Compliance for SMS Text Messages: a Guide to Critical Regulations

Compliance with legal frameworks, such as the TCPA, GDPR, and CCPA, 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 these regulations 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 with federal and local regulations is a focus for any business with a marketing or customer service team. Communications between businesses and customers must be compliant no matter whether your team uses phone calls or emails. Compliance for text messages is no different.

Though a relatively new channel for professional use, business text messaging has been regulated by federal and local governments across the world. Businesses have to be aware of regulations wherever they operate—and where their customers are located. This makes text message compliance a little tricky for those who haven’t navigated it before.

But with a firm understanding of the biggest regulations out there—and knowledge that your business needs to research local regulations, too—you can navigate the world of text message compliance without worry.

Read on to learn about 3 regulations that will shape your path to SMS compliance.

The TCPA and Compliance for Text Messages

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) is one of the most well-known regulations for businesses who are learning about SMS compliance.

History

Enacted in 1991, the TCPA wasn’t meant to dictate compliance for text messages at first. It was meant to curb the many telemarketing calls consumers were receiving in the late 80s and early 90s. Today, the TCPA applies to all marketing channels, including business text messaging. There are various spin-offs of TCPA, including the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act.

In essence, the TCPA mandates that your business must acquire legal consent from your customers before you connect with them via text message. It also demands that your business provide transparency when publicizing texting services.

TCPA Compliance for Text Messages

The TCPA is a complex document well worth reviewing with your legal team. But for basics, to comply with the TCPA, your business will want to:

Clearly outline your services to customers
Secure customer opt-ins with written permission (i.e., a text with a specific keyword or a web form) before communicating with them
Remove reissued numbers, deleting all contacts who haven’t texting recently
Regularly include opt-out instructions in texts, especially at the beginning of chats

The GDPR and Compliance for Text Messages

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is one of the newer regulations that might affect your business if you communicate with customers in the EU.

History

The GDPR was passed in 2016 and implemented in 2018. It was meant to curb some of the data and privacy problems that social media companies were stirring up at the time with their advertising programs. Individual countries within the EU have also created and maintained their own data regulations. Before leaving the EU in 2020, the UK amended the Privacy and Electronic Communications (PECR) Regulations to better compliment the GDPR.

In essence, the GDPR addresses data protection and privacy for all European Union (EU) citizens, including data transferred outside EU boundaries. It attempts to prevent data theft and protect user privacy.

GDPR Compliance for Text Messages

If your business connects with users outside of the UK, you have to adhere to the GDPR. For SMS compliance with the GDPR, your business must:

Comply with opt-out requests
Delete stored data after a period of time
Ensure your data is accurate
Allow customers full data control
Inform customers about your policies
Notify customers about policy changes

The CCPA and Compliance for Text Messages

The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) is a new and relatively specific act, only affecting Californian consumers—and many of the businesses that interact with them.

History

The CCPA passed in 2019 and became active in 2020. California’s government created it to boost privacy rights and consumer protections for residents of California. It affects any business that collects consumers’ personal data, does business in California, and:

Has annual gross revenues above $25 million;
Buys or sells personal information of 50,000 or more consumers or households; or
Earns over half of its revenue from selling consumers’ personal information

Similarly to the GDPR, the CCPA is concerned with regulating businesses’ handling of consumer data. It requires that businesses create and implement additional security procedures for consumer data protection.

CCPA Compliance for Text Messages

To ensure text message compliance with the CCPA, your business must:

Create a process for customers to submit data access requests, including, at a minimum, a toll-free telephone number
Update official privacy policies with newly required information, including a description of California residents’ rights
Avoid requesting opt-in consent for 12 months after a California resident opts out of your texting program

Automate Your Bulk SMS Campaigns

When you set up text automatic, VistoSMS works for you, even when you’re not working.

Integrate with Your Company's ERP or CRM Software

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!