Community Leverages Twilio for Authentic Two-Way Text Messaging at Scale

• Analytics & Modeling - Machine Learning
• Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Application Development Platforms

• Cement
• Telecommunications

• Sales & Marketing

Community, an SMS marketing platform, connects businesses, brands, and public figures to their audiences at scale. Since its founding in 2019, Community has experienced massive growth, favored by high-profile figures and businesses alike. The platform's mission is to enable its customer base, referred to as 'Leaders', to drive conversations that increase brand loyalty, build trust, and create impact. However, to achieve this, Community faced the challenge of navigating the complexities of text messaging at scale, which had reached more than 7 billion messages sent. They needed a communications partner that would help them reliably serve their customers’ needs. Prior SMS technologies such as P2P (person to person) couldn’t facilitate the necessary throughput and Community also experienced filtering and blocking.

Community is an SMS marketing platform that connects businesses, brands, political & public figures, creators, musicians, celebrities, and more, to their audiences at scale. The platform is favored by high-profile figures such as Justin Bieber and President Barack Obama as well as businesses such as McDonald’s, Williams Sonoma and Showtime. Community’s mission is to enable its customer base of “Leaders”—global pop culture stars, local community organizers, small business owners, brands, businesses and Fortune 500 companies—to drive conversations that increase brand loyalty, build trust, and create impact.

Twilio’s Programmable Messaging API and application-to-person 10-digit long codes (A2P 10DLC) became the solution to Community’s texting capabilities. Twilio’s SMS on A2P 10DLC overcame the drawbacks of prior SMS technologies and helped build a more authentic and engaging dialogue between Leaders and their audiences. This enabled Community’s platform to grow to 20 million active subscribers in just 10 months. With Twilio, Community was able to equip Leaders with a 10-digit phone number that their fans could text, and subsequently opt-in to receive messages, while providing some personal information. Messages from Leaders could then be deployed to all subscribers, or filtered to a subset of users based on provided customer data which could include age, location, or interests. Community's partnership with Twilio also allowed them to handle large scale messaging, such as when President Obama launched his first text messaging campaign with Community and received more than 300 thousand replies.

• The partnership with Twilio has allowed Community to create authentic connections between Leaders and their audiences. By equipping Leaders with a 10-digit phone number, fans can text and opt-in to receive messages, providing a more intimate channel of communication. This has led to increased brand loyalty, trust, and impact for the Leaders using the platform. Furthermore, the use of Twilio's technology has enabled Community to handle large scale messaging campaigns, ensuring reliable communication even at high volumes. As Community looks to expand internationally and develop new solutions for enterprise services, Twilio will remain a close partner, continuing to support the platform's growth and success.

• Community's platform grew to 20 million active subscribers in just 10 months.
• Community has sent more than 7 billion messages.
• Community handles large scale messaging campaigns, with one campaign receiving more than 300 thousand replies.