More than ever it seems as if everyone is an expert at SMS marketing from the service providers to the advertising agencies who urge you to ride the mobile wave before you lose your competitive advantage forever. Yes, mobile marketing does have huge advantages, but how do you ensure that all of your efforts get customers to open their wallets rather than getting lost in a mobile abyss? The following are some best-practice tips to get you started in the right direction:

1. Target your SMS messages to the right people by making sure they have opted in to your service.

2. Know your customer's history and determine which specific products and services they would be interested in.

3. Make your message personal, such as a birthday wish along with a special discount.

4. Offer a service or product that is valuable. For example:

Payment Reminder

Customer Survey

Invitation to an exclusive event

Mobile Coupon

Appointment Reminder

Important alert such as a smoke alarm reminder service that tells a customer when it's time change the batteries.

5. Make you message short, clean and actionable.

6. Go viral! Create an SMS marketing campaign that is compelling and easy for customers to share with their friends. Better yet, why not incentivize them for referring a friend by integrating an SMS customer loyalty program?

7. Don't overuse the SMS channel. More than once a week can be disruptive and a sure way to get valuable customers to opt-out of future updates.

8. Keep your customers anonymous by never sharing or selling their mobile numbers to other brands.

9. Invest in services like SMS Gateway API and Email to SMS that will save you time and money on your texting campaigns.

With cell phone subscriptions expected to hit 5 billion this year, the mobile phone has become the most common form of global communication.Whether or not mobile users take advantage of SMS, IM or wildly-popular social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, they are able to connect with colleagues, friends and family at any given moment throughout the day.

But what if you worked in a place that prohibited devices like cell phones, Skype and tools like IM or Twitter?

By this, I don't mean an executive management memo warning employees about wasting valuable time on social networking sites. But rather, a protocol set in place to protect the security of the company.

Meet Bruce Daly. Mr. Daly is an IT consultant for a security agency in Canada and despite being 12 timezones a part from his family in Southeast Asia, he is prohibited from using his cell phone during work hours.

"My work is in a locked down environment that does not allow me to get IM, Skype, mobile service or access to any type of social networking sites that I would typically use."

Why choose TextMagic for your solution?

"TextMagic is allowed through the enterprise firewalls. I have the ability to send text messages via the Email to SMS service as well as receive replies with the SMS Messenger. For the locked down situation I find myself in during the day, TextMagic is a good fit for what I suspect is a rare situation."

Like many small business today, Global Hair Limited, t/a Headrush Hair Salon considered using a texting service as a way to streamline customer communications and save money. With approximately 4,700 clients in their roster, the percentage of missed hair appointments was creating an increasing amount of spare time and costing the business hours of missed revenue. Headrush Hair Salon Global Hair Directors, Phil Saunders and Emma Fulgoney, began to look at different SMS services online and came across TextMagic which seemed the ideal choice due to ease and cost.

How has SMS messaging improved your hair salon business?

"TextMagic has improved our amount of no-show clients who may have forgotten the date and time of their appointment, therefore leaving a stylist in the salon with sometimes up to 2 1/2 hours of down time, which is clearly bad for business and profits.We calculate that our number of no-shows has been reduced by approximately 70% since we've been using TextMagic and we expect this number to improve further as we obtain more clients' mobile numbers."

SMS messaging takes customer service to the next level.

"TextMagic has also benefited our customers. Clients don't want to miss their appointments either and text messaging helps them stay in touch and keep us updated. We also use the Email to SMS service to send our clients special messages on their birthdays as well as unique salon promotions."

Acquired by Global Hair Ltd.in January 2009, Headrush Hair Salon is a high quality salon where customer satisfaction comes first. Their team of well-trained and experienced stylists cater to over 4,700 clients in the East Sussex area. For more information, please visit their website at www.headrushhair.co.uk.

For the last decade, the mobile revolution has been transforming communication and bringing people around the world together in ways they never could have imagined. However, while the world has been moving at an "Internet minute" for most of us, the visually impaired have been left fumbling around on their mobile keypads. Yes, mobile keypads are nifty and compact, but trying to create text messages on them when you are visually challenged can be both pain staking and time consuming.

Up until recently, this was the case for Barry Dickinson, who is visually impaired and who stumbled upon Textmagic's Email to SMS service while searching the Internet for ways to embrace this mobile technology that seemed out of his realm.

What made you choose Textmagic?

"I browsed the web looking for a way to send and receive SMS texts from the computer, which was compatible with the talking screen reading software I use. I found other ways of sending texts, but not receiving them.Tetxmagic is very easy to use by blind people with screen reading software."

How has SMS messaging improved your communication?

"Initially, I started using Textmagic to keep in touch with my children while they where out and about and I have since extended the service to include friends who don't check their emails on a regular basis. Before Textmagic, blind people were excluded from the SMS text revolution. Textmagic now allows us to communicate with friends and family on equal terms and in their preferred format. Our kids can text home, just like their friends, rather than having to talk in from of their friends which isn't COOL!"