As an organisation, the use of SMS might seem too innovative or unprofessional.

So why are "forward-thinking" organisations throughout the world welcoming SMS open-heartedly. What's so good about SMS?

SMS is popular and well-established

To begin with, SMS is extremely popular; each day billions of text-messages fly from phone to phone. Over here in the UK, for example, we send each other over 83 million messages each day.

These facts show that SMS is no longer something new. It's a well-established method of communication, not just an extra function on a mobile phone.

Anytime / Anywhere

The most important aspect of SMS is its unique ability to reach anyone, anytime, anywhere and because there are no barriers in-between the sender and the receiver, every message is almost definitely read.

SMS is a great friendship-marketing tool

As SMS is a personal method of communication, organisations use features like message personalisation to communicate with their clients & staff in a friendly manner, making each recipient feel as if their messages were individually written and sent to them alone.

SMS is reliable

Furthermore, messages sent through reliable service providers are usually delivered within seconds and provide real-time delivery reports.

Now I say 'reliable', because it is possible to route messages through offshore networks on the other side of the world and whilst their prices might be low, so is their reliability.

The Economics Make Sense

SMS is the most cost-effective method of communication and its financial benefits are numerous. Imagine how much time you need to contact 1,000 people by post and how much it would cost. In the UK, this would be

- paper? let's say 1p per piece
- envelopes? let's say 2p per piece
- stamps? these are at least 30p each
- time? a lot!

Well SMS can do all of that in less than 5 minutes in a tiny fraction of the cost.

And don't forget, if your organisation uses a database, website or a specialised piece of software, they can easily be SMS-enabled to trigger messages on particular events allowing you to take advantage of SMS without doing anything yourself.

Got the message yet?

Having read this, you would have begun to understand that the only reason many organisations haven't begun to use SMS is a fear of trying something new.

And if you haven't got the message yet, then visit sites like www.bestkeptsimple.org or www.textually.org and read about how organisations like yours are benefiting through SMS.

Fahed Bizzari is an expert in applying text-messaging for business use. He graduated with a first class honours in Strategic Marketing and applied his knowledge, at the young age of 23, into the development of TM4B Bulk SMS Gateway, his own text-messaging service.