There’s just one month to go until the GDPR changes come into force and your marketing data must be clean and compliant before then. Of course, we want to help you with your SMS data and so we’ve put together a toolkit to help you get upgraded consent; so you can continue communication with your contacts.
You have two options for your data, legitimate interest, or consent. Lot’s of businesses have obtained their data through some kind of transaction and have therefore collected the mobile number legitimately, as long as they can evidence that particular transaction when the data was given. If you’re going down the consent route, you need to ensure you can answer yes to the below questions when considering how consent is obtained and managed:
- Is it clear exactly what is being opted in to?
- Can consent can be documented and evidenced if challenged?
- Is it easy for customers to withdraw consent at any time?
We’ve got a couple of tools in place to help you tick these boxes and ensure you have lots of happy customers waiting to hear from you.
Text to Opt-in
If you have a reply number set-up, you can create a new keyword e.g. CONFIRM or YES, which can be specifically used for collecting consent. With this keyword, try sending out a campaign with a consent call to action which asks recipients to simply reply back with this keyword confirming their consent to continue receiving your messages. These contacts are then saved into a contact group which will collect new and upgraded consented contacts.
Click to Consent
You can utilise our handy URL tracker to gain consent as each recipient gets a unique code in their message meaning you can see who has clicked on the link. Send a campaign to your contacts with a super-clear call to action asking your customers to confirm their consent to receiving SMS from you by clicking the link. As all clicks are tracked within FireText when using the URL tracker, these contacts can be downloaded and added to a new upgraded consent group in your FireText account. The link you include can either forward to your own marketing preferences page or, if you don’t have one, we can set-up a thank you page on this side which thanks them for their opt-in.
Opt-out Keyword
If you’re using a reply number, great stuff, you already have STOP set-up automatically to manage unsubscribes. Make sure you include clear instructions in your campaigns on how your customers can use this to remove themselves from your list at any time. If you’re not using replies, we’ll get you up and running with an opt-out keyword so you can handle unsubscribes clearly and instantly on every campaign.
We’re providing consent keywords, reply numbers, and landing pages at no cost until 24th May!
We’re SMS experts here and have all the tools and resources in place to help you with your campaigns, but we’re not legal professionals. Any information we provide is not legal advice and we always recommend speaking with a legal expert about your GDPR requirements.