Looking for a more effective (and cheaper) way to advertise than its traditional newspaper ads, Ashley Furniture hooked up with mobileStorm to see if mobile marketing was a viable alternative.

Back in July, the retailer, which operates some 377 furniture stores, used SMS and e-mail to tell customers who'd opted in to previous promotions about a secret sale and other goodies.

According to Mobile Marketing Watch, the mobile campaigns really worked. Ashley sent text messages and e-mails the evening before it held a "12-hour private event" and, although most folks don't think of furniture as an impulse buy, it raked in $30,000 during the one-day event.

This was followed by the big test - a four-day secret sale for which the retailer sent out 6,000 text messages and roughly 28,700 e-mails the morning the sale began. When all was said and done, the event generated $138,460. Although four times as many folks got the e-mails, it was the texts that ruled the sale. According to the article, a very impressive $85,438 was attributed to those 6,000 customers who had received the SMS alerts and coupons.