Text Message Marketing Best Practices – Web Opt-In Requirements

With a web opt-in, the text message marketing best practices get a little tricky, but that’s why we’re here to hold your hand through the process. If you really think about it, anyone can enter any mobile phone number (even yours) into a website or point-of-sale system. It’s for this reason that it’s essential, as well as required by the CTIA text message marketing best practices, that the customer submit to a lie detector test to prove they have entered their own number. Just kidding, but the CTIA does require their own version of a lie detector test, which we in the industry like to call a double opt-in. Pretty fancy, huh? You’re probably wondering how a double opt-in works. Glad you asked!

A double opt-in requires the owner of the mobile phone to reply Y or YES to confirm their enrollment in the SMS program. This way, if a customer enters someone else’s mobile phone number or mis-enters their own number, no one will end up being enrolled in an SMS program they don’t want to be enrolled in. Easier than making every customer take a lie detector test before opting into your program, right?

In true CTIA fashion, however, it’s not as easy as simply sending a message asking the mobile phone owner to confirm their number—you also have to disclose the following information required by CTIA to be compliant with their text message marketing best practices:

• Business Name (e.g., Bob’s Burgers)
• Program Name (e.g., Mobile Coupon Program)
• Messaging Frequency (e.g., five messages/month)
• Disclosure that message and data rates may apply (e.g., “Message and data rates may apply”)

When a mobile subscriber replies Y or YES to your text message, you are required to reply with another message containing the following information:

• Business name (e.g., Bob’s Burgers)
• Program name (e.g., Mobile Coupon Program)
• Stop instructions (e.g., “Text STOP to opt out”)
• Help instructions (e.g., “Text HELP for help”)
• Messaging frequency (e.g., five messages/month)
• Disclosure that message and data rates may apply (e.g., “Message and data rates may apply”)

Interested in how to make the rest of your SMS marketing campaign best practice compliant? Want to know what the best practices are for advertising your SMS marketing campaign, or what needs to be included in text message responses to “HELP” or “STOP”? If so, download our free guide on SMS marketing best practices, or if you’re interested in how the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) applies to text message marketing, download our guide on TCPA compliance.