The Snoball Effect

Multi-Channel Outreach Strategies in Modern Marketing w/ Ruben Ugarte [PLAYBOOK]

• Snoball

Share episode

Send us a text

In this episode of The Snoball Effect, Ruben Ugarte, GM of Home Services at ActiveProspect, shares insights into how consent-based marketing is evolving and becoming critical for lead optimization.

He discusses the transformation of customer outreach, which has shifted from traditional, repetitive cold-calling to a multi-faceted, consent-driven approach. Ruben highlights that today's marketing demands a sophisticated outreach strategy, including phone calls, text messages, emails, and even video content, often facilitated by AI and chatbots.

This shift toward omni-channel outreach allows companies to reach potential customers through their preferred platforms, improving response rates and respecting customer preferences.ActiveProspect's approach, as Ruben outlines, leverages technology to refine lead processes, ensuring that outreach is both effective and compliant.

By automating lead verification and optimizing lead qualification, ActiveProspect helps clients maximize the ROI on their marketing investments.

Ruben's insights underscore how integrating consent-based marketing with data-driven strategies can empower businesses to engage more responsibly and productively with their customers, paving the way for better customer experiences and higher quality leads.

Reach out to Ruben:

Follow and chime in on LinkedIn.

Do you know a small business that would love to get the snowball rolling or an expert that can come on the pod and help us along the way? Email chadz@snoball.com or message us on LinkedIn to get involved.

Ruben Ugarte:

Raise their hand, how you go about outreaching to them and that customer journey historically, it was just like dial, dial, dial, and then dial some more and now it's changed right now. It's like, Hey, you got to dial, you got to send a text message, shoot out an email, have some messaging. Maybe you send out a second text message with a video. AI is coming into play where now there's kind of chatbots. I think the evolution of how you purchase media and how you outbound or omni channel outreach really is the word.

Claire:

This is the Snoball Effect. You're listening to the Marketing Playbook Series, presented by the Snoball Effect Podcast. It's growth done right.

Todd Jensen:

Hey, hey, this is Todd, and welcome to the Snoball Effect. This is the Marketing Playbook Series, and I've got a returning guest, Ruben Ugarte. Welcome to the podcast, Ruben. Thank you. Thank you for having me, Todd. Hey, I've only had you're only the second person that I've had back on my podcast twice. So that's a big honor, I guess.

Ruben Ugarte:

That's awesome. Thank you for having me.

Todd Jensen:

I think you and I bumped into each other. Oh, that was it's actually been a while, but I think it was an inner solar and you're the only person that I know. I was sitting there working, you know, at the booth. I have my laptop out and you bust out your laptop and you're the only person I know, Ruben, that has as many stickers on your laptop If not more than me, you can see them right here.

Ruben Ugarte:

I can see, I was going to say something. I love stickers. I get stickers and I'm like, ooh. And then right away I put it on the laptop. It's funny, like if you're at a coffee shop or like with you, I saw your stickers and you saw my stickers and we're like, Oh man, you're like me. You're like, it's like kind of like a sticker thing.

Todd Jensen:

That's right. It was like, you know, when I drive around in my Jeep and you do the little Jeep wave and you're like, I'm in a club. Hey, I just want to hear, you know, what's new in your life. What's new at Active Prospect.

Ruben Ugarte:

Man. Well, one, thank you for having me. Shout out to the Snoball team. You guys were a big part of our. Solar Summit. So thank you for sponsoring that. Active Prospect is going great. We're flourishing. We had the best year that we've ever had in home services. We continue to grow. Our portfolio is now over 200 home service brands. Of which about 70 80 percent of them are installation companies, roofing, bath, windows, flooring is a big vertical this year. We are staying on top of the FCC one to one consent. We have a new product called Trusted Form Verify that is helping support, uh, that new, uh, Compliance check. And in terms of myself, my son is 12 years old. Shout out to Joaquin son. Hey, cause you know, I'm gonna make you watch this webinar. Like I do with all of them. Dad's on a dad's on a podcast. You know, it's the only thing where he'll stop and be like, Oh, you're on the internet. Let me see what's going on here. Like, um, my dog biscuit, he's doing great. Love it. You know, I'm getting ready for the holidays. I'm excited. It's a season coming around and I'm blessed. I'm blessed, I'm healthy and, and life is good.

Todd Jensen:

I, I gotta say, you know, our team, you know, saw you down there at re plus at your summit event and I gotta say re plus was really slow for us this year. Yeah. Except your event. Oh, your event made it for us. I love hearing that. So thank you. From the marketing side. Three plus was reinvigorating from your event. Shout out to the active

Ruben Ugarte:

Prospect team. The marketing team, the leadership, everybody who supported that event, you know all the sponsors, including yourself, all the speakers, that thing, that event, just that to me was like, what It's about, right? You have this massive solar conference that marketers don't have a place to go, and we created a space. Were buyers, sellers, MarTech speakers, people came together, they got good food, they got good education, they got networking. And people left with gift bags. And so thank you for saying that. And we are going to do it again next year. And I'm excited, man. So thank you. So

Todd Jensen:

fantastic. Well, speaking about leads, I've got somebody like you, Ruben, you're up to your eyeballs in lead gen. I mean, you've been in home service for a long, long time. In fact, I'll put a link to our previous conversation in there and we touched on it lightly there. So, uh, But I mean, you've got a background in roofing and, and now here you are in the lead gen side, walk me through a little bit of, of that journey.

Ruben Ugarte:

Yeah. So yeah, I, I kind of come from construction roots. So I've been here, go from current day. So I've been general manager here at Active Prospect for the last several years was in sales. When I got here to Active Prospect in 2019, the brand had had kind of some legacy brands like ADT, Empire Today, some solar companies. But really the company wanted to grow into home services. It's been a great five, five and a half years, almost six years, which is wild. Prior to that, I was an actual client of Active Prospect for five years from 2014 to 2019. I used the technology that I sell today as a user, as an install, as an installer. I worked for a really large residential solar company called Horizon Solar Power that was doing installations in California and Nevada. They were one of Sunrun's largest dealers before Sunrun went direct sale. And I was part of 30, 40 people who kind of grew the company to a thousand. The company was 150 million brand doing five, 600 installs a month. The company got sold to private equity in 2016, again, in 2019. And I was part of a rocket ship. You go from 20, sales. And you're like, let's get to a hundred. Then it's like, let's get to 200. And then a couple of years go by and you're like at 500. And then it's like. How do we get to like 700? And so these numbers are just wild. And just imagine the staff, right? The call center, the operation, the trucks, the panels, like all that, just like, and so being part of that environment really has helped with my role now. Which as you know, home services, I mean, it's on a crescendo of attention with private equity focused on roofing companies, HVAC companies, bath companies. And that really kind of helped prepare for what I'm doing today to working in solar, residential solar as a lead buyer. I used to run their call center and used to do media purchasing. And I would buy about a million dollars in leads from about 50 different sources. So anywhere from 10 to 20, 000 leads a month. Would go to these 80 agents that were in the call center. So I have. that realm. Prior to doing that, I sold residential and small commercial solar for a company called RGS Energy, Real Good Solar. Shout out to Real Good Solar alumni. They're everywhere. And I did that for about two and a half years. And then prior to that, I My family owns a roofing company called A& R Roofing, which is in Glendale, Burbank, Pasadena region here in Southern California. And I sold residential roofing, metal roofs, flat roofs, standing seam, which is my favorite roof. And that's kind of how I got into solar. People who I was selling roofs to were like, do you have solar too? Cause we want to throw solar. And back then, this is 2008, 2009. There was still like Edison rebates, utility rebates. There was local city rebates and like, you know, all these incentives that really persuaded tax or cash, cash heavy people to invest in solar power. So somehow I cultivated from selling roofs and getting on a ladder and selling roofs to, uh, In Martech, two roofing companies and home service companies alike.

Todd Jensen:

So you talk to, you talk to these home service companies, you talk to, you know, you're, you're, you're rubbing shoulders with other Martech, you know, companies. What are some of the challenges that you see all the time right now in the home service industry in regards to lead gen?

Ruben Ugarte:

You know, I think the challenges that we're seeing are, I think the big one I kind of touched on it is there's this big rule from the federal communications FCC, basically focused on what's called one to one consent, where historically people would go to a website, they fill out a form, and then that form would then sell that information to one, two, three, four different people. And to some degree, if you were buying what's called non exclusive leads, you You were having your competitors kind of subsidize your marketing costs. That's going away. I know you're familiar, you know, coming from the best company era. You guys didn't do that. You guys were exclusive, but I think that's a big challenge. People are going to see a drop in lead volume, but they hopefully should see it, uh, increase in quality. I, so I think compliance, I think the challenges of technology and Martech and brands who now are incentivized by this new private equity attention. Are going, man, if I really get my ship in order and I can do 10, 20, 30 million, I could cash out. And there wasn't as many options to do that. If you were an installation brand, previously, a lot of home service brands, as you probably know, we're like legacy where it's like. The grandfather passed it on to the father and then the father is trying to get his children. And there, there really hasn't been, you know, I was reading a report that really hasn't been a lot of transition from one era to another. And so now private equity is coming in and taking over. But in terms of challenges, I would say that the big piece that, that we're seeing is the ability for brands to stay competitive in their markets. At a cost that makes sense, which is kind of always the trick. Digital marketing is going up. Everyone's doing it. So that's driving things up. We are seeing more brands hire agencies than ever before and having support there. I think a lot of companies used to run their own digital ads and kind of do that internally. People are bringing in experts, you know, as much as I think things are changing, they're still somewhat the same. And I think brands are. Continuing to figure out how to hire and how to bring in experts, you know, home service brands are notorious for just like promoting the person who stays around the longest. Like, Hey, you're the sales guy. You did great in sales. Why don't you take over the call center? Or, you know what, you're great in customer service. Do you want to go and, Be an admin over here. And so that historically was the case. Now, home service brands that are growing are bringing in experts from other verticals, financial services, insurance, CPG. And they're bringing in people who are experts in their fields, whether it's a CTO, whether it's a data analyst, whether it's a director of a call center, I feel more and more home service brands are bringing in experts to help run the business. And not just promoting someone internally, which, you know, could be a good thing too, but that's what I'm seeing

Todd Jensen:

that actually resonates with me, or it's consistent with the types of things I see in the marketing world is just this era of in the marketing world, really, you know, specialization as far as active prospect. Help articulate where exactly does Active Prospect fit in there and what challenges, problems does it really solve?

Ruben Ugarte:

Yeah. So Active Prospect is a middleware, it's a software as a service. We are a platform that sits in front of the CRM. So in front of Salesforce, Lead Perfection, all these different, you know, CRMs are out there. What we do is we sit as a protective layer and we act as a digital underwriter. So when you're buying data from either. Third parties, your own website, your Google ads, wherever, even field marketing, you can essentially put all that information in real time into our platform and in real time, our technology will check for duplicates, bad phone numbers, out of area compliance, fraud, bots, all these different checks and balances that historically brands would just do after the fact via their call center labor. By outbounding. And so our technology creates a lot of value by helping to improve the quality of the data that brands are bringing in. It helps to one improve quality because. You're removing the bottom 10 to 15 percent of junk that you probably shouldn't be buying to the theory is better quality leads in better conversions out in theory, right? You put better leads into your call center. You should lead to better results out. And then three, we have a compliance component called trusted form, which is now considered like the gold standard for TCPA verification, consent, documentation. You can now buy a lead and know exactly where it came from, when, um, Who, what, the domain, the IP, the geo, all that stuff. And I think that changes the game. If you're a buyer, especially the ones who are spending so much money. I talked to a massive bath company that spends like one and a half million dollars. And they had never heard of real time rejection. They had never heard of the ability to detect duplicates and to do litigator scrubs. So there's a lot of room for growth and I feel like we're just scratching the surface of market share in the home service sector.

Todd Jensen:

So you deal with a lot of lead buyers. You deal with a lot of integrations and different CRMs in the lead gen space. And in the lead purchasing space, Ruben, walk me through. I mean, you've been in this, you've been in this for a while. How has that evolved?

Ruben Ugarte:

Man, that's a great question. I, the reason I think in terms of lead gen overall, I think it's a good thing. It's going a great. Oh, it's continuing to evolve more consumers going online. The younger the demographic goes, the more that they're going to go online. I think how we capture their attention and how we installation brands or as brands who are purchasing either third party or whether you're getting the eyeball on your own website or Facebook. I think that the change is really coming in the ability to. Omnichannel and when you consume someone's information and they dial, dial and then dial some more and now it's changed, right? Now it's like, hey, you got to dial you got to send a text message, you know, shoot out an email have some messaging Maybe you send out a second text message with a video AI is coming into play where now there's kind of chat bots I think the evolution of How you purchase media and how you outbound or omni channel outreach really is the word have come there and back in the day it was kind of like you just dial you buy a new dial and now there's this whole array of things you need to know and along with that you have to have connectivity so when you buy a lead in real time. It has to go into, you know, go through our system, filter, compliance, checks. Once you know you're buying the lead, it's going into your CRM. It's also going to your SMS provider. Maybe it's going to your finance portal for pre qualification. Most companies your large now have dialers. Um, that have sequencing built in, people are doing lead scoring, there's agent scoring. So when a lead comes in, the propensity of the lead based on the demographics will go to certain agents based in the call center. And then once it goes to them, that agent then has lead scoring on the sales rep, which sales rep has the highest propensity to close based on the demographics. So there's all this like tech. That you can use and creating a, like a wireframe where everything works together. I think that's the cool part about Martek and lead gen, and it's just kind of everything coming together. And then you throw AI on top of that. I think it's a, it's going to be an amazing future for brands who embrace Martek, embrace lead gen, embrace compliance. And going back to what I said before, hiring experts to build Bring all this stuff together because you need high level people to make sure this thing all works

Todd Jensen:

a lot of interconnectivity, and it makes sense to me that then having some regular hygiene on that data that you bring in is more valuable than ever because it's going to be leveraged in so many ways, you know, through SMS campaigns, through retargeting campaigns, through, you know, being prioritized for certain SDRs or AEs, you know, So it makes, it makes a lot of sense that you want to make sure that you're not pushing a lot of crap through the, you know, through the funnel. Right?

Ruben Ugarte:

Huge, huge. The compression of time, the compression of staff time, it's all revenue, right? It's, it's the cost of time and the ability to compress all that at different stages of the business, whether it's at the lead level, dialer level. Sales person wants it sold. There's all these texts that are coming in the home service space, and I think it's wonderful.

Todd Jensen:

What role do you see AI playing in this lead gen, in this lead buying world?

Ruben Ugarte:

I actually did a panel on this at lead gen world earlier this year. I think one big play is in the call center and the ability to have more starter conversations with AI technology, where then the human kind of comes in after the fact. So that's big, the ability to text. There's some technologies we work with out there, uh, channel automation, hatch that have AIS. Uh, chatbots that use them. And I'm like, man, this thing's great. Like I'm trying to throw it off and it's, it's, it has empathy in it. And I'm like, wow, this is cool. I think there's that. I was at the Pantheon service Titan thing that I mentioned. And there's a company out there that a lot of home service brands are using called Rilla that records. The sales person when they're in the home, then it takes all that sales person data, kind of like a gong. I don't know if you guys use gong. It's like, and we use gong here, which I think gong is awesome. And it records what your sales person is saying to the homeowner. And then as a sales VP, now you're collecting all of the demos in a database. And back in the day, you had to go do a ride along. Hey, I'm going to go do a ride along. Your sales are low. I'm going to do a ride along or your sales are up. I'm going to do a ride along to figure out what you're doing now. It's all there. And now you can start to coach on the fly. And so I think that's another big thing. I think AI still has a ways to go and how it's applicable. But hey, man, I use AI when I'm doing LinkedIn posts sometimes, or when I'm trying to put together agenda for a meeting. And so I use it and Compression of time, there's value there. And so I think we're still learning how to use it. And I think brands are still figuring out how to take advantage of it. For sure.

Todd Jensen:

That's exactly what I see. Ruben is it just really carves out more time. It's a bit of an investment at first to kind of figure it out. Like you, I've. I, I, I get in there, you know, I get, you know, I deal with AI tools all day. And it was funny that you were talking about that. You were, you were writing, what was it? You were writing something up and, or it was writing for you and it like expressed empathy and a funny story. I was. I was on my commute home and I downloaded the new, I think it was the pie app, just PI. And it's really targeted for just, just voice interaction. And so literally I, I like put my phone there on my dash on my end and I just start having a conversation with it. And then pretty soon I'm asking, You know, career advice, I'm asking it, you know, okay, what are, what are some, you know, some ideas for, for birthday presents? Yeah, I started having, I mean, you've probably seen that, you know, the movie her with Scarlett Johansson and Joaquin Phoenix, I started having like these, wow, this is the best listener I've ever, I've like ever talked to. So there's times when it gives you a little bit of that, you know, uncanny feeling. But then you see all these opportunities for time savings. If we can carve out a lot of the stuff we don't like to do and have AI help us out with that, I think it just creates more opportunity for more of a person to person connection.

Ruben Ugarte:

I'm all, I agree. I agree. I am always the guy in the conversation when it comes about technology and people being like, man, I don't know if the robots are going to take over AI, this and that. I'm always the guy who's like, but yeah, there's going to be negatives, but there's going to be way more positives. And I just feel that way about tech. I feel just like when Google search came out when I was a little kid and everybody was like, Oh, that's terrible. You're no longer going to go to the library and all this stuff. That's not true. It's, this has evolved and created so much business similar to text messaging. I remember being in the call center and being like, should we text people? Like, do people like that? Is that okay? Is that's like a little too personal. Now it's like people only respond to text messages. So I think everything that comes around, there's always this like, no, no, no. That's bad. It's going to change this, but I think it's a great thing. I think for every job we lose, we're going to produce three more. And I'm excited for all the things that. AI robotic technology in general that's coming, you know, so I'm excited. I think it's a new world.

Todd Jensen:

I'm, I'm, I'm right there with you. And, and one thing that we really lean into here at Snoball, and I want to get your opinion on is in this world where we're so connected and AI is, is analyzing and crafting different messages for different personas, I think there's a growing space for. Some of that human contact. And it's what we're really leaning into because of, you know, we're a referral based company and it's all about, Hey, these are people that, you know, you're going to mention somebody's name and then you're going to say, okay, here's an installer you should use, or here's a plumber you should use. I'm curious about, as you kind of look down the road and into the future. The swell of technology that impacts marketing, as well as kind of this, almost this, you know, this call back to, you know, word of mouth marketing. How do you see those two playing together in your view?

Ruben Ugarte:

Man, nothing will ever beat word of mouth. That's what I love about the Snoball team. I love that about what you guys do. We obviously have mutual customers that rave about what you do, so I, you know, I keep an ear. Nothing will beat raving fans, right? Raving customers, raving customers who are fanatic about what you've given them, the service, the tech. I don't think anything will ever beat that. There's a lot of brands that I come across who, their whole business, 80 percent of it is referrals. And so their cost of acquisition is so low that they can't fathom going out there and buying leads and you know Doing all this stuff that we do But I think with the rise of referral technology like your platform the place for everything and I think it's like building It's like art you have to have the right Chop, so to speak the right capability, the right tech, your referral channel in your out pound third party affiliate channel in your field marketing channel, right? There's phenomenal technology for field marketers. I think every channel has uniqueness about it, but at the same time, it's all the same because you're trying to reach out to the customer either, you know, pulling or pushing. And I think when you have a balanced. Portfolio and you can, you know, uh, go up and down based on the seasonality. I think that's what it's about and having the right tech, the right people to have a balanced portfolio, so to speak of marketing channels. But I think it's great. I, you know, referrals are phenomenal and it's all local, localized, you know, getting contractors at a local or repair people. That's never going to go away. People want to find people locally because it's fast and it's quick and it's local. And so I think that continues to be something that people want.

Todd Jensen:

That makes a lot of sense. I think, especially in the home service industry where you're inviting someone into your home, right?

Ruben Ugarte:

And there's. Opportunity for local brands. I live in about an hour east of Los Angeles in the foothills, Claremont, Rancho Cucamonga, San Dimas area. There's brands who just focus on here in this region and they got their trucks wrapped. I see billboards. I see the newspaper clipping thing when I get it from the, before I throw it in the trash, when I get my mail and they have a brand awareness that's specific to this region and that works for them. And I think for local brands that will always persist there, you know, I talked earlier about private equity coming in and brands growing, trying to grow national brands, historically in home services, That didn't exist. You have what ADT, Terminex. There's very few names that you can say on the East coast and the West coast that people know. I think over time that's going to change, but nevertheless, I still think it's going to be hyperlocal.

Todd Jensen:

Anything else as you look down the road in the home service industry, Ruben?

Ruben Ugarte:

I think in home services, there's just, like I mentioned before, a lot of opportunity for legacy brands who have their house in order. From the P& L standpoint, from the EBITDA standpoint, if they have the right employment contracts, if they have a good marketing funnel, they have a good operations team, there is opportunity than never before to connect with private equity companies. and potentially choose partners, investment partners to help your business grow. I told this to my uncle the other day, my uncle and my uncle's, you know, my roofing family, they're like maybe three and a half, 4 million. They never think about selling, but as time goes on, you can't roof forever. And a lot of times family businesses don't have another generation to pass it on to. And if they do that, maybe that generations, you know, trying to become an engineer, work for Facebook and they're not trying to do roofs or whatever. So I just feel that this is an opportune time for owners who are out there to really get their house in order over the next five years. Because the investors are there and opportunity, there's paths. that have never been out there before. And I'm seeing all types of people take advantage brands who are putting together HVAC kind of conglomerates. They're not building national brands with one hub and then kind of growing region by region, which is historically how people did it. Now it's like, Hey, we're going to buy Washington. We're going to focus in Texas. We're going to get a brand in Chicago. And so now they have these satellites. And so I just think it's a lot of great opportunity ahead for owners. And I'm excited. And I would just say that's, that's an exciting time for not just the installers, but for all the marketing partners like me and you who support these brands.

Todd Jensen:

That's great. Ruben, it's always fun to chat and you didn't disappoint today. All the way from, all the way from, Hey, You know, home service owners, here's some things to, you know, look out for coming down the road to, you know, how we're, you know, navigating the world of Martech and lead gen all the way from that to your selection of stickers on your laptop, you just never get the point. So thank you. So thanks so much for joining the podcast.

Ruben Ugarte:

I mean, he certainly enjoyed it, right? There's biscuit biscuit right there. He's stoked about home service. He's riveted. for having me. I love your podcast. I love what you guys are doing. Shout out to Alex and Landon and the entire team. And thank you for having me. It's been awesome.

Todd Jensen:

Oh, it's been great having you here. If somebody wants to keep this conversation going, they want to explore how they can actually improve their lead gen. What's the best way that they can get ahold of you?

Ruben Ugarte:

Yeah. So you can get ahold of me at Ruben, R U B E N at activepro. com. You can also find me on LinkedIn, Ruben Agarte, Solar Junkie. I'm sure you'll have some of the info there. I also have a website, rubenagarte. io. But yeah, either via email or on LinkedIn. Excited to help anyone who's interested in learning more about what we do and how we can help brands.

Todd Jensen:

Ruben, thanks so much for joining. As always, super fun to talk.

Ruben Ugarte:

Awesome, man. Thank you for having me. See you later.

Todd Jensen:

All right. Thanks everybody. And we'll see you next time on The Snoball Effect. This has been the Marketing Playbook Series. We'll see you later.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Chad Zollinger

Co-host
Head Shot

Christian Jones

Co-host
Head Shot

Todd Jensen

Co-host
Head Shot

Ruben Ugarte

Guest