Tatango Archive

I guess the people at group SMS service Tatango are loving the “Five…Five Dollar Footlong” commercial these days. Tatango has been testing a program with a 16-store Subway franchise in upstate New York over the past few months. The company says the program went so well that 300 more Subway stores in Seattle will be testing the SMS marketing option over the coming months.

Tatango provides a group SMS product – basically the idea is that companies can send out SMS messages to mass groups of people who have requested (opt-in) to be part of the group. You can think of group SMS similar to opt-in email marketing except with much shorter messages that are usually very targeted. Check out our video interview with Tatango CEO Derek Johnson to learn more about the company.

While financial terms were not disclosed, Tatango notes, “Over 5,000 customers have signed up, 13,000 messages have been sent, and most importantly – they have experienced a 9% redemption rate of all messages, as opposed to a 1% rate for direct mail.”

Earlier this year Subway partnered with NY-based GoMobo to allow customers to order food before they arrive to save time.

It’s interesting to see Subway testing a variety of new online options for reaching their customers. I can only imagine that Grimace and the King won’t be too far behind.

This afternoon at SXSW I caught up with Tatango CEO Derek Johnson. Tatango is a group SMS tool we first covered last summer when they launched the service. Tatango is similar to another group SMS service we covered, txt_blaster.

Check out my 2 minute video with Derek where he discusses Tatango, why bloggers are using it and how they plan to make money. He also discusses Tatango.TV which is their new 24×7 live video stream from their office.

Recently launched Tatango provides a one-to-many SMS text messaging service. Tatango reminds me of another startup, Chatterous. With the growing popularity of Twitter and its inability to target groups, services like Tatango and Chatterous could become acquisition targets. Tatango is perfect for getting help from your friends when you are out and about. It could also work well for work teams to make sure everyone is up-to-date on project and meeting status.

Here’s how it works. You setup your friends mobile phone numbers in Tatango, Then you create a message to send. Tatango then sends out the message via SMS to all members of your group.

Assuming they can handle the volume, Tatango could offer their service to companies wanting to provide SMS text alerts on product news and advertising. This method could be more effective than email marketing.

If you’d like an invite, we were able to grab some – just register here. Below is an overview of Tatango from founder Derek Johnson.