SMS Need to Know Guide

This information does not constitute legal advice. Every company has different policies, business needs, and compliance risks. We recommend seeking specific legal advice before adopting any of the compliance practices listed below.

The Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA) and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) regulate the sending of SMS messages in the United States.

You'll need consent before sending SMS messages and PropFuel makes it easy to collect consent from your members and contacts. 

There are four main ways you can collect consent for SMS with PropFuel:

Email Campaigns: 
The easiest way to get your contacts to opt-in to SMS is the most familiar - running a PropFuel email campaign. Create a campaign that contacts people who haven't already given consent, and ask them to give you their mobile phone number and affirm consent to receive SMS messages.

Inbound SMS:
You can also collect consent to receive messages directly over SMS. In PropFuel, create an SMS campaign with the interaction of “Opt-In.” In the campaign editor, you will have the ability to set an Opt-In code. If anyone texts that code to your phone number, they will be opted-in to receive SMS messages from you.

PropFuel Web/External Campaign:
You can utilize the Web/External campaign type in PropFuel to hyperlink this campaign into a newsletter or on your website to collect opt-ins.

Offline or Externally: 
If you already have opt-ins collected in your signup flow or some other system, you can easily sync that data from your AMS into PropFuel as part of your field mapping configuration on your integration. Or, if you have the data in some other format, you can always import it to PropFuel from a CSV import.

Learn more about collecting consent here.

Every message you send must clearly identify you as the sender, except in follow-up messages of an ongoing conversation.

Messages should always include the following language: “Reply STOP to unsubscribe,” or the equivalent using another standard opt-out keyword, such as STOPALL, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, and QUIT. 

The opt-out language you include in your messages must include a widely accepted keyword for opt-out. Using alternative phrases like "text 2 to opt out" is not compliant, and will result in filtering.

Shortening your URL in messages allows you to add links using the fewest characters possible. Since each message you send will use credits based on characters used, we want to make sure you are making the most of your valuable messages.

Here are some helpful tips on shortening your URLS:

The TCPA has restrictions on when text messages can be sent to subscribers, commonly referred to as “quiet hours.” Because of this restriction, PropFuel only allows you to schedule and send text messages between 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Eastern.

To date, T-Mobile is the first U.S. telecommunications provider to announce non-compliance fees for violations of T-Mobile’s Code of Conduct. 

T-Mobile non-compliance fees are as follows:

• 10DLC Long Code Messaging Program Evasion: A $1,000 pass-through fee if a program/campaign is found to be using techniques such as snowshoeing, or unauthorized number replacement/recycling.

• Content Violation: After prior warning, a $10,000 pass-through fee may be imposed for each unique instance of content violating the T-Mobile Code of Conduct involving the same sender/content provider.  This includes SHAFT (Sex, Hate, Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco) violations, spam, phishing, and messaging that meets the Severity 0 violation as defined in the CTIA Short Code Monitoring Handbook.

To update the email receiving SMS notifications, navigate to Settings > SMS. Under Phone Numbers, Actions, then select Edit next to the relevant phone number. Choose the desired user(s) under Notify User(s) and save your changes by clicking the Save button.