Every once in a while, we pull our heads up from the fray of running a two-person marketing agency, and wonder to ourselves, “what is X talking about?” Not like, in a rude way, like how our teenaged children say it, but seriously, out of curiosity, what are they talking about these days? In this new series, we’ll look at a new company’s website each week, and write around 200 words worth of our honest feedback about it.
Today we’re going to take a look at what Twilio, the publicly traded “cloud communications company” that used to be “the SMS people” and now do, well, a whole lot more. This came as a suggestion from a reader on Hacker News, so if you want to see us cover anyone next, let us know! As usual we’re going to evaluate they’re messaging by grabbing the H1, H2, and CTA above the fold, and attempt to ascertain, with no other context, what they’re talking about and why they’re talking about it.
Gartner names Twilio a Leader in CPaaS
The 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for CPaaS recognizes Twilio based on its completeness of vision and ability to execute.
And the CTA above the fold: Read the report
This headline and subheading were on the first in a series of five slides that rotate on a timer. Since we can’t talk about all five, we’ll just use the first as a proxy for all of them – because we can.
The first and most obvious thing that’s going on here is that there is a whole lot of jargon, copyrights, trademarks, and acronyms. If you’re looking for a “CPaaS” and you know what Gartner is, this probably speaks to you – and from there, we can deduce that Twilio’s targets are The Enterprise. After starting out as a messaging powerhouse and then expanding to consume various other tech companies via acquisition, Twilio has transformed from a “service” to a “solution.” The persona being targeted here does things like “Read the report,” not things like “download the Ruby Gem and try it out!”
So in that context, where the people you are trying to reach are the people who influence the people who influence the people to make buying decisions, and where being on the Magic Quadrant™ is an example of success, this messaging does its job in a satisfactory way. On the other hand, as tech companies age and struggle to stay relevant, stay profitable, stay top of mind, and basically, stay in business, perhaps a measure of style could have a whole lot of upside.