Despite the rise of innovative communication methods, cell phone users continue to rely on their text messaging services to communicate with one another. A study from Portio Research found that the number of SMS messages a person sends per month in North America has declined, but only by about 0.5 percent. In reality, phone carriers that offer SMS services are making about $254,6664 per minute.

How do these findings relate to SMS marketing in Canada? Findings indicated that the Canadian market has grown to be tied with the Phillipines as the second-largest SMS market in the world. The Asian nation is commonly known as the "SMS capital of the world," but the study found that use in the Phillipines is trending down as well, while Canada continues to trend up.

Users in these text message heavy nations send and receive about 500-600 messages per month.

Because text message use has only fallen 0.5 percent, it is worth noting that the United States continues to send the largest amount of messages, contributing about 96 percent of overall SMS revenue. Portio projects that SMS in U.S. will be valued at $310 billion in three years. If the largest text messaging market expects to see this much revenue, imagine the potential of other countries, including Canada.

Businesses have the opportunity to reach a broad audience through a custom and localized SMS service. Depending on the information a company has gathered from web traffic, subscriptions and a customer's purchase history, business owners can create a strategy that is relevant to the targeted audience, which can translate to higher sales.

SMS marketing is a cost-effective way for a company to advertise because they do not have to pay high printing or subscription fees. More than 90 percent of customers who use their cell phones are subscribed to an unlimited text messaging service. When a user subscribes to an organization's text alerts, it typically costs them nothing.

According to Juniper Research, application-to-person messaging platforms is predicted to be a $70 billion industry by 2016. This doesn't include the amount of revenue companies have made from text messaging campaigns. Before a small or mid-sized business decides to implement these solutions, reach out to Swift SMS Gateway to learn about their text messaging options.