SMS Best Practices.
At Fiitfu we know the needs of our clients and technology can change quickly. This is why we are so excited to launch SMS – Texting within Fiitfu. There are Best Practices when it comes to texting, and some legal issues you may need to be aware of before sending notes to your clients.
Remember, before anything is sent, you must have three things:
- Consent to send Electronic communication – We suggest tracking the Express consent from your clients, using an interest in Fiitfu, something like “gave expressed SMS consent” and note this consent in their journal. Express consent can be given verbally, written or by filling out a form. Using Fiitfu Forms is a great way to collect Electronic Consent from your clients.
- You must Identify yourself so the client knows who is contacting them. When you send your first text, be sure to say who you are, and what company you are with. You may also want to ask them to note your new business number and add this to their contacts on their phone. Here is an example of what that can look like: ” Hi this is Alice from X company, this number is my new Business number, used for texting only. Please reply STOP if you do not want to receive text messages from me”.
- When you have the above, and you communicate with your clients, you must have an Opt out. In Fiitfu, when you send a text message, if a client responds STOP, you will no longer be able to send them text messages. You will know if a client has unsubscribed from your Text Messages as Fiitfu will highlight any messages that are no longer going out to a client. Plus you will receive their STOP request.
Please note recipients can disable the message stop, and resume receiving messages with the START, YES or UNSTOP commands.
To get the full benefits of SMS communications, you’ll want to make sure you follow some more best practices:
Check your list: Double check that the phone numbers on your list are correct and can receive text messages. You will need to have your mobile numbers in the mobile location on Fiitfu. Invalid numbers (like landlines) will cause message delivery problems, and changed (or fake) phone numbers will fail to reach their destination. If someone requests to stop receiving SMS messages from you, promptly remove them from your list and honor their opt-out. To ensure your clients numbers are all in the Mobile area of Fiitfu, you can re-upload your contacts to Fiitfu.
Keep it simple and concise: Text messaging is intended to be short and sweet. Keep your messages simple with clear-cut CTAs and relevant content.
Control your frequency: How often you send is just as important as what you send. Less is more. Excessive content, deals, and updates can cause annoyance and even increase opt-out rates. Data shows that opt-out rates tend to increase significantly when businesses begin sending more than 10-15 SMS messages a month.
Fiitfu’s Spam Policies are being updated, and once again you must be sure to read and sign off on the new Spam Policy.
We hope you enjoy the new features on Fiitfu.