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Published in Inc. Magazine’s December 2009 issue, How to Boost Sales with Mobile Coupons illustrates how easily small businesses can implement a text message marketing program to drive sales.

Here’s an excerpt from the column:

“One of the benefits of text-message coupons is that you can offer them at a specific time of day. Ashok Desai, owner of Family Dry Cleaners, a chain of four stores in southeastern Tennessee, started sending coupons via mobile text message in August…looking for a way to target coupons based on the time of day and day of the week. “Certain days are very slow for us, like when it rains or the middle of the week,” he says. Now, on Tuesday mornings, he sends out a promotion to the 100 people who have signed up.

To get customers to register to receive the text-message coupons, Desai put out fliers in each of his stores and sent direct mail to local residents, urging them to send a text message to the company’s short code to receive special text-message offers. He calculates he gets about a 10 percent redemption rate per coupon. The initiative, which costs $65 every four to six months, has generated an extra $2,000 a month in sales, he says…”

Read Inc.’s December 2009 issue for the complete column.