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Compliance with SMS and MMS marketing regulations
Compliance with SMS and MMS marketing regulations

This article sets out the key things you need to know about SMS and MMS regulatory compliance in advance of sending out Firepush campaigns.

Tom avatar
Written by Tom
Updated over a week ago

The Telecommunications Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) sets out how companies in the U.S. can legally contact their customers/subscribers through SMS and MMS messages. Text messages are classed as being similar to phone calls and were pulled into TCPA legislation back in 2012. 

You are responsible for reading and understanding the required TCPA regulations and you must comply with these regulations when using Firepush Ltd. to send SMS/MMS campaigns to your customers/subscribers. 

We suggest that you take some time to go through the applicable TCPA laws, as well as the CTIA guidelines for SMS marketing to familiarize yourself with what you should and shouldn’t be doing in relation to text message marketing.

Key information to know at a glance:

To be compliant with the TCPA, you must receive prior express written consent from your customers before sending them automated SMS marketing messages. You must also respect their right not to receive unsolicited texts for marketing purposes.

You can gather consent electronically and you must keep a record of each and every consent so that you can provide it if needed before federal law. It’s your responsibility to keep the record of consent (not the customer/subscriber’s).

The consent you receive must be explicit in terms of the customer’s wish to receive recurring marketing messages directly to their phone number. You must also get explicit consent indicating that the customer understands that consent isn’t a condition of purchase and that your messages may involve the use of an automatic telephone dialing system (ATDS).

The CTIA isn’t federal law. However, the CTIA promotes the wireless communications industry’s best practices which are approved by the nation’s wireless carriers and are designed to protect consumers.

You should follow these best practices, which you can learn about in the CTIA’s Short Code Monitoring Handbook and Messaging Principles and Best Practices document. These guides may change over time, so be sure to check periodically to see whether an updated version has been released.

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