Messaging has the power to transform your business. Anything new takes time to master, but SMS-Magic makes it easy to get started quickly with successful messaging campaigns, without extensive training. Check out our tips for success, designed with beginners in mind!

1. Use Your Support Network

You’re not in this alone! Our customer care team is here to answer questions and provide guidance as you start your conversational messaging journey. SMS-Magic also offers an extensive, user-friendly library of help documents with step-by step instructions, guiding you through common setup and usage pathways.

Depending on the size and scale of your business, it can be helpful to train and designate more than one admin user. Sharing admin responsibilities among multiple users helps you build a whole team of qualified professionals, so you’ll have an effective support network as your messaging journey continues.

2. Follow Successful Examples

Studying how other companies have used messaging successfully can help you jumpstart your own campaigns and avoid reinventing the wheel. It can also be an encouraging reminder that your decision to implement conversational messaging will pay off!

Here’s an inspiring example to get you started. A higher-education program wanted to boost college enrollment among its audience members. They recognized the power of messaging for their specific use case, especially since students constantly have cell phones available. Social media campaigns and email outreach weren’t driving engagement, so the company turned to messaging for a solution.

This company used conversational messaging to touch base with students every week of summer vacation. They asked questions designed to prepare students for the coming semester, initiating meaningful conversations. They also sent application reminders, scheduled meetings and calls, and answered questions. Using messaging to keep students’ academic journeys on track, this company saw real results.

What can we learn from this example? First, when one form of outreach isn’t working, it’s important to pivot and find a winning strategy. Second, the most successful messaging campaigns don’t just send messages to make noise. They offer substantial, valuable content that actually makes readers’ lives easier.

3. Understand Compliance Requirements and Best Practices

The most creative, appealing messaging campaign can be derailed quickly if you’re not following compliance requirements. Know the laws pertaining to your country and telecom provider, and follow them. Avoiding policy violations will protect your company’s reputation.

Even if you’re technically within compliance, your audience can still view your messages as spam if you aren’t following best practices. Make sure each message you send offers valuable content your readers will appreciate, and remember that less is more. Only message within standard business hours, and remember to offer clear opt-out opportunities and honor customers’ requests to unsubscribe from your messages.

4. Leverage the Power of Time-Saving Features

Messaging should make your life easier, not harder. Take advantage of all the time-saving benefits of conversational messaging! Schedule campaigns ahead of time, and automate repetitive forms of outreach like appointment reminders, thank-you notes and follow-up surveys. Use the power of bulk messaging campaigns to quickly reach a broad audience. When you filter your contact list appropriately, you can still send personalized, relevant, targeted outreach to a bulk recipient list. When you free yourself and your reps from the daily grind of repetitive outreach tasks, you have more time to focus on meaningful, personal customer relationships.

5. Consider Multichannel Opportunities

SMS messaging is part of just about everyone’s daily life, and it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. As an SMS-Magic customer, once you get started with SMS messaging, it’s easy to add more! You can expand into other channels too, including Facebook, WhatsApp, and LINE, handling all your conversations from a single inbox. Research your target demographic and discover what channels might engage them effectively, beyond SMS messaging. You don’t have to pick just one channel to focus on. With SMS-Magic, you can carry on cross-channel conversations with ease!

Ready to take the plunge and start saving time, engaging your audience and creating wins for your business? Reach out to SMS-Magic today for a demo or a free trial!

Billions of people use messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and SMS – allowing them to make payments, talk to their bankers, and submit applications from their mobile phones. Conversational messaging has become the preferred business communication channel around the world.

Now you have a chance to test drive the newly updated version of SMS-Magic!

If you already have created a sandbox environment, we would like to push an Early Release Preview to your sandbox in the next two weeks. We’d like you to try it and let us know what you think. Here’s all you need to do:

• If you have a sandbox in Version 1.68 now, do nothing. We’ll push the new release to your sandbox automatically.
• If you’d rather not play, send an email  to marketing@sms-magic.com to tell us to exclude your sandbox from the push.
• Be sure to save your work before the auto-push.

Once you’ve tried the new version of SMS-Magic, we need your feedback. We’ll give you some time to try the new release out, then we’ll send you an email with a feedback link. Your input will help us create a better product for you.

What’s New in the Early Release Preview?

SMS-Magic is known for sophisticated, easy-to-use APIs designed for CRMs like Salesforce and Zoho. The upgrades in the new release make those integrations even easier and give you more control over how you engage your customers.

• Enhanced User Experience: Personalize your user experience with additional role-based permission sets and organize the records detail page with conversation component resizing.
• Multimedia Conversations: Send bigger rich-media files over instant messengers and set Salesforce as the storage location for them.
• Tame the Templates: Enjoy quick access to org-wide templates from SMS-Magic Global Navigation.
• Find Your Conversation Flows: Search by “app name” or “PA-Key” and view process builders, workflows and flows linked with any Converse App.
• Launch Conversations at Scale: Manage multiple high-volume campaigns directly from SMS-Magic Global Navigation.
• Engage with Customers at the Right Time, Every Time: SMS-Magic’s Early Release Preview keeps track of your conversations from start to finish in a single thread – before or after you create the record. Modifying objects and templates? No problem. Your conversations are always on. You can immediately spot conversations assigned to you and keep them uninterrupted and synched with Salesforce at all times.
• Enjoy Stronger Compliance & Support: We’ve enhanced the back-end so you can track all SMS-Magic user activity in one place and access all activity logs when you need them. Configure opt-in and opt-out keywords, templated messages, and message tags. Maintain audit trails and enable reporting for multichannel compliance, opt-out rates, message delivery, and more. Have a question? Our support team is ready to help resolve any issues you encounter. You can turn on full- or limited-access to the support team for seven days at a time.
• Confidently Continue Conversations On the Go: You can spot new messages anytime, anywhere. The upgraded SMS-Magic Mobile App prominently displays how many unread messages you have. The app also lets you continue conversations from your mobile phone and tracks them in your CRM. You can share exact map locations in conversations to improve any in-person meeting experience.

The new release of SMS-Magic’s Early Release Preview is your perfect partner to power high-stakes conversational messaging for moments that matter. Help us make it the best it can be with your feedback. If you have questions, please contact customer support.

If you haven’t tried SMS-Magic yet, our customer support team would love to show you how SMS-Magic can make reaching your customers easier and more effective. Ask for a demo or a free trial!

Emails, in general, are suffering from a lack of enthusiasm. As a group, we only open 22% of the emails we receive. That open rate doesn’t bode well for your email campaigns because your recipients are already predisposed to ignore your messages.

On the other hand, we read 98% of the texts we receive. And we send more than 5 billion texts every day. Clearly, text messaging is the channel that your customers prefer. In fact, your customers love to text.

What makes texts so interesting?

Texts are immediate. Text messages, by their nature, are concise and usually appear on a mobile phone. These days, we carry our phones wherever we go, and we check them every few minutes all day long. Texts have the feel of advice from a trusted friend. Coming from a medical practice, lawyer’s office, financial adviser or a favorite company, texts can provide immediate advice, reminders and information that can help make our lives better. We like the convenience as much as the service.

Because of the nature of text messages, we think you’ll be amazed by the responses you receive from drip marketing campaigns designed for conversational text messaging. And with the right partner, you can craft a drip campaign combining texts and your customer relationship management software. Your CRM can help you segment your distribution list, personalize your messages, track customers who opt in and opt out, and store your pre-written messages. Your SMS or MMS platform can help you track your interactions with customers, no matter what channel was used.

How to Craft a Drip Campaign Using Text Messages

Drip campaigns come in two basic varieties:

• Automated campaigns that follow a set sequence

• Campaigns that are triggered by customers’ actions

In the first example, you might want to introduce your company or service to potential customers or clients. You might offer a special e-book, coupon or other information about your specialty or product in exchange for a customer’s contact information. Once you have their permission to text, you can start a series of automated texts that flow on a set schedule. In each new text, you can introduce an aspect of your business that might interest your customer. In each, you’ll give information that can lead to a sale.

In the second example, something the customer does might trigger the drip campaign. A customer might shop with you and leave your site with an item in the shopping cart. The drip campaign might revolve around helping the customer decide to purchase the item. Other actions on the customer’s part, such as adding another item, might trigger a shift in the campaign like a recommendation of a similar item.

The benefits of planning a drip campaign with texts are numerous. For one, you don’t have to remember to respond or to craft each message on the fly. You have already written the texts and have scheduled them to launch at a certain time or from a certain customer action.

Coupling your CRM to your text messaging platform, you can personalize each text with information you’ve already collected about the customer. Some of that information could include the customer’s name, nickname, date of purchase, item purchased, next appointment or application status.

Questions to Keep in Mind

After considering the best channel for your drip campaign, you should spend some time crafting both the overall structure and the details for your campaign. Here are a few questions to help you plan:

1. What’s your goal?
   Defining your goal early will help you make important decisions as you plan the campaign. It will also help you determine if the campaign is successful.

2. Who are you targeting?
   Determine who you’re trying to reach. Some marketers use personas to define their target audiences. But no matter how you decide the commonalities of your audience, use that information to send texts and offers relevant to their situation. After all, you’re trying to help them solve their business problems.

3. What starts the text sequence?
   If your campaign relies on triggers, decide what those triggers are.

4. Deliver information so it leads to a decision.
   Your text messages should help your customer decide to do business with you. Think through their experience and craft your texts to meet their objections.

5. Set the timing and frequency.
   Decide beginning and ending dates, as well as number of texts and their frequency.

6. Segment your campaigns.
   Don’t send one message and hope it applies to all customers. Use your CRM to segment your audience with meaningful criteria.

7. Measure, track and report
   You have powerful tools with your CRM and text messaging platform to measure responses and track effectiveness. Report your successes and tweak your next drip campaign to make it even better.

We think SMS-Magic is one of the best text messaging platforms available, and we’d love to show you how it works. We have experts ready to help you take SMS-Magic for a spin for FREE!

Or, you can schedule a demo or start a free trial today!

We think you’ll love what you see!

It doesn’t have to be that way!

We’d be willing to bet that your customer relationship management system (CRM) contains an incredible amount of information about your customers, even first names. By using a name in your emails and texting campaigns, you personalize the communications right from the start. But that’s just one way for your CRM to help connect you to your customers.

Try a Conversational Messaging Hub

If your customers contact you more than once, they may not always reach the same person on your team. For example, a law firm may have a team managing the case load – attorneys, paralegals, intake specialists or other administrative staff members. When clients reach out, their lawyers may not be immediately available, but the clients still need updates. The team member who responds needs information quickly to serve the client.

If your CRM and your texting system work together, it would give you a single record that shows your staff all the interactions with the client, no matter what channel the client uses – text, email, phone or mail. When a text comes in, your staff members would be able to continue the conversation because they have the history at their fingertips.

If you have a customer service team, they will find this capability very useful, as well. One of the most often cited customer complaints is being bounced from person to person trying to solve a problem. If the customer must repeat the problem over and over, frustration can build quickly.

A conversational messaging hub stores all contacts for an individual into a single record. If a customer service rep must transfer a call, the next rep has all the information in front of them. It saves time, aggravation, and maybe, a customer relationship.

Compliance Laws are Getting Tougher. Are You Ready?

The European Union has recently adopted new privacy regulations, and we expect other countries to follow suit. Can your system handle customer requests?

You can send texts only to customers who have given you express written consent. In other words, customers who have opted into your communications. They can also opt out by asking you stop sending texts to them. If regulators ask to see your records, you must be able to prove you are following your customers’ requests.

Opting in and out of texts, however, are not the only customer requests you might be asked to verify if regulators come calling. A customer can ask that you “forget” them entirely – that all mention of them in your system is erased.

If your CRM works well with your texting capabilities, you won’t ever have to worry about compliance with GDPR or other rules and regulations.

Security is Everyone’s Concern

Even the smallest databases can contain enormous amounts of personal information that thieves want. In the past several years, criminals have hacked into the data of some of the largest and most successful companies in the world, and it isn’t pretty.

Keeping your CRM and texting capabilities secure is a shared responsibility, but your texting partner should be able to assure you that they have strong security policies in place. Their policies should be designed to keep all aspects of the system – technological, physical and administrative – secure.

What’s Your Next Step?

Knowing the vital role your CRM plays in your quest for more customers and higher revenues, what should you do next? Of course do your homework, but we would like to suggest that SMS-Magic is the best solution in the marketplace.

Why? Here are just a few reasons:

1. SMS-Magic works with your favorite CRM.
   We work and play well with others. We are a preferred provider for Salesforce and Zoho, and we integrate easily with Litify. Contact us to see what we can do with your existing architecture.

2. SMS-Magic helps you automate texts while keeping it personal.
   SMS-Magic is perfect for sending automated messages to your customers and prospects. We provide templates for your use and have lots of information about creating effective messages and campaigns. You can switch from automated to live in an instant so your customers know they’re talking to a person – not a bot.

3. SMS-Magic’s Conversational Messaging Hub Gathers Contacts into One Record
   Working with your CRM, SMS-Magic consolidates all contacts from a customer into one record, including phone calls, emails and messages. Our conversational messaging hub is the first of its kind and is designed specifically to meet your needs. Never again will your customers be forced to restate the problem – making them and your service reps happier.

4. SMS-Magic helps you stay compliant.
   We can help you keep up with the details like customer permissions as they opt-in (and perhaps opt-out) of your messaging campaigns. Our back-end systems are structured so that we can display individual requests, and we can prove you’ve complied with customer requests. You won’t have to worry about regulators asking to see your records. We use on-going processes to collect and store information about distribution and can share it with regulators, if necessary.

5. SMS-Magic provides technical, physical and administrative safeguards.
   Our technical safeguards include use of access controls, integrity controls, audit controls, identity authentication, and transmission security to avoid unauthorized access. We take extra precautions to ensure the physical security of our servers and systems. Our administrative measures include administrative actions, as well as policies and procedures, to manage the selection, development, implementation, and maintenance of security measures to protect electronic information.

We have experts ready to help you take SMS-Magic for a spin for FREE!

Schedule a demo or start a free trial today!

We think you’ll love what you see!

The legislation initially will affect large companies including Apple, Google, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft. For example, it will not allow Google to collect personal data from different services to target ads to consumers without the users’ consent. And Apple may have to allow users to download apps from sources other than the App Store.

“Faced with big online platforms behaving like they were ‘too big to care,’ Europe has put its foot down,” Thierry Breton, one of the top digital officials in the European Commission, said in a recent NY Times article. “We are putting an end to the so-called Wild West dominating our information space.”

The EU is also expected to pass legislation next month that would force social media companies to police their platforms more aggressively.

The new legislation may extend its influence in two key areas. First, experts believe more restrictive legislation will appear around the world in response to the DMA – as it did after the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was adopted. Launched in 2018, the GDPR restricted the collection and sharing of personal data in the EU and became a model for countries like Brazil and Japan. Also, the new European standards may expand to become global standards because it’s easier for companies to apply them across all their markets rather than carving out rules for a single geographic area.

Messaging services can also be affected by the legislation. WhatsApp, which is owned by Meta, could be required to make its system accessible to users of rival services like Signal or Telegram. Signal or Telegram, for example, would have the option of making their systems compatible with WhatsApp. As the law takes effect and enforcement begins, other modifications may cascade from those that are initially apparent.

So, if you thought you could simply wait out the implementation of U.S. and international privacy laws and fly under the radar, you might need to rethink your strategy. Privacy regulations are not going away. They are, in fact, growing.

SMS-Magic Can Help

We’re always watching text messaging regulations around the world so that we can help you stay compliant. As the DMA takes effect, we’ll let you know how new laws may affect your customer outreach.

We can help make compliance easier, particularly if you’ve tied your text messaging campaigns into your CRM. We can help you keep up with the details like customer permissions as they opt-in (and perhaps opt-out) of your messaging campaigns. Our back-end systems are structured so that we can display individual requests, and we can prove you’ve complied with customer requests. You won’t have to worry about regulators asking to see your records. We use on-going processes to collect and store information about distribution and can share it with regulators, if necessary.

Protecting privacy is a complicated question, but with the right partner, the answer can be simple. We’ll keep you updated as laws around the world change. Let SMS-Magic help you reach your customers while you’re protecting their privacy.

Start a free trial today! Your customers will love you for it!

Here’s a beginner’s guide to compliance for companies using business-to-person texts in the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom. And even if you’re an old hand at text messaging, we may have some good advice for you, too.

TCPA – the Federal Regulation in the U.S.

The U.S. Congress originally created the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) to combat unsolicited phone calls, and it has expanded to include new technologies like text messaging. It contains specific restrictions and penalties that companies ignore at their peril. The fines can be as much as $1,500 per message sent. In one of the first class-action lawsuits concerning texting, Papa John’s settled the case against it for $16.5 million in 2013.

Perhaps the most important portion of the TCPA concerns acquiring permission to text. You must have express written consent before your company can legally send text messages to anyone. Before that first text goes out, your customer must say it’s okay or “opt in” to receiving your text messages.

That generally means the first contact must made by a different type of communication. Email, online applications, online communication preferences, direct mail, comment cards, and point-of-purchase materials are some of the most common. Some companies ask customers to text them first, and that action starts an automated chain of messages that allows the customer to opt in.

When a company responds to a request to text, the first text they send must contain a few elements. Here they are:

• Company name.
• Customers agree to receive texts from your company.
• Customers don’t have to receive texts to purchase anything from you.
• Frequency of messages. Be up front about how often you plan to text.
• Message and data rates may apply.
• How to reach customer service.
• How to opt out. For example, “Reply STOP to unsubscribe.”
• Provide a link to your privacy policy.

That’s quite a bit to include in 160 characters, so you can design a series of automated texts that contain the information. Your second text can explain any coupons, discounts or other promotions you’re offering.

GDPR Sets Regulations for EU & UK

In the years since the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) hit the streets in the European Union, it’s become clear that all businesses, regardless of size, need to understand what the GDPR requires. The EU is serious about enforcing its provisions.

Fines have ranged from €2.5 million to €225 million for non-compliance. Although these fines may be negligible to multinationals, smaller companies could be devasted by them. Smaller companies and individuals are not exempt from harsh penalties and the costs associated with defending the charges.

The same rules apply in the United Kingdom as they do in the European Union. The UK agreed to GDPR and Brexit has not changed anything.

Who is Affected by GDPR?

Of course, companies that conduct business in the EU and the UK are directly affected by the GDPR rules. But so are companies with customers there. That could be you. Also, your company might be affected if someone living in the EU or UK visits your website and allows you to install cookies on their computer. The more contact you have with people in the EU, the more risk you assume.

GDPR’s Seven Principles for Privacy Rights

The GDPR is based on seven basic tenets:

1. Lawfulness, Fairness, and Transparency: personal data shall be processed lawfully, with fairness to the data subject, and fully transparent. 
2. Purpose Limitation: The organization shall process personal data concerning the contract or business operation, which are explicit or specified before processing. 
3. Data Minimization: data shall not be held or processed further than is required for the purpose.
4. Accuracy: data must be updated, rectified, or erased if inaccurate. 
5. Storage Limitation: you cannot keep personal data longer than necessary; your data retention must have a deletion time. 
6. Integrity and Confidentiality: all personal data must be kept secure and protected against theft, accidental loss, unlawful processing, or damage.
7. Accountability: Organizations must be able to demonstrate that they put appropriate technical and organizational safeguards in place.

What’s New with the GDPR in 2021?

As the EU has updated the GDPR, you need to know what’s changed:

1. All parties who have access to customer data are responsible for data security. When data leaves your company, the company that receives it becomes a “joint controller.”
2. Special data-collection rules between the EU and US have expired. If you handle EU data, you must include standard GDPR contractual clauses in your terms and conditions.
3. When collecting data, you must have clear and explicit consent for which data you collect and process.

Privacy Regulations Are Here to Stay

If you thought you could simply wait out the implementation of TCPA and GDPR and fly under the radar, you might need to rethink your strategy. They are not going away, and privacy regulations are growing.

Tracking Explicit Consent

You must track who opts in and who opts out of your text marketing campaigns, and you must have explicit consent to collect and process a customer’s personal information. You’ll also need to track who is already in the system to keep one person from opting in multiple times, and you’ll need to be able to erase a person’s data from all parts of your system, if requested.

SMS-Magic can make compliance easy, particularly if you’ve tied your text messaging campaigns into your CRM. We can help you keep up with customer permissions as they opt-in (and perhaps opt-out) of your messaging campaigns.

Our back-end systems are structured so that we can display individual requests, and we can prove you’ve complied with customer requests. You won’t have to worry about regulators asking to see your records. We use on-going processes to collect and store information about distribution and can share it with regulators, if necessary.

Protecting privacy is a complicated question, but with the right partner, the answer can be simple. Let SMS-Magic help you reach your customers while you’re protecting their privacy.

Contact us to answer your questions, set up a demo or start your free trial. Let us show you why your compliance worries will disappear with SMS-Magic!

CSAT scores are great measures of how delighted a customer is after a single experience with your company. Measuring customer satisfaction is a must for most industries.

The first place our customers use text messaging is in sending satisfaction surveys. When they’re measuring customer-service interactions or conversations, our customers tend to send out surveys by text immediately after the interaction. With products like furniture, they may wait several weeks to give the customer time to enjoy the new additions before sending a satisfaction survey.

The surveys often consist of only one question or just a few carefully chosen questions. If our customer needs responses to a longer survey, they can link the text message to an online survey form. And with text, the response rate goes up almost immediately.

The greatest benefit to sending any survey by text is that your customers will read it and respond. We know that globally we send 5 billion texts a day, and we open 98 percent of them. Conversely, we only open emails 22 percent of the time, according to Gigaom. Research from Asurion shows that we look at our phones 96 times a day or once every 10 minutes.

If you want to know what your customers are thinking, ask them via texts. You can use text-only SMS messages or multi-media MMS messages. Visit our recent blog to determine which is best for your use.

In addition to sending surveys via text messaging, you can improve your customer experience with text messaging. Here’s an insider secret from one of our customers – consider using the SMS-Magic Mobile App.

One of our customers is a property management company, and needed a way for tenants to reach property managers during an emergency. The PMs weren’t always at their desks waiting for the calls to come in, and tenants were frustrated by what they perceived was a lack of concern.

Nothing could have been farther from the truth. Often during working hours, the property managers were out visiting properties. After hours, they weren’t in the office, but relied on a dedicated phone line to handle emergencies. The only problem was that tenants texted the company instead of calling, and no one responded to them. The system wasn’t set up to respond to texts.

So, the company deployed the SMS-Magic Mobile App. A tenant could text the company about emergencies, and the PM on call could field the text on a personal mobile phone. The text would even be recorded in the company’s CRM as if it had come through the desktop computer in the office. You can imagine how much happier the tenants are – their emergencies are getting prompt attention. And how much happier staff members are because they can handle emergencies away from their desks.

Another of our customers is a disrupter in the world of travel accommodations. The company works with condominium and apartment developers to identify properties that are empty during the construction phase in major U.S. cities. They design high-end interiors, stage the empty condos and apartments with furniture and accessories, and rent them to travelers looking for luxury accommodations in highly desirable neighborhoods, mostly in downtown areas.

SMS-Magic helps the company’s customer service reps easily reach out to the right people to resolve issues. For example, if a guest is arriving late and has a question about checking in — they can call, email, or text customer support. The inquiry is logged in the support center and any customer service rep who checks that guest record later can see the complete interaction. It makes solving guest issues easier, especially when handing off open cases during shift changes.

Connecting a guest and a customer service rep via text is an important functionality needed to resolve issues. Text is also likely to be a guest’s preferred method of interaction since messaging is the fastest growing conversational medium on the planet.

We can help you set up automated responses to incoming texts. With an automated system in place, your customers will have an immediate response that often can provide the information they need. You have the option to switch to live responses when you need to.

We’ve also thought about the customers who use more than the native SMS capability in their phones. You can receive, track and respond to multichannel queries such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, text and MMS.

Security is always top of mind for us. With all our products, we ensure data privacy and regulatory compliance while you’re using text messaging to manage your customers’ issues.

It’s a competitive world and if you’re able to respond to your customers faster than your competition, you have earned an amazing competitive advantage. Your customers may not expect much from customer service, but you can earn new customers, while keeping your existing customers, by delighting them every time they contact you. Quick responses to their emergencies or inquiries can help you develop the positive customer relationships that drive your business.

We’d like to help you wow your customers with outstanding customer service. Contact us for more information about the SMS-Magic family of products. We have a solution that’s right for you!

We’re always interested in how companies are using text messaging, and when one of our team members parked recently, she was directed by a sign on the parking meter to text her location to the parking company. That started a text interaction that allowed her to pay for her parking space. And if she needed more time, she could text her payment without returning to her car.

Because she works for SMS-Magic, she was interested to see that the parking company didn’t ask for permission to text her. That’s because text conversations initiated by the consumer don’t require permission; consent is implied because the consumer acted first. Our colleague knew, however, that almost every other contact requires the consumer to “opt in” to receiving messages.

The dilemma is that a company can’t text a customer to ask for permission. So how do you get your customers, clients, patients or prospects to say “Yes” to the texts?

Get ‘Express Written Consent’

You must have “express written consent” before your company can legally send text messages to anyone. That means more than just asking for their phone number. And it doesn’t matter who it is – an existing customer, a former client, a trade-show lead, or someone on a purchased marketing list. Before that first text message goes out, your customer must say it’s okay.

Why? The U.S. Congress created the Telephone Consumer Protection Act to combat unsolicited phone calls. Through the years, however, the Act has expanded to include new technologies like text messaging. It contains specific restrictions and penalties that companies ignore at their peril. The fines can be as much as $1,500 per message sent. In one of the first class-action lawsuits concerning texting, Papa John’s settled the case against it for $16.5 million in 2013.

But you can secure permission with a few simple steps:

• Add a “permission to text” checkbox to any initial paperwork a new customer will complete. That includes applications, sales paperwork, installation appointments, requests for more information, medical or financial profile information, or contests.
• You can send emails to your existing clients to give them the opportunity to opt in. You can offer a coupon or discount to incentivize your customers.
• After you have permission, send the first text right away. If permission is included in an online document, send the first text immediately. Whenever you send the first text, however, mention your company’s name, the frequency of messages, any carrier charges that apply, and provide an option to get help or to opt out.
• If you’re offering a coupon, discount or other promotion to opt in, mention how to redeem the offer in the first text you send.

The more you automate these processes, the happier your staff will be.

Record Keeping on the Back End

Of course, you’ll also need to keep a list of everyone who has given you permission to text – and everyone who hasn’t. If you’re ever challenged, you’ll need to be able to prove you only send texts to customers who have opted into receiving text messages.

Receiving, logging and responding to messages from your customers may seem daunting, but SMS-Magic is designed to make it easy by working seamlessly with your CRM. SMS-Magic not only receives and sends text messages, it logs messages so that anyone in the system can see what has been sent to whom.

In addition, if your customer-service reps are working on a complicated matter, the system will log all interactions, including phone calls and emails, eliminating the need for the customer to explain the situation every time they change reps. It saves hours of needless work.

SMS-Magic works seamlessly with Salesforce and Zoho and has the capability to work with most systems. We can help you even if you don’t use a CRM at all.

Does SMS-Magic sound like the partner you’ve been looking for? We hope so!

Contact us to set up a demo or to start your free trial. Let us show you why your compliance worries will disappear with SMS-Magic!

That rule is courtesy of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, a law enacted in 1991 to govern phone calls and then updated to include texts and emails. TCPA seeks to protect consumers from receiving unwanted marketing solicitations, and its fines and penalties help ensure businesses take it seriously. The fines can be as much as $1,500 per message sent. In one of the first class-action lawsuits concerning texting, Papa John’s settled the case against it for $16.5 million in 2013.

Fortunately, with a little planning and a savvy text messaging partner like SMS-Magic, you can gain consent, reach out to your customers legally, and keep the necessary records to defend any actions against you. And most importantly, you can establish a relationship with your customers that lets them know you’re not going to fill up their inboxes with unwanted messages.

What Does the TCPA Require?

TCPA guidelines require that you must:

• Receive consent before any message can be sent.
• Mention your company name
• State the coupon or value proposition
• Mention the frequency of messages that will be sent monthly
• Disclose possible carrier costs and fees
• Give an option to ask for help and opt out of future texts

How Can You Approach Customers to Gain Consent?

Remember: You can’t text until you have permission. So don’t even think about buying a list of phone numbers and starting without consent. But if you play by the rules, where can you solicit customers for your text marketing campaign?

In a recent blog post, we provided a list of 20 ways to attract new customers to your texting campaigns and there are many more. As you design your campaigns to grow your text marketing list, you can include the initial TCPA information your customer needs in a small text block on the emails, trade show materials, business cards, product packaging, or other marketing materials. Here’s an example of how you can structure that text for a fictitious pizza restaurant:

Headline: Want Great Pizza Deals Sent Directly to Your Phone?

Subhead: Text CHEESE to 999999 to Start Receiving Weekly Offers

Graphics: Include your logo or other graphic

Small text: Message and data rates may apply. Max 5 msgs/mo. Consent not required to buy goods/svcs. Terms and conditions at pizzastore.com/terms. Privacy policy at pizzastore.com/privacy. For help, text HELP to 555111. To opt-out, text STOP to 555111.

If your company requires additional legal text for offers such as “May not be combined with other offers” or “Limited time only,” you can include the necessary text in the small text block. Notice that you can provide the web address for terms and conditions and your privacy policy. If your customers have questions, you’ve given them a resource for answers. You’ve even provided information about opting out before they need it.

Consider Using a Double Opt-In

Let’s assume your customer has opted into receiving text messages from your company with the offer we’ve just discussed above. They’ve texted CHEESE to your short code. Now what happens?

Simple. You automatically send them a confirmation text immediately. In that first message, you can provide some valuable information to them and keep yourself legal.

Here’s an example of the confirmation text:

Please reply YES to receive updates from the Pizza Store. Std. msg&data rates apply. Max 5 msgs/month. Reply HELP for help, STOP to cancel.

You’ve repeated your company’s name and asked your customers to confirm that they want to receive texts from you. You’ve provided a reminder about possible texting charges. You’ve told them how many messages to expect, and you’ve given them the tools to ask for help or stop the messages. And you’ve done all of this in seconds without disturbing your customer.

Extend an Offer

Of course, you can offer a special deal, coupon, discount or promotion with either the first touch or the confirmation text. Often, this type of extra incentive will prompt customers to opt in right away by providing a sense of urgency.

In the first example above, the Pizza Store could have offered an immediate discount with the promise of more to come via text messages throughout the month. Adding an incentive would only require a slight rewrite of the copy.

Be careful, however, how you word your incentive. Don’t use a vague statement like “Text us to receive a 10% discount.” Instead, be clear about what the customer must do to earn the discount. This is better: “Get 10% off when you join our SMS text list.”

Test, Test, Test

Your text campaigns will require thoughtful planning, and it will be easy to figure out what’s working and what’s not. Texts are immediate. You won’t have to wait long to determine if your appeals are successful or not. Adjustments are easy to make when you have data driving your decisions.

So, plan some A/B testing with email appeals for your text messaging lists. You can determine which email subject lines and body copy prompt the most customers to opt in. And as you build your text messaging lists, you can do similar testing to see what campaigns produce the best results. The beauty of text messaging campaigns is their immediacy.

Keeping Track of Who Opted In and Who Opted Out

You’ll also need to keep track of who has opted in and who has opted out, as well as who is already in the system to keep one person from opting in multiple times. SMS-Magic can make compliance a breeze, particularly if you have tied your text messaging campaigns into your CRM. No matter what industry you’re in – banking, higher education, hospitality, finance or others, we’ll help you keep up with customer permissions as they opt-in (and perhaps opt-out) of your messaging campaigns.

SMS-Magic is designed to track opt-in and opt-out requests so that you send only to the customers who have specifically asked you to. Our back-end systems are structured so that we can display individual requests, and we can prove you’ve complied with customer requests. You won’t have to worry about regulators asking to see your records. We use on-going processes to collect and store information about distribution and can share it with regulators, if necessary.

Does SMS-Magic sound like the answer you’ve been looking for? We hope so!

Contact us to set up a demo or to start your free trial. Let us show you how SMS-Magic can help you build and automate your text messaging lists!