Hey Spectorians! Here's what you need to know this week.
📱 Big Telecom and SMS/Text Messages
We all get spam text messages. Along with robocalls, it's a huge problem. Shady marketers have discovered the amazing open rates of text messages and flocked to it. Big telecom (AT&T, T-Mobile, & Sprint) is taking steps to crack down on this. Unfortunately it will have repercussions to our lil' industry...
Like many software platforms, we allow you to send customized text messages. Your home buyers and agents love the reminders for the inspection and a notification when the report is ready.
If you're an Advanced user, you probably make a ton of money with automated upsells for your ancilliary services. You also might get more reviews by asking for it with a follow-up text. Sadly, the same texting services get abused by folks industry-wide by sending spammy texts.
Telecom companies are making a few changes this year which apply to every software company that sends text messages:
Requiring more traceability. They want to know who is responsible for originating text messages. This takes the form of company registration, sub-accounts, and custom numbers.
Charging more for text messaging that originate from software platforms.
Some of these sweeping changes are still developing. We're still rapidly learning about the specifics and evaluating our options, so nothing is for-sure yet. However, the unfortunate reality is texting is going to cost more in general. Just as mass emailing services have gone from free to pretty-pricey over the past couple decades, a few bad apples have added significant costs for texting infrastructure and policing.
We'll be conducting some surveys in the coming weeks to determine how much you value texting and text message customization, as well as your willingness to pay more for it. We have rarely increased prices for our software, even in this era of inflation, and we want to be sure any additional costs are still a good investment for growing your business. We'd appreciate if you'd take the time to respond once our surveys go out!
We'll keep you posted on any necessary changes for this. In the meantime, we don't anticipate any disruption to your current texting abilities for the next couple months at least. The telecom companies have been lenient with enforcement so far and are giving time for companies to adjust to the new normal. Stay tuned!
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