Businesses that want to develop trusted, engaged relationships with their prospects and customers are finding that SMS messages are growing in preference as a communications channel. But business texting is not the same as shooting a message to a friend on your smartphone. The first step to trust is gaining your audience’s consent to message them. This article is part of our Become a Textpert series designed to help you kickstart your messaging expertise.

Defining Compliant Opt-Ins

Business text messaging is a form of permission-based communication, regulated in the U.S. by the TCPA, the U.S. Wireless Association (CTIA) and the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA). If you communicate with EMEA data subjects, GDPR also regulates consent.

Just as with email marketing, anytime you begin to use messaging to talk with your prospects, customers, candidates, home buyers, investors, patients, or others, you need to get their consent.

Consent—also known as “opting-in”—must be tracked, time-stamped and managed within your intelligent text messaging platform as a means of evidence that you have the consumer’s permission to message them.

Why Become a Textpert at Building Lists for SMS Messages?

Gain Access: The Kahuna Mobile Marketing Index found that native SMS messages have a high opt-in rate: 86% in US, 82% in Europe and 77% in Asia. Just as impressive, 77% choose to turn on notifications, so you can be sure they’ll see your message quickly.

Increase Intent: Recent research by Twilio found that messaging is ranked as the #1 channel consumers want to use to engage with businesses. And half of them prefer native SMS to message with businesses over messaging apps, like Facebook and WhatsApp. When your business communicates in the way consumers prefer, you’re showing them that you care about what they want. And, rather than just pushing messages at them, consumers can easily respond and have a conversation with your business. Responsiveness builds trust and the confidence that drives intent to buy…and buy again.

Grow Loyalty and Satisfaction: The Global Mobile Messaging Consumer Report found that consumers agree messaging is a great channel to learn about new products and services, provide feedback, or get support. These conversations serve to increase loyalty and satisfaction as they strengthen relationships.

The Converse App for Compliant Opt-In Comes Ready to Roll

The Compliant Opt-In App provides everything you need to run a conversational text messaging campaign to build your lists. Simple tuning of the preconfigured campaign will get you started quickly and simply.

You’ll find:

• Message content templates that make it easy for you to quickly tune your messages based on best practices used by more than 1800 customers to accomplish the same goal.
• Message flows for your opt-in process, including any appropriate automated workflows, auto-responses, and triggers for opt-in compliance requirements.
• Data and analytics that you need with key insights to help you understand why people opt-in, which offers lead to the best opt-in results, and how to drive higher opt-ins to build your list.
• An intelligent and intuitive interface designed to accelerate and simplify managing the volume of opt-in requests and the messaging campaigns you’ll deliver next…

How the Converse App for Compliant Opt-In Works

Let’s say you’re running a promotion that includes an option for a prospect to text a keyword to a short code to “opt-in” to receive something relevant to them. Depending on your type of business, the offers could be new product information, discounts or coupons, contests, how-to videos, insights or research findings—and those only scratch the surface of possibilities.

When an unknown lead sends the keyword to the short code, the following opt-in occurs:

• The keyword and mobile number used to send it are captured as the Converse App creates a new lead record in your database.
• The Opt-In App then automatically triggers a legally compliant message back to the prospect that includes your company name, value proposition, frequency of messages to expect monthly, and the option to ask for help or opt-out of future texts.
• The App will then trigger the first content message to deliver the information or offer the prospect responded to by texting the keyword.

This sequence allows you to manage compliance requirements automatically and convey the information the sender requested.

Once the opt-in is completed, you’re ready to launch any type of conversational text messaging campaign you’d like. Depending on the additional Converse Apps you’re using for the campaign, you may choose to send a single message to the prospect, begin a drip or nurture campaign, schedule a meeting or start a survey.

Converse Apps simplify what it takes to become a Textpert at building lists for SMS messages.

Find out more about Converse Apps and transform your campaigns and communications—into relevant experiences that your potential and existing customers will thank you for sharing. It’s easier than ever to reach and engage your audiences with relevant content that drives business growth.