SMS GUIDE

Short Messaging Service, otherwise known as text messaging, mobile messaging, or alphanumeric paging is a digital cellular network feature. It lets you send short text and numeric messages to and from digital cell phones, cell phones and e-mail addresses, as well as cell phones and public SMS messaging gateways on the Internet.

Messages generated by SMS are immediately delivered directly to your phone. Most carriers offer SMS alerts (information packets, such as stock quotes, sports scores, and news) that can be delivered to your phone at regularly scheduled intervals.

Currently, there are approximately 30 billion SMS messages sent globally each month, with the majority of that traffic occurring in Western Europe and Asia. In North America most major cellular providers offer either one-way or two-way SMS to their subscribers. With one-way service, you can receive messages; while with two-way service, you can both receive and send messages. A short code is required for two-way messaging.

The Short Message Service (SMS), as defined within the GSM digital mobile phone standard has several unique features:

A single short message can be up to 160 characters of text in length. Those 160 characters can comprise of words or numbers or an alphanumeric combination. Non-text based short messages (for example, in binary format) are also supported. These are used for ringtones and logos services for instance.

The Short Message Service is a store and forward service, in other words, short messages are not sent directly from sender to recipient, but always via an SMS Center instead. Each mobile telephone network that supports SMS has one or more messaging centers to handle and manage the short messages.

The Short Message Service features confirmation of message delivery. This means that unlike paging, users do not simply send a short message and trust and hope that it gets delivered. Instead the sender of the short message can receive a return message back notifying them whether the short message has been delivered or not.

Short messages can be sent and received simultaneously with GSM voice, Data and Fax calls. This is possible because whereas voice, Data and Fax calls take over a dedicated radio channel for the duration of the call, short messages travel over and above the radio channel using the signaling path. As such, users of SMS rarely if ever get a busy or engaged signal as they can do during peak network usage times.

Ways of sending multiple short messages are available. SMS concatenation (stringing several short messages together) and SMS compression (getting more than 160 characters of information within a single short message) have been defined and incorporated in the GSM SMS standards.

The most important part of the whole process is to get your customers' permission to send them text messages. It would be disastrous to have a customer feel like he was being spammed by you, and there are laws against it as well. Cell phones are very personal to people. This means that they will be extra unhappy if they receive unsolicited messages, but it also means that they will pay more attention to the messages that they agree to receive. This is what makes text message advertising so powerful.

The collection of the database of customers can be accomplished in many ways:

1. In store - have them send in the opt-in message from their cell phone to the short code with your dedicated keyword

2. Online - sign up at www.yourcompanywebsite.com

5. Direct mail - send your customers an invitation to join or include club details in your next mail ad

6. Print communications - include sign-up details in your newspaper ads, flyers and other printed materials.

7. In person - invite your customers to join when they are in your place of business.

Once a database of opt-in customers has been collected, you are ready to begin the Text Message Marketing Campaign.

1. Create Message to send Customers. Remember, text messages cannot be longer than 160 characters.

2. Choose Recipients from the database of customers that you have been collecting.

3. Send the Messages immediately or schedule them to be sent at a later time.

And we will be available to support you every step of the way.

Text STOP to 41513 to opt-out from any marketing campaign. You must be 18 years or older or have permission from a parent/guardian to participate. Standard/Other Charges may apply. Supported carriers: AT&T, VerizonWireless, Sprint, Nextel, T-Mobile, Alltel, Virgin Mobile, Cellular One, US Cellular and Boost.