The market these days is influenced by digital technologies. Most of the business owners are looking for new age tricks to lead attractive marketing campaigns online. It is the most suitable trick to keep your customers connected to your brand. In this scenario, SMS appears the most straightforward marketing channel in the business sector.
Experts believe that SMS marketing in the US can help growing businesses to build interest in their niche. But beyond all this, the most important factor that every professional need to understand is SMS marketing can also lead a negative impact in the market. If you send wrong or irrelevant information to your audience, they can even unsubscribe your text messages. And it ultimately has a direct impact on your business returns.
Same as most other marketing campaigns, SMS marketing also needs a strategic implementation. In order to succeed with this technique, you have to be more thoughtful and execute your plans with care. At the same time, you have to follow appropriate legal practices to ensure trouble-free operation of your marketing campaigns.
Benefits of SMS Marketing:
Before we discuss the legal issues and terms related to SMS marketing in the US, let us have a look at the essential benefits of SMS Marketing. Actually, there are so many factors that prove its edge in the digital world. Few of them are listed below:
- Easy Availability:
Reports say that most of the people, especially youngsters these days are connected to smartphones. It is possible to establish connections to almost 92% of 18-29 year sold people via smartphone-based marketing tricks. Also, around 80% of millennials keep on checking their phone in routine. Hence, business owners can grab the attention of the most audience with ease by using SMS based marketing campaigns.
- Quick Response:
It is possible to generate quick feedbacks with SMS marketing. The average response of text messages is 90 seconds only; note that it is around 90 minutes in case of emails. It clearly means the targeted audience will be able to receive your updates instantly and SMS have 98% open rates leading to more returns.
- Personalized Communication:
There is no doubt to say that text these days are the most preferred form of communication. People love to communicate to their near and dear ones through daily texts. In this scenario, it is possible to use SMS marketing to develop personalized connection with your audience. They will feel more valued and attracted towards your platform.
- Reliable Choice:
The delivery rate of messages is around 98%, and it is much high as compared to the email marketing. When you use this form of marketing campaigns, you can guarantee that all your messages are being received by the audience.
Why Have Rules for SMS Marketing?
Consumers cannot always trust that marketing professionals will ensure them valuable and qualified experience. In fact, some of these can spam audience with some undesired or irrelevant information. Reports say that many professionals in the US end up annoying their audience with improper SMS marketing strategies. In order to protect consumers from all such black hat marketing risks; professionals have recently announced a wireless carrier group named as CTIA. These professionals are dedicated to enforcing high-quality SMS marketing practices. They make sure that marketing professionals follow appropriate legal guidelines while focusing on the interest of buyers.
CTIA keep on performing regular audits on various SMS marketing programs. In case if you are found guilty in some case, you will be suspended as long as the issue is not corrected. Well! No business owner wants to lose reputation of their brand due to such legal obligations. Reports say that CTIA is not about actual law; rather FCC has developed TCPA to set appropriate standards for avoiding legal trouble associated with SMS marketing. Note that, TCPA works on federal law and disobeying these guidelines can cause huge legal trouble for your business.
Understanding Compliance in SMS Marketing- TCPA:
Now, let us move ahead to the legal compliance rules associated with SMS marketing. Note that TCPA here stands for Telephone Consumer Protection Act and it helps to control the connections between business owners and general public. At initial level, it governed the telemarketing calls, pre-recorded calls, auto dialled calls and unsolicited faxes but with time they were also allowed to monitor text messages as well.
As per TCPA rules in the US, marketing owners need to ensure delivery of best and most relevant content through text messages. All the professionals that are interested in using text-based marketing campaigns are advised to register for the TCPA system; then only they become eligible to send messages to other consumers. Even if you access a wide list of consumer phone numbers, you are not allowed to contact them directly without following TCPA rules.
The best example of such services is that most business brands and text marketers these days make use of branded shortcodes for events, in traditional marketing campaigns as well as in stores. Consumers can opt to the text messages related to certain brand only by sending a short brand code through text.
In case if you do not follow TCPA guidelines for your business, it may lead to several troublesome situations. The TCPA law allows individuals to file a case against the damaging lawsuit and they can claim recovery for violations. It means you may suffer legal penalties in terms of fine payment.
Reports say that the Federal Communications Commission received around 4 billion complaints regarding unwanted calls in the year 2016. Most of these complaints were registered by consumers who keep on receiving text messaging even after unsubscribing such services.
When you do not follow TCPA regulations, you actually end up violating legal terms leading to the huge fine. It can also damage the relationship between sellers and buyers as well.
Tips for Mitigating Risks of TCPA litigation in SMS Marketing:
The TCPA was passed in the 1990’s, and this law was designed to restrict few specific types of telephone solicitations. It is believed that the legitimate businesses are often slowed down by the protocols defined in TCPA. However, some recent software has been developed to prevent that slowdown and business owners are happy with their performance.
Note: Mitigate risks with the TCPA Litigator List
Experts say that TCPA compliance focuses on several essential areas. Whenever a company thinks of contacting some individuals with receiving any prior consent of that person, it becomes important to complete the process while focusing on the US TCPA compliance. Few of these guidelines are list as below to mitigate risks of TCPA compliance with SMS marketing:
- Consent:
As already discussed, in order to start with text message marketing, first, the customer must have given his/her consent to opt for your promotional SMS. It is one of the essential compliance requirements set by the government and is considered the most important practice in the world of SMS marketing. There are two simple methods to make your customers opt for such messages:
- One of the best choices is making use of a shortcode. Users simply need to text you that shortcode to give their consent for receiving promotional messages.
- In case if you are importing some contacts manually, it is important to get written permission from your target audience.
- Opt-Out:
Many businesses miss this important TCPA compliance, and it can cause huge legal trouble to them in the future. When consumers give consent to receive SMS from your company, they also get the ability to opt out as per their need. They must be allowed to opt out by sending an unsubscription code via text messages. For example, if they text the word “STOP”; it means they don’t want to receive your promotional messages anymore. It is important to give priority to opt out messages and do not disturb such consumers otherwise they can file a legal complaint against you.
- Time Zones:
Another essential condition of TCPA is following time zone information for SMS sending practices. There is no point in sending promotional messages or calls before 8 am and after 9 pm. You can send all business-related updates during work hours only.
- Frequency:
Even if the audience has given their consent to receive your promotional messages, it doesn’t mean that you got a license to annoy them. There is no point in sending so many messages every day. People don’t like to see the bulk of messages from your brand, and if you do so, it may annoy them. Ideally, it is enough to send only 2 to 4 texts per month. If you do more, your customers can drag you to the legal platform.
- Language:
Most of the times SMS marketing is bound to limited characters as well. But in this case, it becomes difficult to deliver the desired message to the audience. Some of you may even think of using slang, nicknames, and catchphrases. But such casual language cannot be understood by all consumers. Moreover, it makes your organization look little unprofessional. Prefer to keep your text direct, short and make them to the point. It will help to present a good image of your business in the market.
- Value:
When we talk about new text marketers, this important measure of TCPA is often overlooked. There is no point in disturbing your audience with some pointless messages. Prefer to make the value of your text clear. It is believed that text messages have the potential to deliver the best information in the desired format. A person can complete his/her communication in a time-saving way with SMS; your business must look after this protocol. Make your promotional messages valuable to your consumers by following a concise, specific and direct method.
- Response:
Text messages are instantaneous, and in order to improve the impression of your brand in the market, it is important to respond fast to the messages sent by consumers. Your response rate must be real time, and you can opt for auto-responder systems to complete this requirement. It will ensure instant follow-up for all your messages.
- Measure:
In order to understand which messages are leading a positive impact on the audience, it is important to measure the results time to time. When you opt for SMS marketing campaigns in the US; it becomes essential to follow some criteria to judge the success rate as well.
After all these guidelines; we have summarized the technique to maintain TCPA compliance for your business in a few simple steps below:
- Prefer to dial all calls manually.
- Get proper consent from your audience.
- Make sure you also maintain a “do not call” compliance for the company.
- Follow national “do not call” compliance.
- Use well-equipped vendors that have the ability to identify the specific numbers; especially the contacts that must be removed from the call list.
- It is important to follow updated or latest wireless rules for SMS
- Spare some time to remove the ported numbers from lists.
- Follow proper monitoring procedures to stay tuned to the compliance.
- Follow appropriate procedures to deal with consumer complaints.
- It is important to train your employees to maintain appropriate TCPA procedures and follow the desired
- Do not use simple call center software that falls in the category of Automatic Telephone Dialing System.
- Prefer to make use of automatic TCPA compliance to stay updated to the latest rules.
Note that TCPA compliance also wants business owners to maintain the privacy of customers. You can use software that allows your team members to record the calls for training purpose and for quality control, but it should come with the privacy maintenance procedures. The calls must be paused whenever required. Another important tool for call centers is the automatic TCPA updates. The fact is that TCPA is not a static set of rules; the government keeps on updating it time to time. You must find out a way to follow the latest rules and procedures to avoid legal issues associated with TCPA. There are chances to break the law if you don’t stay up to date about US TCPA compliance.
