82ASK, the first mobile text-and-answer service to launch in the UK, recently re-branded as “Texperts” as part of a £1m marketing campaign.

“We found that the alphanumerics of the 82ASK short code didn’t really compute that well in the UK – about 40 per cent of people didn’t realise that the number to text was also the name,” explains CEO Sarah McVittie.

The Texperts service allows users to text a question to its team of research experts – “texperts” – who then text an answer back within five minutes at a cost of £1 for each answer.

McVittie says the decision to change the company’s name was also prompted by their research, which made it clear that “the human element” to their service was what was really important to their customers.

The name change better reflects this and distinguishes Texperts from other mobile search companies, which are largely automated services comprising a bunch of algorithms. “These tend to be viewed as novelty, gimmick services,” says McVittie.

The company recently raised more than £1.3m in funding from several private and institutional investors, a substantial part of which came from the hedge fund group Odey Asset Management through its Odey European Fund.

This funding is largely the source of the £1m marketing budget – a considerable hike for a company that has spent a mere £200,000 on marketing since it was founded in August 2003.

“We weren’t prepared to do any marketing until we had got to a certain stage: we had to know that the business made money, and we also had to know who our customers were and how we could make it the most useful service possible,” says McVittie.

“We got to that stage at the end of last year, which is when we decided we wanted to raise money with a view to marketing ourselves more aggressively.”

According to McVittie, a lot of the funds raised will also be spent on R&D and technical development. Texperts plans to roll out a considerable amount of technology over the next six months, enabling them to handle a greater volume of text questions.

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