Over the past decade, text messaging has become a major form of communication. The Short Messaging System, or SMS, is the backbone that allows text messages to travel from mobile device to mobile device. SMS was originally offered by mobile phone carriers as a value-added service. Now, four out of five Americans have devices capable of receiving and sending text messages. Legal spam protection has helped SMS inboxes retain their relevancy, giving businesses a method to contact almost all of their customer base directly with a high level of assurance that their messages will be seen.

SMS gateways are portals into the mobile networks that allow traffic from outside of the network to enter and be routed toward a destination. Mobile carriers do not make these gateways accessible to all commercial entities. Instead, companies called SMS aggregators have the ability to route traffic through these gateways and sell their services to interested parties. These aggregators can perform mass SMS deliveries to a company's customer base using bulk messaging capabilities. This market is still maturing, so the quality of service greatly differs across the industry. In shopping for an aggregator, it is important to make sure they can live up to their promises.

Aggregators offer multiple ways to access their services, from APIs that allow companies to integrate mass SMS abilities into proprietary applications, to a web interface that can be used to easily broadcast text messages to a large base.

Depending on the service provider, a streamlined platform that allows the simple creation of a two-way response tree may be available. With these tools at a company's disposal, many formerly tedious chores using call lists and seldom checked emails can be automated, increasing efficiency and opening the door for new advertising routes.

Mass SMS is a great way to contact many users at once, accomplishing in minutes what would take hours of voice calls. The importance of new communication routes cannot be stressed enough. Anyone with a commercial interest that involves being in touch with a large potential customer base should investigate the feasibility of implementing text messaging into their system.