Last August we wrote about Tagga, a new SMS service that made it easy for individuals to set up free interactive SMS campaigns. Since then the company has shifted gears, changing its business model to help larger marketing agencies (the sort with actual budgets) set up their campaigns. Now the company has closed a $400,000 funding round led by a number of independent investors out of the US, Canada, and the UK.
Tagga’s core service remains largely the same: pick out a shortcode (we’ll use ‘TECH’ for this example), and then invite people to send ‘TECH’ to 82442, Tagga’s special phone number. You decide what these vistors receive after opting in, with messages that can include things like an invitation to check out your website or an interactive poll.
Tagga’s intial business model was to append ads to the end of its outgoing messages. CEO Amielle Lake says that the company swapped models in November after finding that advertisers weren’t yet biting at the chance to appear at the end of the texts. What the company did notice, however, was that some of North America’s 30,000 advertising agencies needed a good way to manage SMS campaigns and had no idea how to do it.
Thus, the new Tagga Agency Platform was born. The company now helps marketing agencies create SMS-based campaigns, allowing them to schedule when they’d like their messages sent out, create voting campaigns, and build mobile websites. The service also takes care of any issues involved with carrier fees and device problems. Lake says that 12 advertising firms have signed up for the service, and that some US government representatives are building SMS campaigns as well.
This service appears cool and must interest a lot of Internet marketers! An Interactive SMS service will surely help the Advertisers know what the End-Users expect from them and What should they deliver!
And as expected many Advertisers are opting for it too!
This isn’t the first time this model was used. I remember reading about another SMS service that blasted your friends but I can’t remember the name. They tried the same advertising model but it didn’t work. Last time I checked they were targeting businesses and educational institutions for mass SMS delivery (i.e. emergency services, etc.)
Ah, now I remember; it was Trumpia.com
I saw an ad on BART earlier for a campaign by LG asking people to txt ‘BART’ to 57895 for a free return-mailer to recycle old cell-phones.
Wonder if these two are connected…
or if they should’ve been!
Cool to see new SMS services – I’d imagine the degree of penetration is pretty high compared to iPhone apps =)
We have been using Tagga for the past 6 months and LOVE IT!
Extremely easy to set up, track stats, the support staff are quick to respond and the cost structure is easy to explain/justify to clients.
Thoroughly recommend TAGGA for agencies of all sizes!
I’m not really sure where the news is in this story? I mean, is this supposed to be the first SMS provider to work with ad agencies? Clearly this has been going on for years… great companies like Red Fish Media (www.redfishmedia.com) and the hugely awesome 3C Interactive (www.3cinteractive.com).
I’m not trying to be a smart-ass, I’m just failing to see why this is newsworthy.
I have been impressed how quickly this team reacted to a failing business model and moved in a direction that they saw traction. Kudos to the team for listening at what their customers and marketers were telling them.
It’s trully a recession when 400k funding makes it on TechCrunch!
Well said
WOW ..
In the second paragraph, you actually pick out a “keyword”. 82442 is the “shortcode”
an amazingly innovative solution… for 1991… i’m surprised anyone funded it.
sms marketing platforms for marketers are a dime-a-dozen. Just ask iloop, sumo, msgme, sponge, 5thfinger, air2web, ipsh!, vibes, mythum…….! goodness me I could just keep listing them all for hours.
the real value these days is helping marketers navigate the 1000’s of technologies they could put their marketing dollars into.
Patrick.
Hello Patrick,
I agree that there are many SMS platforms geared towards marketers out there and we’ve obviously tried many of them. We feel what sets us apart is our simplicity and ease of use. An average non technical agency employee can actually use our platform to set up and test a campaign in just a few minutes. They can then measure the effectiveness of their campaign with our live reporting and/or enhance their campaign using our mobile website builder or web2phone tools. Please contact us for a demo if you’d like to see how it works; we’d love to show it to you.
Thanks,
Chris
I agree with Chris. I have had the opportunity to check out the tool and any non-technical person could use it.
Patrick, your argument is similar to comparing an old IRC channel to Twitter. Sure it is not necessarily new or different, but who is using what these days?
Ah, now I understand, Patrick. Looks like you are a bit of a competitor
SMS campaigns can work for public interest ads.
You can do that with Twitter: http://bit.ly/Gp21L
Excellent article! I learnt something new and hope to test drive your ideas soon. Awesome article!!
Tagga is the most easy-to-use and comprehensive of the SMS platforms, as well as offers the most features. Get in there and play, and you’ll see why it’s newsworthy.
Grace, you should disclose your conflict of interest. Invoke Media is the sister company to Tagga and basically bankrolled the company. The CTO of Tagga is the CEO of Invoke. While perhaps you honestly do gush about the company, it’s hardly an unbiased opinion you’re sharing.