This week I received a message from a friend in Seattle about an unsolicited text message (SMS Spam) that she received from a local nightclub. This was an unfortunate situation, but a good lesson for other businesses thinking about using SMS marketing. Not only can sending your customers SMS Spam be costly for your business, it can also destroy any goodwill you may have had with your current or future customers.
Case in point, check out some of the tweets below that I found only a few minutes after my friend alerted me of receiving that SMS campaign. Remember also that only a small percentage of Americans have a Twitter account, which means there was most definitely more angry customers out there. I’m not an expert in the nightclub business, but angering many of your most loyal customers with SMS spam can’t be a good thing for business.
As anyone who has read my blog before, I have no problem throwing a company that sends SMS spam to their customers under the bus, just ask the people from the Jiffy Lube SMS Campaign. This case was a little different though after I spoke to the owner of the nightclub. The owner explained that the consultant that they had hired to manage their SMS marketing campaign said it was completely within the law to send text message to phone numbers that the nightclub had collected over the years.
Unfortunately none of these phone numbers were collected via mobile keyword (i.e. text NIGHTCLUB to 68398), most of them being collected through reservations, paper sign up forms, or loyalty programs. The business owner is at fault here, but I put more of the blame on the consultant who mislead the owner regarding the rules of SMS marketing, which is why I blacked out the business name.
To make it easy for everyone, here’s a simple rule to follow for any business wanting to use SMS marketing:
ONLY SEND SMS CAMPAIGNS TO CUSTOMERS THAT HAVE OPTED-IN THROUGH A SHORT CODE (5-6 digit phone number) & MOBILE KEYWORD. EVERYTHING ELSE IS SMS SPAM!
If you follow that one simple rule, you will be fine when using SMS marketing.
