[HN Gopher] Launch HN: Boostly (YC S22) - SMS marketing for rest...
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Launch HN: Boostly (YC S22) - SMS marketing for restaurants
Hey HN, we are Shane and Mikey, the co-founders of Boostly
(https://boostly.com). Boostly is a text marketing and feedback
system for restaurants that works seamlessly with their point of
sale, online ordering, and phone systems. Restaurants live or die
based on their ability to keep their customers coming back.
However, with the rise of the third party delivery platforms, which
charge 20%-35% commission on each transaction, restaurants are
afraid that many of their customers will stop ordering directly
from the restaurant (even if the restaurant can do their own
delivery), and wipe out their small profit margins. The delivery
platforms also maintain ownership of the customer data. They know
how valuable this is for marketing, whereas the typical restaurant
owner is focused on the food and service, as they should be--and
they miss out on being able to communicate directly with their
guest as a result. With so many restaurants hanging by a thread
these days, it's more important than ever that they be able to
market to their customers themselves, build relationships, and get
their customers to order through their most profitable channels.
Customer data is notoriously hard for restaurant owners to access
because it is scattered across different systems with various
challenges. Even if they access it, they don't have a way to manage
opt-in consent for texting. And of course, most restaurant owners
are non-technical and so none of this stuff is easy for them to
begin with. We help restaurants access their data, get people
opted-in to receive text marketing, and then put it all on
autopilot. All of this started when I (Shane) was running sales
for Jolt, a restaurant operations software company, and saw the
early stages of online ordering trends. Everyone was focused on the
transactions, while customer data was largely getting neglected.
Our insight was that this was leaving an incredible amount of
opportunity on the table--to turn online ordering into a marketing
tool for the restaurant, instead of just being an order taker.
Initially, we founded the company as an online ordering system with
a few marketing and feedback tools. We thought that the only way
for us to access the customer information would be to own the
transaction. We sold that online ordering system to StrideQ, and
through that experience we learned how to access customer data from
the restaurant's point of sale, online ordering, and other systems.
We've built Boostly's current tools to put that data to work for
the restaurant. Essentially, we work with the restaurant's point
of sale, online ordering, and phone systems to ask for opt-in
consent for the customer to receive marketing texts. For example,
when ordering online, someone could check a box to opt in to
receive marketing texts. Or when someone calls the store, one of
the prompts that they can select is to "Press 1 to join our text
club and get 10% off today's order." Once we have the customer's
permission, we put text marketing on autopilot for the restaurant,
so that they can send weekly offers, birthday deals, and other
reminders to their opted-in subscribers. We then track the usage so
that a restaurant knows exactly how much revenue they drove through
their text marketing campaigns. Additionally, we collect feedback
on the customer's experience and give an easy option to leave a
review or to give internal feedback to the restaurant that the
restaurant can use to resolve issues in real time and get the
customer to come back and re-order. I know some of this might
sound a bit spammy, by HN's demanding standards--one key thing we
help the restaurants understand is that it's in their interest not
to over-text their customers. We are scrupulously opt-in, focused
on asking politely for permission, and making sure that restaurants
set the right expectations for how many texts the customers should
expect. Here's a quick video that shows a bit about how it works:
https://youtu.be/nG2iSFCnP7Q There are a ton of SMS marketing
companies out there. Five things differentiate us and make us good
for restaurants in particular: (1) Ability to opt-in customers
through point of sale, online ordering, and phone systems; (2)
Fully automated experience; (3) ROI tracking; (4) Collect feedback
on the customer's experience with the ability to resolve issues in
real-time; (5) Giving customers an easy way to leave public
reviews, without them feeling pressured to do so. With your
typical text marketing system, the only way to join is to text a
keyword to a phone number. Also there is no automation, so as a
restaurant owner, I have to go in and schedule every text that I
want to go out. With Boostly, since we work with the restaurant's
existing systems, we can facilitate opt-ins in real-time without
customers having to text a keyword--for example we can ask them "Do
you want to join our text club and receive offers from us" at the
time that they order food. Also, it's completely automated (they
can set up 6+ offers and it automatically rotates through those
offers each week). Additionally, we collect feedback, encourage
reviews on Google, and are able to track exactly how much revenue
was generated through those offers (most texting services can't do
this). As far as reviews go, we give everyone the opportunity to
leave a review, including if they have a negative experience. What
we do is also give the ability to send internal feedback to the
restaurant, and then make it easy for the restaurant to respond and
hopefully resolve the issue. This is good for both the customer and
the restaurant, and we think it's a much nicer solution than trying
to just pump positive reviews or suppress negative ones. Most
restaurants want to know when something isn't right, and they
especially want to be able to fix the problem so that they can keep
you as a repeat customer. The review platforms make it hard to
initiate a direct conversation with the customer (especially if
you're not eating in the restaurant (i.e. takeout or delivery), so
in the end, nobody wins. Our pricing model is simple: we have a
pay-for-what-you-use approach. Restaurants pay $0.08 / SMS and an
additional $0.04 / MMS (includes a picture and/or more than 160
characters). We want to earn the restaurant's business every month,
so there aren't contracts, unless the restaurant decides to commit
to specific monthly texting volumes in exchange for a discount. We
have over 400 restaurants using our system so far. Running an
independent restaurant is getting harder and harder as non-
technical proprietors are getting squeezed by Big Delivery,
inflation, and staff shortages. We think that helping them build
better direct relationships with their customers, and getting that
relationship right for both sides, is one thing that can really
help here. We'd love to hear your feedback as well as to hear
about any experiences that you've personally had with text
marketing that you wish had been different. Many of us have been on
the receiving end of poorly executed SMS marketing campaigns, and
we are sure that we can learn from your experiences to continue to
help restaurants do it right for their customers! And if any of you
have experience in the restaurant business, we'd also love to hear
about your thoughts or experiences from that side. Looking forward
to the comments!
Author : shaneliammurphy
Score : 29 points
Date : 2022-09-01 13:00 UTC (10 hours ago)
| throwoutway wrote:
| My first reaction was "Geez. Please no" but I'm glad you are
| scrupulous about opt-in. But you also need to make it easy to
| opt-out and seriously-no more than one text per week from your
| platform. Just group 2-3 offers in one text because inevitably
| you'll be spamming 1-2 texts a day if I sign up for 10 places.
| shaneliammurphy wrote:
| I totally agree with you on not texting more than once per
| week. We coach our restaurants that over-texting is a huge turn
| off. Every text that goes out has the opt out instructions to
| "Reply STOP to opt out", so we let restaurant owners know that
| they need to be respectful to their audience, otherwise they
| burn a bridge.
| davewritescode wrote:
| In general, you have to be scrupulous about opt-in in regards
| to SMS.
|
| It only gets tricky when you want to have portability between
| SMS marketing vendors.
| dominotw wrote:
| > but I'm glad you are scrupulous about opt-in.
|
| There are laws against this unlike email.
| mikeylikey wrote:
| haha. Same. (Mikey here, technical founder )
|
| It's not uncommon for new restaurant customers to see quick
| results and want to start texting more than once a week.
| Fortunately, we
|
| a) know the short-sightedness in that b) have a white glove
| experience where we have tight control over what gets texted
| and how frequently. The system automation is literally
| constrained to a weekly texting pace
|
| Love the grouped offer suggestion. As a consumer that's more in
| line with my personal preferences. I think eventually this
| would be a nice feature in an effort to give the consumer power
| to customize their notification preferences.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > to ask for opt-in consent for the customer to receive marketing
| texts
|
| This is the one thing that might make it acceptable to me, but it
| also begs the question: Who is opting in to getting spammed?
| (Intentionally, I mean; I'm going to _assume_ you 're not using
| dark patterns to pull one over people while still claiming to be
| "opt-in")
| mikeylikey wrote:
| > Who is opting in to getting spammed?
|
| Generally they're opting in to save money and get good deals at
| their favorite eating establishments. For some, getting this
| via text is a preferred method and less friction than
| downloading an app or alternative medium.
|
| > I'm going to assume you're not using dark patterns to pull
| one over people while still claiming to be "opt-in"
|
| these wouldn't hold up very well in a lawsuit even if you
| wanted to do this
| tmpz22 wrote:
| > we can ask them "Do you want to join our text club and receive
| offers from us" at the time that they order food
|
| So let me understand this.
|
| * I order food through a self-serve PoS or website, or
| cashier/waiter, whatever
|
| * Presumably the interface collects my phone number - potentially
| a checkout process which previously did NOT collect my phone
| number
|
| * Immediately after I receive a text from you, a third party that
| I may never have heard of, not attached to the restaurant, and
| this text asks me to opt into marketing for the restaurant I just
| ordered from
|
| Questions:
|
| 1. In the initial SMS will you identify yourself as a third party
| not affiliated with the restaurant?
|
| 2. How do you plan to identify and report success metrics for
| your customers marketing campaigns? Tracking links in the SMS
| that mark as conversions when clicked?
|
| 3. If your company succeeds and you get a whole bunch of big
| chains to do this, how will the average dining experience change
| for a customer of the restaurants you partner with?
| mikeylikey wrote:
| Well-structured line of questions. Thanks!
|
| Clarification question for you to help me answer:
|
| Why are you asserting we aren't "attached to" or "affiliated"
| with the restaurant?
|
| Maybe there is a misunderstanding of the relationship here.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| Communication is influenced by the relationship between the
| communicating parties. In marketing a lot of effort is spent
| to establish familiar and trusting relationships as a
| sustainable brand because that leads to higher conversion
| rates.
|
| As a customer I do not equate the Boostly brand/notifications
| to the restaurant I plan to visit. Even if they sign a
| contract giving you the right to use their name and branding,
| I don't want a friendly text saying "Hi its Milagros bar and
| grill, would you be interested in receiving updates on our
| latest dishes?".
|
| In short, I will not attribute good will owed as a patron to
| the restaurant to the marketing service making my phone buzz.
| It will be an adversarial relationship from the beginning
| that unfortunately would effect my opinion of the underlying
| restaurant. The rest of my questions are built around
| understanding the rest of the experience, once we get over
| that uncomfortable hurdle.
| I_dev_outdoors wrote:
| What about a flow that works like, "Please enter your phone
| number to leave feedback about your service today and we'll
| send you a free gift for your next visit."
| bierjunge wrote:
| Can you please explain why are you faking the signup popups? They
| repeat every few minutes with the same names and cities (e.g. I
| saw the popup for "Sg from Hamden, Conneticut signed up for
| Boostly" at least 3 times now). This looks very sketchy to me.
|
| And a second, more technical question. Why are you loading "font-
| awesome.min.css" (Cloudflare) and the IBM Plex font
| (font.google.com) every time you show the popup?
| mikeylikey wrote:
| (Technical founder here)
|
| Pretty boring answer here: Shane (non-technical) was left to
| put together the website and I think he just picked a wix
| template that happens to do this.
|
| We are b2b and a majority of interactions with customers take
| place over the phone, including signing up to be a customer.
| The website, up to this point, has relatively little utility
| compared to other company websites. We've prioritized placing
| technical time and energy on the actual product. We did have a
| designer spend an hour on making it look better than it use to
| though.
| bierjunge wrote:
| Thanks for the answer. I'm no webdev, but deleting this line
| will fix it.
|
| <script> (function(w,n) { if (typeof(w[n]) == 'undefined'){ob
| =n+'Obj';w[ob]=[];w[n]=function(){w[ob].push(arguments);};
| d=document.createElement('script');d.type =
| 'text/javascript';d.async=1;
| d.src='https://s3.amazonaws.com/provely-
| public/w/provely-2.0.js';x=...} })(window, 'provelys', '');
| provelys('config', 'baseUrl', 'app.provely.io');
| provelys('config', 'https', 1); provelys('data',
| 'campaignId', '6555'); provelys('config', 'widget', 1);
| </script>
|
| If a guy like me, without any experience in JS can find it in
| less than a minute, it shouldn't be a problem for you to fix
| it.
| mikeylikey wrote:
| You keep up the good work here and you'll have to add
| "webdev" to your linked in before long
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| Fantastic. All I needed was some more texts/SMSs from restaurants
| I visit.
|
| Good luck to you guys, but I hope you'll find a way to make this
| less annoying than I expect it to be.
|
| And please allow for a simple general opt-out.
| codegeek wrote:
| You are getting hammered by the HN crowd here but there is merit
| to stuff like this. I will tell you what I do want as a customer:
|
| - Ask me to opt-in but only the 3rd or more time I am ordering
| from the same restaurant. Asking me to opt-in right away will
| seem more spammy. If I am coming to a restaurant for the 3rd
| time, I probably like the food and will be open to receiving some
| marketing stuff if it helps me as well
|
| - Send me targeted messages and not generic. For example, lets
| say I frequently order "General Tso's Chicken", perhaps send me
| an offer that mentions it. I would be more inclined to act.
|
| - Do not over text/SMS. You mentioned this already but cannot be
| understated. Thi is where you have to teach the restaurants. I
| would even say put technical limits ( a restaurant cannot SMS
| same customer more than 2 times a month etc) even though you
| charge by the SMS. It is in your long term interest that
| customers are not turned off by too many messages.
|
| - Make it a bit fun and not all marketing/money. Send me
| interesting stuff on the food I just ate (may be how it was made
| etc).
|
| - Coupons would be awesome if I haven't visited for a while and
| it could get me to order my fav. food again.
| shaneliammurphy wrote:
| These are great suggestions! I especially love the thought of
| going the extra mile to make it relevant to you as an
| individual. I like the idea of eventually allowing the
| individual consumer to set the limits on what they receive,
| such as frequency, type of content, etc. (For example, I only
| want to receive messages about events happening at this
| restaurant and no more than 2x per month.)
| codegeek wrote:
| Np. Even though I have never worked or owned a restaurant
| myself, I did have a stint as a Cafeteria worker in college
| and since then, my respect for food industry and workers in
| general has gone up by a lot. Anything to help them make more
| money, I am up for it.
| tlogan wrote:
| The biggest problem when running restaurants is staffing. The
| biggest. When owner fixes that (you have good chefs, waiters,
| bartenders, etc.) quality improves and customers just come back.
|
| I know a few friends running and owning restaurants. Nobody would
| have time to work with anything related to sms marketing.
|
| But let's see if this will work: I saw a couple companies come
| and go doing this.
| mikeylikey wrote:
| oh man yeah if we had a dollar for every time an owner passed
| on "more orders" because they didn't have the staff to handle
| more... we'd have another compelling revenue stream.
|
| > Nobody would have time to work with anything related to sms
| marketing
|
| That's actually one of the value propositions: we know you
| don't have time so let us do it for you. Just sit back and see
| the results
|
| > But let's see if this will work
|
| The famous first words. So far we've been pleasantly surprised
| to see it does. I guess we'll find out to what degree and how
| far we still have to "go"
| chasebank wrote:
| I'm genuinely curious why yc would fund this. They already have
| fivestars in their portfolio that does the same thing from the
| yc11' batch.
| eaglehead wrote:
| Fivestars got
| acquired..https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/13/european-point-of-
| sale-pro...
| smt88 wrote:
| Consider this:
|
| No consumer wants these messages. I understand why restaurants
| need them and why they are profitable, but actually recipients
| will be irritated (even though they "opted in").
|
| My concern is that these will turn SMS, one of the last (mostly)
| clean communication channels, into another cesspit like email and
| the web have become.
|
| I'm not asking what you're doing to prevent that because you
| can't build this into a successful company without moving the
| needle in that direction.
|
| I just want you to question why you're doing this and whether
| your business is creating a world you actually want to live in.
| To me and everyone who isn't profiting from it, it's pollution of
| our personal lives.
|
| (Unrelated: I started a company years ago with restaurants as
| customers. They are by far the worst people I've ever had as
| clients, if you could even sell to them. It's basically
| impossible to build a profitable software business with
| restaurants as customers -- even "Big Delivery" is unprofitable).
| mikeylikey wrote:
| I appreciate the way you framed this.
|
| > No consumer wants these messages.
|
| While I personally resonate with this sentiment, it's not
| accurate in my (very skeptical) experience. "many" consumers?
| "most" consumers? maybe. but I'd be slow to underestimate the
| size of the market here.
|
| > My concern is that these will turn SMS, one of the last
| (mostly) clean communication channels, into another cesspit
| like email and the web have become
|
| Valid and well articulated. I don't have a great response on
| the broad concern (we've demonstrated as a society/culture why
| we can't always have nice things; e.g. robocalls) beyond
| knowing the degree to which this medium gets regulated by the
| big 4 utility companies (and government). They are quite
| sensitive to their customer's (and constituent's) preferences
| to not have this personal space invaded. As for boostly, I
| think it will only shoot ourselves in the foot to overstep (or
| even get close to) these important boundaries.
|
| > They are by far the worst people I've ever had as clients, if
| you could even sell to them
|
| Certainly not the easiest lot. We do view the ability to sell
| to them and meet needs as a competitive advantage of sorts.
|
| Thanks for your informed feedback!
| smt88 wrote:
| > _While I personally resonate with this sentiment, it 's not
| accurate in my (very skeptical) experience._
|
| So you want these messages? You're happy to see them?
|
| Even if there are a few people who want these messages, I'm
| going to wager that you'll only be profitable if you're
| messaging a lot of people who don't (and accidentally agreed
| to get them).
|
| > _" many" consumers? "most" consumers? maybe. but I'd be
| slow to underestimate the size of the market here._
|
| Your market is restaurants, and the market is certainly huge.
|
| > _As for boostly, I think it will only shoot ourselves in
| the foot to overstep (or even get close to) these important
| boundaries._
|
| Depending on how much VC money you've taken or will take in
| the future, you won't have this choice. Your investors will
| demand growth, and the only way to get it will be to creep
| further and further out of your comfort zone. Marketing
| automation is full of dark patterns. The only company I know
| of that never really implemented them was MailChimp, and
| MailChimp also uniquely never raised capital.
| mikeylikey wrote:
| I think there may be a false premise here. You seem to be
| framing this as medium objection: That "no consumer" wants
| text messages. Texting is really just an implementation
| detail here. Many people _want_ to save money and receive
| special deals for their favorite eating establishment. Many
| would prefer receiving these offers in the form of an
| ephemeral text message vs. downloading another app, for
| example.
|
| In this context: yeah, I want these messages and am even
| sometimes happy to see them.
|
| Ultimately (and this was my paradigm shift), it appears
| markets are far more diverse than I gave credit to and my
| personal preferences can't be applied as generally as I
| previously assumed.
|
| > Your market is restaurants, and the market is certainly
| huge.
|
| The market I was referring to, in this context, was people
| who would happily receive texts from restaurants if it
| meant they saved money.
|
| > Depending on how much VC money you've taken or will take
| in the future, you won't have this choice. Your investors
| will demand growth
|
| Valid point and concern(s). Can never really underestimate
| the power of these incentive dynamics and would be foolish
| to suggest we might be immune to them. FWIW we are
| bootstrapped outside YC participation to this point.
| Appreciate your reference to MailChimp. I'll look to take
| note on some of their practices.
| bombcar wrote:
| Special deals are the way to go _and_ make them rare
| enough that they feel special.
|
| Otherwise, the big old "stop texting me" button is going
| to come into play.
|
| I like the local businesses that send coupons via email,
| those are nice.
| nickphx wrote:
| That's quite the markup on per message costs.
| bmismyname wrote:
| This is why I use a fake phone number when I'm forced to provide
| one, especially when ordering stuff off the internet. Good luck
| with your business, but I don't want to be in your database. It's
| quite annoying how every retail establishment tries to onboard
| you into their data harvesting scheme with their "points" and
| "rewards". No thanks, if I have to pay extra I'll do that. Phone
| numbers are terrible in particular because they are PII and can
| be used to link various data sources together to "enrich" them
| when selling that data to the brokers.
|
| I do miss the days when you could just go through life not
| feeling like an NPC in someone's scheme to extract money from
| your pockets.
| samch wrote:
| I can summarize my SMS marketing experiences in one word:
|
| stop
| shaneliammurphy wrote:
| That's precisely why opt-in practices need to be observed. If
| you don't want to be in the club, you shouldn't receive texts
| and you should be pestered to join. If you did join and then
| you decided later that you don't want to be in, simply replying
| "stop" will remove you from the program. We actually include
| those opt-out instruction on every text, because it should be
| easy to know how to leave if you don't want to continue to
| receive those texts.
|
| But if you really like a place and want discounts to them, this
| could be a good option.
| mikeylikey wrote:
| I see what you did there
| cjbconnor wrote:
| Unfortunately, this sort of thing is a big turn-off for me. The
| thing that keeps me coming back to a restaurant is the quality of
| the food, not their marketing. What I've experienced is that as
| the quality of the food goes down, the number of marketing
| notifications goes up. I've gotten an email from chipotle every
| 2-3 days for the last month, but the last time I went there the
| food was terrible.
|
| Also, your privacy policy isn't very confidence-inspiring.
| Sharing name, phone, and physical location with third parties
| shouldn't happen. I'd never use your services for that reason
| alone.
|
| I wish you the best of luck, but I can't say your services are
| for me.
| pluc wrote:
| You could say the same about virtually all marketing. A product
| should let its product speak. Marketing is the art of shoving a
| sub-par product down users throats despite better alternatives
| existing.
| shaneliammurphy wrote:
| Totally - a product has to be great. With that said, getting
| feedback from your customers is also vital to making real
| improvements in the product and many restaurants are blind to
| what their customers think. Not everyone is comfortable
| telling someone that their food isn't great, or that there
| was a service issue, and we've been able to provide a more
| comfortable way to give that feedback, which leads to real
| improvements.
|
| I also believe that there is a difference between marketing
| something to new customers that they might not want and what
| we do here. The only people who will raise their hand to join
| a text club are the actual fans who like the place and the
| product. Then this serves as a rewards mechanism to provide
| additional deals and incentives to continue to purchase more.
| This is retention marketing--not new customer acquisition.
| shaneliammurphy wrote:
| I hear you on the importance of food quality. If you don't have
| good food or service, no amount of marketing is going to save
| you. I also think that there is a fine line that you don't want
| to cross when it comes to the number of marketing messages that
| you send to customers. Every 2-3 days would annoy me personally
| as a consumer too. Anything more than once per week is way too
| much for such a direct channel
|
| Since this is an opt-in program, only the people who really
| want to receive texts from a particular restaurant will
| participate. If that's not you, that's totally fine. Either
| way, we appreciate you sharing your thoughts!
| [deleted]
| stevekemp wrote:
| I went to visit a doctor recently, and booked the appointment
| online. As a result of that I received:
|
| - An SMS confirming my appointment.
|
| - An SMS the day before reminding me of the appointment.
|
| - An SMS the morning of the appointment inviting me to checkin.
|
| - An SMS after I left asking me about my experience on a scale
| of 1-5.
|
| That's four SMSs relating to one appointment/visit. The moment
| I read this post I could just imagine a similar situation - I
| make a reservation online for a table, and I'll get spammed
| indefinitely about offers, and invitations to leave a review.
| zbjornson wrote:
| Medical appointment reminders and other medical
| communications have a special cutout in the TCPA, including
| reduced consent requirements. They annoy me too though;
| they're redundant with my calendar reminders. The feedback
| SMS might not be included in the exception either.
|
| https://blog.curogram.com/what-are-tcpa-and-traced-act-
| and-h...
| shaneliammurphy wrote:
| You're correct. The TCPA's opt-in requirements are specific
| to ongoing marketing related texts and treat
| "transactional" texts differently.
| TylerE wrote:
| This sort of thing can be done really well.
|
| One specialist I've had to go to frequently has a very good
| system.
|
| An SMS 3 days before as a reminder. Another the day of, which
| you reply to to check in.
|
| When they're ready for you, they text back, and you go in,
| and the nurse meets you at the door. (Even ignoring Covid,
| I'd much rather wait in my car, my with choice of tunes
| cranked, etc).
|
| That's all good in and of itself.
|
| What makes it really good is that someone human _actually
| reads those messages_ and dispatches them as appropriate. So
| whenever I 've had a billing question, need a refill, have a
| question for my doc whatever... I just text that number, and
| if it's during normal business hours I usually get a response
| back within 5-10 minutes. (And _actual_ response, not "You
| are very important to us, we will return your call within 48
| hours")
| mikeylikey wrote:
| One of the greatest conveniences of my life has been my
| dentist utilizing texting and text reminders
| bombcar wrote:
| What'd I'd _love_ for dentists and various things like
| that to offer is "waitlist" - where I can say "look, I'm
| available the next cancellation that appears, and I can
| be at the office in 15 minutes".
| fasteo wrote:
| For a reason. Patient no-show is a _huge_ cost for doctors;
| it can get as high as 50% in some cases.
|
| They will do anything to fight this. And I am mostly at their
| side in this particular issue.
| codegeek wrote:
| Except possibly the rating SMS, why is this a bad thing ?
| Doctors have the problem of no shows and it is good to send
| reminders. I personally don't mind receiving reminders for
| something I have agreed to. I wouldn't call a Doctor reminder
| SMS spam.
| mikeylikey wrote:
| A hacker after my own heart (Mikey here, Technical founder ).
| Thanks for you diplomatic critiques.
|
| This was/is the sentiment of myself and a majority of our
| developers from a consumer standpoint. It's a curious
| experience being your product's chief skeptic. It's also been
| interesting to observe the number of consumers eager to
| participate, along with the degree to which it works on behalf
| of our restaurant customers. A few months ago my skepticism
| decreased when one of my favorite local pizza joints became a
| customer and I found myself ordering a lot more with them
| despite my aversion to being "marketed to". Fortunately, food
| quality appears steady so far .
|
| One of the things I look forward to with more bandwidth and
| runway is to craft the product in a way that may even appeal to
| the segment of the market that shares our preferences. In the
| meantime, thanks for taking time to share your perspective.
| aml183 wrote:
| Marketing works plain and simple. The people who think they
| aren't affected by marketing are the very people it works on.
| Nobody wants to admit that marketing affects them which makes
| product development so difficult.
| criddell wrote:
| It sounds very strange to start a company to do something you
| don't initially believe in (although it sounds like you are a
| believer now). If it wasn't about creating something you
| wanted to exist, what was it that drove you to create
| Boostly?
|
| My guess: some combination of believing it could be a good
| business while helping restaurants.
|
| Now that you know it works, do you plan on expanding beyond
| restaurants? Wouldn't you like to send text messages from car
| dealers, record stores, dry cleaners, grocery stores,
| clothing stores, taxi and ride share companies, landscapers,
| HVAC service companies, dog walkers, barbers, book stores,
| home improvement stores, electronics retailers, and so on?
| You could have phones buzzing with commercial messages a
| dozen times a day!
| mikeylikey wrote:
| Aye. Yeah I was not "scratching my own itch" as we say.
| Shane has a background in restaurant sales and we started
| in the industry with an assumption that SMB restaurants
| were underutilizing their customer data. Your guess is
| accurate. The game as YC likes to say is "building stuff
| people want" and that's we attempted and eventually
| meandered into.
|
| Brick and Mortar retail is a big market with similar
| dynamics to restaurants. We do have non-restaurant
| customers already but believe there are advantages to
| carving out this niche. Some of the best customers who like
| us best are those that were texting with more generic
| companies prior.
| madelyn wrote:
| Hey, first impressions- this looks great! I work in the space and
| know that HN can be quite rough for sms marketing tools. Couple
| quick questions:
|
| How do you handle offer "staleness" if you're rotating through a
| set every so often? And additionally do you have tools that
| automatically remove unengaged numbers?
|
| Is the long term plan to offer Boostly to larger businesses or
| chains?
| shaneliammurphy wrote:
| Offer staleness is a very real thing! We generally encourage a
| restaurant to start with 6-12 offers, and then every 60-90
| days, we review how each offer is performing and optimize their
| rotations. That way things that aren't resonating get removed,
| and we can track the trends. We also encourage variety in the
| type of offers as well (i.e. you don't want to send a % off
| offer back to back). Generally, you want to refresh your offers
| on a regular cadence.
|
| Initially, this has been built for the SMB restaurant or the
| franchisee to do local marketing rather than large brand based
| marketing.
| lucky_cloud wrote:
| > any experiences that you've personally had with text marketing
| that you wish had been different
|
| I wish I'd never received one single marketing text or
| notification ever in my entire life. I wish I could purge the
| entire world of such things.
| shaneliammurphy wrote:
| Did you originally opt-in to receive the texts that you're
| referencing? If not, that would be incredibly annoying (not to
| mention that the government frowns on that). I've received spam
| texts in my time (soooo many "UPS package" scams), and those
| have left a bad taste in my mouth. That's why we've taken the
| approach of "expressly opt-in" and "easy to opt-out."
| dominotw wrote:
| I would love for a list of restaurants that i can trust to
|
| 1. actually cook food ( most don't??)
|
| 2. Don't use chef Mike ( no fresh frozen)
|
| 3. Don't use harmful oils and ingredients
|
| 4. Offer basic menu with 10-15 items, nothing weird.
|
| Where can i find a such a 'no kitchen nightmares' restaurant list
| near me.
| coconut_t1 wrote:
| Interesting take. Opt-in def the way to go about this.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| SMS pestering is anything but universally maligned?
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