Great article! Just wanted to clear up some things about SMS for business:

Open rate—The average open rate for SMS is actually 98%.
Cost—Low. From a company perspective, it only costs $1-2/month to provision a long code text-enabled number, and ~$100 for use of an SMS platform. Meanwhile, it costs about $150,000 to develop an app (with accompanying push notifications).
Opt-out possibilities—High. It’s important for marketers to offer people the chance to opt-out, and the Mobile Marketing Association, which oversees text marketing, demands double opt-in authentication and the opportunity to opt-out with a simple keyword.
Sender’s identity—Clear. If you are texting with someone, you know who they are, and if you text with a business, you can add your contact information to your phone for ease of recognition.
Engagement—High. SMS can be used for any business for a variety of different use cases (scheduling, reporting, payment, etc.) In customer service, for example, SMS engagement is very high because people are trying to resolve their problem on a channel they prefer. Push notification engagement is very low: only 6% of consumers react to (receive and clicked on) push notifications from mobile apps across industries and OS types
Personalization—High. By integrating with CRMs, SMS can deliver a personalized, contextualized experience, drawing from past interactions to inform future ones. SMS can incorporate data as simple as name or email, or as advanced as available appt times drawn from a scheduling system. Plus, from a customer perspective, text messages seem like they’re coming from a person
Record—High. Depending on the system you use, you can get advanced reporting about the message sent: how many people have opened your message, how many people have engaged with the text flow, etc.
Spam rate—Low (even lower with long code text messages). Texts on short codes are regulated by the CTIA, with clear rules for opt-in and opt-out. Failure to comply means your short code can be revoked.
Amount of information—The amount of information with SMS is medium. Although it may take a few messages to resolve a problem, the fact that SMS platforms can tie into a CRM means relevant customer information can be incorporated into the first text, speeding up the interaction.
Distractibility—SMS distractibility is only high if you aren’t expecting a text message. If you are waiting for customer service information over SMS, it won’t distract you to get a new message.

As I’ve laid out, SMS is a great channel for customer engagement. In fact, 64% of Americans would rather text than call a business. If you’d like to learn more, you can download our 2014 report here: http://onereach.com/resources/high-demand-for-text-message-2014-report

Cheers,

Kevin

What do you mean by a properly trained client? There’s still a lack of personalisation when it comes to SMS, and they are being deleted too, just as unnecessary e-mails or excess apps. Moreover, it’s even easier to delete those – generally just one swipe, unlike the mobile app.
Undoubtedly, integrating several tools together – just like SMS and apps that you’ve mentioned – will work great for any business. The decision to delete a mobile app, in my view, does not depend on the size of the business as people generally turn away from mass brands to their customised and personalised local businesses. The developer needs to work over the size of the app, its functionality and work on retention – that is the other point I discussed in another article.
Surely, SMS have many advantages but mobile apps have more. Have you heard of the Macy’s case when they can actually track if you step inside Macy’s store and the exact shelves you crossed and stopped by while searching for whatever you needed? This is possible only with an app that has a special monitor integrated with the app and geolocation.