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!

So we were surprised when she absolutely raved about an online retailer she used during the holidays last year. She wanted to send food to relatives, and the company didn’t have their favorite treat in stock. When she ordered everything else, the company recommended a substitution for the out-of-stock treat, and she sent it along to her family, but she wasn’t thrilled.

After the sale, the company sent her a one-second survey, and she decided to let them know how disappointed she was. She wrote in her survey response, “We are so disappointed that the Blackberry Farm sausage isn’t available. Guess the pigs got tired of giving their all for our breakfasts. Sigh.” She didn’t expect a response.

The customer service rep wrote back, “Thank you for your order. I too am disappointed that the Blackberry Farm sausage is no longer available. It was delicious. I will let our marketing team know since sometime stuff becomes available again. Have a great night.” Our team member was floored. This was either the best artificial-intelligence response ever or she was talking to a real person. She felt heard.

Fast forward many months. Our team member placed another order with this company. Everything went well, and again she responded to the company’s one-second survey. She gave them a “10” and wrote, “You guys rock! My interactions with you make me smile.”

Jane from the company wrote back, “Your email made me smile! Thanks so much for that.” She continued, “And thanks for answering our one-second survey. We’re glad you think we’re worth recommending! Please take 10% off your next order!” The message continued with a secret discount code, the expiration date and the note, “Feel free to share the love with your friends and family – forward the discount code to them. Feel free to like us on Facebook too, if you do that sort of thing.

What’s my point in telling you this story?

This company turned a grumpy holiday shopper into an advocate for their company with two orders, and one of them didn’t even contain everything the customer wanted. With a few simple interactions, they built a relationship with a single customer. And if they delighted one customer, we expect that they delight others, too.

The good news? You can, too – and conversational text messaging is a great way to do it. You can build relationships quickly using a format that allows you to send messages to customers using their preferred delivery method – text. And you can combine automated text messages with messages sent by individuals on your customer service team.

It’s probable that our team member triggered a personal response when she sent back more than the requested rating. If she had responded with just her rating, it’s likely she would have received an automated response, “Thanks for answering our one-second survey. We’re glad you think we’re worth recommending! Please take 10% off your next order!”

Because she added a personal note, however, it’s probable her response bumped her message into the “personal-response” queue and allowed a mail order team member to respond. Your CRM can help you sort customers and send messages that will build loyalty to your products and your brand.

But even automated texts can help build customer relationships. Your texts don’t need to sound like they’ve come from a robot, even if they’re automated. Here are a few ideas from this food retailor:

• You shopped, we shipped, how did it go? Take our survey and get 10% off!
• Our one-second email survey – this is not a tricky sales pitch, promise. If you have a second, we’d love to know what you thought of shopping with us. Our survey is low-tech, just like our food. Respond with a number from 1 to 10.
• We wanna hear about your holiday shopping experience. Tell us and get 10% off all the food you buy!
• Your order is totally confirmed!
• Thanks for your order! If you need to contact us, please reply or call. A real, live human will be with you promptly. We answer phones till 10 p.m. Eastern Time every day at this time of year.

It’s a competitive world and if you can help solve your customers’ problems, you earn an amazing competitive advantage. And if you communicate effectively using a channel your customers prefer, you can build relationships that will extend far beyond a single sale.

Being authentic in all your customer interactions is increasingly important in today’s business world. Staying in touch has become a requirement. SMS-Magic can help you reach out to applicants faster and with better results.

We offer a free trial so that you can get a feel for our product. If you’re as pleased as we think you will be, you can choose the level of service that’s best for your company.

Contact us to set up a demo or to start your free trial. Let us show you how you can engage applicants in new ways!

You don’t have to be a professional writer to be effective, and we’d like to share 5 tips that can help hone your writing skills:

1. Understand your audience and their challenges.
   Before you write, think about what makes your recipients special. What common traits do they share? Is it their industry, their job responsibilities, their goals or their interests? For example, you might segment your audience by age. A 64-year-old person would have much more interest in information about Medicare than someone in their 20s.
   
   You might consider dividing your total audience into smaller groups. Your customer relationship management system can help you sort recipients and make it easier to target your messages.
   
   You will want to focus on how your product or service can help solve the challenges your audience faces. Your audience doesn’t care about your new technology or the great new system you’ve adopted – unless it has a direct benefit for them. Answer your customer’s question, “What’s in it for me?”
   
   Because you’ve already sorted your audience by their common traits, you know that everyone on your send list has similar challenges. With that understanding, you’re ready to communicate with them.

2. Distill the message.
   
   With a standard text message, you only have 160 characters to make your case. Even with longer MMS messages, you don’t have room for a lengthy discussion. Take a few minutes before you start writing and think about exactly what you want to convey.
   
   If you prefer a visual exercise, write down everything you think you want to say. Don’t worry about writing too much; just get it down. Once you have all the information in front of you, start to edit. Keep what’s most important. Cut out the extra words. Get the info in the right order. Then trim the message to fit your word count.
   
   Make sure you’ve included basic information – who, what, where, when and why. Start with what’s most important for your audience, not necessarily what’s most important for you or your company. Write from your customer’s point of view.

3. Throw away jargon, buzzwords & clichés.
   
   This tip is also based on knowing your audience. If they’re just getting to know your company or are new to your industry, don’t confuse them with acronyms. Make it easy for new customers to understand what you do and what you offer.
   
   Also, as a rule, avoid professional buzzwords. You don’t want the language in your message to make it difficult for your audience to understand. Of course, you’ll also want to consider the opposite if you’re sending messages to seasoned professionals. For example, you might not choose to use the term “heart attack” if your audience regularly calls it by a more technical name.
   
   And finally, avoid clichés like the plague. They aren’t helpful and they’re as boring as watching paint dry.

4. Consider your tone.
   
   Because you know your audience and you’re focusing on the things they have in common, you can vary your tone depending on the message. Is your audience ready for a little humor or a light tone? Is it okay to be provocative? Or are you sending messages from an authority and need a formal tone? Your message and your knowledge about your audience will dictate what tone you take but be intentional about choosing it.
   
   One caveat – Be careful with off-color language. It might work well with some audiences, but it can ruin your appeal if you use it inappropriately.

5. Proofread – then send.
   
   Research has shown that our brains sometimes work against us by being too efficient. Here’s how: If you’ve been working on a text for a while, your brain will frequently skim over misspelled or missing words. It fills in the blanks for you. Your brain helps you understand what you’re reading, but it doesn’t necessarily help you find typos.
   
   So fight back. Take a break before you hit send. Let your brain settle. Then come back to your message. If there is a typo, you’ll be more likely to see it. If you have available colleagues, let them read the message. A fresh pair of eyes can help find mistakes. Many communications teams make text reviews part of their culture, and everything is read by at least two people.

It’s a competitive world and if you can help solve your customers’ problems, you earn an amazing competitive advantage. And if you communicate effectively using a channel your customers prefer, you can build relationships that will extend far beyond a single sale.

Being authentic in all your customer interactions is increasingly important in today’s business world. Staying in touch has become a requirement. We hope these tips will help you tackle writing tasks more effectively. SMS-Magic can help you reach out to applicants faster and with better results.

We offer a free trial so that you can get a feel for our product. If you’re as pleased as we think you will be, you can choose the level of service that’s best for your company.

Contact us to set up a demo or to start your free trial. Let us show you how you can engage applicants in new ways!

These messages are conversational, and they are generated individually. Their tone is friendly, and they offer advice or information as if it’s coming from a trusted friend. In fact, it’s coming from an attorney who is a trusted member of the client’s team. In certain situations, that’s even better than a friend.

I can hear you object, “But our business isn’t like that. We have to send thousands of texts to reach our audience.”

I’m sure that’s true. But your text messages don’t have to sound like they’re going to thousands of people at one time.

When a new client reaches out to the law firm, they might do it by email or phone. Chances are they’ve also reaching out to other law firms. In order to win their business, our law firm quickly responds with an automated text message to say hello and to clarify who they are.

The automated response is written in a style that a friend might use – “Hi, this is Brittany from the AlwaysWin law firm. Can I help you with questions about a legal issue?”

When the prospective client responds, the system switches them to a personal exchange with a member of the intake team. This quick response allows the firm to ask initial screening questions and establish a relationship before other firms can respond to the client’s initial query. It helps win business.

To use this technique at scale, you need to think like your customers. Ask yourself what you know about them:

• Why are they contacting you?
• What problem are they trying to solve with your product or service?
• What help might they need initially or on a second query?
• Where are they?

Once you know who your customers are, you can craft automated messages with a personal touch. You can even add a first name to the opening sentence, if you track of that information.

Your CRM should help you personalize the message. And it can help you segment your queries into those that share common characteristics. Your outreach may be unique to customers in the U.S. or customers in Asia, Europe or Australia. Or you may need to modify your interactions with customers in different countries because of laws governing the use of digital information. Segmenting can help with all of that.

Once you’ve started the conversation, managing the flow of information is critical. If you use a CRM like Salesforce or Zoho, SMS-Magic can help you track of all your applicant interactions. Your incoming texts, emails and phone conversations, as well as your responses, can be archived in your CRM so that anyone on your staff can access the entire interaction. Your customer doesn’t have to repeat themselves and your staff can hand off customer interactions confidently.

We know that customers prefer texts because 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. You can bet that your customers are just like the rest of us.

It’s a competitive world and if you’re able to respond to customers faster than your competition, you can earn an amazing competitive advantage. More than that, however, is the benefit that a conversational tone can provide. Handle the first few interactions well – like a trusted friend – and you’ve started a customer relationship that can last for years.

Being authentic in all your customer interactions is increasingly important in today’s business world. Staying in touch has become a requirement. SMS-Magic, through conversational and automated text messaging, can help you reach out to applicants faster and with better results.

SMS-Magic offers a free trial so that you can get a feel for our product. If you’re as pleased as we think you will be, you can choose the level of service that’s best for your company.

Contact us to set up a demo or to start your free trial. Let us show you how you can engage applicants in new ways!

If you’re like most people in the United States, you use a combination of payment methods. Using a mobile app or paying bills from a laptop computer is just so much easier than trudging to the bank or writing checks used to be.

It’s how we do business. If you were anywhere else in the world, however, you would probably be conducting business using a text messaging app like WhatsApp or WeChat. Think that sounds farfetched? Text messaging is a communication trend that will soon be widely used in the U.S., and we don’t need a crystal ball to tell us so.

We’ve been watching the billions of people who are using text messaging apps around the world. Like mobile phone adoption, the U.S. is slow to start using text messaging, especially with apps like WhatsApp, but it’s coming. To keep your business healthy and growing, you need to understand and leverage new communication channels as quickly as you can or risk losing customers and sales.

If It’s Broke, Fix It

If you’ve been trying to reach your customers and potential customers with conventional channels like phone calls, direct mail or email, you probably are wondering why your results are mediocre, at best. It’s because we only open emails 22 percent of the time, according to Gigaom. Phone calls have a lower response rate.

Conversely, we send more than 5 billion texts a day, and we open 98 percent of them. Asurion’s research shows that Americans look at our phones 96 times a day or once every 10 minutes.

Most texts sent in the U.S. today use the native texting capability that comes packaged in mobile phones – Short Message Service (SMS) or Multimedia Message Service (MMS). SMS messages are limited to text only but are quick and inexpensive, great for reminders. MMS messages can contain photos or videos and are often very eye-catching. They can create high response rates, but they are more expensive to send and take longer to transmit.

The rest of the world, however, is using an assortment of “over-the-top” apps that use the internet to send the message, not a cellular service. Facebook Messenger is the top app in North America and Australia, WhatsApp is most popular in most of South America, Russia, India and parts of Africa, and WeChat is the leader in China. If your company is based in the United States, you might not be familiar with apps like Viber, Telegram, Line, Discord, KakaoTalk, Phoenix, or Zalo, but if you’re trying to reach customers in specific countries, you may need to become familiar with the favorites in that area.

When someone in India uses WhatsApp to do their banking, they are using a Facebook service that offers end-to-end security. Security is one of the priorities for most OTT apps, but it isn’t always available in the initial download. Most of the apps are free to download but may charge for business uses. They allow users to share files, to set messages to self-destruct, to make voice calls and to chat with groups of up to 200,000 users. Some also allow voice calls even to those who haven’t downloaded a specific app.

Are You Ready to Use OTT Apps Now?

The downside of using OTT apps is that the people you send to must also have the app. That limits your audience in the U.S. right now, but trends indicate that OTT app usage will grow rapidly in the next few years.

Here’s what we recommend: start using text messaging to reach your customers and potential customers. We have a customer who increased customer responses to their campaigns from less than one percent to over 15 percent just by changing from emails to texts.

Work the kinks out of your campaigns now. As OTT app adoption accelerates, you will be perfectly poised to take advantage of the technology while your competition struggles.

Our system, working with your CRM, can keep track of all your customer interactions in one place. It can also keep track of messages sent from a variety of platforms, starting with native mobile text capabilities and expanding to OTT apps like Messenger, WhatsApp, SnapChat or the others as needed.

SMS-Magic offers a free trial so that you can get a feel for our product. If you’re as pleased as we think you will be, you can choose the level of service that’s best for your company.

Contact us to set up a demo or to start your free trial. We’ll share what we see in our crystal ball. Let us show you how you can engage your customers in a new way!

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!

The trick is adding text messaging effectively. For that, you might need to know what we know. Here are eight of our favorite tips for building effective text messaging marketing campaigns:

Secret #1 – Get permission first.

You can’t just start texting your customers, even if they’ve given you their phone numbers. Government regulations say that you must have their permission first. So you’ll probably want to ask for permission in every way possible – on your website, in emails, with printed ads, on receipts, and many other ways. Find tons of great ideas for promoting your texting program in one of our recent blogs and examples of those first few texts in this one.

Once you have permission to text, here’s how to design your campaign:

Secret #2 – Decide what you want to accomplish.

What are your goals for the campaign? Do you want to increase opt-ins to your text messaging lists? Do you want to increase sales, applications, or appointments? If you can, put some numbers in the goal. How much of an increase in sales? How many new appointments or applications? Knowing what you want to accomplish will help you know when you’ve done well.

Secret #3 – Research your market.

If you haven’t already done so, you should conduct research to define your market. You need to know who they are, where they hang out, and what makes them tick. What are their challenges and how can you help? In a business-to-business environment, you need to be sure you understand their business. How do they want to be served? Do you know what they think value is? The more you know about your market, the easier it is to design campaigns that help them solve problems.

Secret #4 – State the call to action clearly.

What do you want them to do? Remember KISS – Keep it short and simple.

Secret #5 – Personalize the text messages.

As your opt-in list grows, take the time to segment your list into personas. You can send tailored messages to segments of the list. Using a CRM will help define and track your audiences.

Secret #6 – Don’t overwhelm your audience.

Think about your own experience. Nothing makes us angrier than texts we haven’t opted into or too many texts from anyone. Treat your customers like friends and be respectful of their time. Keep in mind that we read texts within two minutes of receiving them. Time your texts for your customers’ convenience.

Secret #7 – Choose an SMS provider who can help on the back end.

Your provider should make respecting opt-outs easy and should be able to provide the reports to prove compliance with local and national laws. Even better is a service that works easily with your CRM. You may not ever need to show you comply with regulations, but knowing you could, will keep you from pulling your hair out.

Secret #8 – Test, Evaluate and Tweak

When you decide what your campaign goals are, you should determine how you’re going to measure it. Whatever your method is, remember to test appropriately. You need to know if your campaign is working. If it isn’t, figure out why and adjust it. Then test again. Nothing is perfect, and you’ll get better results with flexible design.

Those eight secrets should help you get started. Text messaging is a powerful tool, and it’s available to organizations of all sizes.

Let SMS-Magic Help You

The SMS-Magic team works every day to make building effective campaigns easy. We are Salesforce and Zoho experts and can make those integrations seamless. We would be excited to share our experience and help you decide what is best for you.

Does the SMS-Magic team 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 how SMS-Magic can help you build and automate your text messaging campaigns!

But before you plan your first campaign, you need to choose the inbound number your customers will use to talk to you. Will you choose a short code or a long code? Either one will work, but one may be better than the other for your use case.

Long codes are essentially phone numbers, complete with an area code. Short codes are generally five or six digits. Keep reading and we’ll bust a few myths about short and long codes to help you make a decision.

Myth #1 – Short Codes and Long Codes Are Essentially the Same

Short and long codes are not the same. They differ in three ways:

1.     Long codes can send and receive text, faxes and phone calls. Short codes can only send and receive text messages, either SMS or MMS.

2.     Long codes take longer to send – almost a second per message. Short codes are much speedier – 40 messages per second – and they work better when a high-volume response is expected, such as voting during a television program.

3.     Carriers limit inbound long-code messages to one for every four outbound messages. Short codes don’t have a limit – you can send and receive as many as you’d like.

Myth #2 – Short Codes Aren’t Worth the Cost

It’s true that short codes cost more than long codes, but in the U.S., you aren’t allowed to send marketing texts with long codes. Don’t put your business at risk because your communications have been blocked by the carrier. SMS short codes also work better during two-factor authentication and emergency alerts because of their speed. If you plan to send multiple marketing messages to many people, short codes are a must.

Myth #3 – Long Codes Don’t Have Any Value

On the other hand, if you plan to send customer service communications to your customers, long codes may be the best answer for you. A courier company could use a long-code message to inform customers that their packages are out for delivery. A bank could text clients their account balances every month. An airline could reply to a passenger’s seat preference request. Value is related to how well your code choice helps you reach your goals.

Myth #4 – Tracking Message Delivery is Impossible

If you use long codes, you can send messages around the world but the technology doesn’t support delivery receipts. With most text messaging solutions, you won’t know if the intended recipient received your message unless they respond. SMS-Magic, however, tracks long-code message delivery for you for both technical and legal purposes.

By comparison, short codes are country specific and always provide delivery receipts that are useful with two-factor authentication and when SMS delivery is critical. Short codes are considered reliable for both technical and legal purposes.

Myth #5 – It Takes Weeks to Get a Short Code

If you’re dealing directly with the telecom carriers, acquiring a short code could take up to six weeks. SMS-Magic, however, already holds pre-approved short codes that can be assigned to you, shortening the time to a week or two. We have long term relationships with the carriers and will manage that relationship for you. You can leave the details to us.

Let SMS-Magic Help You

The SMS-Magic team helps clients with short- and long-code decisions every day. We would be excited to share our experience and help you decide which one is best for you. Or if you’re already sure which would be best for you, we can help you implement your choice.

Does the SMS-Magic team 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 how SMS-Magic can help you build and automate your text messaging campaigns!

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!