SMS consent for local businesses: the short version

What this is, and what it is not

This is general information for owners and office managers who want to text customers without creating a problem. It is not legal advice. The rules around business texting in the United States come from federal law, carrier policies and, in some states, state law, and they change. If you run a practice that handles health or legal information, or you text across state lines, have a lawyer read your consent language before you launch.

What follows is the short version that most local businesses need: when you need consent, what the consent has to look like, which words every thread has to honor, and how to keep appointment texts and promotions from getting tangled. If you get these right, you are in a much better position than a business that texts from a personal phone and hopes.

Two kinds of texts, two kinds of consent

The first kind is the text a customer expects because of something they already did. They booked a visit and you confirm it. They asked a question through your website and you answer it. They missed a call and you text back. These are informational or transactional messages. The customer gave you the number for exactly this purpose, and the message is about their own appointment or inquiry.

The second kind is anything that sells. A seasonal offer, a reminder that whitening is on special, a “we miss you” text to a customer who has not been in for a while. These are marketing messages, and they need a higher standard of consent: express written consent, given before the first promotional text, specifically for marketing texts from your business.

The mistake most businesses make is treating one consent as both. A customer who typed their number into a booking form agreed to hear about their booking. They did not agree to hear about your spring promotion. Keep two separate checkboxes, two separate records and two separate lists, and the problem mostly goes away.

What express written consent looks like

Written does not mean paper. A checkbox on a web form, a typed reply to a text, or a signature on an intake form all count, as long as you can show what the person agreed to and when. The disclosure has to be clear before they agree: the name of your business, that they are agreeing to receive automated or recurring marketing texts, that consent is not a condition of buying anything, roughly how often you will text, that message and data rates may apply, and how to stop.

The checkbox cannot be pre-checked, and it cannot be buried in a terms link. Put the language next to the box in plain type. Keep a record of the exact wording, the timestamp, the phone number and the page or form it came from. If a complaint arrives a year later, that record is what you will be asked for.

For appointment texts, the bar is lower but not zero. Tell people on the form that they will get texts about their appointment, and give them a way to opt out. The SMS consent and TCPA basics page has the terms defined if you want the vocabulary.

STOP, HELP and the words every thread must honor

Every number you text from has to respond to STOP by ending messages to that number, immediately and automatically, with one confirmation and nothing after it. Treat the obvious variants the same way: “stop”, “unsubscribe”, “cancel”, “quit”, “end”. A reply of “please stop texting me” typed in a sentence should also be read as a stop, even if the software does not catch it, which means a person needs to look at replies.

HELP should return a short message with your business name, what the texts are for and how to reach you. Both responses are required by the carriers, and both are good manners. A customer who can leave easily is more willing to stay.

One more thing: a STOP to your promotions list is not a STOP to appointment confirmations unless the customer says so, but do not argue the point. If someone says stop, stop everything from that number and let the front desk sort out the appointment by phone. Nobody has ever regretted sending fewer texts to a person who asked.

Hours, frequency and the number you send from

Send marketing texts during the day in the customer’s time zone. Many businesses hold to a window between early morning and early evening, and some states set their own limits. Appointment reminders can go out when they are useful, but a reminder at midnight reads as a mistake. Set quiet hours in your software so that nobody has to remember.

Frequency should match what you disclosed. If the form said “up to four messages a month”, do not send eight because a slow week made you nervous. Reply texts in an active conversation do not count against that; a customer who is texting with the front desk about Thursday expects answers.

The number matters too. In the United States, a business texting from a local number has to register that number and its use case with the carriers through the 10DLC program before messages will reliably deliver. Register the same number people call. A text from an unfamiliar number, even a polite one, gets ignored or reported. If you have one line for the whole business, the texts should come from it; one number for the whole business covers why.

How Ottimo handles it

Forms built in Ottimo carry two separate consents: one for appointment and account texts, one for promotions. Each is unchecked by default, carries the disclosure text next to the box, and is recorded on the customer record with the wording, the time and the form it came from. The follow-up sequences read those flags, so a reminder can go to a customer who only agreed to appointment texts, and a seasonal offer cannot.

STOP and HELP are handled on every number automatically, and a stop is written to the record so no other sequence picks the number up. Quiet hours are set once per business. None of that replaces a lawyer reading your consent language, but it means the rules you decide on are enforced by the software rather than by memory.