Did you know that...

• 73% of new mobile phone buyers report that text messaging is the most important feature of their phone?
• 5.8 Billion text messages are sent every single day... just in the USA?
• 97% of all text messages are opened?
• 83% are opened within the first 15 minutes?

John from Duct Tape Marketing posted a short but very informative article on 6 Creative Ways to Use Text Messages as he sees it.

http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/2011/06/17/5-creative-ways-to-use-text-messages-in-marketing/

Here's a quick summary of just 6 of the many ways your business can use text messages in your marketing:

1. Newsletter Sign-up
I like this approach because you can put the code on a business card or slide when speaking and make it very easy for people to subscribe with their phone on the spot.

2. Real Time Appointments
Services such as salons, dentists and even restaurants can use text to fill gaps in the appointment schedule and offer busy customers the ability to come in now if it works.

3. Share Your Slides
I speak to lots of groups and without fail someone always asks if I’ll share my slides. I have no problem doing this, so I’ve started to set up a short code word for each event and I simply say text “event name” to the code and people get a message that allows them to download the slides on the spot while I’m standing up there in front of them.

4. Instant Polling
A number of web based technologies such as Poll Everywhere have cropped up of late making it very affordable to poll audiences by having them use SMS and their own mobile device.

5. Coupon Distribution
Creating membership type levels where people can get special treatment or special announcements is a great way to build community.

You can use SMS to allow people to join your “first mover” club and then routinely send them coupons, gift certificates, special previews, and advanced education and information only available to club members.

6. Group Texts
Don’t forget about the wave of group text services that are cropping up as a great way to communicate with your staff, customers, partners and suppliers. The key feature these services offer is that the group text becomes a conversation for all and most allow you to go beyond to text and add images (MMS).

Click here to read John's entire article.

In order to use text messaging, you have to have an opted in list of people who have asked you to send them text messages regarding your offering. Very similar to how you would use email to market to your prospect and customers. There are many ways to build an SMS list but I'll have to save that for a future post.

If you would like to share ways in which you use SMS Text Messaging please leave a comment below.