Ping Mobile and Sharsheret have teamed up for the ?Text For Your Next? campaign to promote breast cancer awareness.

Women can text to receive a reminder to schedule an annual mammogram, ultrasound or other breast cancer screening in six months from Sharsheret. The company hopes that the partnership will connect women in a life-saving endeavor.

?An SMS message is virtually guaranteed to reach the target audience and serves as an excellent tool for alerts and reminders,? said Shira Simmonds, president/CEO of Ping, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.

Sharsheret is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting young Jewish women and their families facing breast cancer.

Ping provides mobile marketing services, including SMS, MMS, IVR, WAP applications and Bluetooth to marketers.

?With ?Text For Your Next,? Sharsheret is reaching out to women where they are ? on their cell phones ? to remind them to schedule their annual mammograms and screenings,? said Elana Silber, director of operations at Sharsheret, Teaneck, NJ. ?The goal is that with this simple text we are promoting breast health and breast cancer awareness and ultimately we will save lives.

?For an outreach campaign to be effective it needs to actually reach the target population,? she said. ?We understand that young women today are active and may be hard to reach, yet we know that young women keep their cell phones close at hand and are choosing to communicate more and more via text messaging."

SMS awareness
Users can participate by typing their first and last name ? without a space between ? and text the keyword SHARSHERET to the short code 74642.

?The campaign is specifically targeted to younger women from Jewish Ashkenazi decent who carry a gene for breast cancer at a younger age,? Ms. Simmonds said.

This is not the first mobile campaign that Ping has been involved with.

Earlier this month, the company took a stand against texting while driving in support of Oprah Winfrey?s ?No Phone Zone? campaign.

The campaign warns consumers about the potential dangers of texting while driving.

Ping is promoting its safety position by adding a slogan to all of its staff email signatures, newsletters and Web pages. The slogan says, ?Ping Mobile supports Oprah?s No Phone Zone: Dnt Txt N Drv? (see story).

In addition, Ping partnered with Multiplied Media to deliver targeted campaigns to consumers via a new local-based application.

The application is GPS-enabled and connects consumers to local businesses, people, restaurants and movie theaters at the moment they want to buy or get products and services.

?The goal is to use SMS to help prevent and detect breast cancer early, so treatment can be taken advantage of early on,? Ms. Simmonds said.