Text Message Compliance and Guidelines

COMMITTED TO COMPLIANCE

Text Message Compliance and Guidelines

TextByChoice is 100% FCC Compliant and supports 770 carriers worldwide, including ALL major carriers in the USA!

In simple terms, compliance is getting the consent to contact your lists. This can be electronically or on paper. However or wherever you’re obtaining the cell number, you must notate and inform the owner of the number that it may be used to text relevant information.

"Under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) of 1991, the Federal Communications Commision (FCC) plays a crucial role in helping consumers stop unwanted calls, text messages and faxes."

What does it mean to "give your consent?"

For email and texts sent to your mobile phone:

For commercial texts, your consent must be in writing.
For non-commercial, informational texts (such as those sent by or on behalf of tax-exempt non-profit organizations, those for political purposes, and other noncommercial purposes, such as school closings), your consent may be oral.

What are the requirements for commercial text messages?

While most unsolicited commercial emails and text messages are not banned by law, they are required to include three elements:

Honest and relevant content
A method to “unsubscribe”
Compliance with a set of “sending behavior” practices to help inform and protect consumers, such as including at least one sentence of text and a valid header in each email.

Please note: FCC is working really hard to reevaluate its very generic definition of “consent” and working with several agencies to come up with specific scenarios. Numerous associations are involved in such negotiations considering the broad definition does not fit every scenario and criteria. For the most part these associations represent the interest of member driven organizations and wanting to send out important information or account related specifics to their members via sms. To learn more, click here.

More information around these guidelines can be obtained from here:
Consumer Guide | CanSpam Act | Stop Unwanted Calls, Texts and Faxes
TCPA Rules and Regulations.pdf
Declaratory Ruling and Order around TCPA

The Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA) represents the U.S Wireless industry offers a set of voluntary recommendations developed with the industry stakeholeders so that:

Consumers are protected from unwanted information
Consumers can exchange wanted messages with other consumers, and
Enterprise and Consumers can exchange wanted messages

CTIA’s Messaging Principles and Best Practices Guidlines can be obtained here. In addition, CTIA Short Code Monitoring Handbook is also available here.

Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) is a global non-profit trade association and its mission is to accelerate the transformation and innovation of marketing through mobile, driving business growth with closer and stronger consumer engagement. Similarly to CTIA and FCC MMA also has a Best Practices Handbook that can be used a guideline for entities engaged in using the mobile messaging systems using Short Codes.

The DMA Nonprofit Federation serves the nonprofit marketing and charitable fundraising community. It has published its own guidelines specific to nonprofit sector that you may follow.

COMMITTED TO COMPLIANCE