SMS or text messaging has been around for a while, as has the use of bulk messaging (sending a marketing message to a number of people via text message). But the question is  this a legitimate way to market your business in a professional way, or is it just a way to irritate & annoy your customers. As always, my answer to this is it depends!! As with all direct marketing methods, it depends on the timeliness & relevance of the message. And this is particularly true of SMS marketing. Research has shown that using text messaging for general marketing and brand building is not particularly effective, and using it in this way does risk annoying your customers, but if you have a specific promotion or message that is highly relevant to the moment, then it can be very effective. Let me give you a couple of examples: To deliver details of a short term & spontaneous promotion Imagine that you run a popular restaurant, with many regular customers, details of whom you quite rightly hold on a marketing database. Imagine now that one evening you find that your bookings are a bit light, and that you want to drum up some additional business. In this scenario, the idea of sending a text to all your “local” regulars, offering a free glass of wine with their meal if they dine with you that evening would be a perfectly legitimate & probably highly effective marketing tool. To improve customer service in e-commerce scenarios If you run an ecommerce site, communication during the delivery process is key to good customer service, so the idea of sending an SMS to the customer as the item is despatched, ideally containing a tracking code and expected delivery date if possible would ensure that the customer is fully kept up to date with their shipment. In both these cases SMS is the ideal medium to deliver the message, and if used sparingly can prove very effective and would be unlikely to irritate. Even in these days when email direct to smart phones is increasingly the norm, Text Marketing can still form a legitimate & valuable tool in the marketing kitbag. As always, we are happy to discuss how this may be useful to you, so feel free to give us a call 
