The challenge
Ty's audience lived on platforms he didn't control: YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. All of it was subject to algorithm changes, policy shifts, and the constant pressure to create content just to stay visible. He'd built a real following, but he didn't have an owned, direct channel and all of it could disappear overnight.
Email wasn't the answer either. He had a list of a few hundred thousand contacts, but open rates were declining, it was expensive to maintain, and the response just wasn't there. For a solo operator running a coaching business largely by himself, he needed a direct channel his audience would actually read - one he owned.
How he uses Community
Keywords for audience growth
Ty promotes his Community number across every channel he owns - his email signature, and social bios on Facebook, Instagram, X, and TikTok - so there's always a direct path for his audience to opt in. To grow his list, Ty uses Keywords tied to free value offers. Members text a keyword, receive a resource, and enter a follow-up flow that introduces his paid offer.
Segmenting by readiness, not just demographics
He segments by purchase readiness and keeps separate lists for current students, contacts who aren't in a position to buy, and personal connections. This keeps campaigns focused on the right window of potential buyers and reduces unnecessary sends.
Automated campaigns that feel personal
Ty structures his campaigns as mini-courses: a teaser message to hook attention, follow-up messages that deliver value, and a final message that drives toward his landing page. Using automated workflows, he sequences timed messages that feel like a one-to-one conversation rather than a broadcast - because in text, personal is what gets a response.
Results
Across hundreds of automated campaigns, keyword-triggered workflows average a 76.14% click-through rate and campaign follow-up texts average 51.18% CTR while moving members from interest to conversion. With response rates of up to 19.2%, the contrast with email is hard to ignore. These numbers reflect a simple system: reach the right people, with messages that feel personal, in a channel they actually open.
“I don't think there's a better way to communicate with a captured audience that obviously showed interest in what you have going on. It's very difficult to beat that type of messaging because of the response rate. People are just gonna read their text messages. Period.”
What's next
Ty is exploring two areas of expansion. The first is list growth, where he sees viral social content opportunities as his primary growth lever. The second is AI-powered conversations that can guide audience members through educational content and qualify interest, without having to be in the loop on every exchange.
For any small business or creator operating at scale without a big team behind them, Community gives you the ownership and the engagement that social media and email never could.
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