When I attended the CCST conference in October as a speaker, I received a number of questions from schools around SMS, or text messaging. Specifically, schools were interested in the compliance requirements for using text messaging to reach out to current or prospective students.

While we have not been using text messaging as tool in CUnet’s mobile marketing efforts for a while, I’ve realized that there are a lot of schools out there who are looking for some guidance around compliance and text messaging. So, I’ve provided a summary of these requirements below.

There are two main guidelines to follow when conducting a text messaging program of any sort. The first is what’s legally required by federal law and the FCC, and the second is what’s required by the wireless carriers.

1. From an FCC perspective, the advertiser / commercial message sender needs to be compliant with the TCPA and CAN-SPAM laws, which in summary require the following:

• Must have the end user “Express Prior Consent” to be texted, and the ability to produce the record of consent when asked
• The user needs to know they are being charged for receiving text messages – hence the language “Standard message & data rates apply” is important to be shown clearly wherever the user is opting in, including on advertisements, websites and other places where the opt-in is happening
• The user needs to be able opt-out using the same way they opted in allowing no more than 10 days for the advertiser to stop messages
• If there will be an opt-out confirmation message (which is a chargeable text message), the user needs to know that upfront as well
• Because of the nature of the a text message, the FCC can and may consider a text message something that meets both the TCPA definition of a “call” and the CAN-SPAM act definition of an “e-mail” hence compliance with both is required

2. From a Wireless Carrier perspective and based on the Mobile Marketing Association Guidelines:

• The user needs to know what is the program they are being opted into (title/description)
• The user needs to know that “Standard Carrier Message & Data Rates Apply”
• The user needs to know how to opt-out (i.e. “text Stop to #”)
• The user needs to have an expectation for the frequency of messages he will receive
• The advertiser needs to maintain a log with timestamp for opt-ins and opt-outs to prove user subscription
• If the user opted in from the web, there needs to be a double opt-in process to verify handset ownership (user texts back “ok” to confirm)
• Help command information should be provided. This gives information about the specific SMS campaign when texted back to the originating short code; i.e. “for Help, text Help to (Short Code)”
• A URL or location where full terms and conditions can be accessed must be provided
• Customer support contact information must be provided

Do you have any feedback or suggestions? Please contact me or leave us a comment below.

About Akeel Haider

Akeel Haider is the Mobile Media Strategist at CUnet. Akeel brings over seven years of performance mobile marketing and advertising experience, having worked on both agency and publisher sides of the business since the early days of premium SMS in the United States. Akeel holds a master’s degree in information systems from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. In his spare time, Akeel enjoys playing squash, watching European soccer, and occasionally working for a United Nations non-profit organization.

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Tags: CAN-SPAM, compliance, Higher education marketing, mobile, mobile marketing association, sms

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 18th, 2012 at 1:24 pm and is filed under CUnet, Mobile. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.