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Opt It is the premiere provider of text messaging for brands and businesses.

First, it was the shiny Motorola Razor cell phone. Do you remember how cool that was? Then it was the Blackberry, what a commotion that little scrolling ball created in the mobile world! Next, the IPhone made headlines for its amazing picture quality and touch screen capabilities. Now, the talk of the town has shifted away from the look of cell phones and on to their resources. Interests have migrated from the alarm clock function to the ability to text message and use applications. With all these changes occurring within such a short period of time, it’s sometimes difficult for marketers to know where to concentrate their mobile marketing efforts.

The best place to look for your answer is within the facts and statistics that are currently available. Only 35 percent of U.S. adults have mobile devices with the capability of utilizing an application, and of those, only 24 percent actually use the app programs available, according to the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. Eleven percent of adults don’t even understand the concept of an “app” and are not sure if their phone is equipped with the capability.

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The PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Health Research Institute released a study demonstrating the benefits that mobile technology offers in terms of healthcare. The healthcare industry is now packed with mobile devices designed to improve the standard of care and convenience for patients. Forty percent of the respondents surveyed indicated they would pay for mobile health care services.

Mobile technology is not only an aid to consumers, it’s also a new business category for those interested in improving and offering more options for preventative, acute and chronic care. There are already 10,000 medical and healthcare/fitness-related applications available for download to internet-enabled mobile devices, and consumers are catching on to the idea of being able to send data to doctors automatically.

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The New York Times recently published an article with new statistics regarding adult text messaging usage. Everyone knows that teenagers text, yet the fact that adult usage is continually increasingly is often overlooked and under reported.

Last year, 65 percent of American adults were sending and receiving text messages. That percentage has grown to almost three quarters of all Americans according to the most recent surveys. In his article, Frederic Lardinois of the New York Times reports that “about 50 percent of all adults who use text messaging send between 1 and 10 messages, 25 percent send between 11 and 50 messages a day, 10 send between 50 and 200 messages.”

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Viral marketing- a variety of marketing techniques that have the ability to create a multiplier effect, is on the top of every marketer’s list of things to learn about or do this year, and for good reason. Viral marketing utilizes pre-existing social networks to increase brand and product awareness, usually with the goal of increasing sales. Word-of-mouth is one example, but the most perfect example of viral marketing is definitely text message marketing.

Any message that you send to your subscribers can be easily forwarded to their entire contact list. The trick to motivating your subscribers to do so is to give away a buzz-worthy offer or exclusive information that anyone would want to share with friends. You can even ASK them to forward on the message. An example of this would be:

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A recent Infographic done by Shane Snow for Mashable sparked our interest due to its comical yet clear representation of the reality of text messaging.

The cost advantages of text messaging versus a broadband plan have drawn the attention of the entire world, and the arrival of unlimited messaging plans a couple of years ago opened the doors for mass communication in the palm of your hand. No wonder text messaging has surpassed phone, email, and face-to-face conversations as the number one communication method for teenagers!

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