What do you always take with you when you leave the house? Your keys, your wallet/purse and your mobile phone. The last of these three modern day ‘essentials’ is rapidly becoming a key weapon in the wise business professional’s ‘marketing armoury’.

The reasons are clear. Not only is it quick and affordable. Most importantly, it boasts an extremely high reach rate. Most of us ignore the vast majority of the 300 sales messages we see in a typical day. But very few text messages get ignored. Indeed, 39 out of every 40 text messages are read within the first five minutes of being sent. So in terms of ‘open rate’, text message marketing leaves other media standing.

Text message marketing also benefits from speed. Instead of having to wait for the next issue of a newspaper or magazine to be published, for example, one simply needs to type the message and click ‘send’. So a campaign can be taken from concept to delivery in less than ten minutes.

There is also a much lower level of wastage. Instead of paying to take your message to everyone who hears a radio programme or reads a newspaper, you can select who receives your messages. Your SMS text message campaign will only go customers and contacts who have already opted-in to receive offers from you.

Indeed, it is possible to make a campaign even more effective by segmenting your contact lists and only sending text messages to those who you expect to respond. By managing your lists carefully over time, you can make the targeting even more precise by removing those that never respond.

As a result text message marketing is extremely effective, with a redemption rate ranging from 20 to 70 percent. That is streets ahead of traditional advertising media such as print, radio or direct mail, which have typical response levels of 1 or 2 percent at best.

Text message marketing is unsuited to some messages, of course. You cannot use it for delivering beautiful photos of a new sports car, for example. It would hardly be suited to promoting a cruise holiday either. But for quick, tactical promotions there is little that compete.

When you receive a well-timed text message offering “Free sausage roll if you buy a pint at The Hope & Anchor before 7pm” or “Half price drinks before 10pm tonight at Glamour Puss nightclub”, it is not only the sort of offer to spark an idea. Some recipients will even forward it to their friends to encourage them to come as well!

It certainly works for the English National Opera at the London Coliseum. They use SMS text message marketing from Textlocal to promote sales of unsold tickets. “Looking at the last two campaigns we spent a total of just over £500 on text credits,” says Marketing Manager Jonathan Broad, “which yielded £8,000 gross profit”. The return on investment works out at 16:1.

Businesses ranging from sports clubs and hotels to beauty salons and restaurants have been quick to capitalise on the business potential of the new medium. FC United of Manchester have used text messages as part of their marketing mix since 2007.  “Texting is a great way to keep supporters informed about matches,” says Andy Walsh from the club. “It’s ideal for sending key messages at a critical time and really has improved match attendance.”

Malmaison Hotel in the same city is equally enthusiastic. They collect customers’ mobile phone numbers to send automated booking confirmations and use them send restaurant promotions and special offers.  “SMS provides an easy, cost effective way to reach guests with personalised messages,” says IT director Alistair Hargreaves. “There has been a great response to our text campaigns, above our original expectations.”

To see further details and find out more about text message marketing, check out SMS marketing on the Business Link website here or see other case study examples here from the award-winning SMS marketing company www.Textlocal.co.uk  

You can see for yourself how well it works with a free trial from Textlocal. Set it up online and you’ll be up and running in just two minutes.