Community competes with a host of different types of services competing for space in your text inbox, from Attentive to Twilio to Zendesk. And many of the software platforms companies use to manage their customer relationships now have features that make texting easier.
But what sets Community apart is the dialogue that celebrities and brands have with their customers, who provide a wealth of information about themselves that the brand owns and is not shared with Community’s other customers.
Oseary was originally drawn to Community because of his role as a music manager, he said.
“I have no way of knowing who came to the concert tonight. There is no way I can speak to them once they leave the concert. I have no way of knowing who bought the album,” he said. “With Community, once they text the number, we now have a way to stay in touch directly. And that information is not owned by anyone other than the artist, talent or person building a business.”
Companies advertise a phone number that users text to sign up for updates. McDonald’s posted its number on a billboard in Times Square just this month. The service also allows brands to segment customers who sign up for texts, so if an artist has a concert in Atlanta, only people in Atlanta will get the texts.
Using text messages to connect with customers, for all its promises, poses unique challenges. Brands need to get their customers to sign up for messages, which is hard to do unless the brand is already well established. And customers may want to hear from fewer brands in their SMS inbox than in their email inbox.
“Unlike email, when you have to scroll to the bottom of the thing and click the link that says unsubscribe, you only have to write one word if you don’t like the text messages you receive finds: stop,” said Mr. Kutcher. (That’s news you can use.)
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Rupert Murdoch makes another deal. Fox News settled a last-minute defamation suit with Dominion Voting Systems for $788 billion. The deal allowed Murdoch and his firm’s executives to avoid testifying, but it also provided Staple Street, Dominion’s private equity owner, with a big payday after buying the company for $38 million in 2018. His son Lachlan, CEO of Fox Corporation, also this week settled a separate libel suit against an Australian publisher.
