Businesses face a delicate balancing act when it comes to SMS communications. On one hand, text messages offer an immediate and personal way to reach customers. On the other hand, unwanted messages can quickly lead to frustration and damage to brand reputation.
Consider these scenarios:
- A small business with 25 users and one company number struggling to manually track opt-outs across all employees.
- An enterprise with 1,000 users and 10 site numbers, where customer admins lack visibility into individual employee text messages.
Without a centralized system, businesses risk inadvertently sending messages to opted-out recipients, neglecting user privacy and potential loss of number reputation with carriers. Failure to comply with SMS opt-out regulations can result in hefty fines, with some companies facing multi-million dollar settlements for violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).
Recognizing these challenges and listening to your feedback, we’ve built a new SMS opt-out management tool to our user interface to help businesses achieve responsible SMS communication. This solution simplifies and automates SMS compliance by blocking SMS opt-out conversations, sending auto-replies, and provides a centralized place to manage your opt-out list efficiently.
What is SMS opt-out?
SMS opt-out refers to the process that allows recipients to choose to stop receiving text messages from a sender. It’s a fundamental aspect of permission-based marketing and is required by law in many countries, including the United States.
Users must give an organization explicit consent to receive promotional or transactional text messages. Some of the examples that consumers can opt in to receive these messages include:
- Providing verbal consent to opt in to receiving text messages
- Sending an initial text message to the publicly available phone number
- Sending a keyword to an organization’s phone number provided during an advertising campaign
- Agreeing to receive text messages at the on-site or online point-of-sale and so on.
It is the organization’s responsibility to initiate the message to consumers who agree to opt in to text messages. This response must provide the brand name, confirm the subscription, how to get help, and instructions on how to unsubscribe.
Organizations are legally required to inform contacts how to opt out of promotional text messages. For example, “Thank you for subscribing to XYZ Productions. Reply HELP to receive assistance. Text STOP to unsubscribe.”
When contacts respond STOP to a message, they will receive an auto-reply indicating they have successfully opted out of receiving further messages. The organization won’t be able to initiate further text conversations with the blocked contacts. Recipients can opt back in to receiving messages by replying START to the text message string.
How RingCentral’s SMS opt-out experience works
- When a recipient opts out of receiving your business’ text messages with RingCentral’s supported keywords such as “STOP”, our system springs into action.
- RingCentral immediately sends an auto-reply message to the recipient, confirming that their opt-out request has been received and processed.
- Our system automatically blocks further text communications to this number, ensuring no unwanted messages are sent.
- The contact is automatically added to an opted-out list. This centralized list helps maintain compliance across your entire business.
Admins can easily monitor, download, or export the SMS opt-out list to be sure contacts who have requested to unsubscribe from text message campaigns don’t receive unwanted communication. Recipients can also easily opt back in by replying with keywords, reopening the communication channel.
How does it benefit your business?
Having an effective SMS opt-out management system offers numerous advantages for both businesses and their customers. Let’s explore these benefits in detail:
Automate SMS compliance process
Managing SMS opt-outs can be a complex and time-consuming process for businesses. Our new feature simplifies this task by handling opt-outs and auto-replies automatically. This reduces human error and ensures consistent, timely handling of opt-out requests across your organization. Free up your team to focus on strategic business activities while ensuring robust adherence to industry standards and regulations such as:
- Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) requirements
- Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA) guidelines for marketing communications
Lower costs, happier customers
Imagine the frustration of continually receiving promotional text messages from a brand after you’ve explicitly opted out – this negative experience could significantly damage your perception of that company.
Respecting opt-outs is crucial for maintaining a positive brand image. It puts the power in the hands of the recipient, honors their communication preferences to reduce frustration from unwanted messages. This can reduce the likelihood of messages being marked as spam, preserving your sender reputation with mobile carriers and improving deliverability rates for messages to interested recipients.
Plus, avoid sending messages to uninterested recipients saves on SMS costs and resources. By only messaging interested subscribers, your overall engagement metrics are also likely to improve.
Manage opt-outs in one place
Our new SMS opt-out management system also includes a centralized interface for monitoring opt-outs across all company numbers and users. This maintains a comprehensive audit trail of opt-out requests and actions taken to help with compliance efforts. While RingCentral automatically blocks SMS communications to opted-out numbers, we recommend proactively cleaning your address books and to-send lists based on the opt-out data to reduce unnecessary processing.
RingCentral’s new opt-out experience also provides valuable insights into customer communication preferences, helping you make informed decisions about your SMS communication strategies. For instance, imagine you notice a spike in opt-outs following a particular promotional campaign. By analyzing opt-out patterns, you can identify which types of messages resonate with your audience and which don’t, allowing you to tailor your content for better engagement and reduced opt-outs.
Availability
RingCentral’s new SMS opt-out experience will be generally available to all customers in the US/CA by November 2024. Learn how to manage opt-out requests with RingCentral here.
Originally published Oct 24, 2024