This is the practise of taking the marketing message directly to the personal pocket of the prospect. It can appear to be very intrusive, so marketers must tread carefully.
The ownership and use of cell/mobile phones has gained huge market penetration. Their use as a marketing tool is in its infancy. On radio & tv most adverts include a keyword on a short-code as a one-way request from the prospect to the organisation. But few companies are using the text message as a two-way vehicle. One offering is Mojio Messenger, see http://www.reach2mobile.co.uk/MOJIO-R_Messenger.
Everyone carries their personal phone with them, if you want to reach your prospects where they are, you need to buy (expensive) or grow your own list. A way to quickly grow your own list is to provide a once-in-a-life-time offer using a viral Short Message Service (SMS) campaign Viral_marketing. So long as you don't over-use your prospects, you can keep sending text messages for quite a while, building up brand awareness, and with the use of suitable humour you can build loyalty too.
You can also use Text Message Marketing as a B2B tool, for instance to maintain a set of contract staff http://www.textmarketer.co.uk/news.php?action=fullnews&id=200.
