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Background

While Cardi B is widely recognized today as a Grammy award winning megastar, back in 2016 she was just kicking off her career as an artist. After breaking onto the scene as a reality tv star on Love & Hip Hop: New York, Cardi was still looking to push the boundaries as an entertainer. The Bronx native knew music was her true calling and had the determination to go all in on her dream. During the time, music was becoming heavily saturated with artists who had made it big utilizing social media and SoundCloud. Her original management team knew that her marketing strategy had to be as unique as her personality to catapult her transition to a rap superstar. To capture the following she had built from her previous career, her team turned to text as their preferred channel of communication.

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Advantage

While her counterparts, at the time, turned to Instagram, Twitter, or Snapchat to interact with their fans, Cardi and her team chose to target her fans’ text inbox. By promoting her number on her social profiles, it allowed them to collect subscribers while completely bypassing the social media and streaming service algorithms that many artists fall victim to. Over text, Cardi was able to be as unfiltered as possible with her closest fans, all while gathering valuable data when they entered her phone. Once in her phone, contacts were able to be filtered and segmented by age, location, and interest to be retargeted later. This level of personalization allowed Cardi and her team to collect over 120 thousand contacts and carry a 24% click through rate on her messages. When Cardi finally broke out and was signed to Atlantic Records, her new team saw the advantages of communicating over text and continued to use it as a main channel of communication for all her releases.

‍Communication

Since the release of her very first mixtape, back in 2016, her fans have consistently received updates to all her releases. From new music and video releases to club appearances and merch drops, everything has been promoted over text. Her fans have appreciated this personal approach as her messages have racked up over 2.6 million engagements. Most recently, Cardi and her team used it to promote her two newest singles, WAP featuring Megan Thee Stallion and Up. WAP went on to peak at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, while breaking the record for the largest opening streaming week for a song in United States history. To celebrate the release of her single, Cardi texted out an exclusive link for fans to join her on YouTube live for her watch party at midnight. The merch accompanying her single went to be a huge hit as well, as fans were altered that all pre orders would be exclusively signed by her. With everything she touches becoming a hit, no matter what she does next, you can be sure that her fans will be told via text.

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