13 SMS Text Messaging Services for Marketing in the Mobile Age

Ninety nine percent of the time statistics can drive you to heavy drinking. In researching this post on SMS or Text Message Marketing, I wanted to find out how many people use text messaging, how quickly they are read, and are business owners using it as a way to reach customers.

More than any other topic that I’ve written about recently, the data is all over the place:

• Text Messages have a 98 percent read rate
• Text Messages have a 100 percent open rate
• Texts are typically read within 15 minutes of being received
• Mobile phones have reached 100 percent penetration in the United States

Let’s go with something more trustworthy: Do you know very many adults without a mobile phone? How about business owners without one? Have you had a customer without a cell phone? Here’s the leap, but I have pretty good evidence it is true: If they have one, they likely use text messaging on it, too.

Text message marketing is a permission-based approach to sharing short updates or specials with your customers. It lends itself to point of sale or retail offers, but not entirely. My gut or intuition tells me that it’s a good way to share news, updates, ideas, and special offers with customers with whom you have a relationship and who express interest in signing up.

Here are 13+ services that can make it easy and affordable; some are completely free if you keep your efforts small and focused:

Fanminder is a great service that I’ve reviewed before and think has a lot to offer. They offer a combination of social, email, and mobile phone marketing. It is free to text to up to 100 numbers. Pricing starts at $15/month after that.

Signal is pretty robust and lets you send text messages, QR codes, barcodes, and mobile optimized web pages. You can do coupons, sweepstakes, polls and plans start at $29/month with a free trial.

TellMyCell is useful if you want to give your customers a specific keyword to text in and receive a special offer (or any response really). You can have unlimited contacts and unlimited groups, but you pay on a per message basis. You can pay-as-you-go for five cents per message or plans start at $29/month after free trial.

Trumpia sells texts in packaged units (i.e. 500 or 1,000) and they don’t expire. You can use them in your text message marketing in a variety of ways, from appointment reminders to event coordination to standard marketing messages. Plans start at $25/month with 30-day free trial.

ReachPeople.com charges by the number of contacts and number of messages. They have a full free plan with up to 25 messages and 100 contacts. Paid plans start at $29/month. I like that they had a voice broadcasting option if you wanted to leave a voicemail for a group.

Simple Texting has one of those sites that is just clear and easy to grasp and the main screen calls out to business owners. I like that. You can integrate with social media like Facebook and Twitter. Free 30-day trial, then $15/month for up to 250 messages.

CallFire offers a variety of telephone-based services like IVR (interactive voice response – you know those automated attendant types) and a virtual call center service. But their SMS plan is a basic flat rate of three cents per message and it has a free trial.

SnapGiant knows that many small businesses (including restaurants and food service businesses)  use text message marketing and their page gently reflects that. You only pay for outgoing messages, not incoming, and unused messages roll over to the next month (that’s kind of cool). Plans start at $19.95/month after free 30-day trial.

Mozeo is another text platform with flat message pricing – five cents per message. Unlimited contacts, unused messages roll to the next month. You pay a one-time charge for keywords (as in your customer texts in PIZZA to your number to get a special offer). You get 10 free text messages to trial the service.

TXT180 offers 500 messages for $14.95 per month. Discounted to only $9.95/month if you prepay for 12-month contract. No free trial.

SMS Marketing has a one-time flat rate of $35 to setup your web-based text messaging account, then a per message fee. You get unlimited autoresponders and can schedule text message offers with ease. It even comes with one free keyword.

TextMagic is a text messaging service that you don’t even need a phone to use. You can forward your emails to this SMS service, too. You buy credits in 200 pack increments starting at $27. I discovered this 

UK-based service via a terrific post at the Content Marketing Institute: Why SMS is a Must for a Younger Audience.

Betwext is one of the only text message marketing companies that had unlimited keywords (which could be important if you intend to do a lot of different campaigns) and a low rate of only one cent per message. There is no monthly fee and that’s sure to shake up the marketplace.

Some Bonuses:

If you simply want to replace your mobile phone text plan for something less expensive, these five options are worth a look:

Go SMS Android App. Free texting. Handcent is another.

JaxtrSMS is sort of like Skype but just for texting. If you text another Jaxtr user, it’s free. Otherwise a low message fee based on destination country. Makes international texting pretty easy.

Kik Messenger  is texting for smartphones. Or more like texting with an instant messenger feel. Free.

Google Voice  is a free voice-over-IP phone (like Skype) but offers free texting, too.  You can send to up to five people at one time.

GroupMe is part of Skype and is a novel way to text a group of people. Totally free. Might not work in a business situation with a group of customers, but might be good for internal teams.

If you just want to be able to get Twitter or Facebook updates on a mobile device, but not cell phone type text messages, then Boxcar for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad is a notification app that allows you to get updates from many different web services (Curdbee, FourSquare, GitHub, Google Voice, just to name a few more). Free for the iOS world. Android and PC versions coming.

Notifo is another that handles notifications to the iOS platform.

If you’ve been contemplating how to offer your customers a way to get special marketing offers, via cell phone, then one of these 13 text messaging solutions will help. Like all services we review, I try to pick ones with transparent, affordable pricing and that make it easy for a busy small business owner to figure out. Let us know what services you’ve been using in the comments below.

By  TJ McCue