While both presidential candidates have called for financial aid to the hurricane-hit Gulf Coast through television and online appeals, their use of mobile for the American Red Cross seems to have hit a snag.

The Obama campaign sent out a text message Monday, Sept. 1 at 3:40 p.m. Eastern time with a clear call to action that came four days after another SMS to volunteer locally as well as witness his acceptance speech in a Denver, CO, stadium. Yesterday's message was simple:

"Barack asks that you give to the Red Cross: give 5 dollars by texting GIVE to 24357 or give more by calling 1-800-435-7669 or at redcross.org/donate Please fwd".

Following that request, this writer texted in to see how the process worked. Here's the message that was sent back from the Red Cross:

"To confirm Ur $5.00 donation to Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund reply w/ the word YES. www.redcross.org/en/t2h or 800-733-2767. Txt STOP 2 send. Std. msg rates aply CB: 800-733-2767".

Texting YES to that short code returned the same message as above. That was strange. There was no confirmation or thank-you message acknowledging the donation. So this writer tried again â?¦ and got the same message as before. Déjà vu with the final shot, too.

While not so mobile-savvy, the McCain campaign too championed charity by text on the first day of its convention yesterday. Besides appeals for online donations from Sen. McCain's wife, Cindy McCain, and First Lady Laura Bush, there was a call to action on the large screen with this message:

"Text 'GIVE' (4483) to the address '2HELP' (24357)".

That short code belonged to the Red Cross. Texting GIVE to that number returned the identical response as the texts sent in response to the Obama message. Again, replying with the word YES yielded the same message - a virtual replay of what happened with the Obama effort.

Now this was puzzling.

It was clear at this stage that something was wrong. So a call placed to the American Red Cross donation line at 800-733-2767 shed some light on the issue.

It turns out that this writer wasn't the only one receiving the same text bounce-back. Several others called in to complain about the same messaging issue, the call center rep admitted.

"The donations aren't going through those texts," the rep named Cheryl said. "It's a recording of people to keep track of people who have donated."

That's what her supervisor told her to tell callers. But it didn't make sense. Why ask potential text donors to reply with GIVE to donate $5 if the intention wasn't to donate by text?

Cheryl said that the Obama campaign was notified of the problem. She also suggested calling the wireless carrier to see if the charges would appear on the bill.

The Red Cross was lucky in that some people cared enough to call in to report the problem. This writer ultimately made a donation to the Red Cross by phone, as did many others who received the Obama text message and followed up on the McCain campaign appeal at the Republican National Convention.

Now this is something that politicians or marketers who use SMS for mass appeals or campaigns must recognize: do a dry run before such a vast exercise is made public or risk frustrating your audience with good intentions let down by technology.

The McCain and Obama campaigns have done the right thing by sending text and email alerts to their supporters or those signed up for their messages to support organizations running hurricane relief efforts.

Both campaigns even went so far as to replace political messages on their site homepages with calls to donate to relief efforts.

Email and the Web are proven mass-outreach tools. But outbound texting on this scale is a fairly recent phenomenon. Mistakes are bound to happen. A dry run before the text for the Red Cross went live would have helped. Still, don't cross out text's potential to rally the troops.