A small concert organizer, having to delay things for a couple of hours when the band is held up, sends out an SMS alert to hundreds of ticketholders with a new start time for the concert. Later, he uses it to get people to sign up on a subscription site, alerting people when last-minute tickets are available to a concert or show.



A group based on New York City's Improv Everywhere use SMS alerts to their members to bring together flash mobs ? groups of people who ?spontaneously? do silly but harmless things in public.

A bride uses SMS to keep her wedding party all on the same page. Later, she uses her SMS service to organize a surprise party for her mother, letting Mom pick the restaurant and having everyone show up there.

There are thousands of uses for SMS, a text messaging service that broadcasts alerts the same way your email sends out mass messages. So why isn't everyone using it? Because it costs. Sometimes it costs a lot, as much as $0.05 a message, and that can add up quickly when you use it every day all day. And if you're really going to use SMS the way it should be used ? as a marketing tool that will exponentially increase the reach of your business ? you need to use it a lot.

How SMS Can Rapidly Expand Your Marketing Reach

If your business depends on reaching a lot of people with your advertising and marketing, an SMS marketing program, used creatively, can turn your business into a gold mine. How? By initiating an opt-in SMS program. People who love texting ? teens, young adults, and other people with busy lives ? can opt into your SMS program. In return, you can send them sales alerts, coupons, or anything you want to let them know about. Used well, you can get the world to beat a path to your door.

Here are some examples of how you can do this:

You run a record store, and you like to order new stock every Friday, so you want to run sales specials to clear out stock on Thursdays.

You are a music promoter, and you want to send alerts to subscribers when their chosen bands are playing at local venues.

On quiet nights, you'd like to run incredible drink specials at your bar to bring in customers.

You're a marketing company that would like to do all of the above for your clients.

But this isn't just a one-way street. Your customers can use SMS to respond to you, purchasing tickets, reserving spots, and otherwise providing them with the tools to give you feedback. Some organizers have used it at charity events to make it easy for attendees to donate cash with a credit card. Others have used it as a way to ?count down? ticket sales until they're all gone. The possibilities are endless.

But again, there's that expense. Unless you go with a service like that of http://www.textatize.com . They provide you the ability to send as many SMS messages to as many people as you'd like, and with there opt-in service, you have the power to build your SMS empire as soon as you sign up. And they give it all to you for a flat rate of $9.99 a month.

Why not put this powerful new tool to work for you?