Please do not substitute this as legal advice, you should seek out legal counsel prior to implementing A2P texting in your business.

So is A2P SMS legal for you to do? The short answer is probably not, the FCC under the CTIA defines A2P texting as “anything outside of normal consumer conversation” and those messages that fall outside of that category better have the right opt-ins and opt-out notifications otherwise you could be in for up to a $1,000 /per msg fine!

So how can I be safe? Well, again we are not legal experts. but in the opinion and practice of the Author, It is an opinion that if you follow the category breakdowns within the CTIA and keep your messages informational rather than transactional you could avoid having to send several redundant opt-ins.

What are the redundant opt-ins?

Well the FCC has laid it out this way if a customer clicks a button on a lead form that allows permission to text them even in the initial text you have to ask for permission to text yet again. So instead of sending a normal text to someone who already agreed to be texted, you need to send an opt-in message that would sound something like this:

“Last Automation would like to send you an SMS, to receive messages reply yes, or reply no to unsubscribe”

Annoying right? Well, it gets even worse, because even if the reply “yes” your next text needs to provide opt-in information as well as for instructions to opt-out. Example:

“You have successfully subscribed to Last Automation, 1-10 SMS/ mo standard data rates may apply. Reply Stop at any time to unsubscribe”

what do you think of that? keep in mind in this scenario this customer had already agreed to be texted! Yet in order to stay compliant and send transactional SMS, you need to jump through these hoops just to send a text.

So logically you are thinking that you couldn’t close a door if you had to say all this crap to it right? Well, there might be loophole so let’s exploit it.