The phone app is, it turns out, pretty much the least used application on most iPhones these days. We don't call anymore, we text and Zoom and do all sorts of other stuff, but actual phone calls have kind of become this almost quaint relic of a different era. Amanda McGuckin Hager, CMO and CRO at TrueDialog, watches this transformation daily, and she's actually built her entire go-to-market strategy around understanding what it means when business text messaging becomes our most intimate communication channel.
McGuckin Hager is, in fact, one of the 2025 SAMMY Award winners, recognized specifically as a "growth catalyst" for transforming how businesses engage customers through SMS. With 25 years in B2B demand generation and a recent expansion into the CRO role combining sales and marketing, she offers a really compelling perspective on why text messaging is simultaneously becoming more personal and more business-critical.
The Cultural Shift Nobody Saw Coming
When you really think about it, we're watching a pretty massive behavioral change happen in real time. Kids today basically panic when they get a phone call because they don't know what to do with it. It's kind of like watching them get change back at a cash register if they paid with actual money, there's this moment of confusion about how to handle this ancient transaction method.
"Your traditional students are not answering the phone," McGuckin Hager explains when discussing TrueDialog's work with colleges and universities. "They're not picking up the phone and dialing out, and they're not even really checking email all that often." This isn't just anecdotal observation, it's fundamentally reshaping how organizations need to communicate.
The business-to-business world is, very much, experiencing the same shift. McGuckin Hager herself doesn't have a desk phone anymore. She uses her cell phone as her main work line, like most professionals these days. And here's the interesting part, Apple and Android both now let you forward any unknown phone numbers straight to voicemail automatically. If someone doesn't leave a message, you literally don't even know they called.
Think about what that means for traditional sales outreach. Cold calling, pipeline conversations, lead nurturing, all of those standard B2B tactics that relied on phone connectivity are basically obsolete if nobody's actually answering. The channel that was supposed to be most direct is now the one most likely to be completely ignored.
The Intimacy Paradox of Text Messaging
McGuckin Hager describes text messaging as "our most intimate channel," and when you look at your phone log, she's absolutely right. It's your friends, your family, the people who matter most to you. It's almost like a bat line, she notes, this direct connection to your inner circle.
But here's where it gets really interesting. That circle is actually expanding. It's not just close relationships anymore. Now it includes two-factor authentication notifications. Consumer brands you've interacted with sending holiday sales or promotions. Sports teams you follow providing ticket sales and game updates. The channel that used to be very, very tight and intimate is gradually incorporating more commercial interactions.
According to research on mobile messaging trends, the number of mobile messaging users worldwide continues growing year over year, with businesses increasingly recognizing SMS as a critical engagement channel. The challenge, very much, is maintaining the intimacy and trust that makes the channel valuable while expanding its commercial applications.
This is what McGuckin Hager calls the intimacy economy. We've kept SMS relatively pure compared to email or phone calls. The authentication requirements are stricter. The opt-in processes are more rigorous. The ability to opt out is easier and more standardized. Because the industry recognized early that if SMS got ruined the way email got ruined, we'd lose something genuinely valuable.
Authentication and the Fight Against Spam
If you've tried to set up business text messaging, you probably know that it requires actually quite a bit of authentication work. You need to prove who you are to carriers, to providers. You need content on your website. You go through multiple verification steps. And that's intentional, that's the industry working really hard to prevent SMS from becoming the next spam-filled wasteland.
TrueDialog has built automated 10 DLC registration to streamline this process. For those not familiar with texting infrastructure, 10 DLC stands for 10-digit long code, which is basically the standard phone number format we all use. AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile have all said there will be no text traffic on their networks unless it's properly registered through 10 DLC.
"I think that's one of the best things the industry has done to kind of control the authenticity of the channel," McGuckin Hager notes. And when you compare it to email, the difference is pretty stark. Your email address is listed all over the internet. Data providers scrape constantly. Email isn't protected in any meaningful way.
McGuckin Hager gets those Google dark web notifications we all get, the ones telling you your email's been hacked somewhere. Despite CAN-SPAM legislation and technical requirements for opt-in, we all receive emails we definitely didn't sign up for. We all get phone calls from people we don't know who somehow got our numbers.
SMS is different, at least for now. The compliance requirements, the opt-in hurdles, the easy opt-out functionality, the registration process, all of it works together to keep the channel relatively clean. Now, politics is basically a different story. Politicians seem to have found ways around all these protections, probably because their campaign organizations are so short-lived that by the time you could take action, they're already gone or in office.
The Microsoft Teams Integration That Changes Everything
One of TrueDialog's recent innovations is actually pretty brilliant when you think about the use case. They've integrated SMS directly into Microsoft Teams, which means you can now text and call from the same phone number within the Teams environment. You receive texts and calls to the same number, all managed through Teams.
From a user experience perspective, this is kind of genius. Anyone who's been in a Teams meeting waiting for, let's call him Bob, the decision maker who's running late, knows the frustration. You're sitting there thinking, "Someone text Bob and tell him we're in the meeting." Now you can do that without leaving the platform or switching to your personal device.
But the implications go way beyond convenience. This integration is really about recognizing that business communication has fundamentally changed. We're not just replacing one channel with another, we're actually creating new communication patterns that blend synchronous and asynchronous, formal and informal, scheduled and spontaneous.
The seamlessness matters because recipients aren't getting texts from one number and calls from another. The experience stays consistent, which builds trust and recognition. And for businesses managing customer relationships, that consistency is really valuable in maintaining the kind of authentic engagement that SMS enables.
Combining CMO and CRO Roles
McGuckin Hager recently added CRO responsibilities to her CMO title, which means she now runs both sales and marketing at TrueDialog. This isn't just a title change, it's basically a recognition that in modern B2B companies, particularly in the tech sector, these functions need to be deeply integrated rather than merely aligned.
"It's been going really, really well," she says about the transition. "Everyone's been working really hard. We're seeing the fruits of our labor come in." With 25 years in B2B demand generation, she already understood how leads flowed into sales teams. She knew the geographies, the people, the players. And frankly, she already saw the revenue outputs, so she had all the data.
Now it's about optimization. Breaking down teams and rebuilding them based on what the data actually shows works. Putting theory into action, seeing results, and fine-tuning based on what you learn. This is, in fact, where having deep marketing experience becomes really valuable in a sales leadership role.
The combined role also makes particular sense for a company like TrueDialog, where the product itself is fundamentally about communication and engagement. Understanding how marketing messages land and how sales conversations progress, particularly when both might happen through the same SMS channel, creates opportunities for insight that siloed organizations might miss.
Revenue Intelligence and the SMS Signal
Here's a really interesting story that illustrates why SMS matters so much in modern sales cycles. A revenue intelligence tool provider reached out to TrueDialog because they had a client with a problem. These tools sit on top of the sales pipeline and give managers understanding of activities and timelines in deal cycles.
A sales manager using one of these tools would look at an opportunity and say, "Hey, Mr. Sales Rep, this isn't going to close. You say it's going to close, but I'm showing no activity in the last two months." And the sales rep would respond, "Well, that's because I've been texting them." The revenue intelligence tool wasn't using SMS as a signal.
Think about what that means, though. If you're in a deal cycle and you're on a texting basis with your prospects, that's actually a really high likelihood to close. You're talking about the finer nuances of the deal. Negotiations. The buying process. Sending documents back and forth. You're beyond the proposal stage, you're in the nitty-gritty of terms, signatures, legal red lines, and all the details that happen right before closing.
SMS as a sales signal is actually more intimate and more indicative of deal progression than email or scheduled calls might be. But many B2B tools and processes haven't caught up to this reality yet. They're still measuring the old channels and missing where the actual conversation is happening.
The Economics of Clean Communication
Bill Gates once talked about solving the spam problem, and his thesis was basically that we need authentication and we need to make it cost something. Email isn't free, but it's really, really cheap. If it was more expensive, it would cut down on a lot of junk because marketers who have real ROI would still market their products, but the spray-and-pray approaches would become economically unviable.
SMS has accidentally implemented that model. It does cost money per message. You do need authentication. And those two factors combined keep the channel relatively clean. The carriers filter out suspicious content. Brands really have to think about what they're sending because there's actual cost associated with each message.
"It costs money, you can't send junky stuff," McGuckin Hager notes. "And now you're really kind of forming these more intimate relationships." There aren't a whole lot of notification systems on our phones that are this clean and this protected. The purity of the channel, very much, is its value proposition.
Right now in SMS, you're either opted in or you're opted out from communications with a brand. There aren't subscription types like email where you can say you want newsletters but not event notifications or product updates. It's binary, and that simplicity actually helps maintain the channel's integrity.
The Salesforce and Dynamics Integrations
Beyond Teams, TrueDialog integrates with Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics 365, enabling one-to-one texting directly from these CRM platforms. Sales reps can text quotes, confirmations, and updates without leaving their workflow. What used to sound absurd, texting a quote to a customer instead of emailing it, is now just normal business practice.
This integration strategy reflects an understanding that SMS isn't replacing other channels, it's actually complementing them in ways that match how people naturally communicate now. You might schedule a call through email, confirm it via text, have the call in Teams, and follow up with documents through whatever channel makes sense for that specific interaction.
The key insight is really that communication has become channel-fluid. People don't think, "I will now switch to SMS mode." They think, "What's the fastest way to get this done?" And increasingly, particularly for quick confirmations, updates, or questions, that fastest way is text messaging.
For businesses, this means meeting customers where they already are rather than forcing them into preferred channels. And platforms like TrueDialog that enable this kind of flexibility essentially become infrastructure for modern business communication.
RCS and the Future of Rich Messaging
With RCS (Rich Communication Services) gaining traction, especially through Google and Apple's support, SMS is evolving beyond simple text into richer media experiences while maintaining the reliability and simplicity that made it successful. Images, videos, read receipts, typing indicators, all the features people expect from modern messaging apps are coming to standard SMS.
McGuckin Hager feels "really fortunate to be in the right place at the right time" with these developments. The improvements happening in messaging infrastructure, combined with how deeply integrated texting already is in our lives, create a really unique moment for companies building on this channel.
The challenge, as always, will be maintaining the purity and intimacy that makes SMS valuable as it gains richer capabilities. The industry has done a pretty good job so far of implementing guardrails and standards. The 10 DLC registration, the carrier filtering, the opt-out requirements, all of it works together to keep the channel trusted.
What Marketers Can Learn From SMS
There's actually a broader lesson here about channel strategy and customer respect. SMS works because it's been kept relatively clean and because businesses can't just blast messages without consequence. The economics and the authentication requirements force more thoughtful communication.
What if other channels adopted similar principles? What if the barrier to entry for email marketing was higher, not to exclude legitimate businesses but to make spam economically unviable? What if social media ads required more verification of claims? The idea isn't about limiting access but about creating incentives for quality.
McGuckin Hager's success at TrueDialog comes from really understanding that SMS isn't just another channel to exploit. It's a privileged space that customers have chosen to keep relatively private, and brands that get invited into that space need to earn the privilege through relevant, valuable, properly timed communication.
This is what she means by growth catalyst. It's not about finding hacks or workarounds. It's about building systems and strategies that actually respect customer preferences while delivering real business value. That approach scales because it's sustainable.
The Integration Imperative
Looking forward, the companies that succeed with business text messaging will very much be those that integrate it naturally into existing workflows rather than treating it as a separate channel requiring separate processes. The Microsoft Teams integration is a perfect example, texting becomes just another communication option within a tool people already use daily.
The same principle applies to the Salesforce and Dynamics integrations. Sales reps shouldn't need to switch platforms or remember different systems. Communication should flow naturally through whatever interface they're already working in. This kind of seamless integration is basically what makes new channels actually get adopted rather than just being available.
McGuckin Hager's combined CMO and CRO role positions her perfectly to drive this kind of integration thinking. She understands both how marketing creates awareness and interest and how sales converts that into revenue. And she understands how SMS can support both functions without creating friction or redundancy.
The future she's building at TrueDialog is really one where business texting is so integrated into normal workflows that it's not thought of as "SMS marketing" or "text selling" but just as one more way to have the conversation that needs to happen in the way that's most convenient for both parties.
And that, ultimately, is what makes SMS such a powerful channel. It's intimate, it's immediate, it's ubiquitous, and when done right, it's actually welcomed rather than intrusive. McGuckin Hager has built her strategy around protecting those qualities while expanding business adoption. That's definitely growth catalyst work worth recognizing.