Check out this guest post over at iContact's 'Official Email Blog' How to Use Text Messaging to Compliment Your Email Marketing Campaigns

If you’re already an email marketing pro, you know the value of building upon your traditional marketing efforts. Text message marketing promises to change the way you contact your customers, just as email marketing already has.

...

Not everyone receives their email on their mobile phone, and that’s where text messaging can extend your existing email campaigns and vice versa.

Head over to iContact to read the entire post.

Every so often we like to publish straight-forward guides that cut through the jargon typically associated with SMS marketing. Collectively our guides have been read tens of thousands of times - and we hope we've helped just as many people get started with SMS marketing. If you're new to the world of SMS marketing any of these guides should be helpful:

• The prospect of launching your first mobile marketing campaign can be downright scary. Mobile is a new platform, with new conventions, new language, and new metrics. Perhaps you’ve read a white paper in the past. It was probably dozens of pages long and filled with incomprehensible jargon. We understand where you are coming from. And that is why we put together this Ez Guide To Mobile Marketing With Text Messaging.
• Learn how to build a list of customers to text to. We’ll provide you with several examples of what has worked best in the past for our clients, as well as go through pitfalls and common mistakes so you can avoid making them yourself. Each example and idea will have to be tailored to what industry your business is in, but you’ll still have a wealth of knowledge to get going on building your subscriber list! Learn the Best Way To Build Your Opt-In SMS Marketing List.
• Complex technical information is great if you are a software developer. Unfortunately, it is not very helpful if you are a decision-maker considering whether a short code is right for your business or organization. And that is why we put together this Ez Guide To Short Codes.
• Marketers at Fortune 500 companies and small businesses alike are using text messaging in a number of innovative and effective ways. To help you understand the powerful use of SMS text messaging we've compiled 50 Fantastic uses of text message marketing.
• If you’re an active texter, chances are you’ve already used a mobile keyword. Even if you don’t text that often, you still might be familiar with keywords, even if you don’t realize it. As you’ll see in this guide, keywords power mobile coupons and contests, allow consumers to join your marketing list from their phone, and even let you send out mass text messages when on the go. Learn all about Mobile Marketing With Keywords.
• Mobile marketing is new, it is personal, and it allows consumers to stay in control. Survey after survey shows that consumers are open to mobile marketing messages. So short of opening up your own mobile marketing firm, how can you join this rapidly growing industry? Affiliate programs and reseller programs, offered by firms like Ez Texting, allow you to participate without putting up capital of your own. Learn about Mobile Marketing Affiliate Programs.

Want to learn about Ez Texting? Take a tour.

The indispensible Mobile Marketer recently published their outlook for 2011:

The outlook for mobile advertising, marketing and media is dynamite, backed by firepower from Apple, Google, Microsoft, Research In Motion and an array of retailers and brands that get it.

...

As editors and reporters Giselle Tsirulnik, Dan Butcher and Rimma Kats so ably demonstrate in Mobile Marketer’s Mobile Outlook 2011, all facets of mobile marketing are gaining currency with brands, ad agencies, publishers and retailers. Thank-you to them for this Classic Guide that should be read cover to cover.

Head over to Mobile Marketers to download the guide now.

Americans send over 1.5 trillion texts per year - up from less than one hundred billion only a few years ago. If you look at the entire world you come up with this staggering prediction:

A study by ABI Research finds that consumers worldwide will send more than 7 trillion SMS messages in 2011, indicating a huge opportunity for marketers.

The study found that messaging is more prevalent among younger subscribers, and as they replace older subscribers, messaging will get a further boost.

The upshot for businesses looking to reach their customers?

With the expected growth in SMS for 2011, more brands will likely jump on the SMS marketing bandwagon.

"In 2011, marketers will continue to use SMS along with other mobile channels,” Mr. Strother said. “Not everyone has a smartphone, and communicating with those that do not via SMS is the best way to reach a wide audience.”

Read more at Mobile Marketer