In today’s time, it is a necessity for every business to find the best ways to engage with their audiences and influence decisions. As email inboxes become more saturated and social media marketing costs increase, more professionals turn to SlickText for a marketing and communications solution that people will read. “We help our customers do this by creating ways to automate one-on-one conversations through our direct integrations with business tools, such as Shopify, and our new Workflows feature that measures the sentiment of responses and helps automate a natural conversation,” says Matt Baglia, Founder and CEO of SlickText.  

SlickText is an example of “the American Dream.” It was founded in 2012 in a small apartment in New York state, and it has grown to what it is today— a multi-million-dollar business servicing the world’s top brands and largest companies. SlickText has always been a product-led company. This is a unique genetic makeup for technology companies these days as many start with sales and marketing and build a roadmap to meet customers’ needs. “SlickText placed the innovation and development of the platform first; it’s because of this we are now considered the leader in text messaging communications,” says Baglia. “In the early years, SlickText was recognized as an Innovator of the Year consistently and was honored and even recognized by the White House (we had a flag flown in our name) for our focus on innovation and development.” SlickText has since supported over 177,000 customers and has two headquarters in the United States.

The company’s text message marketing software doesn’t require its customers to have any coding knowledge or technological background. It takes no time at all to learn and implement. “Getting started is easy and convenient because you can use your computer or phone to access the platform,” adds Baglia. “Since we always incorporate customer feedback, we proudly have over 200 features to help our customers with even the most specific use cases. Plus, we integrate with many other business softwares. That, plus our focus on marketing automation, makes us cutting edge.”

Users can reserve a keyword— or text word, as the company calls it— that is easy for their customers to remember and that matches their brand. “You’ll have customers text this keyword to a short code, local number, or toll-free number, depending on your campaign goals,” explains Baglia. “There are some nuances to using a dedicated short code and we typically only recommend this extra expense to customers who need to send many, many text messages at one time. For most customers, a tollfree sending number works just fine when setting up and advertising a texting campaign.” 

“ SLICKTEXT HAS SUPPORTED OVER 177,000 CUSTOMERS AND HAS TWO HEADQUARTERS IN THE UNITED STATES ”

According to Baglia, there are many ways to start growing the texting list, but it all comes down to letting the audience know that the business is available through text messages. “You can do this by launching a text-to-win contest, advertising your text list on social media, including it in your emails and even creating fliers or posters for your brick-and-mortar locations,” he says. “When someone texts to join your list, you can automatically ask them specific questions to help seamlessly segment your list.” He adds, “This will automatically add new numbers to specific groups within your text list so that your marketing can be as specific as possible, which makes your conversations even more natural and valuable.” 

For example, Mission College—a public two-year community college located in the City of Santa Clara and the heart of Silicon Valley—needed to find a way to send alerts and reminders that all students would read and act upon to reduce the amount dropped for non-payment. They planned to nudge the student toward the goal of registering for a class, paying their bills, and hopefully one day graduating with a degree or certificate before coming back and telling their success story. The first semester, the college sent out one text blast with the help of the SlickText team. In subsequent semesters, the college began scheduling texts weekly, six weeks in advance of the payment deadline. They also expanded communication to include students who owed previous semesters to prevent student accounts from going to collections. They went from having a monthly SlickText plan to buying in bulk. It’s part of their communication plan now, where they let people know they owe money and could be dropped, and also, they can register for college, and they were there to help. 

According to Baglia, technology is changing the marketplace, and the company is always paying attention to this to help their customers navigate changes. “Our many integrations create a simple way for our customers to connect SlickText to almost any other business software on the market,” he explains. “Plus, we are constantly developing new features for our product to adapt to current technology. That’s why we’ve ensured that our customers can automate almost any text message campaign.” 

SlickText has only scratched the surface of its potential. They constantly see new applications of text messaging in a wide variety of industries— everything from education and corporate communications to retail and restaurant management. They plan on continuing to innovate, creating a feature-rich product for their customers. Without a doubt, SlickText has culminated into the pioneers of text message marketing communications and currently leads the marketplace. “It’s our customers who got us to this point. That’s why we focus all of our attention on serving our customers. Even though many new platforms are coming to the market, ours continues to outshine them because of our customer-first focus,” says the steadfast leader. “With the advantage of many years of development, we are confident that our platform is incredibly userfriendly and helps our customers get results. Just the fact that we have over 200 features is something that sets us apart from our competition, and each feature is designed with our customers in mind.”