The mobile phone is by far the most commonly used communication device today and mobile phones have continued to improve over the years with more and more features and functionalities added each time. Today you can find some smartphones that are more equipped than the average desktop/laptop computers!

Compared to other forms of marketing, SMS Marketing is a relatively new form of mobile marketing that uses SMS (short message service) also called text messaging as a medium of direct advertising, often to a firms existing customers.

So why SMS marketing? SMS which has become the world’s most powerful method of communication has been in existence for just about 19 years now. The first “Merry Christmas” text message was sent on December 3, 1992 from then twenty-two year old Neil Papworth. Research has shown that most SMS messages are read within five minutes of their being received and SMS marketing performs better than email marketing in terms of readership.

Unfortunately today, some marketers have been using sms marketing as a channel for spamming i.e. sending bulk sms messages to different mobile phone numbers of persons who did not specifically opt-in to receive text messages from the sender. This is why the SMS industry as a whole (but especially in the US and Europe) today tends to be trending towards opt-in only systems in which subscribers give consent to receive messages from a desired organization. When choosing your SMS marketing service provider, you need to ensure that they strictly abide by and adhere to the opt-in only system.

For best results your sms marketing should be used alongside other marketing channels like email, print, etc. To have a successful SMS marketing campaign, here are a few of the things you must ensure are set in place:

1. You need to have a clear understanding of what you are going to promote and decide if sms would be the best channel for such a promotion.
2. Use your other existing marketing channels (e.g. email, social media, etc) to advertise and support your sms campaign.
3. You need to get your staff involved in promoting it to their circle of friends too.
4. You need to have a firm monthly SMS marketing campaign plan in place for promoting your business on a monthly basis.
5. Set the relevant yardsticks with which you are going to measure the ROI of your SMS marketing campaign.

If you adopt ethical methods in building your sms marketing database and campaigns, you can be assured that you will achieve amazing results. If all these sound too intimidating, you also have the option of outsourcing your bulk SMS/text marketing services to a professional and competent internet marketing service provider like Mauco Internet Consultants to plan, execute and manage it for you.

Are you currently using SMS marketing in your business? What has your experience been like? What ROI have you recorded? Share your comments with us below. If you found this post useful, then please consider giving it a +1, Like, Retweet or Share on your preferred social network.