Text messages - as Marketing Tool?

I see that many of the sessions at the conference surround the topic of technology. And marketing is a big one too. So put those together and we're probably all thinking about ways to use technology to market our programs.

There's the standard website and email format that comes to mind first. But, I haven't really heard a lot about using text messaging as a marketing avenue. I feel like it's kind of a random thought I'm throwing out there, because I don't even know if it would be possible (or legal/ethical). And here I may also be showing a little bit of my limitations with technology. Personally, I've written one text message in my life and it took me about 5 minutes to write it and figure out how to send it!.

Emails seem to be easily ignored or deleted because we're all overwhelmed with the number of emails we get each day. But students seem to be very in tune with their cell phones for text messaging. But, is it even possible to send text messages to groups of people? (Again, my lack of knowledge shining through here). Would students be receptive to this kind of marketing, or would they be more annoyed by it? Are there legal/ethical limitations to this?

Although I can think of the advantages of using text messages to promote career programs, personally, I think if I were to receive text messages of the "marketing" variety, I would fall more on the "annoyed" side. But that's just me. What do you think? Anybody seen/ heard of this being done anywhere?