I'm Derek Johnson with tatango.com.
And I'm answering the question what is required in an opt-in text message confirmation?
So what is an opt-in text message confirmation?
Essentially, it's the text message that is sent to the very end of an opt-in process
that a consumer goes through to opt-in to a text message marketing campaign.
Essentially it's, like, "Hey, thank you, you've opted in."
But unfortunately, it's not that simple.
The CTIA and the wireless carriers has specific guidelines that tell brands exactly what they
wanna see in that opt-in text message.
So there's a few of them here.
And I'm gonna go through them each one.
The first one is the brand name.
You have to tell the consumer the owner of the short code.
So if it's Pizza Hut you have to put Pizza Hut into the text message opt-in confirmation.
Second one is opt-out information.
Usually, it's to opt-out reply stop.
So you need to tell customers how they can opt-out of the text messaging campaign they
just opted into.
Number three is customer care contact information.
This can either be a phone number or an email address and essentially it allows consumers
a channel to communicate to the brand if they have issues or questions.
Fourth one is there has to be a recurring message disclosure.
This essentially means that it has to very evident in the message in the opt-in confirmation
message that they've opted in for future text messages or recurring text messages.
This is very important because a lot of brands will forget that and the CTI really is very
specific as the fact that they want consumers to be aware that if they're opting in or they're
opting in for future text messages.
The last one here is you have to disclose messaging data rates may apply.
Now, this is what the CTIA requires.
That is essentially, it's not law but it's what the carriers and the CTIA what they require
to operate on their networks.
So the worst thing that can happen is your short code gets shut down or audited because
you're not doing the correct thing.
Now on the other side, the legal side, what is the law is the Telephone Consumer Protection
Act.
That is a completely different beast and requires a completely different set of disclosures.
I'm gonna go through them because they're super important and you can't leave them out
of your opt-in message.
So the first part of the TCPA requires that and it kind of overlaps a little bit with
what the CTIA and the wireless carriers want in the message as well.
So essentially what they say is you have to tell the consumer that they've opted in for
recurring auto dialed marketing messages.
That's the first one.
And again, recurring as you can see that that was part of the CTIA and carrier requirements
so it kind of overlaps a little bit.
And then you have to disclose the consumer again this is on the TCPA.
This is the legal side.
This is the side that consumers can actually sue you under is you have to let the consumer
know that consent was not a condition of purchase.
This means that they were not forced into opting into your campaign just because they
made a purchase at your business.
Those are the two requirements.
You have the CTIA wireless carriers then you have the TCPA.
There's one other one which is not a requirement of anything but I highly recommend it is in
the opt-in confirmation text message you also include the terms and conditions of the mobile
campaign because in the terms and conditions you can have things like an arbitration clause.
You can have additional information that the consumer's agreeing to.
And so it helps your business protect you against frivolous lawsuits and TCPA complaints
and things of that nature.
So, a lot of different things you have to include.
Feel free if you have a question about this or you need a template.
I know Tatango has many of these different types of templates to help brands figure out
all this because you really only have 160 characters so you got to fit all that stuff
into one message.
So it really takes some finesse sometimes.
So hopefully, that helps you answer the question as to what is required in an opt-in confirmation
text message.