SMS Sending Compliance and Best Practice

Whether you’re sharing updates, promotions, or reminders, SMS Sending offers a highly effective channel to build meaningful relationships with your audiences. Before engaging in SMS marketing, it is important to familiarize yourself with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Public and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR).

This article is not legal advice; it is intended to provide general information on regulations and compliance when engaging in SMS Marketing in the UK.

When sending SMS marketing campaigns within the UK you must ensure that you;

Obtain explicit consent
Provide a simple, accessible and free opt-out mechanism on every message you send
Clearly identify yourself as the sender in each message

In line with UK regulations, you must obtain consent from your contacts before engaging in SMS marketing. With Transpond you can record consent for SMS marketing when collecting subscribers via your Signup Forms, in addition to recording consent it is considered good practice to detail the nature and frequency of SMS messages a contact can expect to receive as well as a link to your privacy policy (if available).

Recording Consent via a Signup Form

The first step is to create a custom field to record if a contact has given consent to SMS Marketing:

Click Contacts in the top navigation bar of Transpond > All Contacts > Fields > click + Add a Field
Give the field a meaningful name along the lines of SMS Opt-In or SMS Consent Given and for the field type select TRUE/FALSE then click + Add Custom Field

Once the custom field has been created, you need to create a new signup form or edit an existing one.

When viewing the edit form screen, from the Elements menu on the left drag a new checkbox field on to the form in the preferred position.
In the Content tab for the checkbox, under Field, select the TRUE/FALSE custom field you created in the steps above and then edit the label text.

To add information on the nature and frequency of SMS messages a contact can expect to receive, drag a text field from the Elements menu on the left of the screen and enter the details.

In order to provide SMS marketing contacts will need to have a mobile phone number, if you aren't already collecting phone numbers via your signup form you will need to add a field for this on the form too.

How do contacts opt out of SMS marketing

On every SMS message you send via Transpond, an "opt-out" link will be automatically added. If a contact decides they no longer wish to receive SMS marketing from your organization, they can tap the link in the text, which will take them to a webpage where they can enter their phone number to opt-out.

How to yourself as the sender of SMS Marketing

To set a default 'From Name' for your SMS Marketing in Transpond:

Click on your profile image in the top right corner of the screen > Company Profile > then click the SMS tab.
Here, you can enter your default name. This should clearly identify your organisation as the sender of the SMS messages. The name must be 3-11 characters long and have no spaces.

If you want to use a one-off name for a specific campaign or if you work with multiple brands/services, the default 'From Name' can be overridden when creating your campaigns.

SMS Marketing - Quiet Hours

Within the UK, SMS marketing messages can be sent between 9am and 8pm. Outside this time is considered "Quiet Hours", in order to be compliant, you must not send during quiet hours. Transpond helps you with this compliance by not allowing campaigns to be scheduled or started before 9am or after 8pm.

SMS steps in Automations

If you're using an SMS step within an Automation, the Automation will respect the quiet hours of 8pm through 9am by holding contacts at the step until quiet hours have passed. After this time the SMS will be sent and the contact will continue through any additional steps in the Automation.