazing, fluent, fast resource center. And it still does that today. I record tutorials every week and then also the office hours, we brought them up in the mix a lot because no two scenarios that you are automating are the same. You might have gravity forms in there. Hooray.
[00:25:33] If you do, because it's fantastic, or you might have some other form provider or no form provider, or you might never have heard of gravity forms, which might be the answer to all of the problems in this scenario. You need access. So often is you need access to someone like me who just knows that landscape.
[00:25:49] Intimately and knows how to put it together for any given scenario. It's like ready, steady cook. I don't even know if you have that in the States, but it's like, here are your ingredients. We need to make this. How do we do it? That only comes from experience. And not only that, you've then got to be able to explain and teach someone how to do that for themselves.
[00:26:08] Um, I'm not going to catch the fish for you. You got to go catch the fish yourself, but I am going to show you exactly how to catch the fish. Each individual little bit of it. Here's how to make your rod. Here's how to do your line. I give you the components and tell you how to put them together. Off you go.
[00:26:22] And honestly, it's magic. It's transformative. And it's really exciting to be, to be doing that in the Active Campaign Academy.
[00:26:29] Matt: I want to ask you a selfish question. Because one of the things that always, again, so there's like the, that mental block that I have about, you know, training people or creating courses.
[00:26:37] And then the other like technical thing I always stumble on is, how am I going to get somebody to complete this course? Because as somebody who has purchased courses before, what I have done, and the reason why, again, I might have this, this voice in the back of my head. I'm never going to use it. I don't use it.
[00:26:53] I bought it. I don't log in. I don't go into it. And then I don't complete it. And then I say, why did I buy this thing? So as the course creator, I start to think, how am I going to make sure somebody gets through it? Is it making smaller chunks or is it just like, Hey Matt, you're just going to be good. I
[00:27:09] Kay: think it has to be bite size because of the reality of how like my target audience is small to medium enterprise people, they are time poor, they just need to get stuff done.
[00:27:18] This is why the tutorial fluency is the most powerful and effective part of what we do because they know they can come in with any scenario and by the end of the working day, they will have their next steps there to work on because they're trying to get something done. That's the motivation. So we do monitor whether people are completing courses, but honestly, the courses are like the, the least of my concerns in terms of whether someone is getting value from it.
[00:27:43] I just had someone today who literally posted, I can come in here once every 90 days, ask one question. That's my year's worth of value done. Yeah. And that's, that's huge. So it's about meeting a need that they have. We do check in with them. So we monitor. Are they re, are they clicking anything in the emails?
[00:27:59] Are they coming? Are they attending the community? Clicking into the community? Are they clicking to the website? And if they're doing those things, if they don't do any of those things within a certain timeframe, we are proactively getting in touch with them saying in a very human way, are you okay?
[00:28:16] Matt: You're right. What do you use Gravity Forms with the Active Campaign add on, the connection, that all is probably pretty obvious, but you mentioned something again before we hit record that you use Gravity Forms in a way that as soon as somebody sort of onboards into your program, they're met with a Gravity Forms.
[00:28:34] So how do you use Gravity Forms for your own? Business
[00:28:38] process.
[00:28:38] Kay: Okay. So I first got to say big love for Gravity Forms. It's my number one most recommended form platform for WordPress users. It beats everything else, hands down. So there are a couple of places we use it that are really, really powerful and highly effective that a lot of people miss.
[00:28:54] The first one is on thank you pages. And we do this both for our opt in for my free training, the, the accelerated active campaign. If you're using active campaign, just go get the training. You'll see this in action on the thank you page. So you're redirected after you've entered your email. And yes, please.
[00:29:09] I want this free training for active campaign. The one of the first thing you see is welcome video for me. And then it says, please just while you're here, go fill out this little course. It asks two really open questions. How are you feeling about active campaign right now? What's your biggest, I can't remember the wording, but it's like, what's your biggest pain point?
[00:29:26] Gravity Forms then does all the smart stuff of sending that to where I need to see it, including a Slack notification. So I see it right away. And that links me straight back into ActiveCampaign where there's a deal set up that I can then do a personal one to one response that talks directly to what they just said they were having trouble with.
[00:29:44] And that converts over 10 percent into purchases into the Academy. Yeah.
[00:29:49] Matt: That's fantastic. That is huge. Yeah, so
[00:29:52] Kay: putting a a, a really tiny but very open survey on the thank you page after the opt-in for your strongest lead magnet. I feel like everyone should be doing that. Even if you never did anything with it.
[00:30:03] The data that you collect from that is gold for your marketing. Yeah. Irreplaceable, invaluable gold. That's why the language on our website's so good. I've been collecting those since we first. Let's get started. Accelerated active campaign.
[00:30:18] Matt: Yeah. That's fantastic.
[00:30:19] Kay: Yeah. We also do that when someone purchases and joins the accelerate that sorry when they join the active campaign academy on the thank you page.
[00:30:28] Again, there's a welcome video and it's straight into a survey that asks them where are you at with active campaign right now? And if they don't have time to fill it out, then that's fine. We we're tagging because we're using the active campaign integration, which is fabulous. So we're tagging them when they complete the form.
[00:30:43] If they haven't completed the form by the time they hit the website or they're getting a certain onboarding email, we're going to give them another nudge to go fill out this information for us and tell them why it would be valuable to them. We also have another one that helps identify their three top priority courses.
[00:30:59] The Gravity Forms is doing Such amazing service, because what it means is they're getting pretty much instant gratification and immediately getting directed to courses and content that we have that's right for where they at. They are at right that minute when they're hot and ready to learn.
[00:31:19] Matt: That's awesome.
[00:31:20] Speaking of hot, put you on the hot seat for just a second. Is there a recommended, when you work with your own clients, do you get down to the weeds of saying, here's my word? Here's, if you're building out a marketing site for your active campaign business. Here's the WordPress stack that I recommend. Do you get into the weeds with recommending, let's say, Gravity Forms, a
[00:31:40] Kay: WordPress theme?
[00:31:40] Absolutely. Absolutely. And again, that's something I learned from my beta members. And as we launched the Academy, I realized how incredibly valuable that is. And it's something I'm leaning into more and more as time goes on, is proactively putting that out to our wider audience as well. We do it a ton for people in the Academy.
[00:31:57] I would say every single office hours call, and we run them twice a week. I think every single call, we are talking about at least one person saying, I want to do this. Here's what I've got so far. What should I add to this stack? Or what do you recommend? This, you know, we're, that information is incredibly valuable and that, and this is where trust comes back in, right?
[00:32:17] If you don't trust someone, you're not going to ask them those questions or do what they suggest. We have a really high level of trust and that's my most valued commodity. In my business,
[00:32:27] Matt: you mentioned something earlier at the start of the interview that, um, you're on the active campaign customer panel, customer advisory board, customer advisory board.
[00:32:38] That's an unselling hero in a lot of, I'd say relationship building with a lot of software businesses, right? I mean, if you looked, if you just zoom out and look at the WordPress world that I live in. You know, there's affiliate marketers, you know, there's people like doing, Hey, recommend and I make 20 percent kind of thing.
[00:32:53] And that's like the only relationship they have with a brand and whatever. That's fine, I guess, in some degree, but this is like a step further. How did you build a relationship with active campaign? Because I think a lot of people could apply this to any business. local business, web and internet businesses.
[00:33:10] Like this is something that I think a lot of people just don't understand that they can build relationships with brands and really put you in the spotlight. Like hopefully they've done with you. How did that relationship evolve or yeah. Yeah,
[00:33:22] Kay: it's, it's been an interesting journey to get here and you're absolutely right that it's.
[00:33:27] It's a neglected area, particularly in SaaS companies. And it won't be a surprise to active campaign start team people listening to this podcast when I say it was a hard road to get to this point. It took a long time. Basically, I was in their face as much as possible for like seven years, persistently helping users, representing users and speaking up.
[00:33:47] I was always the one who would be the critical friend and say. Guys, this is your platform is incredible. I'm a huge evangelist and probably the biggest evangelist for active campaign worldwide and a champion of it. And I educate people in how to use it. And I'm not, I don't hold back on letting them know when they're letting us down as users or where they could be doing better or where they're missing an opportunity.
[00:34:10] And. There's been a period where there has been more distance as a company grows very quickly. It's hard for them to keep in touch with users. We all know that you've all seen it unfold. And so now ActiveCampaign are in this wonderful place where they're able to draw back in again. They formed a customer advisory board, it's a handpicked, it's about 12 people worldwide.
[00:34:32] I like to think I was first on the list to go. Yeah, because they're just like, if we get her on this, she'll shut up. They just hear even more from me now. And it's always with the users at the heart of it, because if a company is really listening to their users. Their product is going to be so much better.
[00:34:50] And I don't mean listen to an individual user. If you can find a nurture and reward a relationship with a, with an Uber user, someone who knows all the users who's obsessed with your bit of tech and loves it, but is also not afraid to challenge you and say, actually, do you know what? This bit's really rubbish to use.
[00:35:10] This is painful. Can we fix this? If you find someone like that, love them, nurture them, lean into them and, and look after them.
[00:35:20] Matt: KPC, slickbusiness. co, support and training with the queen of active campaign. Where can folks go? Where else can folks go to say thanks for listening to the interview?
[00:35:30] Kay: I would love to connect with you on LinkedIn.
[00:35:32] I'm spending more and more time there. Fantastic communities on there. So please do find me on LinkedIn. Connect with me. I'm KPC. I also have a big open Facebook group that's open to any active campaign users called automate your business with active campaign. Other than that, come find me at slickbusiness.
[00:35:50] co. That's where you will find our free accelerated active campaign. Training and the Active Campaign Academy. And also our blog, which has got lots of free stuff. The Active Campaign Academy is where you get the direct access to me for that gold star VIP, ask me anything treatment.
[00:36:09] Matt: There's one last bonus segment today.
[00:36:10] And it's a clip from the recent Gravity Forms update video I put out on social media. It's a recap of all the things we've done since August. Enjoy. And I'll talk to you later in October. Hey, it's Matt from Gravity Forms. I'm back with another monthly update from the Gravity Forms universe. Let's dive in because there's a lot.
[00:36:33] Gravity was proud to sponsor WordCamp US 2023. We had a chance to meet some of our amazing customers, and I had a chance to meet my fellow colleagues that I've only chatted with on Zoom. We're also proud to support and sponsor WP Accessibility Day, which kicks off next week, September 27th and the 28th.
[00:36:51] Go to WP Accessibility. data. Participate for free. Now on to the product updates. Gravity SMTP alpha three is out. Head to gravity forms. com slash beta. If you want to take part in early release products like this gravity forms version 2. 7 point one three and point one four have been released. These are just minor releases.
[00:37:12] But no big changes to how you use your favorite contact form plug in. Other add ons that saw some minor updates, Advanced Post Creation 1. 4, User Registration 5. 2, Geolocation 1. 1, Google Analytics 2. 1, and PayPal 2. 7 was released to include more funding sources at checkout, and Aweber 4. 0 was released to now use their API for connecting to the service.
[00:37:37] We ask that you re authenticate to avoid any issues. Lastly, our official ConvertKit beta add on was released. You can download it right from your dashboard by logging in at gravityforms. com. If you're using the old add on from the ConvertKit team, you're gonna want to start checking out this add on. Not much will change for you, but you might want to start testing it on your site.
[00:37:55] That's it for now. If you want more behind the scenes, look at what's going on at Gravity Forms and hear some great interviews. Follow our podcast, search for Breakdown Gravity Forms in your favorite podcast app and tune in every two weeks or just simply head to gravityforms. com slash breakdown and you can subscribe to the podcast right there.
[00:38:15] Thanks for watching.
[00:38:21] That's it for today's episode. If you could do one more thing for me today, share this episode on social media, your favorite Facebook group or discord channel, spread the word about this podcast. It really helps. helps if you haven't added breakdown to your favorite podcast app point your browser to gravityforms.
[00:38:38] com slash breakdown and click the icon of your app to add us and listen to us every two weeks okay we'll see you in the next episode