A new app could have implications for credit union financial advisors' client communication strategies, particularly for their millennial members. Tribe is a video messaging app that allows users to record a 15-second video and send it to other users. It was initially launched in August 2015, and has more than 500,000 users who have collectively sent approximately 50 million messages.
In the past few weeks, the app introduced augmented messaging, which uses natural language processing and voice analysis to create "magic words": keywords drawn from the spoken message that allow the recipient to take an action like visit a webpage or create an event in their calendar.
For example, a credit union financial advisor could record a message for a member, letting them know their newest performance report is available and asking if they'd like to meet to discuss it. When the member views the message, the app provides a link to download the report, and to create an event auto-populated with the time and date mentioned in the video.
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Tribe uses Google voice recognition to convert speech to subtitles, so users can also receive messages when they can't use audio.
Tribe noted in a release that active users open the app more than 20 times per day and send more than 200 videos per day in group chats. The app is aimed at millennial users, and more than half are between ages 12 and 25, founder and CEO Cyril Paglino said, but 22% are over 25.
"There are a lot of families, parents using the app," he said.
Because of the extensive updates on the back-end, Paglino said, current users will have to manually update the app to use the augmented messaging features, rather than waiting for the update to be automatically pushed to their device.
The update is backed by $3 million in seed funding from Sequoia Capital, Ludlow Ventures, Partech Ventures and Kima Ventures.
Users can communicate one-on-one or in groups. For now, Paglino doesn't have any intention of adding wider publishing capabilities for users to push their videos to apps like Twitter or Snapchat.
"There's no public button, there's no story button," he said. "We want to keep it private, and I don't think we're going to go in that direction." He added that "Snapchat built the one-to-all broadcasting platform really well," and that Tribe isn't trying to compete with Snapchat or Instagram Stories. "That's not our job. We're mostly trying to change how people communicate on a daily basis," he said.
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