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Cellphones have become just another extremity of the body – always attached to the ear or the belt, hanging out in the pocket or swimming around in a purse. They typically don’t leave their owners’ sight, and they are constantly being checked for missed calls, new voice mails or new text messages.

And that’s different than it was decades ago, when clunky mobile phones came in black leather bags and were anything but discrete.

But as time has passed, cellphones have shrunk and their capabilities have soared. And text messaging – unlike e-mail, where anything and everything can flood your inbox despite elaborate spam filters – has created a mode of communication that is personal, direct and easy to manage. That’s why some companies have positioned themselves into this new realm of mobile marketing and are pursuing a mode of communication that places a company’s message literally at its customers’ fingertips.

“It’s a channel that’s immediate, dynamic (and) relevant,” said Jamie Buelt, a partner in Catchwind, a Des Moines-based mobile marketing company that specializes in text message marketing. “It’s not like using the Web or e-mail. You don’t have a lot of etiquette rules and things to learn. It’s very short and simple.”

One hundred forty character spaces simple, that is.

As a general standard across multiple cellphone carriers, 160 characters are usually all the space that is allowed when sending a text message. However, according to policies created by cellphone carriers, 20 character spaces of that text message must be saved for “reply stop to quit.” According to rules and regulations, this opt-out message has to be tagged on every text message that Catchwind sends. That leaves 140 characters to play with, which means messages must be short and sweet, yet deliver a message that reflects a company’s character and culture.

“As weird as it sounds to take 160 characters and say you can develop culture in that message, it actually is true,” said Brian Hemesath, CEO of Catchwind. “Because of the timeliness and the message itself, we’ve got some really interesting customers that have done a lot with those 160 characters.”

But learning to send the right text message with the right tone at the right time takes a lot of practice and a lot of time to develop. Because every message is sent with a purpose, “it has to be understandable, it has to be relevant and it has to be valuable,” Buelt said.

Even more so, the text messages that companies send out that are directed toward consumers, have to solidify the loyalty between the company and the customer, who has to opt-in to a company’s texting campaign.

That means the people who are receiving text messages “are people that have raised their hands and said, ‘I want more. I like you. I want to hear from you,'” Hemesath said. “Instead of the reach of 100,000 people or a million people and waiting for that small percentage to respond or react, we now can focus that demographic, or that channel, on 1,000 people, 10,000 people, that have all given permission and said, “‘I want to be marketed to.'”

Hemesath also said text message campaigns have high response rates, averaging between 10 and 20 percent. Hemesath said Catchwind has seen a response rate as high as 60 percent on a campaign it did for a restaurant.

“As long as you have something to say to people that keeps them wanting to hear from you, it’s actually probably the most dynamic channel that there is,” Buelt said. “It’s not going to take the place of newspaper advertising, but for that one-on-one personal communication with your client, it’s actually a channel that is unparalleled.”

The first step in a text message marketing campaign is to create a call to action that gets people to opt-in to receive the messages. This could be a billboard, a radio or newspaper advertisement, or even a blurb on a pre-existing Web site that says, for example, “Text LUNCH to 72466 to get lunch specials from Company XYZ.” Once the customer sees that call to action and responds by texting the keyword to the specified number, in this case “LUNCH,” then Company XYZ can communicate with the customer directly, personally and within seconds.

“This is a market that’s direct, energetic, interactive and immediate – real time,” Buelt said.

Having been in the text message industry for roughly two years, which Hemesath said is an “eternity” for this medium, Catchwind currently does business in 25 states and can reach 99 percent of all mobile subscribers.

“To some degree, it’s the Internet all over again in 1994,” Hemesath said.