It used to be “for a good time call 867-5309”. Now it's “for a good time text “DEBAUCHED” to 696969”. Did you ever wonder what those numbers are, who administers them, and how you can use them for business? I did. I think about these things all the time. I'm Dr. Telecom.

Every cell phone has the ability to send 160 character (max) SMS or “text” messages to other cell phones. The address used to route the message is simply the phone number. Since all phone numbers in North America are unique, so are all SMS addresses.

The addresses seen in the ads you see on the TV and other places, entreating you to text a keyword someplace for products, services, media, etc., are a different kind of address that is also routed among the cellular carriers. These are called Common Short Codes and are administered by the CSC Administration (CSCA), part of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association (CTIA) http://www.usshortcodes.com/aboutCSCA.html

A business leases a CSC from the CSCA for between $500 and $1000 a month. Once set up, all US cellular carriers can route their subscribers' SMS texts to you or to an Application Provider with whom you've contracted to get the messages and do something with them.

The CSC gets the message to the business or their Application Provider. But the first word in the message sent, known as the KEYWORD, is what typically determines what will happen. If UCAN had the CSC of 11111, they could say “Text CONSUMER to 11111 to start getting our daily Consumer Alert message.” They could also say “Text SPL to 11111 to start getting Sunrise Powerline status alerts.”  The address is the same but a computer program uses the first word as a trigger and responds differently depending on the trigger text received - it stores the email address in a database for that campaign, then replies in some way. UCAN could have hundreds of different campaigns, all from that one CSC account.

I'LL START TEXTING WHEN YOU PRY MY PHONE OUT OF MY COLD DEAD HANDS (or maybe not)
Texting seems to be somewhat generational, IMHO. Most Gen X'ers and younger use it while most of the mid-to-early boomers that I know do not. Personally, as you can probably tell from my blog posts, I tend to be verbose, so 160 characters is a limitation! But also, I prefer to both send and get regular email because I don't want to be interrupted during the day for things that aren't temporally significant. A phone call (or a text message) generally requires my direct involvement when it happens. I also reserve that attention I might give to text message for VERY important things - once and awhile I might text Mrs. Telecom if she's in class so she knows to check the message at an early convenience but it's not as intrusive in a classroom as a phone call and she doesn't use her phone for email, PERIOD. Emails are things I can go thru when I want to. That's me. I don't “text SPOCK to  NCC1701 to get Star Trek trivia sent to your cell phone!” I'm unusual. But, you knew that.

If you're considering using text messages for marketing be sure you only send them to people who have initiated the process. Text messages cost money while emails, if you already have Internet access, are free. Be sure your system has a way to let people unsubscribe.

ALTERNATE APPROACH
Also, know that pretty much all cell phones can receive emails-as-texts. That is, you can send a regular SMTP email to a carrier-specific email address, e.g. 8885551212@carrier.com, and the recipient will get the email as a text message even if they don't have Internet access on their phone (truncated to 160 characters). So, you COULD do a text campaign from email, which would still cost the recipient whatever their plan's per-message cost is, but would cost you nothing. The only problem with this is that it's not SMS round-trip; that is, the consumer can't initiate this relationship by texting but must get to you via a web site or email or other method to get registered and to cancel later on. Verizon users can go here (this was really hard for me to find) to create a more intuitive “nickname” email address.

DO-IT-YOURSELF TEXT CAMPAIGNS
So what if you simply received the text messages for your campaign on your cell phone? This would work but you'd have to reply to each message manually - not very time-efficient. Well, there is a product that appears to automate this process. The one I know if is called SMSFinder by MultiTech.    In this case your subsscribers text to an actual cell phone number because SMSFinder is actually a box with a GSM cell phone in it plus some additional brains. Subscribers might text “CONSUMER” to, say, 8885551212, the unit's cell phone number, in order to have the SMSFinder get the message then do something with it. The SMSFinder owner does not have to lease a CSC address to use this product. Of course, the unit's owner will have to pay their carrier for the text messages. For a small campaign, this might beat the $500 - $1000 a month for a CSC address.