What is SMS marketing? One kind of marketing strategy is called SMS (or text) marketing. This type of marketing involves sending short messages via a mobile phone, and it’s usually used as a way to promote products and services or send out reminders and special offers to customers. Some examples of this could be including your customers’ mobile numbers in their order forms, contacting them via text when they forget to pick up their orders, or sending coupons and exclusive deals to the mobile phones of people who sign up for text message updates.