When Portland, Oregon's Rose Quarter decided that they wanted to find more effective, cost efficient promotional tools, they looked to text messaging. After a bit of early apprehension, they decided to go for it; the results speak for themselves:

...when the Rose Quarter was mulling over text messaging, one of the major issues wasn't the cost, but the size of the database, and whether to wait until the database had fattened up before management moved forward.
"We started with 3,000 people," Eric Blankenship, Global Spectrum Director of Marketing at the Rose Quarter, told Pollstar. "That was what we wrestled with. Do we want to wait until it's 10,000? Do we want to wait until it's 15,000? And we didn't. We have 3,000 people who want our message via text messaging. Let's give it to them."
The Rose Quarter launched its first round of text messaging with a ticket presale announcing the June 13th Faith Hill / Tim McGraw Soul2Soul date at Portland's Rose Garden Arena. All 3,000 participants received a password and Web link to purchase tickets before the general public.
How did it go?
"Through text messaging alone, we sold $25,000 worth of tickets on the first day," Blankenship said. "Again, it goes back to, ‘Should we do something with the 3,000 people or should we wait until its bigger?' If we had waited a little bit we wouldn't have sold $25,000 worth of tickets. So, for us it was good."

You can read the full article at Pollstar.