Texting has a lot of things in common with Spider Man.
Both of them look great in Lycra. Both have been around a long time, but are cooler now than ever. And both of them are sticky – Spider Man sticks to walls and ceilings and personal tragedy, and texting sticks to everybody’s brains.
Also, they both have great powers.
Spider Man’s powers include Spidey Sense and flinging webs out of his wrists and superduper strength and agility and having perfectly pouty eyes that are reliable with the ladies.
Texting’s powers include being read 99% of the time, very close to the time they are sent, by every human on earth that has a cell phone, which is pretty much everybody. There have been more than 70,000 texts sent and received through RateNow just today, and you can bet that virtually every single one of them has been noticed. That’s power.
However, with all of these powers come great responsibility. For Spider Man, that includes hanging out on buildings looking for brutes and ne’er-do-wells and stopping bank robberies and other mafia-intensive activities. For texting, that includes delivering messages in the most reliable, trustworthy way without pissing people off.
You see, texts get read. They just do. A text gets sent, it gets read. Your phone dings or buzzes or lights up, you see the text. Period. Such is the power of texting.
But the last thing you or I or our benevolent overlords at AT&T or Verizon or Sprint want is our Messaging app to become our new email inbox, fraught with scammers and Canadian Pharmacy special offers and desperate requests for help from Nigerian princes and SPAM from who knows where crowding up our otherwise blissful existence. So, there are lots of rules and laws and safeguards in place to make sure texting offers its great power while always respecting its great responsibility.
AT&T and Verizon and Sprint and all the other carriers continue to become more and more effective and aggressive in combating SMS SPAM, and we continue to stay closely aware and prepared for the changes to laws and standards and best practices, to make sure we only provide the capability to send the right kinds of texts in the right way from the right people to the right people. Sending an unsolicited marketing text is stupid, and it’s disrespectful, and it also carries with it legal liability and penalties.
So, sending texts the right way includes using the responsibility of the opt-in. You see, of the over 70,000 texts that have been sent through RateNow today, every single one of them has been sent to a person who opted-in to receive that message. Industry statistics indicate that over 70% of consumers in the US want to communicate with their favorite brands via texting. People want to text with you. Giving them the ability to opt-in is how that gets started.
There are lots of ways for your people to opt-in to receive your messages, and when you start texting, we can help you figure out the methods that work best for you, but the point of what we’re talking about right now is that texting can dramatically enhance your relationships with your most loyal people, and that only happens after they consent to receive messages from you through the opt-in. And that was a really long sentence.
This is where Spider Man and texting are different. You see, Spider Man will totally intervene and protect a helpless old woman who is being harangued by a gang of hooligans, without the old lady’s consent. Texting, however, would totally honor the old lady’s right to request to receive that intervention. Which, as we think about it, would be pretty stupid.
So, Spider Man’s got it right with spider powers. And RateNow’s got it right with texting powers.
The responsibility of the opt-in opens the door to the power of texting. Put that on a graphic tee and give it away at a premiere.