Hans Hegge, Director of Marketing, Text Ripple, Inc.
What is your business? Text Ripple offers Mobile Marketing via SMS Text Messaging. We work with businesses in the service and food industry, beauty and body salons, as well as online and offline retailers, non-profit organizations, and departments of government, to name a few.
Our service is used in a variety of ways; businesses can add customers to their “text club” by adding what we call a short code to their existing marketing campaigns. For example: Text: DEAL to: 411NOW. Once customers opt-in, the businesses can utilize our service to send whatever they want to their text club members via SMS Text Message – info on product sales, special text club-only offers, coupons, upcoming events, and so on.
Some organizations use our service in a very different way. Since we offer a system that allows companies to send single message to thousands of recipients, this is ideal for corporate messaging. Email is unreliable and difficult to manage while on the go. However, every phone in existence can receive a text message. Using Text Ripple simplifies the process by offering an online scheduler, so executives can be sure that messages will be delivered at the exact time their employees need them, when their customers want them and exactly where they need them: in the palm of their employee’s or customer’s hand.
Why did you start your business? The lack of reliable and instantaneous marketing inspired us to search for a better solution. Mobile Marketing is still in its infancy; after seeing the problems that the technology had, we gathered together the smartest people we knew and addressed each of the problems. We weren’t even sure if it was a problem with implementation or just a limitation of mobile technology itself. After some research and thousands of hours of coding, we absolutely had to go national, since Text Ripple is the only company that has the tools to make mobile marketing perform to its full potential.
How many people are in your organization? Text Ripple is continually growing. We have a core of 10 positions in the company, as well as numerous affiliates and interns. Every department is currently in the process of hiring more employees to keep up with the growing demand of Text Ripple.
What’s the toughest part of operating your business? Making sure our customers are knowledgeable about the product they are receiving and that they are receiving the highest quality service possible. We pride ourselves on great customers service- each one of our clients are assigned a personal account manger, allowing our clients to have a one-person contact, not just a call center.
Many potential clients do not recognize the difference between one mobile marketing company and another until it is too late; they find that they have signed a contract with a company that did not write its own software, and instead purchased it from a third party. This presents customers with a variety of problems.
The biggest problem is upgrades. Mobile marketing companies that purchase their texting software from a third-party cannot modify, upgrade, or customize their software, often by the agreement they signed during the purchasing process. Text Ripple offers a 100% original platform. There is not a single part of our operation that we did not research, create, and test ourselves. What this means is that, unlike third party software that may be updated once a year (if at all; many texting programs are not modified once they are initially built), our backend software is constantly being improved; it is 100% up-to-date 100% of the time.
Scalability is also an issue. Many of these third party applications do not work on large-scale projects. Unfortunately for the end user, these programs are developed in European non-English speaking countries like Denmark, Germany, and India. So they may be able to call their company for support, but the language barrier and the fact that they did not even code their system makes it a mountainous task to repair their system, if they can even do so. Fortunately, Text Ripple is infinitely scalable; we have tested our system beyond what would be considered “normal use” (Think beyond the 150K mark), and have never had a single issue with our system.
What’s the most fun part of operating your business? Helping others grow their business. We are entrepreneurs too; though we enjoy working with all of our clients, helping small and medium-sized businesses generate more traffic, more sales for their company really helps us feel accomplished and prideful of our company and service. Hearing from our customers that their sales have increased 60% since the previous quarter, or that our service is eight-times more effective in generating new and repeat customers than the last method of marketing they tried really motivates us to provide the best service possible. We don’t smile unless our clients smile first!
Is there anything you would have done differently? We would have offered frequent-flyer incentives to our employees last year instead of last month! Just kidding; we are very happy with what new features we have in the works, so no, we would’ve done everything exactly the same.
What advice do you have for others just starting their business? Prepare for the most intense work experience of your life; you will probably work 90 hours per week (like I still do), lose lots of sleep and often experience “all-nighters” (just like our Director of Technology), and possibly go gray in the process (ask the Head of Marketing). Keep in mind that through all the turmoil, prosperity comes. Thomas Edison worked over 100 hours in the final week before the deadline of the unveiling of his phonograph. This is the reason that he is the father of recorded sound. Ever hear of Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville? Of course not; he’s the inventor that could’ve taken the glory from Edison but slept-in instead of working until dawn. Never stop working as hard as you can or stop trying to do better than you did the day before.
What person has influenced your business the most and why? Anyone who has ever risked everything just to make something out of nothing. We take inspiration from our mothers and fathers who did everything in their power to make sure we had the tools for success. Most especially our clients who show us that good people that work hard will succeed perpetually inspire us to do the same.
Why do you consider your business to be an online success? Text Ripple has been a success for a number of reasons. Our biggest accomplishment is that we’ve done exactly what we imagined: we made the absolute best mobile marketing platform on the market. There are more reasons. We have not had a single complaint from one of our clients. In fact, our clients are more than happy to tell their business associates about us, which tells us a lot about the quality and performance of the service we provide. If our clients are as excited as we are about the service and the results, then that is my new definition of success.
Recommend one must visit website other than your own: Kind of referring back to a previous question, Entrepreneur.com is a great and free resource for those just starting out in their own business, as well as those who have been entrepreneurs for many years. Inc Magazine has been a big help also for similar reasons. One of our keys to success has been to never stop learning and observing. Sites like Entrepreneur.com (and of course Ebiz-Professionals!) should be in every entrepreneur’s favorites list.
How may our readers contact you?
Website: www.textripple.com
Email: hans@textripple.com
