Effective Text Strategies Every Collection Leader Needs | Mark Reinhard | Ep. 268

Adam Parks (00:08)
Hello everybody, Adam Parks here with another episode of Receivables Podcast. Today I'm here with a very interesting guest, Mr. Mark Reinhard, the CEO of Concepts2Code here to help educate me on text messaging. Text messaging was something that, I mean, I guess when I started doing it, it was pushing a bunch of numbers on my phone to try and get to the letter, and we've evolved significantly from SMS to MMS to now RCS. And what does that mean in the context of the campaigns that we're sending as the debt collection industry out to consumers? So Mark, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate you sharing your insights.

Mark Reinhard (00:46)
Nice to be here. Looking forward to a good chat.

Adam Parks (00:48)
Well, absolutely. For anyone who has not been as lucky as me to become your friend through the years, could you tell everyone a little about yourself and how you got to the seat that you're in today?

Mark Reinhard (00:57)
Yeah, absolutely. I've been, basically software building software forever since, since basically forever. Let's put it at that, leave it at that. but at some point I got introduced to collections, did a bunch of consulting for collections. And then over time, over many, many years, I started doing more and more work in collections and I dropped off the consulting business and formed, what is now concepts to code as specializing in collection based software.

We started off with payment portals, emails, document management, and over the past five or so years, it's becoming, texting has become a bigger and bigger part of e-collections, so to speak. So texting is a whole lot different than any other avenue we've gone down because you've got limited number of characters, limited number, limited opportunities to send messages. But it's, so it's really changing the strategy for how people are collecting. But it's becoming very, very effective. It's probably the biggest growing part of the business.

Adam Parks (01:52)
It seems to be the piece that has the most opportunity. I believe when I was reading earlier, Twilio's 2024 messaging engagement report said that 98 % of all text messages are being opened. And I know I've been on stage a couple of times recently with a gentleman who points out that he's got like 300,000 unread emails, but zero unread text messages. And I think that's an interesting dynamic as we start thinking about how the consumers want to engage with us.

Mark Reinhard (02:19)
Yeah, I think the open rates are extremely informative because you're absolutely right. I have way more unopened emails than I do unopened texts, but I also have way less texts because I get emails every single day from every place I've ever stepped foot in. sometimes even unsubscribing, it's hard to get off those lists. You get emails from places you've never been to, political stuff. Email is, you know, there's spam, but there's less control.

Mark Reinhard (02:47)
Text messaging is very, very controlled. So you do have to follow the rules. You do have to be approved. It is harder to get started to text, but that is also the benefit is because they're not allowing everyone through. So if you can get your agency through, get through to the consumer, you will have a much, much higher rate. The trade-off is there's less volume overall. So be one of the good players and it's going to help you a lot.

Adam Parks (02:56)
I think that makes a lot of sense. And as we think about text messaging in general, or every time that I think about communicating with a consumer, I think about trust. How are we able to develop trust with the consumer? And I know there's a couple of different methods from a text messaging standpoint. We've talked about short codes and long codes, and we've talked about the different styles of text messaging. From your perspective as someone who's helping all of these organizations to send text messages, how do you view the building of that digital trust?

Mark Reinhard (03:43)
Well, it really comes up to doing things strategically and considering who you are sending to, back in the day when everything was phone calls, you would skip trace and you would get 10 numbers for someone you would call every single one. If you were to skip trace and get 10 numbers, then text every single one, you would probably start to get blocked because there's less tolerance for that. So you really got to strategize with what your outreach actually is.

Adam Parks (04:02)
Yes.

Mark Reinhard (04:05)
And then also the content. You have a very small opportunity to send information. You got to worry about disclosures if it's not an actual cell phone number provided by the consumer. And there's all sorts of things you need to do to sort of send text messages to the people where it's appropriate. It's not a just blast every single phone number that's ever come into your system. You got to be smarter and that is what the carriers want you to do. So when you do do it, it's highly effective. So it's not about sending more. It's about sending correctly and sending strategically.

Adam Parks (04:26)
You gotta be smarter and that is what the barriers you want you to do. So when you do do it, it's highly effective. So it's not about sending more, it's about sending correctly. How do you think organizations can start down that path in building that digital trust? Is a short code necessary? When we talk about disclosures, is it just a function of messaging? Talk to me a little bit about the playing field that the debt collection industry is up against.

Mark Reinhard (04:55)
Yeah. So there we're up against a lot. We always are. It's just kind of the nature of it. the short code is really where, where most people are going and probably where most people will end up. There is a little bit of a barrier there because it is tougher, tougher to get it started is a little bit more costlier. and so depending on your volume, depending on what you're doing, you can get away with long code. You can get away with 800 number. They both work. However, the short code is,

Mark Reinhard (05:20)
has its own set of rules. They're higher standards, which is good. It means they're going to let more through if you follow those standards, as far as what content is sent. you maybe you can't have it like any conversation you want over a short code. You have to have certain messages that are approved, pre-approved and whatever. There's some flexibility in it. So the short code is absolutely great for the larger company scaling up, sending high volume. Definitely. It's almost like a must have. Long code.

Adam Parks (05:46)
Okay.

Mark Reinhard (05:48)
still works very effectively. You may not get as high a deliverability rates, but at certain volumes, it's perfectly fine. It also works very well for two-way texting. So if you want to throw your number up on your website that says, give us a call, it would be unusual or sorry, send us a text. It would be unusual to say, send us a text anytime to text message 12345. Whereas

Adam Parks (05:54)
So, you want to throw your number up on your website, it says, give us a call. It would be unusual for to send us a text. It would be unusual to say, us a text anytime to text message 2345.

Mark Reinhard (06:10)
if it's a full number, people are very used to punching that in. And we encourage people to encourage their consumers. Reach out to us by text. It's better than chat because a text message can be returned a day later and the conversation is still there. A chat is somewhat difficult to reestablish the next day because they're not on the website or whatever the case may be. So encourage your inbounds and generally that's better done with long code or 800 numbers. Basically the same thing. And then short code, higher volume ⁓ notices such as model validation notice.

Adam Parks (06:18)
It's better than chat because the text message can be returned a day later and the conversation is still there. Chat is somewhat difficult to reestablish the next day because they're not on the website or whatever it needs to be. So encourage your in-bounds and generally, I don't know, block code or a counter number, basically the same thing. And then short code, higher volume notices such as model validation notice,

Mark Reinhard (06:44)
very, very effective over

Adam Parks (06:44)
very, very effective.

Mark Reinhard (06:45)
shortcode.

Adam Parks (06:47)
Okay, and I think that makes a lot of sense. You talked a little bit about the difference in delivery capabilities between a short code and a longer form code. Is there a difference in the open rates as well, or is it really a function of delivery?

Mark Reinhard (07:02)
So this is a really good question and you can ask 10 people and you'll get different answers. So there's like the real answer and the sales answer. in text messaging, most people talk about delivery rates. So yes, we got a delivery, the carrier acknowledged it was delivered. Now I certainly get on my phone when I get a message every once in a while it says, this may be spam or whatever, do you want to report this as spam?

Adam Parks (07:06)
That's why I'm asking the guy who consolidates and does it for so many different people, because I realize that you're not looking at an individual client.

Mark Reinhard (07:29)
That message was delivered and whoever sent that probably got a confirmation that it was delivered. there's a, so delivery rates, while someone says, delivery rates are always 99.9999. Yes, those are delivery rates, but effective open rates are a bit harder to track in texting than they are in, that emailing because an emailing we've got images and we can track when these emails are actually being opened. the delivery, you gotta have high delivery and

Mark Reinhard (07:56)
and short code will get you a higher delivery in general, especially at higher volume. So that is if you're going to scale up and up and up, you're going to go short code at some point in time if you're not already there. Open rates are a bit harder to track with SMS because you don't necessarily get that confirmation when the person opens the text. The phone may track that, but it's not sending all that information back to the carriers and back to you. So

Adam Parks (07:58)
Okay.

Mark Reinhard (08:20)
Question the numbers you have, but the main number, you know, when looking at anything in collections is what is your effective rate? Like what is happening? You sent out a bunch of text messages, you got a bunch of payments, or you got a bunch of visitors to your portal or whatever it is. You want to see what the total outcome is, not just the number that, you know, the carrier is saying, it's 99.9999 % delivered. That's great. But if you didn't get the payments, you didn't get the engagement, that's really where to start measuring things.

Adam Parks (08:27)
Well, engagement, I think is that key measurement because if we're not getting some sort of an engagement back from the consumer, how powerful was the message? And I recently was reading something from TransUnion that said that a brand is not recognized until it's been seen five times. So you may not see that engagement on message one or two, but I think this kind of goes a little bit more to what is the content of the messaging that we're sending in on which set of train tracks or which set of rails are we actually sending that message? And which brings me to kind of my core question that I clearly just don't have a great understanding of, which is SMS versus MMS versus RCS. Can you try and walk us through what are the big differences between these different platforms?

Mark Reinhard (09:30)
Sure. And I don't even know if they're different platforms with different technologies, but for any user, yeah, it's a question. I'm not even sure what to call them. They are, so SMS is the first one. That's the basic. That is literally a text message. It is text only. They're actually weirdly divided up into 160 characters. Even if someone texts you a really long message, behind the scenes, those are broken up into multiple SMS messages and they should.

Adam Parks (09:35)
Different rails, I don't even know what to call them.

Mark Reinhard (10:00)
our phones are smart enough to stitch those back together. But if you went out back and bought a really old phone and maybe some of us can remember this, you would get a long message and sometimes it would come in out of order in chunks. That's because the underlying. Yes. ⁓ So yes, that is the technology behind it is SMS and that's like the basics of it. MMS is sort of the next level up to that. So there's less of a limit on characters. think there's a few thousand.

Adam Parks (10:09)
One, two, three, four, one of two, yep. I know exactly what you're talking about.

Mark Reinhard (10:29)
character limit. Hopefully no one's texting a few thousand. But the addition to that is the ability to send media. So you can send an image. So when you text someone the picture you took of your lunch or your dinner or whatever people are texting these days, your phone is going to say, I'm sending an MMS message. If you just text someone the word hi, it may send an SMS messages. And it's generally doing that to find the most efficient way across. But anything with media,

Adam Parks (10:30)
1600.

Mark Reinhard (10:55)
for the most part is turned into MMS. RCS is not, it's going to be the future. There's no doubt about it, but it's not used by a ton of businesses right now because the acceptance is growing, but it's still not, you're not guaranteed to get it. Yes.

Adam Parks (11:09)
It's not 100%. Every device that's active today is most likely able to receive an MMS. I mean, unless somebody's walking around with a Nokia brick, which I'm sure is still out there in a museum somewhere, but a little bit different.

Mark Reinhard (11:16)
Yes. Yeah, absolutely. But RCS is the next level. It's like, it's like the internet evolving. You know, there was HTML. There must've been two, three, four and five. I don't remember what version we're at now, but these are, these are just different services that are evolving, but then it's really just the data in transit. RCS has a ton of advantages. When you're typing to someone and you see those little bubbles and you're waiting for them to respond, that's RCS because it's doing more than just sending the message. It's connecting between the two devices and saying this person is, you know, has their finger on the keyboard or whatever it is. So maybe scary if you think about it from that perspective. But also it's, it is more like HTML where you can embed links and buttons and an image within your text, not necessarily just attached to it, but within it. And it also has that concept of brand recognition. So when you have an RCS

Mark Reinhard (12:19)
number, can register or you will register as a business and will have your brand logo on there. Much like we see sometimes when we log into Gmail and the little icon from a business will have their logo. That's because they've registered, trademarked or done something to their logo. They've registered their brand with that email domain. You will register your business with the phone number that's associated with the RCS messages.

Adam Parks (12:45)
I would think that would be infinitely important for law firms, for example, because the letterhead is such a powerful part of their business in terms of communicating with consumers and the ability to kind of bring that on to new and interest, know, new and different channels, I think is an interesting overall piece. But as we were as we were debating, what do we call SMS versus MMS versus RCS? According to perplexity, it's the three different mobile messaging protocols.

Not to be too technical, but I was curious because I just could not come up with the the phraseology for that. Yeah, it's it's it's protocols. And I think the most interesting part of what you were talking about for the RCS is that brand recognition, right? Whether it be a branded call display or being able to do that via text messaging and kind of tie that together seems like that's going to be a pretty big piece of the puzzle. But

Mark Reinhard (13:21)
protocols. neither one of us came up with that.

Adam Parks (13:42)
Which phones are capable of which things, right? If you're on an iPhone 5, you're getting MMS, RCS isn't really available. is there a limitation on when we can start using that as businesses if it's such a low rate? Because I think when we were talking about planning this, we were talking about it was like 36 % of the phones that are capable of receiving RCS are actually receiving any RCS messages.

Mark Reinhard (14:08)
Yeah. And like I said, it's, out there and it's on most of our phones that have been, you know, in play for the past couple of years, but still it's highly underutilized. And honestly, I'm not totally sure what that is and whether it's the acceptance or the cost or whatever, but there's no doubt it is, it is where text messages is going. think it also has additional security built on top of it. I'm not, not the best to speak to that, but I do believe it's like its own layer of encryption on top of the messages.

Adam Parks (14:16)
I think that's part of that. That's my understanding as well, similar to like an iMessenger where you're encrypting from channel to channel and not necessarily putting the message through the carrier the way you are with an SMS because like an SMS can be recalled in a discovery.

Mark Reinhard (14:48)
Yeah, and I think Yeah. And I think, you mentioned when we were chatting, previously at the, like a WhatsApp same thing. It's not an SMS on them. It's kind of their own protocol. So it's on their own flows to the own network. And it does that does, you know, so they say end to end encryption. ⁓ I don't know if it's the, it's not the equivalent encryption level of WhatsApp, cause that's kind of their main thing that they, that they strive for, but it is there's more security around it. so for a bit.

Adam Parks (14:57)
I think all those messaging platforms are separate. You've got WhatsApp, you've got Signal, you've got Telegram, you've got a variety of these security focused messaging platforms. And how does that ultimately tie into RCS? But RCS would be

Mark Reinhard (15:21)
Yes.

Adam Parks (15:32)
or any of these text messaging protocols would be available from your messenger app on any device versus having to download, set up an account, and totally live in this own separate world. But I think as we start looking outside of the United States, WhatsApp messaging is significantly more popular than any other protocol.

Mark Reinhard (15:51)
Yeah. And a lot of that is, you know, regulations and things like that. They're sort of outside of what our business cares too much about because we're very, we're very focused on getting messages out and not necessarily having secure legal chats, you know, we're, so yes, there's, various reasons why different technologies do better than others. But, um, from the MMS, uh, SMS RCS point of view,

Mark Reinhard (16:17)
The main benefit is you're absolutely right. The customer doesn't need to do anything. They just have a phone and they get a message. If they have RCS enabled, you can send them more content, more options, you know, almost like an interactive session. Would you like to pay this bill? And it's, it's different than just a regular link. But they can click on things and that can respond in a certain way, more like a mini, mini, mini app, almost like a JavaScript app.

Mark Reinhard (16:42)
For anyone tagging me on this probably totally unfair comparison, but think of it that way. you're doing something. You're doing something. Yeah.

Adam Parks (16:44)
No, it's a fair comparison because you're within that text messaging app. It's really its own minor world, but it has there's additional layers that are sitting on top of RCS as compared to an MMS, right? Like just even some of those baseline functionalities I think are important. High resolution images, long form videos, activated GIFs, audio and group chats, read receipts, typing indicators. Like these are all things that I think we've

Mark Reinhard (16:58)
Yes.

Adam Parks (17:13)
at least iPhone users I know have been doing for many years, like you see the little messages coming up and I'm not gonna get into the blue versus green bubbles because I am a believer of all of the above, right? Like I use both sets of devices for testing and just trying to understand it. As we think about what's going on in the industry, what do you think the biggest misconception is around text messaging for debt collectors?

Mark Reinhard (17:35)
I think it's, can we, can we do it? And it seems like a strange thing, but there's been such resistance to, to going through with text messaging for such a long time. And yeah, most agencies are doing it, but it's still not like the primary, means of communication. And it's very, very, very effective. So there's, you know, and you've got to, you've got a lot of legal stuff to deal with. You've got a lot of compliance. You have a lot of client requirements to deal with.

Adam Parks (17:38)
Interesting.

Mark Reinhard (18:02)
But there's a hesitation about doing it or can we send this and can we send that? For the most part, like you can do probably more than you think you can do. You just do it responsibly. ⁓ And you know, just like I said, don't skip trace and send to every single number you find. Use the numbers that come in, vet your numbers, care for your data and send on the correct data. And I say that probably over and over again, skip tracing can be dangerous in some of these, even emailing. Like it's...

Adam Parks (18:11)
Yeah.

Mark Reinhard (18:30)
It's a different purpose than calling. And we're in that mentality of, got 10 numbers, call 10 numbers. It's just different in text messaging.

Adam Parks (18:41)
So that's a really interesting point about that data cleansing. Are any tips for people that are getting 10 phone numbers and need to start honing that in? Is it just about going to what the consumer provided originally? Because phone numbers change less often than email addresses, for example.

Mark Reinhard (18:59)
Yeah, this is a big one where it's really about your client working with your client. Your client may just send you over stuff and if they've got more data than they're sending you, like where, I need to know where this phone number originated or how you got it. ⁓ and was consent given at the time? Now, I say when consent was given at the time, it's talk to your compliance department over whether you need consent to send that first text messages.

Adam Parks (19:04)
Okay.

Mark Reinhard (19:25)
for the most part, you can message, just got to be careful what you're sending. Obviously if you have like explicit consent, it's always good, but remember we're an agency, like no one ever has explicit consent. The first message you can't get consent before you communicate with someone. So do you have pass through consent? was did the client have wording in their contract that said it's okay for us to pass this through a lot of this starts earlier on in the game.

Adam Parks (19:41)
Yeah.

Mark Reinhard (19:51)
Keep that in mind. If you want to text message more, think from the bottom and talk to your clients because the earlier they get you the data you need or the earlier they change the wording in their paperwork that's going to come to you and determine whether or not you can text that message, the better off you are. So if they do have data, but they're not sending it to you, get that data as well.

Adam Parks (20:12)
Okay, so as we think about the communication channels for debt collection, we've got phone calls is still number one, emails quickly got up there and I think that was due to lower barrier to entry than sending text messages and now more organizations are moving towards text messaging but nowhere near 100 % penetration in terms of those out bounds. So for those groups that have not started going down this path yet, what's the first step in the journey of a thousand?

Mark Reinhard (20:38)
would say the first step, you're very, very conservative and you're not quite sure if you want to do it, start getting consent. We build portals, so we talk about it all the time. Put options in there when someone's making a payment. Please give us your text number, and then send them a, you know, thanks for your payment. We get those all the time. You're starting the process. That person gets the text messages, you're utilizing it. And then if they set up post-dates or some sort of scheduled payments and there's a problem down the road,

Adam Parks (20:46)
Okay. So you

Mark Reinhard (21:06)
you can also text them back. So you don't need to do mass texting right off the bat. Get started. And we tell people about emails as well. Get started sending messages to people you're already doing business with. That's the safest way to do it because of compliance is the concern. Start off doing it safely

Adam Parks (21:06)
don't need to do mass testing right off the bat, get started. I mean, you can tell me about emails as well. Get started in sending messages to people you're already doing business with. That's the safest way to do it, because if the client is concerned, start off doing it safely.

Mark Reinhard (21:27)
with. I mean, I hate to use the word safely, so I want to back that up. less, you know, if you're worried about.

Adam Parks (21:32)
Mitigating risk.

Mark Reinhard (21:34)
Yeah, you're mitigating risk. There's risk in everything we do. It's truly a risk mitigation. then also talk to your other agencies. If you're not sending messages and the 10 agencies down the street from you are sending messages, why aren't you doing it? Ask them, are they having problems? And, you know, knock on wood, we do not hear a lot of problems resulting from text messages. But that's partially due to the carriers having these rules. Like you can't

Mark Reinhard (22:00)
send certain things. You have to be approved. Your phone number has to be approved. Your brand has to be approved. You have to identify yourself, provide all your, you know, your federal identification numbers when you apply for this. You are not a business out of nowhere. And it takes a little bit of time to get approved to send this number, but that means something. It means not everyone's getting it and that's helpful to you.

Adam Parks (22:14)
So how does the cost structure differentiate between sending SMS versus MMS versus RCS? And I'm not asking for specific pricing because I realize like how specific pricing is based on volumes, et cetera. But I'm just trying to understand like how different is it and do we need to bake in different messaging protocols within our strategy? Meaning like the first message from that number might want to be a, you know, an RCS with as much brand verification as we can, but based on cost, may want to trickle that down. So how different are the cost structures?

Mark Reinhard (22:56)
Yeah, that's a point. So you've got long code, which is usually a 10-digit number. They're significantly cheaper than short code. Short codes, you're paying a monthly fee just to have your short code because you're registered and whatnot. They're generally a little bit more expensive, but they're like we said before, the penetration on that is significantly higher or noticeably higher. And you will be able to do more in debt collection. So the carriers are not have not necessarily said you can

Mark Reinhard (23:22)
do debt collection or you can't do debt collection. Well, not all of them. Some have actually said you can't do debt collection on our networks. And I know it is weird. The same ones that we're collecting for, but.

Adam Parks (23:30)
So weird to me. I was going say, I'm pretty sure I see them at conferences, but here we go.

Mark Reinhard (23:37)
And you know what happens? Yeah. With that is you can do customer service, but not that collection on some of them. And so, yes, we all fly under the radar at some times, you know, but when you register, there's no option for a short, for a long code to say, we're doing debt collection. We say we're doing customer service. And that's because it's the only option there for short code. You can say, this is who we are. This is what we do. And you're telling us to the carriers in your application process.

Mark Reinhard (24:06)
So they accept that debt collection is a registered category to be used for shortcode. So like I said, that is why you provide that information. It helps you, it helps the delivery rates because you're not, you're not picking something that's mostly right or the best option. It's very clear, it's transparent and it's allowed.

Adam Parks (24:12)
Interesting. And so when we think about that cost structure, do you see a differentiation in strategic opportunities to leverage the different protocols?

Mark Reinhard (24:35)
The protocols, yes, but I would say, like I said, RCS is highly underutilized. So let's talk, let's have this conversation again in six months or a year. And I want to see like what the, acceptance rate is because we're talking before about how you can put links in it and like buttons in it and put how many times have you gotten messages where you can do that from anyone? Very rare. It exists. Right.

Adam Parks (24:56)
Very rarely do I see any kind of interactivity in the text messages I receive.

Mark Reinhard (25:02)
This is not an example of our industry being behind. It's a lot of industries not utilizing it yet. So our guess is, but I'm telling you, it's going to be, like I said, another year. wonder where we're at. We're like, what was SMS? Remember those days? Maybe.

Adam Parks (25:06)
Agreed. Is there any difference in the effort level in which to send an MMS versus an RCS? Are we just talking about a button click here? Like, how different is it really from a mechanism standpoint?

Mark Reinhard (25:22)
I don't think so. It's really handled by the technology. Just like when you send a text or you send an image from your phone, you as the user not doing anything different.

Adam Parks (25:33)
It's a campaign, like as you're building the campaign, it's most likely gonna be a drop down to make that selection as to which is which. And if you were to try and do RCS in mass, would you even know which ones were not able to go through because the recipient was not capable of receiving the RCS?

Mark Reinhard (25:40)
Yeah. you will get, I'm not completely familiar with all of the information you get, but the end goal of RCS is to provide you with much more information ⁓ because delivery rates are still kind of the standard metric now. So it's coming along.

Adam Parks (25:58)
Okay. Well, it's interesting now how different is your content strategy through the different protocols? Yeah, we're talking about like 160 to 1600 characters going from SMS to MMS, and I'm not even sure that there is a limitation, at least from what I'm seeing on RCS itself. But how different is I know you talked about model validations and things of that nature. You know, is that still part of your content? outbound strategy from a MMS perspective and do you think that'll change in RCS?

Mark Reinhard (26:37)
Yeah. I think it will change, but what won't change is the main objective of messages have to be short. Number one, I don't care what technology comes out that lets you send a book to someone. It's not going to help you. Right. And really this is about like user experience. Like what is going to make the user or the consumer get the message and respond in some way to it.

Adam Parks (26:45)
It's not gonna get red, yeah.

Mark Reinhard (27:03)
but you've got to have a short direct message. And you can do that through SMS. You can do that through MMS. Generally the biggest thing that we see through MMS right now is, is document delivery. So if you are sending them the model validation notice, there may be a PDF that's part of that MMS. So, know, John Doe, here's, this is so-and-so collection agency. Here's the information about your account. Please contact us. Something very simple like that. Typical use of MMS.

Mark Reinhard (27:32)
Another thing you can do with MMS that does it to kind of get up to where the branding is of RCS, you can send them contact cards. So, you know, you send a friend someone else's phone number and you get the contact card with it, you know, their name or phone number. You could send that over MMS too. So here's a, here's a great like one-off use for that. Your collector has a positive conversation with someone. They get off the call. by the way,

Adam Parks (27:40)
you

Mark Reinhard (27:57)
Do mind if I send you my contact information so you can have it in your phone? And then hit a button, it shoots that person a contact card. And when they have a question down the line or they need to contact you again, they've received a text message from you. It has your contact information and they just save it to their address book.

Adam Parks (28:13)
If you're lucky enough to have them save it to the address book, it should open you up through spam filters, iOS 26 issues, and all of the other things too. Like what a great opportunity.

Mark Reinhard (28:23)
Yeah. Oh yeah. You're absolutely right. I didn't think about that. So a hundred percent. But that comes down to where we've started at the beginning, like send to people who are already engaged with you. It's not always about just mass bulk sending, like build that trust, build that brand. And that happens from, you know, communicating with people the way they want to communicate. And that's through text messaging.

Adam Parks (28:28)
You Mark, you bring that full circle, we get back to my first original statement, which was building that digital trust. So I really do appreciate you coming on sharing all of these insights, not only about the mobile messaging platforms, but how to build that trust, how to get started actively sending text messages as a debt collector, and what that looks like for individuals and organizations.

I think we are gonna have to do a follow up on this. I don't know if it's six or 12 months as we start watching the adoption of RCS from a business perspective continue to increase. And you should expect to get some random text messages from me from different devices as I experiment and try and continue to learn more about this because I think this is closely tied to what the future of our industry looks like.

With that interactivity in my mind, I start thinking about all the different ways that you could authenticate pass keys and other things that could become part of, it's called that rich content delivery as we look at RCS and even what we've done as an industry with MMS. But thank you so much for sharing your insights today. I really do appreciate it.

Mark Reinhard (29:54)
Appreciate the time, good chat.

Adam Parks (29:57)
For those of you that are watching, if you have additional questions you'd to ask, can leave those in the comments on LinkedIn and YouTube and Mark and I will be responding to those. Or if you have additional topics you'd like to see us discuss or another rabbit hole you'd like to see us run down as it relates to technology and the debt collection industry, you can leave those in the comments as well. And I'll get Mark back here at least one more time to help me continue to create great content for a great industry. But thank you everybody for your time and attention today. We'll see you all again soon. Bye.

Mark Reinhard (30:22)
Thanks Adam, thanks everyone.