SMS marketing is legal when you obtain consent from your subscribers and your business upholds the guidelines set forth by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
What are the compliance guidelines I need to follow?
The FCC’s Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) requires that businesses gain consent before sending SMS marketing text messages. The act also requires SMS marketing text messages to include this information:
- Description of the program
- Shortcode or phone number messages will come from
- The phrase “Msg & Data rates apply.”
- The number of messages subscribers can expect to receive
- Instructions on how to opt-out
- A link to your terms and conditions or privacy policy
- Contact and support information
The FTC’s CAN-Spam Act helps to protect consumers from misleading information and poor business practices. The CAN-Spam Act instructs businesses to avoid the following bad business practices:
- Failing to identify a message as an advertisement
- Misleading or false information in subject lines, header content like sender information (To:, From:, Reply to:) and message body content.
- Falsifying business location
- Failing to inform subscribers how to opt-out
- Failing to honor unsubscribes
- Comply with the TCPA and CAN-Spam Act to ensure your SMS marketing practices remain legal.
You’ll also want to review Constant Contact’s own SMS permission policy. It’s important to remember that Email consent is separate from SMS consent. You still must obtain explicit written consent from your existing email contacts, before you can message them via SMS.
📣 Just like with email; any purchased, rented, or appended list of phone numbers from any source, no matter what the source claims, are strictly against Constant Contact’s Acceptable Use Policy and cannot be sent to.
What information do I need to prepare before I register?
☐ Tax ID/EIN (Employer ID Number)
Corporations, partnerships, and sole proprietors must have a valid TAX ID/EIN available.
☐ Sample SMS message content
This helps us understand how your organization will be using SMS marketing. We will generate some suggestions, but you are welcome to create your own.
☐ A valid way of capturing SMS opt-ins
We automatically create an SMS-enabled Sign-up Landing Page for you to start sharing immediately once your registration is approved. This landing page is required and can’t be deleted, but you can also create and customize additional sign-up landing pages.
☐ A valid website
This website is linked in the response message when your SMS contacts reply “Help.” Your website can’t be a Constant Contact landing page.
☐ Your state registration
Your organization must be registered with the state in which you conduct business. Your SMS registration information is checked by our SMS messaging provider against official state and federal databases. If the information you enter into your SMS registration doesn’t match these databases, it can result in your registration being rejected.
☐ A privacy policy and terms and conditions/terms of service (T&C/TOS)
You can upload your own or create one during the registration process. This is linked in your Sign-up Landing Page for collecting new SMS subscribers. Your privacy policy and terms of service should let your audience know:
• What information you’re collecting
• How often they can expect to hear from you
• What content they can expect from your messages
We created templates to make the process easier for you:
• Example template: Privacy Policy for SMS [Download]
• Example template: Mobile Messaging Terms of Service for SMS [Download]
How do I register my account for SMS Marketing?
Now that you’ve collected all the necessary information it’s time to register!
Keep in mind that once you’re approved, you’ll be assigned a dedicated SMS phone number for sending SMS messages.
If you already assembled all the information listed above, it shouldn’t take too long and you'll be ready for the next step: Growing your SMS contact list.
