We’ve been talking about the intricacies of regulatory and carrier text messaging compliance. We’ve learned with our customers that a good way to understand compliant text messaging is by applying it to real world processes. This post shares an example of the flow as a prospect moves from marketing to sales and then to service, as a customer. We’ll look at applications of both regulatory and carrier compliance.

Compliant Text Messaging for Marketing

Most consent happens within marketing, when new leads reach out to contact you thanks to an opt-in promotion, a web form, an offer of a free trial of your offering, a blog post or through referrals.

Regulatory compliance requirements for marketing:

• Automate consent capture. Use a single or double opt-in to assure compliant consent.
• Create your compliant content. Be sure to only send text messages related to the subject matter that the individual subscribed to with you.
• Record everything in a history. Be sure you securely track and store a record of consent and all following communications between your marketing organization and each individual.
• Honor opt-outs. If an individual opts-out, record the opt-out and be sure to stop any automated messages to that record. Confirm their opt-out with a final message.

Carrier compliance requirements for marketing:

• Select the appropriate Sender IDs. Be sure to use the appropriate number type for your text messaging conversations.
• Use a compliant message structure. Follow the rules for message length, types of content etc.
• Check your campaign content. Marketing teams that use SMS templates can rest assured that campaigns will pass carrier restrictions.

Compliant Text Messaging for Sales

For reps, compliance usually focuses on the content of the messages themselves. In organizations that use marketing messaging, sales should already have consent to text message with a prospect that moves into their pipeline. However, some organizations use messaging opt-ins to create new sales leads directly from the opt-in. The regulatory compliance recommendations below assume the latter scenario.

Regulatory compliance for text-to-lead sales scenarios:

• Capture consent. Create an automated text-to-lead-campaign that automatically runs when a new prospect texts your organization.
• Record all interactions in a history. All communications between sales and the prospect should be recorded and stored.
• Honor opt-outs. If a prospect asked you not to text them anymore, honor that. Train reps to record the request and cease all messaging, other than to confirm the opt-out.

Important carrier requirements for sales:

Sales messaging is highly interactive. Be sure that rep messages are deliverable by your carrier.

• Choose long codes or toll-free numbers. Reps need to be able to have interactive conversations with their prospects. That means you need to select Sender IDs that support 2-way messaging.
• Train your reps regarding content they can send including size of messages, not to add links, how to avoid repetitive content as spam etc.
• Use SMS templates. SMS templates assure the messages your reps send meet carrier structure and content rules, so you enjoy maximum delivery levels.

Compliant Text Messaging for Support

Text messaging empowers support reps to handle 10:1 the volume of customer requests vs what they can handle with phone calls alone. Even more important, customers prefer text messaging.

For this example, we are going to assume that support reps do not send any messages that do not already have consent.

Regulatory compliance for support:

• Check consent. Be sure you have customer consent before you message.
• Automate recording of conversations. Be sure that every interactive and automated conversation is recorded in the record history.
• Honor opt-outs. Automatically record the opt-out, change the status so the record is blocked and confirm the opt-out with a final message.

Carrier compliance for support teams:

The key carrier criteria to assure message delivery include:

• Choose long codes or toll-free numbers. Reps need to be able to have interactive conversations with their prospects. That means you need to select Sender IDs that support 2-way messaging.
• Train your reps regarding content they can send including size of messages, not to add links, how to avoid repetitive content as spam etc.
• Use SMS templates. SMS templates assure that messages your reps send meet carrier structure and content rules, so you enjoy maximum delivery levels when resolving customer issues.

We’ve created a Buyer’s Guide to Text Messaging Compliance that shares insights into what you need to know, best practices recommendations for text messaging and a set of questions to ask your vendors to assure you will meet regulatory and carrier compliance. Click below to download this powerful asset!

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