Understanding Phone Carrier Compliance and Double Opt-In

06 Jan Understanding Phone Carrier Compliance and Double Opt-In

To respect the privacy and safety of consumers, regulations have been put in place to control how brands proactively interact with consumers. These regulations, especially when dealing with SMS, can be difficult to navigate. At Aktify, we’re here to help you understand the regulations and make sure your business is compliant so we can help you can achieve the goals you have set out to achieve. 
Businesses can stay ahead of the curve by ensuring opt-in compliance. This is done in one of two ways. 

1. Have the right language and fields on lead forms (this is what we recommend).
2. Deploy a double opt-in process with existing recipients of communication.

Staying compliant with either of these two options will help your company avoid penalties and ensure your company’s Campaign Registry Trust Score and positive engagement rates stay high. More details on each of these options can be found below. 

Why Does this Matter? 

There are quite a few reasons why it’s vital for companies to get ahead of this with urgency. Here are a few:

• Carrier compliance will help you avoid penalties and give you clean data that yields high results
• Your Trust Score will grow which affects your Application-to-Person 10 Digit-long Code (A2P 10DLC). Your business will become more trustworthy and credible to the industry and public. 
• Best user experience will be provided to customers, as only those who have expressed clear interest will be reached out to.
• Highest level of deliverability will be reached. Contacting unwanted customers via SMS will lead to high opt-out rates and may lead to filtering by the carriers (Your messages never actually reach the customer) 

Lead Form Compliance

If your company plans to communicate through SMS with those who have filled out your form, you need to allow visitors to choose whether or not they wish to receive that communication. This cannot be a mandatory checked box or fine print stating that they agree when they hit “submit.” This must be an optional non-prefilled field that lets the visitor consciously make the decision to give consent to receive SMS. 
We recommend you implement this ASAP, to avoid worrying about double opt-in. Here are three options for implementing this into your form. Revise all forms on your website to have one of the following: 

• An unchecked checkbox that says, “By Submitting the webform, you are consenting to receive calls and texts. You may opt out of messaging by responding STOP” 
• A picklist on the form that allows visitors to check yes/no, I agree/I do not agree to receiving communication through SMS
• A text field that asks visitors to type YES or I AGREE if they wish to receive communication through SMS

 

 
Make sure the contacts who have expressed consent in the format above are marked or tagged in your database. 

Double Opt-in

Double opt-in (DOI) is a tactic used to improve lead quality and ensure compliance. It’s a verification, sent by way of SMS, to consumers who may already be receiving communication from a business. This asks consumers if they wish to continue receiving communication from the given business and are willing to engage through SMS. 
In the case that lead and contact forms do not include an optional way to give consent, phone carriers are now beginning to require proof of DOI for any marketing or promotional conversations. 
 

Impacts of Making these Changes

Initially you may see a decrease in your number of total engagements as well as your transfer rate. This decrease will primarily be composed of low quality leads and uninterested prospects. Despite these impacts, our recent trials with improved opt-in processes show a dramatically improved quality of leads. With the leads being higher quality and lower quantity, on average, output remained at a similar level, while engagement and transfer rates rose 61% and 12x respectively, when compared to the total number of leads uploaded. 
 

 
Making these changes are necessary for the long term health of your database and communication strategy. Understanding regulations and compliance, especially in a relatively new industry can be difficult. We understand this at Aktify and we are here to help. Please reach out to us with any questions or needs.