How to Stay Compliant with SMS Opt Ins and Opt Outs

Compliance with legal frameworks, such as the TCPA, may be fact- and context-specific. The information contained in this blog post should not be relied upon as legal advice or to determine how the TCPA or other laws or standards apply to your use of SMS and our service. This information is provided “as is” and may be updated or changed without notice. You may use this blog post for your internal reference purposes only.

Compliance is a critical aspect of customer communication channels, like business text messaging. It’s critical that you and your team understand what you need to do to remain on the right side of the law—and ensure customers consider your business reliable and trustworthy.

SMS opt ins and opt outs are the most important compliance considerations in business text messaging. It’s critical that your team understand the ins and outs of SMS opt ins—and how best to ask for them.

What Is an SMS Opt In?

Your customers must opt in, via written consent, to text messages before you can text them. Opting into your SMS services is a simple process—if done correctly. After you publish your company’s business SMS phone number, customers can text in with a specified keyword (e.g., SUBSCRIBE). Alternatively, they can check a box on a web form. SMS opt in information on your website or social media pages may look like this example:

Want faster customer service? Text SUBSCRIBE to (999) 999 – 9999 to opt into our business text messaging services. Our average response time is 7 minutes.

What Is an SMS Opt Out?

At the end of the above text, you may notice the statement “text STOP to unsubscribe.” That is an opt out instruction. Customers must be able to opt out of your SMS services at any time they please. Include SMS opt out instructions in most of your automated or mass business texts. SMS opt out instructions may look like the following example:

Hello, this is Pet Care Org! Don’t forget that {{pet name}} is due for a teeth cleaning on {{date of due cleaning}}. Text END to stop receiving texts.

What Are SMS Opt In Regulations?

There are a few text opt in laws and SMS opt in regulations to consider. The most important is the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). Created in the early 90s to curb telemarketing calls, the TCPA wasn’t initially intended to dictate compliance for text messages. Now, the TCPA applies to many communications channels, including business text messaging. Ultimately, it mandates that your business must acquire written consent from your customers before you connect with them via texts or messages, provide opt out instructions, and more.

How Does Asking for an SMS Opt In Benefit Your Business?

Asking for an opt in benefits your business in two key ways. First of all, you can be sure that each and every one of your recipients wants to receive your texts. That means they’ll be more likely to respond and engage with your team. Additionally, asking for an SMS opt in lets customers know that you care about their willing participation, and don’t just want to blast them with marketing material.

SMS Opt In Best Practices

So how can you make the opt in process easy for your customers and your team? Stick to these SMS opt in best practices:

Make sure your opt in instructions are clear and brief.
Create simple SMS opt in keywords, like SUBSCRIBE or START.
Send opt in confirmations as soon as customers opt in. Double opt ins are strongly recommended.
Ensure your business text messaging platform can recognize standard opt out keywords and automatically remove those customers from your SMS lists.

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VistoSMS Offers the Features You Need to be Successful

With VistoSMS, you get all the standard features of a mass texting service plus industry-leading, cutting-edge features you won’t find anywhere else. There’s no better way to grow your business.

Automatic Text Reply

When you send thousands of text messages, you might get thousands of replies. Instead of managing each reply individually, use VistoSMS to schedule a text message reply each time your customers mention a particular keyword. They text, and you send an auto response text within seconds without lifting a finger.

Drip Campaigns

Drip campaigns are an effective tool to help your customers go from the research phase to the purchase phase. Bring the drip campaign method into your text marketing strategy with VistoSMS. Schedule messages to be sent out at particular intervals to walk your contacts through why they should choose your product, service or organization.

Mass Group Texting

Send a mass text with the click of a button with VistoSMS. Busy professionals don’t have time to send messages to thousands of people each day. So automate the process. Instantly reach thousands — or hundreds of thousands — of people with our one-of-a-kind mass text service.

Unlimited Contacts

Any mass texting service that limits the number of people you can text isn’t doing its job. While our competitors like to limit the number of contacts you can have, we make sure your message reaches everyone — and we mean everyone — that you need it to. No limits on contacts — ever.

Schedule Texts

We want to be the leader in automated text message for business services, and one of the most important parts of SMS marketing automation is the ability to schedule a text. With VistoSMS, you can write your messages ahead of time and schedule them for whenever you want. Make your work schedule work for you.

Send Long Messages

Limiting the number of characters you can send in a mass text message is like turning off your microphone in the middle of a speech. Your message doesn’t get across. That’s why we won’t limit the length of your text messages. Stop thinking in 160 characters and start thinking about everything your customers need to know.

Text Keywords

Set custom keywords to allow your contacts to automatically join groups, get discounts, reach people in your organization and more. Set as many keywords and related functions as you want.

International Texting

Do you have clients that are based in Belgium? Costa Rica? Egypt? You name it, we can send it! Texting Base is one of the few platforms that offers International Texting! A list of countries and cost of units can be found by clicking here.

Authentic Text Messages

No spam, no undelivered messages. VistoSMS sends real, authentic SMS messages directly to mobile carriers so your message never gets locked in the spam folder. Everyone on your contact list gets the full message you sent in seconds.

Birthday & Holiday Texts

Celebrating something (or someone!) special? VistoSMS makes it easy! Just create a message, personalize it, pick a date/time and it will automatically be sent. No more forgetting those special occasions!

Two Way SMS

What’s the point of sending mass text messages if you can’t continue the conversation when one of your contacts replies to you? With VistoSMS, you get a convenient, easy-to-use inbox that lets you see — and quickly respond to — everyone who has responded to your mass texts. Keep the conversation going.

Upload Your Contact List

Coming to VistoSMS from another mass texting service? You made the right choice! And you don’t have to worry about losing your contact list, either. Simply upload your existing contact list to VistoSMS and start sending messages. You don’t have to start from scratch to start using our platform.

Zapier

Take advantage of our free Zapier integration to connect Texting Base with more than 3,000 work apps that your business already uses. Never miss a beat, a message, a request or anything at all by keeping all of your workflow apps — including your text marketing platform — fully integrated. Our cutting-edge API makes it not just possible, but easy.

Picture Messaging

There’s a handy little secret for those who want to know how to make their text marketing stand out from the crowd: use pictures. Images in text messages are memorable, get the message across and drive more engagement. VistoSMS allows you to attach a picture to any outgoing mass MMS message.

Multiple User Support

Get the right people in the right seats — that’s how organizations thrive and grow. Some of those seats probably involve a role in your SMS marketing campaigns, so don’t leave your team members out of your texting platform. Instead, add all of them to VistoSMS. We support unlimited users so your whole team can get involved.

Voice Services

What if some of your contacts would prefer to speak on the phone instead of texting? With most mass texting services, you would be out of luck. But VistoSMS makes voice calls easy. You can receive calls from any contact at your dedicated phone numbers.

Text to Join

SMS marketing isn’t just about sending text messages to your contacts — it’s also about growing your contact list. With VistoSMS’s Text to Join feature, getting more contacts is easy. You can allow people to text your dedicated number to join your list, giving you valuable contacts and data in the process.

Text to Vote

With our text to vote feature, you can quickly and easily get the opinion of your contacts. Ask a simple question and get thousands of answers within minutes. Don’t waste money on expensive surveys and emails no one will respond to — use text to vote data to drive impactful, growth-oriented decisions for your business.

Use Texting Base From Your Mobile Phone

You can do text marketing on the go with VistoSMS. Out and about, at home or simply away from your office computer, you can log in to your Texting Base account from your mobile phone and send out a text message blast. Get real text marketing results without setting foot in the office.

SMS Surveys

Sending surveys to customers is one of the best ways to get real, actionable feedback on your business or organization. That’s why we have implemented survey functionality in our platform. You can easily send text message surveys to your contacts to keep them engaged and get real insight fast.

Triggering Auto Responders

Want to be more interactive with your customers? VistoSMS offers a triggering capability, which means you can add words like “YES” or “NO” and an auto response will go out based on the client’s answer.

CTIA and Mobile Carrier Guidance

If you have done any mass texting for your business in the past, you know there are rules about disclaimers and giving contacts clear instructions for opting in and opting out. Keeping up with all of these rules can be complicated, but we make it simple. We offer mobile carrier and CTIA guidance to make sure you’re doing it all right.

Single Send

Sometimes, one engaged customer becomes more valuable than hundreds of other customers. Whether it’s a highly interested prospect or someone who has an appointment coming up, you can use VistoSMS to reach that particular individual with a perfectly tailored message that keeps them engaged.

Text Message Data Collection

Phone numbers are a given when you are collecting data from your SMS marketing efforts. But we think text message data collection should go deeper. That’s why we have designed VistoSMS to automatically collect data points like city, state, ZIP code, email address and first and last name.

Personalization

Never forget that your contacts are real people. They want to be talked to like real people. This should always inform your approach to text marketing. Want a quick and easy way to personalize a mass text? Address every recipient by name. With VistoSMS, you can do that quickly and easily.

Integrate Your Web Apps

Zapier integration allows you to connect VistoSMS with the web apps you’re already using. Even if you are using a relatively unknown app, we probably have you covered. That’s because VistoSMS can integrate with more than 3,000 apps! From the greatest hits like Slack and Salesforce to the deeper tracks like MailChimp and Shopify, we have you covered.

Secure Data and Information

For most businesses, data is more valuable than gold. Unfortunately, like gold, data is a common target of online theft and fraud. That’s why you need top-of-the-line encryption and SSL technology — like the kind that VistoSMS offers — to protect the data you collect with your SMS marketing efforts.

Built-In Link Shrinking

A mass texting service can drive thousands of visitors to your website if you include a link in your messages. But URLs are often long, and they look confusing and a little off-putting in text message format. Save characters and boost click-throughs by using VistoSMS’s built-in link shortener. Just a few characters is all you need.

Email Capture

Text message marketing and email marketing are close relatives, and both can bring exponential growth to your business. So why not have them work together? With VistoSMS, when you get new texting contacts, you instantly capture their email addresses. All you have to do is export them to your email marketing platform like MailChimp.

Inbound Multimedia Messaging Service

You can get multimedia responses from your contacts directly in your VistoSMS inbox. This feature allows your contacts to send you pictures that tell the whole story, whether it’s a customer service issue, an item they would like to sell or a type of home they would like to buy. The possibilities are virtually limitless

Two-Factor Authentication

Protect your VistoSMS account with two-factor authentication, the leading account protection technology. All this means is that you have to go a step further than your email and password; you get a text message with a unique login code every time you log in. That way, the right people — and only the right people — can access your mass texting service.

Personalize Data Mapping

Tired of sending standardized texts with no flare? Capture your audience by personalizing texts with their favorite sports teams, foods, etc. Simply upload a .csv file with your contacts (Phone, First Name and Last Name) and add any extra fields you desire!