How Releventful CRM Filled the Gap in the Event Industry

Today we're here with Daniel Wright, Creator of Releventful. It's more than an event platform - It's actually a customer relationship and business management platform. Whether you're a caterer, DJ, venue, photographer, or wedding planner, Releventful can help you grow your business. This CRM provides event industry business owners an all-in-one toolkit that saves both time and money keeping you organized and connected.

Today's Topics Include:

• How Releventful filled the gap in the Event Industry    
• How Releventful became the first “All In One” platform for TEAMS to collaborate, compared to others like 17hats, Dubasdo, etc. meant for solopreneurs.
• How Releventful helps leads not get lost in the shuffle with sales campaigns and 2 way SMS texting.
• Why you might be paying too much in processing fees from other CRMS.
• How Releventful was born by blending a unique set of project management and communication tools. 
• Learn about Releventful’s app that released last month and how it elevates the client experience.
• How their DJ add-on & Song Selection features that will allow guests to request songs on the spot at their event through the app, build playlists, and more! 

Mentions:
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Transcript

0:00

Welcome to another episode of Funktastic Chats. We're chatting today with Daniel Wright, who was the creator of the top CRM and business management platform for event professionals called relevant, full. You've probably had experienced using an all in one CRM before. All in one means that proposals, invoices, contracts are all native to the CRM itself without paying for additional costly tools that integrate like DocuSign, Panda, doc, Twilio, et cetera, examples of all-in-one CRMs that you may already be familiar with would be like Dubsado 17 hats, HoneyBook. There's so many out there, have you ever wanted to text a lead or a client after all texting does have a 90% open rate compared to email, which is a 20% open rate. I hate to break it to you, but you probably already know this. Most of those all-in-one CRMs out there are meant for solo preneurs and or they have high processing fees in order to get you in at a low subscription price. You're sending emails to the client, they're all different threads and they're going to spam, bad project management tools. That's really endless. I want you to, re-imagine a unique blend of tools that can take all of the different activities happening in your business. Take all of your third-party integrations and put it into a blender. And the end result is this fresh, sleek CRM that will elevate your client's experience. Coming up now, Daniel Wright creator of Releventful on Funktastic

Mike Zabrin: 1:22

Today we're here with Daniel Wright, Creator of Releventful is more than an event platform. It's actually a customer relationship and business management platform. Whether you're a caterer dj, a venue, a photographer, or a wedding planner, well Eventful can help you grow your business. They also provide event industry, business owners, and all in one toolkit that saves both time and money keeping you organized and connected. So, we are here with the creator and owner of Releventful Daniel Wright. Hey Daniel, how you doing? Welcome to the podcast.

Daniel Wright: 1:54

Hi Mike. Thank you so much for having me on. I really appreciate it.

Mike Zabrin: 1:58

Of course. I was gonna ask where the name Releventful comes from. I'm assuming it's about staying relevant in the event space, but I don't know. Is that right?

Daniel Wright: 2:07

Yep. It's a merge of two different words eventful and relevant. So, so yeah, we wanna be relevant in the event space. You got it. First try. It's awesome.

Mike Zabrin: 2:17

Awesome. I know the idea of a CRM isn't necessarily new, but when it comes to software, where do you think the gap in the event space was prior to relevant?

Daniel Wright: 2:30

Yeah, great question. So, relevant full is actually inspired for uh, by my family event business. So we would often talk about the challenges of, of what was being experienced uh, kind of while we were eating dinner and catching up. And and so over time I'd, you know, I'd, I have a background in software development and I just kind of had this aha moment and I was like, You know what? I can do something about. of my favorite stories is that we were discussing how it took two weeks for everyone to get on the same page, that the event date had changed. And it just really spoke to the challenges of the event space when you have so many different parties involved. So more often than not, if you consider a wedding, the bride is the center of everything, and all the other vendors are trying to figure out who the bride is working with. You know, Oh, well, you know, who's this vendor? And they may or may not have the contact information. So relevant for, at its inception was really to solve communication and getting everybody on the same page. That was one of the biggest gaps that that I identified. Just talking to my, you know, just the family business kind of thing. But over, over time, I began partnering with many other businesses in the event industry and listening to my customers and then built Releventful into what it is today. So today it's more of a unique blend of tools to help event professionals with all aspects of their event business. So the, you know, the business event and employee management. So there there's a lot there, but really the goal was just to kind of have a tool that's really actually made for the event industry. So most CRMs out there, they're made for projects. And so we have a really great blog that's talking about kinda event management versus project management and how project management is more of a linear process and event management is taking many disparate things and trying to coordinate all the activities that are happening simultaneously. And so that's where Releventful for really shines. It's like taking all of the different activities that are happening from, you know, this vendor and then the bride and the mother of the bride, or you know, I'm talking about weddings, but obviously event events in general, you have many different players involved typically. So yeah, so that, that's kind of where Releventful was born and some of the challenges that we were looking to solve with our product.

Mike Zabrin: 4:55

I love the first thing you said was communication because that was the number one thing that our business had struggled with prior to joining Releventful. And I definitely wanna dive deeper with you later on the communication features in Releventful. But I have like, you know, I had like a thousand Gmail labels. Each bride is like five different threads, you know, But I definitely wanted to come back into that. But you just like, Answered all of my you know, made the pain a lot better and anyway, but you know, one of the CRMs I looked into before I found Releventful and it's not just this one, a lot of CRMs work like this, but one of the ones was HubSpot. And the idea of HubSpot's sounded great, but you have to integrate with a lot of third parties. Like, Oh, you wanna send a text? You need Twilio. Oh, you wanna send a proposal? You need Panda Doc. Oh, you wanna set a contract? You need to integrate with DocuSign. How important was it for you when creating relevant fold to keep the SMS features, the contract, the proposals, you know, everything totally native to Releventful

Daniel Wright: 5:52

yeah, it was really important. So I'm a techie guy at the heart of it. And one of the things that it was kind of like some personal decisions that not only benefited my product, but benefits you the consumer, which is when you use third party tools, the price goes up. Significantly, like, especially one of the things, honestly, I looked into DocuSign. I was like, Okay, we need to have the ability to receive e-signatures. Let's see what DocuSign provides. And I started looking into what it would take for Releventful to include DocuSign. They're really expensive, like really expensive. And so instead we did our own research and we are e-sign and U E T A compliant. And so we built our own solution because it's cost savings for us, and it's cost savings for you. You don't have to pay a lot of money to use DocuSign, and we don't have to pay a lot of money to use DocuSign overall, it's a it's a more cohesive and better experience. And so in additional additionally uh, sms, you know, we're looking into sms and it's the same, it's the same kind of concept. So you'll see that throughout Releventful, that we were very intentional about. Building out our own platform when we do integrations, we do integrations with the companies that do it right. For instance, Stripe, we just made, we just invested a lot into Stripe. Over time we've had four different payment processing platforms that we supported. And over time we realized that some of them just didn't they had terrible customer service. You know, like they literally treated our customers poorly. They requested enormous, ridiculous amounts of financial documentation for no apparent reason, and no one could figure it out. Why? And we were asking them like, Why are you asking our customers for all this financial information? Also being being forward in the tech industry because we know that. Technology is moving forward at such a blazing pace that we want to partner with companies that are really staying on top of this and providing the best tools possible. So Lenley is another example of a company that we've integrated it with for, you know, calendar and appointment management. We still have our own appointment management, but we also integrate with because we love them as a company. They're low priced and they do it really well. They, so they're very they're on top of things when it comes to sch scheduling and calendar management and things like that.

Mike Zabrin: 8:09

I love how easy it is to take payments through Stripe because you could take payments through a credit card or you could do ach, and I love ach is that it has a cap of something like $5, right? So, you could take a $5,000 payment and you're, I think it's a $5 max fee that you're paying compared to like, something like HoneyBook who offers their very own payment processor. And it's actually a 1.5% payment with no cap on it at all. So, so, you know, it's a great way to really minimize your processing fees. It's hardly anything, isn't it?

Daniel Wright: 8:42

Yeah. Yeah. It is. So it's two. So the processing fees for Stripe, like you said, it's around like 2.9%. And and we do, we add, I think it's a 0.03% a very small percentage fee just so we can maintain our integration. So at the end of the day, it's like 2.93%. And I love that you mentioned HoneyBook, because we've noticed that as well. So I think Honey Book's general strategy is they have a low priced plan, but then they massively overcharge you for credit card processing and I think they're making the vast majority of their money. Um, But honestly, it's a drain on you as the business owner and it's a drain on your customer as well. So, you know, it, so just things like that. You gotta kinda do your homework and consider things like credit card processing fees and how expensive or not expensive they are and all those things. Just the total package.

Mike Zabrin: 9:35

Yeah, I just wanna make sure I have that right too. So the credit card is around like 2.9%, but the ach, if you're taking an ACH payment, it's way lower, isn't it? It isn't it like a lower, It's like, you know, I think it's something like a $5 maximum payment that Stripe will.

Daniel Wright: 9:50

Yeah.

Mike Zabrin: 9:51

or something like that.

Daniel Wright: 9:53

I'm trying to remember what Stripe is. I I can look it up right now.

Mike Zabrin: 9:56

Just while this is happening, I just have to let everybody know that I have left a lot of software for Releventful, and they make it really easy for you to sign up, even if you're a newer if you're a newer business owner. We're talking about contracts. They have a whole sample contract. They have sample of emails that go out to onboard your clients. They really just kind of make it a, you know, as of seamless, an experience as humanly possible, you know,

Daniel Wright: 10:27

Yeah. Thank you for that. And we've been working really hard on that too, to make it as easy as possible to get in the system. So actually when you first log in, you're presented with a an option to select which industry you are, and you click a button and your account is actually automatically loaded with a bunch of sample content for your specific industry, which is really cool. And then we have a whole new suite of onboarding videos and we've completely redone our help center to make it easier and easier to find things. So we're really excited about that. And our goal is to just make it as easy and seamless as possible. And we have onboarding services too just to help you get up and going. So I did find the Stripe ACH payments is 0.8% capped at $5, so,

Mike Zabrin: 11:09

Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel Wright: 11:11

so really a reasonable payment there. And actually the fee cap, just so you know, I think QuickBooks, their fee capped at $10. So Stripe's fee cap is actually better than QuickBooks. So yeah they're doing a lot of things really well. And another really cool thing about our Stripe integration and I'll get off this train, but they support up to 30 different kinds of payments, including delayed payments or kind of buy now, pay later options. So you can fully manage all of the different payment options with our new Stripe integration in your Stripe dashboard and say, I want this one, and this one. And then it automatically presents to your customer. So what Stripe has done with their payment processing and just giving you the most powerful tools. Not to mention it's super easy to get up and going with them. That's another reason why we love using them, cuz we were using other companies and it was a very extensive, like, weeks week. It was like at least three weeks of process just to try to get your account up and going with them. So we're working really hard to give to you the best.

Mike Zabrin: 12:08

Definitely. Releventful is really the only all-in-one platform that I've experienced that can be utilized for teams. A lot of the all-in-one CRMs that I personally have experience with are either for solopreneurs or they're specifically sales CRMs. Have you noticed that at all in your in your digging when, creating Releventful? And what are some features specifically for teams that can make your business more collaborative and relevant full.

Daniel Wright: 12:37

Yes we did absolutely realize that a hundred percent. And so we actually were built for teams from the very beginning. So the, it was kind of honestly, because we started with the family business and they had a team, and so we were building relevant fallout with that in mind from the very beginning. So some of the things that we do for teams is roles and access, right? So certain people need access to certain things, certain people don't. So in other words some of your employees, you just wanna schedule them to work. You can do employee scheduling inside of relevant full, you can do time off requests., you can get automated reports and reporting based on the employees that you've scheduled and get an estimated amount on, you know, your overall p and l for the event. So this is my revenue and these are my costs. So we have that built in to kind of give you more of a holistic picture of where your revenue is at and and kind of your, just overall p and l. And then we have really nice reporting that breaks down an employee scheduling tools that's built into our calendar to give you a visual on, oh, how many times have I scheduled Bob or, you know, or Sarah or whoever the case may be. You can get a visual you can also do a resource view and see how you're scheduling people overall for your events and kind of get a, it's more of a top down. You can see them listed on the calendar. So we've done a lot to. To make it easier for collaboration even inside of the event. So you can create a team for the portal. You can also create to-dos and tasks for your individual staff to do and to complete. You can have a salesperson and a sales role that just manages the sales side of things. You can have someone who just does invoicing, someone who does scheduling someone who just deals with the events they're assigned to. So, so yes we noticed that as well. And that, that is something like we're even priced out. So we did a lot of, we've gone back and forth with our pricing a lot over time, so if anybody's followed Releventful, you've seen the prices kind of change. And really the heart behind that is we wanted to have the best pricing for you, our customer. And what we realized as our previous pricing, it was based on the range of employees that you had. So, you know, zero to five or zero to three and then, you know, four to 10, that kind of thing. So we were in line with other solopreneur type products, but what we realized is that Releventful is for teams. And we don't wanna penalize you for having a team. So we have simple pricing, like if you have a team, this is your price. Doesn't matter how many employees that you have. So we just wanted to make it simple because we don't wanna penalize you for having a team. Like if you have a team, we want you to use relevant. It's built for teams so,

Mike Zabrin: 15:08

I remember being so, so shocked when I was talking to Rich, another member of the relevant full team who helped me with my account getting started. I was like, What do you mean wait, do you really mean that everybody can have their own email address? They can log into the platform and see client communication and chat with the chat with the client and see the whole portal and everything, like not just through one email address for the entire system. He's like, Yeah. I was like, Wow, . And it's pretty funny that's you know, that, that is such a talking point or something that's not very common in the, in a lot of these systems. So I thought that was really cool. I wanna maybe shift a little bit and dive deeper about you. We have a lot of entrepreneurs that listen to the podcast, so I came up with a few questions for Daniel relating to growing your business and monetizing whatever you, the listener are passionate about. So Daniel, I guess my first one is that, you know, inspiration comes in many forms. What has inspired you or motivated you over the last few years, whether it's business or personal?

Daniel Wright: 16:07

Well, yeah, so that. There, there's a lot of things. I'll be honest, like first and foremost, it's my faith. So this has been a difficult, starting a company is challenging, and anybody who's an entrepreneur knows what that means. They know how challenging it is, how difficult it is emotionally, you know, you just pour everything into the company to get it to grow. And so, yeah, some days it's super exciting. Some days it lets you down, but you just keep on plugging away. So yeah, I'd, I would say faith is a big component, a big motivator. Another thing is I'm just really passionate about the event industry. I'm passionate about making change, about providing a solution that genuinely makes a difference. So. I think, and that's where I've talked with friends and family and things like that and they're just saying, you know, nobody can build a product that you can because they don't have the passion that you have for it. And so that's one of the biggest things. So if you're an entrepreneur you have to have passion behind it. And if you don't have passion, it's just not gonna happen because it's just you come across really big challenges and you have to navigate those things and decide whether or not you're gonna move forward. And at the end of the day, like if you have something that's really driving you, that's really moving you forward on that then that will be kind of your , the thing you hold onto and the difficult days. And then when you get over the hump you know, you achieve your dreams, so to speak. So yeah, that. There, there's so much to a journey of an entrepreneur. And I'm still in the middle of it, and it's exciting. I wouldn't trade it for anything. So yeah,

Mike Zabrin: 17:45

Were you in a better position starting relevant for, because you came from this software development you know, background Or do you think it's still you know what, also what advice would you give someone who wants to start their own tech company that doesn't have any software development experience?

Daniel Wright: 18:01

yeah. Great. Great question. I do think me having a technical background is definitely a huge plus. With that also came a lot of challenges because I had to learn a lot of things, because my background was technology, so I had to learn a lot of business things and, you know, marketing and sales and, you know, when you're an entrepreneur, you, you just kind of dive in there and you do everything. And so there, there's a pretty massive learning curve, but I think that's for everyone. I don't think anybody comes in the box as an entrepreneur and has all the skills, so you kind of have to learn as you go. But software, because I'm, you know, it's relevant for the software as a service company, that definitely, I think gives me it gives me an edge, being able to change quickly and where the investment is coming from myself. If you're trying to start a tech company and you don't have development skills, the challenge on your side is you're gonna invest a whole lot of money to get someone to build your product because it's very expensive to get somebody with good skills and to produce a quality product. So software development is, it's an expensive game, . So, so I do, I'm very appreciative and thankful that I had the skills necessary to build this. And honestly, if I didn't, I don't know if I would've.

Mike Zabrin: 19:12

I've talked to quite a few tech companies that don't have that experience. And they were venture capital funded. And and because of that, they really don't get, you know, as much say of the different features that come out and the direction of the company as much as somebody. I imagine like you that, has the software development experience

Daniel Wright: 19:34

yeah, definitely. You either, if you have the skills necessary, then you can build it, you know, and you can kind of drive, drive the direction. But you're right. If you, when you get investors involved depending on the arrangement or the agreement, you may start to lose control over over the direction or the say of things just because you have other people that have invested money, and so now that, that's a part of. Of the makeup of your company. So, yeah, I'm I do have a hundred percent control of relevant full. And I'm able to drive it forward as I see fit, and I'm super thankful for that. Right now it's it's completely kind of privately funded. I don't have any investors. So it's great.

Mike Zabrin: 20:14

What's one thing that people are generally surprised to find out about you?

Daniel Wright: 20:22

Well, I'm a drummer, , so, yeah, I've been playing the drums for over 25 years, so music is a huge part of my life. I, ironically, I've, the longer I'm a musician, the more I realize that a lot of a lot of people who are musicians are kind of in like technical and engineering kind of fields which is interesting. I don't know if it's like your brain is wired a little differently. I'm not really sure. But anyways, yeah, I play the drums love it and been playing for over 25 years and wouldn't give that up either. That, that I really have enjoyed playing the drums over the years and Play the drums in high school band and, you know, marching band and been in church bands and all kinds of stuff over the years. So yeah, it's a lot of fun.

Mike Zabrin: 21:05

We had some really fun musicians on the podcast. So, if you're listening musicians and you need a crm, you don't know what a CRM is, that's, this is the perfect episode for you to check out Releventful we're gonna get into the DJ add-ons and all that fun stuff that will really apply to you. But I wanna kind of shift into the sales process a little bit because a lot of wedding vendors, they get a lot of inquiries depending on how much paid advertising they do from the not and wedding wire and Google to companies that are a little more established. Or get a lot of leads regularly. How does relevant full help leads not get lost in the shuffle?

Daniel Wright: 21:40

Great question. One of the biggest things is you have to have a CRM that that enables you to organize yourself. Many companies that are starting out, they don't have a crm. And so there's still a lot of companies out there that are managing their business on Google Sheets and just generally Google products. And so they start off that way and then they get to a place, and the biggest issue that they have is just organization. They don't have a way to find things quickly. They don't ha they don't know where things are at. They're trying to find different resources and assets and emails and documents and they do their best. They might have a, you know, the. A legit folder filing system that they work on. But at the end of the day, you need something to manage holistically. Where that lead is, you know, it's a funnel, so you have a lead and it enters your funnel. Your website most often is the beginning of that funnel. Or like you said, you have other advertising points along the way and that's the beginning part of your funnel. But once, once it enters your crm, it needs to get into your crm and then you manage, okay where's my lead at? I had this follow up, I had this touchpoint I need to do this with this lead. You know? And you just track all of the different information and details so that they don't get lost in the shuffle. So with Releventful, We have a pipeline, it's a visual pipeline. It's a, we actually have a five stage sales process. It's completely customizable, but you can visually see where your leads are at within your pipeline. And we have lead cards, so you can click on a lead card and it opens up more details like sales campaigns. So another thing that, that a good CRM will do for you is help establish consistency. So, with your sales process, you're initially, you're trying to nail it down. You know, what works, what's my messaging? What do my customers want to hear? When do I contact them? All those different touch points. And you're trying to work out the secret sauce of what works for your business and what converse leads over into real customers. So with Releventful, you can track those things. Okay. With this lead, I'm three emails in and now they're gone or with this email or with this lead. You know, I tried SMS text messaging and. That worked, you know, and I convert them over to a book customer. So with Releventful you can automate your sales process, either through emails or SMS text messaging, and then you can follow it through the booking process, which is creating a proposals or invoices. And we have we have visual proposals it's kinda like a shopping cart. Like I wanna, you know, let me add this and this. And they can see the price update and they can see what things look like a little bit more self-serve. Or if your industry is a little more where you have to create more complex proposals with many different line items. We have a line it a proposal as well. So your CRM tools should be able to accommodate wherever you're at in the sales process. Not only through tracking them as a lead to get them in, into a, you know, a warm to a hot lead. So when they're a hot lead, you gotta book 'em as a customer. So one of the things you don't wanna do is kind of what you were going back to originally is have your customer, you know, your potential customer, go to three or four different places to book you. You don't want 'em to get lost in your process. So with Releventful we created something called quick close invoicing. And because we're all in house, it makes it a whole lot easier for us to do this. As far as all of our tooling and, you know, e-signatures and payments we have something called quick close invoicing. So you can go from a proposal to signed contract to a payment, all in one three, three step seamless process. So that's what you want. We call it quick close invoicing because enables you to close the deal faster versus, you know, Hey, I'm gonna send you, I'm gonna send you a document, Please sign it, scan it, and send it back to me. That's kind of more of the, you know, old school way of doing things. If you don't have technology or you're trying to save money or maybe you have a, Google Doc over here, or you have DocuSign over here, and then you send'em a QuickBooks invoice over here. At the end of the day, your customer might get confused and they might lose something and something might go to spam. Like, I didn't get it. You know, where did it go? And then all of a sudden your customer was ready to book and then they're gone because you lost them in the process. So what's relevant for you, don't lose anyone because it's all encompassed in the same system. And not only that, but you transition them straight from the booking process into the planning process. So relevant. It's a full, I call it the event life cycle. You know, you go from kind of, that leads through to a book customer and then through the planning process. So because we're event-based system, you have the whole planning side of things and you seamlessly transition them. Even through automation tools and Releventful to give them their portal. And we have our app, kind of the segue to the app there where your client can download the relevant full app and they can do planning on their phone filling out forms, documents, messaging you back and forth, doing emails. And then seamlessly have access to their invoice and their contract that they sign and all of that.

Mike Zabrin: 26:31

I dunno if all business owners feel like this, but as you're talking, I'm like a little kid in a candy store over here going like, Oh my God, this is like the coolest thing ever. Like Super exciting. I love the proposal feature because, I feel like in some CRMs you get one or the other, you get the line item proposal, or you get that true shopping cart experience, just one or the other. It's nice that you could pick which, which experience you'd like. I personally love the, that shopping cart. I call it the shopping cart experience. And I knows there a better word for it. Just,

Daniel Wright: 27:02

No, that's good. We, Yeah. Shopping cart experience. We'll go with it.

Mike Zabrin: 27:07

perfect. Because it's a great way to upsell clients too. Like there have been so many times where we intended to sell our client an eight piece band. Right. But then after we got the proposal back, Oh wow. Wait, they added on venue up lighting, They added on our photo booth, they added on a jazz trio. Like, I did not, we didn't even talk about this. You know, So it's a great way to to upsell. And then by the way, a quick side note everything that we're talking about here with the pipeline and. The app and everything like that. Releventful did a really amazing webinar on the DJ Vault. And it's on their YouTube, it's on their relevant full YouTube channel. And you could see Daniel and and Rich really go through this step by step and just see just how everything looks and everything just looks so awesome, . And so I would definitely recommend that. The SMS texting is really cool because not only is it two-way texting, but it's with you the whole sales cycle, isn't it, from like payment reminders to, Can you talk about just like how you integrate texting throughout the sales process besides just like back and forth.

Daniel Wright: 28:16

Sure. Yeah. It kind of goes back to the very beginning. Communication was paramount. That was actually where Releventful started. And so the cool thing is that when we added in texting, it plugged into our existing what we call a business communication platform. So that is we can dive deeper. I'll answer your SMS question, but that the business communication platform actually does quite a few things for you and it solves a lot of issues from communication perspective. So for SMS texting you can start with the sales process where you're sending them text messages. Hey, thank you so much for filling out the form on our website, or, you know, we're really excited to be working with you. So and so's gonna, you know, gonna give you a call here in a few. And so texting is that that immediate prompting, especially in our culture, everybody's a d because they're super overloaded with too many with too many kind of, it's like sensory overload. We, we all know it. Things popping up on our phone, just everywhere. Texting is very effective because it pops straight to the top of their to their notifications on their phone. So everything is competing for your customer's attention or your lead's attention. So SMS texting is very effective to get right in front of their face immediately. So with Releventful, you can have text messages go out immediately. Again, over 80% of all text messages are read. So super effective goes straight to the top of the list. If you're in a really, really competitive industry, like DJs or Photo. Those two are probably the most competitive spaces in the event industry. Texting is something you should seriously consider because it'll get you in front of your customer faster because they're probably looking at a dozen other people at the same time. So with that when you're sending them a proposal, you can send a text proposal. So again, like that's a part of your full. Now you have, you went from a cold lead, you've warmed them up, now you're to a hot lead and you're sending 'em a proposal. They're almost ready. So send 'em a text message. They click on the button, boom, they open up the proposal and even into the payment reminders. You can also do texting as well, still within that sales cycle. Now you have a booked customer, but you can do text messages because Sometimes people forget to pay or whatever. And so you can set up text messages to go out automatically to your customer, which is really great. Yeah, so employee scheduling, that's also, We also have fully integrated, if you wanna use the SMS texting for scheduling your staff, you can as well. That's actually integrated in there. So that, that's the full integration of our SMS text messaging. One really cool thing about it is that we don't charge overage charges because every other text messaging company out there, like, Twilio or simple texting or, you know, all these other companies, they're overage charges are significantly higher than your base rate. So whenever you go over, you're paying, a significant amount more. So Releventful doesn't do that because we have our communication platform. And we do two-way texting. So if you're in the sales process at any point in time, those text messages automatically flow through our business communication platform and are stored in the portal. So you always have a full record of everything that's happened from the very beginning of the sales process all the way through to the end when the event is done. It's all nicely kept and stored for you.

Mike Zabrin: 31:36

Does Releventful give you a phone number or how does that work? Does it connect to your phone?

Daniel Wright: 31:41

So we um, we do tollfree numbers. So you automatically get a toll-free number with any of our text messaging plans. You can purchase more. We also do SMS short codes. So if you ever wanted to do an SMS short code we support that as well. But a free toll-free number comes with every SMS texting plan, and you can add more if you're higher volume. So yeah, that, that's how that works. And it's fully compliant. So they can opt out, they can text the word stop. It will stop. So it's it's a fully compliant SMS texting platform that follows all, you know, all regulations and all that kind of stuff.

Mike Zabrin: 32:17

Wow. That's awesome. Congrats on releasing the app by the way. Isn't it just come out like last month or something like.

Daniel Wright: 32:24

It came out last month,

Mike Zabrin: 32:26

Oh, man. Congrats. That's a, that's a huge accomplishment. How has creating an app impacted your business and what have people been saying about it?

Daniel Wright: 32:35

Yeah. People love the app. We created it based on based on what we heard from our customers, honestly. Like We heard our customers just talking about their need for a mobile app. It helps them a lot. And just differentiating themselves in the industry and giving, and kind of meeting their customers where they're at on the devices that, that they're used to. It's interesting because Releventful it was actually built with responsive design from the beginning. So all that means is like it's actually made that, you'll see the screen transform if you're on a phone, a tablet, a desktop. So it's already built to to work on every device. But what you get with a native mobile app is it's actually designed for the app, for the phone or the device that you're pulling it up on. It's designed for that screen. So it's definitely a, it's a higher quality experience for your customer where, we're all used to apps and so have, having an app for your business, it just kind of elevates that experience for your customer. And with Releventful, we're using the latest and greatest technology, so, when your customer gets a link, so let's just say you're having a an email conversation within Releventful and you send them a note, they have a button, and if they click that button in the email, it's a one click download. So it takes them to the app store, download the app, and then it automatically logs them into their event. So we've created everything to be very seamless for your customer. So literally they click the button one time and boom, they're in their app and can start interacting with the app on their phone. So response has been really great. We've been very excited about it. Honestly, we've it's kind of been something that's been years in the design and process and making. So we're just elated to get it out to everyone.

Mike Zabrin: 34:14

Awesome. What do you say to the people, you know, clients who are like, Oh man, you know what, This company, they gave me this password. I have to remember, I have to keep logging into this app. I have no idea what it is. It's been six months since they emailed me the login information. It used to happen to us all the time. What's the experience like for a customer logging into the app?

Daniel Wright: 34:35

So, yeah, so with Releventful, we decided to go a different route where we don't require for your customers and people that you invite to the event. So just kind of a side note on our portal, part of the business communication platform, again, back to that original idea of we have many different people involved with the event. How do we bring 'em all into one place? Well, with Releventful, our portal is designed to have everybody who's involved. That means other vendors that you're working with, you know, friends, you know, friends of the, of your client that want to be involved in the planning process, you can simply invite them to the event. Now, when they're invited, they automatically get a link and that link is permission for them, and it's a one click login. So you don't have to deal with passwords. You don't have to create, you know, like your client coming to you saying like, Hey, I can't log in. And now you're, you have to stop what you're doing. Go into whatever portal you're working

Mike Zabrin: 35:26

Yep.

Daniel Wright: 35:27

reset the password, resend it to them. It should work for you. Now, you know, you don't have to do, you don't have to do that anymore.

Mike Zabrin: 35:35

Right. Then you gotta go to the, like for us, until, you know, Releventful, they'd have to go to our website. They gotta go to the client portal page, and embed code would populate on the screen. They'd have to enter the email address and then the password would come up and then, there wouldn't really be that That much content in there other than how much money they owed, you know, their invoice and their contract and, you know, a couple documents that we could upload. But that's about it. Which brings me to my favorite feature of Releventful, the the song selection and DJ management feature. Please tell us about this feature, Daniel.

Daniel Wright: 36:12

So, so, yes. So for DJs we have been plowing this ground for DJs and kinda we've worked with actually Joe Bon, you know, you gave a plug there for the webinar. He's a personal friend of mine. He's in here in the Raleigh area. We met a long time ago. And so I worked with him directly and other DJs like, Okay what is song selection? What do you guys do? You know, And so just I would actually go and demo to Joe Bun, Hey, you know, this is what I came up with. What do you think? So anyways, we're working on song selection for a long time. And so where we are today is we actually have three different types of song selection you can do. One is planning forms. So this is like inline song selection. You have a bunch of questions you wanna ask your. Some are related to songs, some aren't just general planning, you know, how many guests are you having at the dinner party? You know, are you gonna provide food for the vendors, You know, whatever you wanna ask. You know, check boxes, drop down menus, fill in the answer, all that kind of stuff. So it's Releventful we, our first type of song selection is inline song selection. So inside of that planning form, they tap the field to enter their answer, and it brings up a song selection window. So that's integrated with Spotify or your own personal song list. So that's song selection number one, and that's fully featured. You can do cool things like, you know, if you want a cocktail hour, you can actually put a suggestion button down on the corner, and they tap that and it brings up, you know, hey, this is our recommended cocktail hour songs. And so you can cu, you can custom curate that for your customer, which is really neat. So the second type of song selection, that's our song selection by category. So just big, you know, general categories. It could be things like, you know, cocktail hour dinner, music, general song selections. You can create all the categories that you want. You can let your client create their own and they just add songs into the category and you can put limits on it. Like, you know, I only want one of these, two of those, 15 of those. You can gimme a hundred of those. And as a part of the, that kind of song selection, you can also let'em share their Spotify playlist with you, which is super common. So millennials love Spotify playlists, so they typically have like 150 of those. And so they'll pick their favorite playlist and just share it with you and maybe they'll be done. But that's there. The last kind of song selection, the third kind is our live song selection. So the live song selection is really awesome. It's completely unique to relevant full. So what you can do with that is live at an event. You can make song selection live. You get a shareable link and you share that with with the bride. The bride can get it straight from her relevant full app on her phone, and you can text it to people, you can email it to people, and so it, it'll just easily spread to people. In the event people sitting next to one another, they all have the ability to share the link. So everybody's sharing the link and before you know it, everybody has the app on their phone and they start letting the DJ know what songs they want to hear. So if you have typical events where this would happen is, you know, you have your your weddings, your parties, your bar mitzvahs. It's like super common for people to walk up to the DJ booth or table and

Mike Zabrin: 39:23

what I was

Daniel Wright: 39:24

and be like, Hey, can you play this? And you know, you can't even hear 'em anyway because the music's going, the party's going. And so you have to, the DJ has to stop what they're doing, be like, what, you know, you know, taking their headphones off and yeah, I'll play that song. But, so now we get a, so with the live song selection, you get a really fun way for people to interact with you. And it doesn't interrupt the flow of what you are doing. It doesn't interrupt the flow of, you know, the way you're mixing the event and your focus on handling the event because the DJ has a, you know, you have a really important role of, you know, you're not only doing the song, but you're managing the general flow of the event. Giving announcements, what's coming up next? You know, you got a lot of things that you're tracking all at the same time. And so with the live song selection, you can have your your phone or your tablet up right next to you and you see the trending list so people can like, so the, somebody adds a song that they like and then other people can say like, Oh yeah, I want to hear that. And they like it on, you know, on the relevant full, on the relevant full app. And so they, so with the live one, one important thing is for the guests that are invited to do live song selection, that's literally the only thing they can do on the app. They pull it up, it's a special mode, if you will, just for them. So they just see the song collection. That's it. So they're like, you know, as for all they know, that's the only thing the app does. And so they just, you know, they're just liking songs and so the dj, they see the trending list of songs. They're like, Okay, cool. I just played that. All you have to do is ctap it. You tap the song on, you know, on your tablet, boom. It just moves the song down to the bottom of the list and you keep on going. And that and everybody at the event

Mike Zabrin: 41:00

link with his. Yeah.

Daniel Wright: 41:02

Yeah. You

Mike Zabrin: 41:02

Um, I was just gonna say, you could share that link with whichever, whoever you want to. Right. We were both getting on the same thing, I think. But you could share that link with whoever you want to. So like, let's say you're the bride and groom and you really trust, you know, your bridesmaids. You wanna give them full permission for the DJ after party or whatever. You know, they could share the link with their friends and, you know, share it with however many guests they want to. And what's really cool is, like Daniel said, you could see like, okay, four people have requested this song or whatever. And then when the DJ taps the button that like, what is it, like a thumbs up button or something like that

Daniel Wright: 41:34

yeah. It's a like

Mike Zabrin: 41:35

of the list. The like button Yeah. Moves to the bottom of the list. So that's really cool. Yeah, especially like, especially at weddings alcohol and requesting songs to our DJ sometimes isn't , the best mix. Know having an app is really great, you know, cuz I thought that was really cool. This is a little bit of a selfish question, this has been an incredible addition to us. After they select their songs, we typically make a set list on on a Google Doc for them in order. And that's what the musicians see and we show it to our client too. Is it pretty easy to download the selections that they picked out, like their play songs? For us to go and make a set list for them,

Daniel Wright: 42:13

Yes, definitely. So, inside of the portal, there's a to-dos area. And the to-dos is kind of where you have your those three different kinds of song selection. They all display there and there's a print button up at the top. So you just tap that print button and it gives you a nice printable form or view of all your client song selections of any forms or you know, of anything that they filled out. That's all right there. So yeah that, that's like, a nice printable view of every, of everything that your client has filled out, all their song selections, everything. And then we also have an area in the portal is playlist management. And the playlist management piece is kind of the other side of song selection, which is if you're doing song or just prep for the event. And this is like specific for the DJs, this isn't for your client. So for DJs, when you're prepping for the event in the playlist area, you can reorder the songs around and create your. Legit playlist. And we have another app that's not the app for the app store. This is an app that you install on your MacBook or your Windows you know, laptop, and it scans your songs. So we call it the Remix Scanner. So it scans your songs, all of your library, and then one when you're kind of matching up, like, All right, I have all these songs for that my client has chosen. I'm definitely gonna play all these. This is my playlist. This is the order I'm gonna do it in. You can our remix scanner will automatically match up, like this is the song you have in your library. And it'll create your playlist for you matched up to your actual laptop or, you know, whatever computer you, you take with you. It'll match it up and then you can download the playlist from there. It's an M three U file. So it's an M three playlist file. If you're using Serato, you can drag it into a Serato crate. It's compatible with tractor you know, iTunes or whatever you're using. And then we also have a CSV download of that playlist file as well, and that's compatible with Crate Hackers. So, so yeah it's a full, it's a full solution for DJ's kind of, You have the printable version that you can just print out and you can use that. And then you have a playlist creation area in the portal where you can actually create your playlist and get the actual playlist that's matched up to your physical files that you have and just, and then you're off and running. So if you have any events where it takes you, you know, if you have 150, 200 songs, you know, for some events, like if you have a lot of songs, it can take you a decent amount of time to go through and just like, All right, I need this one and this one. So yeah, that, that's what the Remix scanner does for you, is it kind of matches it, does that matching for you?

Mike Zabrin: 44:50

I noticed some um, the play bar is next to the song. So can clients actually preview the song before they click play? Like can they listen to it? Is this through, This is through Spotify, right?

Daniel Wright: 45:02

Yeah. So, yeah if they tap that, if they tap that I think it's like a, yeah, a little sound button. Or speaker, I think it's a speaker. So if you tap that, it will actually open up Spotify for them to listen to that particular song. And if you're using your own songs, it'll open up it'll take them to YouTube or we actually have it where it'll take you to the lyrics. There's like a song, A to Z or something like that. And it'll automatically plug in that song there where they can view the lyrics too.

Mike Zabrin: 45:29

I guess this is a common question, but do clients do they each need their own Spotify account to pick out songs or is this something through Relevant for

Daniel Wright: 45:38

So yes, they would need, they would use their own Spotify account for it.

Mike Zabrin: 45:41

Which everybody has Spotify these days, so

Daniel Wright: 45:44

Pretty much

Mike Zabrin: 45:45

amazing. Yeah. And I guess the last thing that I love to touch on is just the event timeline feature. I thought that was so cool. Do do clients also have access to that timeline feature as.

Daniel Wright: 45:56

Yes, they do. So, that's based on a setting. So if you want your clients to be able to manage their own timeline, they can if you want to kind of hold that, you know, for your business to handle, you can do that too. But yeah the timeline feature really fast for. For your client, Let's just say if typically for DJs, they want their clients to fill out the timeline for event planners, it's like, no, I'm doing the timeline right. So event planners are, you know, they're planning it, so they want control over the timeline. So they would not give the clients the ability to edit that. DJs typically hand that over to their clients to, to fill out as needed. But it's really fast, super easy. You can reorder things around and everybody who's on the event they can they can actually see that timeline. Just kind of on a note of the portal. The portal is also based on access, so, You can have to-dos that are that you say, Okay, I want my client that is handling this to do I'm not assigning this. I'm not granting permission to anyone else, but I have these other ones. I want these people to be doing this. So you can actually assign tasks even internally, to your own team to your client. And you can permission things out from, for the to-dos area of the portal for the appropriate person who's assigned to that thing. They will see it and then everyone else won't. But the timeline and the event details, everyone gets to see that because that's core to the event. And time. Any information changes like the date or the time, you don't have to wait two weeks or you know, try to find everybody. Everybody's notified automatically by relevant full. Hey, the, you know, the time changed the date changed you know, event details changed and that way everybody is just notified automatically and you don't have to worry about that kind of thing anymore.

Mike Zabrin: 47:34

Oh, that's so awesome. I really suggest that everybody who is considering using Releventful, just write out all of the tools that you currently use right now. All the Zapier integrations, right? Like all the project management tools that you use, your sales, crm, your, you know, and I guarantee you if you're anything like me, you'll be able to condense all of that down into one native system called Releventful daniel, before we go is, I'd love to know kind of what's on the radar for Releventful what's coming up? What's can we expect new with the with the software?

Daniel Wright: 48:11

Yeah. So, the next thing that's already in the works is we are adding clock in and clock out or check Yeah, clock in, clock out to for employees. So we're, that's actually gonna be on the mobile app. We're also enhancing our task management to be on the app as well. So really the next update for our mobile is gonna be for the mobile app. And it's gonna be for your staff specifically. So we're investing more into the employee the employee management side of things so that you can, and actually, so the clock in, clock out, that's gonna be geofenced. So they will not be able to clock in, clock out unless they're on site physically. So, you know, it'll check the gps. Yes, I'm there. Okay. You can clock in now. And it'll actually automatically remind them when they get on site if they have location services enabled. It'll say, Hey, clock in. You arrived. Same thing clocking out. So that's gonna be a really exciting feature. Just, you know, for you and your business, everybody has a phone, you know, millennials are all over it. Like you can barely pry it outta their hands. So give, giving them the ability to clock and clock out on their phone will be perfect. And so that that's that side. And then also just general tasks and to-dos for your staff as well. They'll have that checklist right on their phone, you know, Hey, you need to do this and this. So that's gonna be right there available on the app as well. So yeah that's kind of the next thing coming. We're excited about that. We're always improving relevant falls really built on just listening to our customers, to be honest. So, we, nothing is irrelevant fold that wasn't asked for or thought about or, you know, discussed with legit people in the industry. So like, that's my background in the event industry. And then, you know, just countless other people that we've had discussions with and talked with, like that's what relevant flow is. It's a product of the event industry. So it's kinda like buy people in the event, people for people in the event industry. So,

Mike Zabrin: 50:02

Stay relevant in the event space and make sure you check out the show notes in this podcast episode. Daniel, where can where can people sign up for relevant full? What's the next step for people to, to check out the software?

Daniel Wright: 50:15

yeah. Yeah. So, go to relevant full.com and you can check it out, you can book a demo with us. I also have a couple coupon code that I wanted to throw your way, so anybody who's listening, there's a place on there when you sign up that you can enter a coupon code. So one is early 10 no spaces, all caps, early 10. That'll give you 10% off for the first three months. So that's a great discount for you. The other thing that I wanted to give a plug for, we literally just went live with this yesterday, hot off the press. If you are switching from multiple systems we know that can be overwhelming and expensive and, you know, it's kinda, you know, Mike, you're already trudging down this path. So, we're, we have, yes, , So if you if that's you, we have a special what we're calling the big switch. It's a special program just for you. Huge discounts. And and then huge discounts on your onboarding assistance as well. So the more people we talk to, they're just like, Man, this sounds awesome. This is completely overwhelming. I'm using this and I'm using this and I'm using this. I don't even know how I'm gonna make this happen. So we just created a program that is for you to help you do this that, you know, big discounts for, you know, for six months. So go check it out. It's on our pricing page, on the website. And then you know, you can do that program or if you just want to go ahead and sign up and you're ready early 10, we'll give you 10% off your first three months you can get going that way.

Mike Zabrin: 51:45

Awesome. Click the link of the show notes and it'll bring you right to real eventful. And I just wanna leave you guys with this. If change is scary, it's because you're growing and change is good. So don't let switching to something that will make you more money overwhelm you when there is just so many great things and relevant to look forward to. Daniel, thank you so much Matt. I really had a blast talking with you.

Daniel Wright: 52:10

Thank you so much, Mike. I really appreciate being on the program. This has been really fun. Use the coupon code go to www dot relevant. Dot com. And let me know your experience with relevant Phil. I would never recommend something that I don't personally use and enjoy myself. So I have a feeling that this will be a very welcomed refresh to your business. Thank you so much for tuning into Funktastic Chats. We'll see you next week.