7 Things You Must Know Before You Text Your Customers

Texting has become a more and more popular mode of communicating with business customers and potential customers. Texts are fast, easy, convenient, and your customers may even initiate the conversation. But there are many traps for the unwary lurking in the texting relationship. Here are seven things to consider before the next time you text with your customers.

You may have to have permission. The Federal Communications Commission has rules prohibiting unsolicited commercial text messages by auto-dialer. That’s quite a lot of jargon, so in translation: you cannot send text messages automatically to many people (let’s call those “mass texts”) that each customer did not give you permission to send. If you are trying to convince the people you are texting to purchase something (e.g., notifying them of a sale), that permission has to be in writing. If you are not trying to convince them to purchase something (e.g., notifying them that you have shipped their order), that permission may be either oral or in writing. The exception is emergency situations, when you may send mass texts without permission.

Emails sent to cell phones as texts are subject to CAN-SPAM. The Federal Trade Commission has rules governing commercial email messages that are sent to cell phones as text messages. You may not have even known that this was possible, but it is, and there are rules about how to do it right. You have probably already heard of the CAN-SPAM regulations. They say that if you send an email that is commercial (as opposed to informational or transactional), you must:

• Not use false or misleading information about who sent the email.
• Use subject lines that accurately reflect the content of the email.
• Identify the message as an ad.
• Provide a valid physical postal address.
• Provide information about how to opt out of receiving future emails from you.
• Honor opt-out requests within 10 business days.
• Monitor what others are doing on your behalf—you are responsible for your vendors.

Emails sent as text messages must comply with both the FTC’s rules about content and the FCC’s rules about permission. Importantly, CAN-SPAM applies no matter how many email messages you send. Even a single email you send directly to an existing customer as a text message would be subject to the CAN-SPAM rule.

You have to include certain information. For plain old mass texts of the non-email variety, you should provide information about who is sending mass text messages and about how to stop receiving them. For emails sent as texts, all of the elements of CAN-SPAM compliance have to be included.

Direct texting is less complicated, legally speaking. If you are sending a text to a specific customer with information about something you are doing for the customer, the regulations discussed above do not apply, at least for now. Texting is a communication tool, and you can generally use it as a communication tool. This is true whether your customers are other businesses or individual consumers. That said, you may want to let your customers make the first move when it comes to texting; not everyone appreciates this mode of communication.

Texts can be saved forever. As with all written communication, consider that texts can be saved forever. Be conscious about what you put in writing.

Consider your timing. There are the obvious courtesies of not sending texts to your customers outside business hours unless they have initiated the conversation. Beyond that, make sure you do not send text messages at a time when you know your customers might be doing something where texting could be dangerous, such as driving. Bad timing could cause a tragedy.

Charges to your customers. Although cellular plans with unlimited texting have become ubiquitous, not everyone has this feature. Make sure you aren’t sending so many texts that you could cause a problem for customers who still use older plans. You don’t want to annoy or alienate them.

Updated to add Bonus #8: Beware misdirection. As with email, be very careful not to send a message to the wrong person.

What do you think? Do you text with customers? Has it been a good experience?