SMS Marketing Compliance – How to Send SMS to Customers Without Getting Sued

SMS marketing is one of the fastest ways to increase customer engagement, thanks to 80% consumers reading and responding to text messages inside half-hour. But you may’t just buy a list of contacts and start texting everyone. There are processes you would like to follow to send compliant SMS marketing messages. If you do it right, you’ll have the option to make sure that each customers and regulators love the messages you send. This article will provide help to do just that.

Reservation: I’m not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, but I have worked with tens of 1000’s of corporations in this area over the last decade.

TCPA and FCC: What They Mean to You

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) implements and enforces communications law in America. In 1991, they passed the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) to prohibit corporations from using automatic dialing machines to call random customers. Since then, they have passed Updates and clarifications about how organizations can — or can’t — send SMS messages to consumers. Key takeaways include:

• Contacts must explicitly consent to receive text messages from your organization

• You must instruct your contacts how to opt out of receiving text messages from your organization

• If they cancel, you have to stop writing to them

You can select not to consent to receiving SMS messages if your contacts already have a business relationship with you (have purchased something or contacted you about a purchase), but it is best if you require your contacts to explicitly consent to receiving SMS marketing messages.

Mobile operators and 10DLC registration

Mobile carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile and their telecom partners want to make sure their customers only get the text messages they need to receive and that they are from legitimate organizations (i.e. carriers are trying to get rid of spam). That’s a tall order, but they’ve done a lot to make it occur. The most significant step they’ve taken is enforcing “10DLC Registration.” That’s a fancy term for registering company phone numbers so you may send text messages over their networks. To do this, you’ll have:

• Information about your organization, including your employer ID

• The phone number you’ll use to send and receive text messages

• Your Text Messaging Use Case

• Examples of text messages you’ll send

• Proof of how contacts consent

You will need to submit this information to Campaign Register and wait for approval to start sending text messages. Once approved, you may start sending SMS campaigns. (A SMS service should maintain registering 10DLC for you).

Ask your contacts to give their consent

The two easiest ways to get your contacts to agree to receive SMS messages are:

To get your contacts to text you, you may often want to use a keyword and a promotion. For example, you might promote “Sign up for text messaging to get 20% off your next purchase.” Text DEAL to the number [our number] subscribe.” Your SMS service should allow you to auto-respond to confirm they’ve opted in and share your discount code, as well as add them to your contacts list with keywords. You can also have contacts text you by replacing “Call us…” with “Text or call us…” on your website.

Make sure you have a form field for their mobile number on your contact forms. Then add opt-in language to the form, such as: “By submitting this type, you consent [company] consent to contact you via the information you provided, including marketing text messages and updates.”

Send SMS campaigns that your contacts really like

You need to make sure people actually like the messages you send them. This creates a higher customer experience and keeps them from churn. Successful SMS marketing campaigns are:

• Right – based on what subscribers have agreed to

• Current — seasonal promotions, last minute deals or reminders

• Clear and convincing — they let you know what to get and how to get it

Stick with this and your SMS marketing campaigns will stay compliant (and increase revenue).

Avoid carrier spam filters

Just like with email, mobile carriers have spam filters that look for things that are common in messages they have previously marked as spam. Things that trigger carrier spam filters include:

• Excessive amounts of emoticons (one or two is often fantastic)

• Using the dollar sign ($), especially in multiple cases

• Sending shortened links or Bitly links (clients don’t see where the link goes)

• End of message in URL (followed by some text)

• Email Length Messages

• Excessive variety of typos

• ALL CAPITAL LETTERS

You may have the option to avoid any of those actions, but the more of them you have and the more messages you send, the more likely you are to be flagged as a spammer and potentially blocked. You want to avoid that.

Grow and shrink your contact list

To be the most successful, you would like to be consistently acquiring recent SMS subscribers, and you furthermore mght need to weed out—for lack of a higher term—bad subscribers. Sometimes someone will enter the fallacious number or a phone number that may’t receive text messages (like a landline). Those messages won’t be delivered, and that’ll hurt your fame with carriers, so weed them out.

Inevitably, someone will try to unsubscribe by responding with something like “leave me alone” or “stop texting me.” These responses won’t trigger an automated unsubscribe, but you continue to need to delete them. This creates a higher customer experience, and it also proves to mobile carriers that the messages you’re sending are good and wanted, which improves deliverability rates.

The best time to start doing anything that may help your enterprise is sooner reasonably than later. SMS marketing is no exception. And by following the advice in this text, you may send compliant SMS marketing campaigns that may profit your enterprise.