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Trext – Software that engages large groups in interactive texting

trext.me

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Re: Trext – Software that engages large groups in interactive texting

#71

Post by samstave »

leoedin wrote: post #63
samstave wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...a lot won't even scroll down past that line. It really sucks that this is being reinforced. I read the tag line and was like "ok" -- but then I watched the demo movie of setting up the ITTT text tree and thought it was pretty bad ass. People need to stop being lazy and actually expend a small amount of effort to understand something. Its a sad state that everyone expects every single piece of information spoon f…

Why should I (or anyone else) spend 5 minutes (or about 1/50 of my free time today) figuring out what someone's product does? I don't care about every web app. Most of them are entirely useless to me. The likelihood is, this one is as well. Is it really, actually, sad that everyone who clicks a link on Hacker News doesn't spend 5 minutes watching a video to figure out what a web app even does? I think we should celeb…

I'm willing to be you spent more time writing this response than it would have for you to have watched the demo vid that auto plays on their site had you just scrolled down.

You, appear to me, to have some sort of ingrained attitude against having patience and curiosity. I presume you're a type where you expect every post made to be backed up with links to information you'd be able to google yourself in under 30 seconds.

Re: Trext – Software that engages large groups in interactive texting

#72

Post by tonywebster »

hackerkira wrote: post #19
tonywebster wrote: post #14

I think this is an awesome idea, and the implementation of the conversation designer is beautifully simple (although it should support collapsing threads of conversation for complex interactions). At the risk of sounding a bit harsh, anyone dismissing SMS has their head too far up Silicon Valley. Only half of the adult population in the US has a smartphone, and SMS is the best communication method for low-income, rur…

Thanks for the feedback. We strongly believe in the accessibility of SMS. We're actually working on the collapsing threads feature. We'll make the free trial more evident. Our initial customers haven't objected to our pricing, maybe we're getting lucky. Why should we revise it?

If you already have customer feedback, I think you need to first assess whether the customers you have now make up a strong segment of the types of customers you'd like to continue converting. Hopefully you have data about how you acquired those customers, and the effort and cost involved with that acquisition and whether or not it's something you can replicate at scale. If it's what you want, then that trumps anything you'll hear on HN. :)

My thought, however, is that there's a long tail pricing strategy that's being missed. Your plans right now are $60, $175, and $500/mo, which I feel eliminates a lot of folks in the sub-$60/mo region. I'm not sure what the low number should be, but I'd rhetorically ask if you think six $10/mo customers are worth more than one $60/mo customer -- the answer in my mind is no. Building six relationships means that as those companies or groups grow, they'll grow into your bigger packages. As someone at one of those companies leaves their employment and moves to a new job, they'll insist on implementing your technology. They'll tell their friends and colleagues. If you lose one of those six customers, you still have $50/mo coming in. That becomes even more clear when you start thinking about 50 customers at $10/mo versus one $500/mo customer. (I'm not saying $10 is the right number)

I'd also argue that there's a difference between a trial and a free account. If I'm thinking of using this service for some business use case, I personally am not going to let my mind be creative about really thinking how your service can intertwine with my needs if it's just a trial account. I'm not going to invest my time into something ephemeral. But, if there's a free service that I can actually test with a customer and use for a few weeks without that ephemeral feeling, you're starting that relationship building early. Free accounts will absolutely cause you to lose money, which is why it takes testing and analysis to determine the right balance. But if you're actually charging $60/month to send 650 texts, you're already making a profit of 90% after SMS fees and card processing charges.

Re: Trext – Software that engages large groups in interactive texting

#73

Post by specialist »

austenallred wrote: post #25

Forgive me if I'm hyper-critical about the marketing. The first thing anyone sees about your company is: "Texting for education, health, advertising, and much more. Start the conversation." What does that even mean? I want to understand what your product does, and more importantly how it can help me. "education health, advertising and much more" are completely random use cases, and are confusing and distracting. This…

Agreed. This is a really neat idea with a compelling implementation.

But instead of trying to describe the service (tech), I'd choose a catchy name (textback, textpong, pongtext) and show by example. People will grok it once they see it.

Identify a handful of use cases. Hope that one hits the mark. Run like hell.

Here's some of the ways I could imagine people using it.

- My chiropractor, hairdresser, mechanic wants to confirm an appointment.

- My chiro, etc needs to cancel, resched, etc.

- I'm on a wait list for time sensitive goods like flights, concert tickets, restaurant reservations or close out of cupcakes and vendors needs to confirm transaction, first come first serve (first right of refusal) style.

- I have a periodic donation to my favorite charity (or campaign contribution) and they want to do another "ask" (for more money). I'd like to respond, something like "thanks for asking, here's $100, please ask again in 6 months".

- Real time ad hoc game shows. It's trivia night at the local pub. Send a text to the game host to join. (Hmmm. This is a great idea. Yours, for free.)

Any way. I'm sure there's zillions of use cases. And there's at least a few customers who will pay to scratch an itch.

Best of luck to the OP.

Re: Trext – Software that engages large groups in interactive texting

#74

Post by specialist »

samstave wrote: post #71
leoedin wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should I (or anyone else) spend 5 minutes (or about 1/50 of my free time today) figuring out what someone's product does? I don't care about every web app. Most of them are entirely useless to me. The likelihood is, this one is as well. Is it really, actually, sad that everyone who clicks a link on Hacker News doesn't spend 5 minutes watching a video to figure out what a web app even does? I think we should celeb…

I'm willing to be you spent more time writing this response than it would have for you to have watched the demo vid that auto plays on their site had you just scrolled down. You, appear to me, to have some sort of ingrained attitude against having patience and curiosity. I presume you're a type where you expect every post made to be backed up with links to information you'd be able to google yourself in under 30 seco…

some sort of ingrained attitude against having patience and curiosity

Please. You assume too much.

In an attention economy, our most precious resource is our time.

If someone wants my attention, they have to do the work. If I gave everything the attention it deserved, I'd never get anything done.

I only looked at trext (at all) because another commenter said the demo video was great (and it is).

Re: Trext – Software that engages large groups in interactive texting

#75

Post by TheMakeA »

zbush wrote: post #62

What's the name for this style of background? I've been looking for how to do it, but I have no idea what to even search for. I'm undecided as to whether it's nice or distracting and want to play with it a bit.

Do a search for parallax javascript libraries.

Re: Trext – Software that engages large groups in interactive texting

#76

Post by hackerkira »

BWStearns wrote: post #69
hackerkira wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a great idea. We're giving a first month free for the $60 plan but subsidizing it could get people hooked. Do you think we should offer a much larger plan (hypothetically would 100,000 texts for 4k/month be plausible?)

I don't know your cost structure/margins, so I really can't give a specific set of numbers in good faith. In my relatively limited experience in polling/interviewing large numbers of people (a couple projects) I have gotten the impression that my example of engaging 1000-2000ppl/month is unusual. The tools we used seem to have been geared towards 1-2000/day or more (inferred/back of envelope). This makes me think the…

We will make the first month free deal more obvious. I appreciate your feedback and honesty. Get in touch with us via email (on our site) and I'd love to chat more about your use cases.

Re: Trext – Software that engages large groups in interactive texting

#77

Post by zekenie »

sharmanaetor wrote: post #57

I just signed up. One suggestion. Improve the "Phonebook" feature. Entering one contact per line? No excel/csv import? And no way to bulk add contacts after a group has been created? Not fun when I need to add 2000 contacts.

Yes. You are right!

Re: Trext – Software that engages large groups in interactive texting

#78

Post by zekenie »

TheMakeA wrote: post #75
zbush wrote: post #62

What's the name for this style of background? I've been looking for how to do it, but I have no idea what to even search for. I'm undecided as to whether it's nice or distracting and want to play with it a bit.

Do a search for parallax javascript libraries.

But note that we're just using css

Re: Trext – Software that engages large groups in interactive texting

#79

Post by mwctahoe »

VLM wrote: post #52
dkrich wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These prices are why people don't use texting/sms anymore. Huh? I honestly don't know a single person (other than my parents) who don't use texting as their primary medium of communication between phones. It's easy, it's reliable, it removes the possibility of awkward or lengthy conversations. What makes you think nobody texts anymore?

Must be come cultural thing due to local network effect. My wife exclusively uses facebook on her phone as do all her friends. For two way conversations I exclusively talk on the phone.

my parents, aunts and uncles all usually call to talk or send emails, most of my friends gchat/text/tweet to communicate.
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