Leveraging the mobile phone

There are huge opportunities to leverage the mobile phone to communicate with your user base. The mobile phone is one of the few devices where you can push a message to your users in real time. Unlike a website or instant messaging application where the user needs to be logged on or email where the user needs first read their email, with a SMS or WAP push message the user can be contacted immediately.
There are many opportunities to leverage the mobile phone for marketing, notifying or prompting users. For instance there are a number of banks like First National Bank's inContact and MTN Banking that send out SMS alerts whenever money is paid from or to your bank account. There are a huge number of companies using SMS messages for marketing messages. There are a number of other uses particularly for two factor authentication like sending an SMS message with a one time pin (OTP) that is entered onto a website during the login process. This proves the user has the mobile phone in addition to knowing the username and password.
With all this added ability comes the inevitable risks. Too many marketing messages will annoy the user. It is therefore essential that the user always has an opt out option. There is also the added risk that the SMS can be spoofed. For instance an SMS can be sent to a user with a WAP link asking them to go to log onto your website, but the link points to a phishing site. This might enable somebody to get hold of a user's password.
So the bottom line is that 'yes' it is a great opportunity to contact your user base, but speak to some consultants who have a strong knowledge about this space before you do so, because there are a lot of pitfalls.