Overview
In recent years, SMS Marketing text messages have gained popularity among companies. However, this popularity has also led to an increase in reported spam text messages. As a result to increased customer frustration, major cellphone Carriers such as T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon have updated their policies to regulate how businesses interact with their customers.
Please Note
Phone carriers now require companies to register their business information before they can send text messages to their potential customers using a local area phone number. Until you complete the registration process, all texts sent through Real Geeks will use a toll-free phone number.
How Does This Impact Me?
These changes primarily affect our automated services like Signup Autoresponders, Drip SMS, GeekAI (Robin), and Reactive Responses. If other services you have that use SMS don’t have any of these rules in place today, you should expect changes like this in the near future. Industry experts say that this will become the new normal.
What Changes Are Being Made?
In response to these policy changes, Real Geeks has implemented changes to the texting system. These changes address two of the biggest requirements from the Carriers:
Sender Identification
- Every message sent from Real Geeks must clearly identify you as the sender. This is not required in a follow-up message for an ongoing conversation.
- Real Geeks Response: To stay compliant, Real Geeks will append the following SMS “Signature” to every message to your lead: “- [First Name] from [site name/url]"
Example
Thank you for signing up on my website! What features are you looking for in your next home? - Michael from EZ Real EstateOpt-Out Language
- Carriers are requiring that the very first message sent to a lead should provide instructions that give the user an option to opt out of sms communication. Example: Reply STOP to unsubscribe
- If you contact the same recipients multiple times per month, you don't have to give opt-out instructions in every message, but you must do it at least once per month.
- Real Geeks Response: To stay compliant, Real Geeks will automatically include the following sentence in the initial message sent to a lead: "If you want me to only call you, reply STOP to stop receiving text messages.”
Example
Thank you for signing up on my website! What features are you looking for in your next home? - [First Name] from [site name/url]
If you want me to only call you, reply STOP to stop receiving text messages.
Conclusion
While these rules have been around for a while now, phone carriers have recently started enforcing them more strictly. Fortunately, history informs us that these new changes do not significantly affect communication. In fact, in 2022, Real Geeks incorporated the "STOP" language into our GeekAI and Reactive Responses messages. After closely monitoring thousands of conversations, we discovered that this additional "STOP" language resulted in only a 2% rise in opt-out rates.
Learn More
To learn more about the recent changes to carrier policies, review the links below:
FAQ
Only the automated ones, meaning Signup Autoresponders, Drip, Reactive Responses, and Geek AI (Robin). Standalone texts that you send directly to a lead are NOT impacted by this update.
The mobile carriers require the text signature and opt-out language adherence regardless of registration status.