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In episode nine of the Tech Product Review podcast supplement, guest expert Andrew Jenkins chats with host Bill Banham talk about Attach.io - a platform which helps you understand how your customers interact with your content so you know how to time and tailor your follow up for maximum impact.

Listen to the show here.

Read the transcript:

Bill Banham: Welcome to another episode of the CPSA product review podcast with our wonderful guest expert, Andrew Jenkins. In this episode, we're going to be talking about Attach. Andrew, welcome to the show.

Andrew Jenkins: Thanks for having me.

Bill Banham: Now, as always, firstly, what is Attach and what does it do?

Andrew Jenkins: It's a cloud-based solution for you to upload your collateral, or sales materials, or proposals, or profile content, and then share the link or links to those pieces of content via email or however you wish to either sales prospects or you could put it in your LinkedIn profile or the bios of your social accounts, and then you get resulting analytics as people visit those pieces of content. This is especially helpful when, given the file size of certain pieces of collateral now, be it a slide share, or like a PowerPoint presentation, anything that has some rich media in it, it can be sizable. And if you try to email it, it won't ... there's no guarantee that it will get through filters. So you can put it up into Attach, share the link, and get analytics from those that visit the content.

Bill Banham: Okay, thank you. So you've alluded to a few of the benefits there. Any other benefits that you can mention?

Andrew Jenkins: Well, you can segment so instead of just having ... Like you can have a general link to a particular piece of content and I'll call it a public piece of content, but you still get notifications from Attach when people are looking at it. But, you can also go further and create a unique link for a specific sales prospect so that you'll receive notification from Attach when that specific person is looking at it. And then, as you alluded to in the introduction, you then know when or whether or not you should follow up with that person once you know that they're looking at the collateral, and you can get subsequent notifications because maybe they are looking at the content more than once, and you'll receive notification each time.

And so you can create it for a specific person, or a company, and so then you know that maybe colleagues within an organization are ... multiple people are looking at it, and it can ... and also you can be sharing content at different parts of the customer journey. So it could be an e-book, it could be a white paper, it could be a number of different pieces of collateral, depending on the stage they are at in their decision journey, right up to the point of proposal for their consideration.

Bill Banham: Right, so for those folks listening to this who are familiar with inadvertent covers, more old school tools like say Mail Chimp and other email providers. It's a bit like that is it? It's something where ... it's a tool where you can review and measure the interaction, how people are clicking and spending time with your messages and your content.

Andrew Jenkins: Well it's not a messaging solution. This is simply a place where your content, collateral, or sales materials can be hosted or held in a repository and then you share links for access to it. If you're using Mail Chimp for your email, you could foreseeably include links from Attach in your Mail Chimp email campaigns for more public oriented or content that's related to whatever stage of the drip campaign you're in, as one example. But the other thing to note is, there was a solution that LinkedIn acquired that's now incorporated into their team or enterprise account that did similar things to Attach where sales people could put pieces of collateral and then share it via LinkedIn or email or whatever and get notification when the recipients were engaging with that content.

Well, if you're not on a LinkedIn enterprise or team solution because that's now the only way you can get access to that solution, well, what other alternatives are there? And that's where the likes of Attach can come in. Especially if you're an entrepreneur, or a sales team of one, or a smaller team that doesn't warrant or isn't gonna go for a LinkedIn enterprise account, something like Attach is going to serve you well.

Bill Banham: Sounds great, but are there any shortcomings, anything that you wish they could improve upon?

Andrew Jenkins: It can be a little cumbersome for ... when you ... let's say I want to share three different pieces of content for ... with a prospect. Here's a one pager, here's an e-book, here's an FAQ, whatever you want to call them, it can be a little confusing about the way it lays it out on the page for you to know what file you are sharing and the specific link. And so, from a user interface, there can be a little bit more work to just the way it organizes files. Having said that, I still find it ... I get a little ... a little smile comes across my face when I see ... I get a notification that a prospect is consuming the content that I've sent to them. To know that it hasn't gone into a black hole and you are just left wondering, you know very, very clearly that your prospect is paying attention to your content and that's a pretty powerful feeling.

Bill Banham: Is there a cost Andrew? You mentioned earlier on that it's a tool which can be used perhaps by entrepreneurs, smaller companies and what not. I'm guessing perhaps it's on the lower end if there is a cost. But if so, how much is that?

Andrew Jenkins: You have to forgive me, they have reached out to me as an influencer and they were kind enough to give me access to their Pro account for no charge, but to your point, it's a nominal expense. I don't think it's ... we're talking well below $100 per month. Might even be below $50. What just ...

Bill Banham: Ladies and gentlemen I've just had a quick look there. It's free to start with for minimal usage, then it's $10, $30, and then after that it's called Advanced where one contacts them to-

Andrew Jenkins: For a custom quote.

Bill Banham: Exactly.

Andrew Jenkins: As I said, I suspected it was quite inexpensive and ... but, it's proven to be quite a powerful solution for me.

Bill Banham: Are there any competitors? And if so, who are they?

Andrew Jenkins: Well the one I mentioned that was acquired by LinkedIn, there's also another solution called Post Wire that's free or paid, if you want it more branded and you get some analytics as ... when people are looking at your content. Those are the ones that come to mind. And then there's larger scale like Uberflip and Scribble Live. Those are less about proposals and marketing collateral and more about enterprise grade content libraries on your website then the backend analytics. So they're more ... I'll call them website oriented versus sales person and content sharing oriented.

Bill Banham: Okay, and that little ding in the background there ladies and gentlemen I think indicates that we are coming towards the end of this particular interview. So just finally Andrew, as always, we've got to hear it from you. What would be your rating out five for the tool?

Andrew Jenkins: Because of the short comings I identified earlier I'm gonna give it a four.

Bill Banham: 80% still is not bad ladies and gentlemen! Well, that just leaves me to Mr. Andrew Jenkins, as always, thank you very much for being my guest.

Andrew Jenkins: My pleasure, thanks for having me.