Podcast Transcript:
This is SMS Marketing Basics part two. Hey there, I’m Jillian Kendrick and welcome to the Momentum Marketing Podcast. I’m a mama, a wife, an entrepreneur and a three time best selling co-author. In each episode, you’ll get real world practical advice and strategies and maybe a parenting tip or two. Along the way. If you’re ready to create a business that supports your family and your lifestyle, then you’re in the right place.
Hello, I’m so glad to have you here for SMS Marketing Basics part two. I am excited to bring some new stuff to you. But before we get into that, make sure that if you haven’t seen my brand new training, how I get over 600 brand new leads to my business every single month.
Go ahead to jilliankendrick.com/webinar and you can check it out there. We are also launching a brand new page to our site that will be linked to my Instagram as well. It is going to be jilliankendrick.com/link-pineapple. And on that page, you can check out all sorts of links, some of my best youtube videos, best blogs, best podcast episodes, see ways that you can work with me. Watch some free trainings, there’s some really, really good, amazing stuff there. Go ahead and check it out.
But right now we are talking about SMS marketing basics part two. And let me just say this both is and is not a marketing basic. On one hand, it’s a marketing basic because as of, I think, September 1st, everybody in the US has to do this. So it’s basic in the sense that this is a regular part of the set up that you have to do to get into text message marketing. But it’s not basic in the sense that it’s going to take a little while for you to come up with everything to set it up and I’m gonna walk you through all the details.
Here’s my disclaimer before we even get started. For as much as I know about this industry, text message marketing is still a relatively new sort of thing. It’s something that a lot of businesses do, but not every business does the way that we all do email marketing or that we all have websites. Text message marketing hasn’t caught on quite in that way yet. There’s still a lot of businesses that don’t do it, which is why I think you should be doing it, but also you should be doing it well. And part of the reason for what we’re about to talk about is there are now rules in place that you have to comply with in order to do text message marketing in the United States that previously scammers could just get burner phone phone numbers, quote unquote and they could spam a bunch of people move on to the next phone number Spam a bunch of people move on to the next carrier. Spam a bunch of people and turn and burn so to speak. But now this new compliance step that you have to do is going to make that so much harder. Which honestly is a really, really good thing like this should have been in place a long time ago. But this is really important and the reason that it’s part two, you have to do this, you have to know about this.
So there’s been recent compliance changes within the United States and this is going to affect and apply to businesses in the United States or who operate with a US based phone number who are sending to us based phone numbers or Canadian or other entities who are sending to us based phone number. Probably a couple of years ago. All of the carriers, the big major carriers, like AT&T Verizon Sprint T Mobile, they all recognized that more businesses were using text message marketing in these major carriers. And the carriers basically got together and said, ok, there’s a lot of messages being sent, there’s a lot of stuff happening. We need to keep tabs on this kind of. They need to like police it. And so they created. All the carriers got together and created the campaign registry. Where this organization can, actually can charge extra fees for businesses who send text messages. But then it also does third party policing. And so what happened was, it used to be that businesses who sent high volume like 3000 text messages a day or more, they had to register it. Also used to be that depending on the carrier that you used or the provider that you used. The carrier being AT&T Sprint T Mobile, et cetera. The provider being, who’s the software or what website did you go to, to send that text message? Some CRMs or some business software come with phone numbers already and they have to do it themselves. Others like Twilio and different things like that, they would have to do it themselves as well.
But some of those providers were making it so that regardless of the amount of text messages you were sending out, you still had to do this registry through them because they had to stay compliant with those carriers. They had to make nice with AT&T and Verizon. So it used to be that, like if you sent low volume or depending on your provider decisions of how they ran their business, you may or may not have had to do this registry thing. But as it turns out now everyone who is a US based business, US based phone number, or Canadian entity, or other entities that are sending to us phone numbers they now have to register through the campaign registry. Everybody has to do it. Volume doesn’t matter. If you’ve been sending text messages for a day or 10 years. If you do text message marketing or you do reminders, you do school alerts, you do any of that sort of stuff if you have a business, or maybe possibly even nonprofit, and you send text messages to your list, you need to register with the campaign registry period. And that actually goes into effect September 1st of 2023 which as of this recording is coming up in just under a month. And here’s the deal, one of my colleagues actually said this really, really well, he said to do the campaign registry a year ago or so a couple of months ago, it was quick turnaround to fill out everything on the registry, get what you needed done and then get the approval from the registry back and then go about your business within like a couple of days or maybe a week or so. Now that everybody has to do it, the campaign registry is going to be backed up and it’s gonna take much longer, the longer that you wait to register.
I mean, imagine this, let’s say the state that you live in immediately decided that driver’s licenses are no longer good. And you need to get a new type of license, you need to get an auto of whatever kind of special license. I don’t know. I’m just making this up. But hypothetically, wouldn’t you think that if everybody in your state who needed a driver’s license and now they have to go do something else, don’t you think that that would back up the DMV? You would not be able to get an appointment for months. And the same rule kind of applies here, the longer that you wait to do the campaign registry, the longer it’s going to take for the approval process to go through. And the carriers, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, will shut you down if you don’t have your campaign registry confirmation done and taken care of by September 1st. So do it now. Get in now or else you’ll have to wait a couple of days, a couple of weeks or even longer depending on how backed up they get.
So make sure that you do it now. In order to do the registry, something that they’re gonna ask you is a detailed description of the way in which you use SMS or text message marketing. So for example, whether you do marketing appointment reminders, you do two factor authentication, maybe you send confirmation codes, maybe you send a product key, maybe you do an opt in, maybe you send emergency notifications. Maybe you’re a school and you send the text messages to parents saying Hey, we’re having a short day today. Hey, school lets out at noon. There’s a snow day. There’s lots of different examples of why you could use text messages. But whatever it is, regardless of the fact that you might even say, oh, this isn’t marketing, quote unquote. But just because it isn’t, marketing doesn’t mean that you don’t have to register. Even if you send notifications or confirmations or if you send text messages, you have to register. It doesn’t matter if you consider the marketing or not, but you need to give a detailed explanation of the types of text messages that you send the campaign registry calls those campaigns. So when it asks you what kind of campaigns you run, you would then explain, will we send emergency notifications or we send text messages to parents letting them know that school is out early today or we send marketing, we send appointment reminders, whatever that looks like for you.
The other thing that you’re gonna have to do with the campaign registry is you have to provide your legal name, the name of your business or company or entity or your DBA. You have to give them a physical address and you have to explain the ways in which a subscriber customer or lead could opt in or opt out. So if you don’t have that set up yet, we talked about that in text message, marketing basics the first part. So go back and listen to that if you haven’t already. And the reason that they’re asking for personal information, this might be confusing to people. But let me explain.
So the email service providers, they already do this. At the bottom of your email or really any emails that you receive, there should be an unsubscribe link and a business name or an address and like a physical address that can be tied to the person or entity sending those emails. This is the carrier’s way of doing the exact same thing is if they get enough people complaining and saying, hey, this company is spamming me, we can go back and we can actually pinpoint the specific human and the specific entity in which that spam is being sent or from which that spam is being sent. And what that means is all of these spammers and crooked a-holes can no longer turn and burn when it comes to sending text message marketing. They have to register. If they don’t register, they can’t send text messages. There are probably ways around this that I am not even aware of and honestly don’t even want to know. Do your due diligence, do the right thing. But the carriers can literally block you. They can block your numbers and they can block your entity based on your business name, your name and your address. They can block you not just in their carrier. Like let’s say you do a turn and burn spam campaign through AT&T and then you drop that number and then you go over to Sprint and do the same thing and then you drop that number and then you go over to T-Mobile and do the same thing. Well, that’s no longer the case because the registry is gonna have all of your information and they’re gonna be sharing it within the carriers. So if you do this to one carrier, they’re all gonna block you. Which as a consumer I think is amazing. I’m very excited about this. But the good news is that it eliminates a lot of spam. It’s going to eliminate a lot of spam. And the people who are doing SMS and text message marketing, right? That aren’t over sending, that aren’t over hyping, that aren’t really bothering people with their marketing or with their notifications. Those people are going to be fine .The people that are doing it right are going to be just fine. This is meant to eliminate the bad apples.
So make sure that you are registered before September 1st of 2023. If you are listening to this after September 1st 2023 and you’re trying to set up text message marketing, make sure that you get a hold of your carrier and get a hold of your provider and get on the campaign registry as soon as possible. Your provider, whoever you use Twilio, Fixyourfunnel, Quavio, Text Magic, Active Campaign has one, Keap has one, lots of others have different options that you can use as well. Make sure that you get with your provider to ensure that you are on the campaign registry. And if your provider, they should be offering this and it should be super simple. But if they’re not offering this for any reason, look up the campaign registry and go through their website or their documentation to make sure that you are registered with your text message phone number and that your business entity and your intentions for the campaigns that you’re going to run are registered with the campaign registry and that you’re good to go.
And I just want to say this in case it’s not clear for anyone, this is not meant to scare you.
I mean, it’s meant to scare you a little bit because I want you to do it. But the reason that the campaign registry exists in the first place is so that the providers and the carriers can have a better handle on getting rid of those bad apples and getting rid of the people who are spamming and are doing bad things. If you set your proper intentions and explain the types of SMS and text message marketing campaigns that you’re going to be running and you do that to the best of your ability in a way that isn’t considered spammy or you’re only text messaging as much as you absolutely need to drive the correct amount of attention that you want to your business and for your leads or for your customers, if you’re doing that right, you’re setting that intention and you’re setting the expectation ahead of time with the lead or customer so that they understand that they’re going to be getting text messages from you and the rate at which they can expect to receive that message as long as you’re doing those things and you’re doing it to the best of your ability. I really don’t know that the campaign registry is going to block you. This is truly set up meant for eliminating spammers, but do your due diligence. If you have questions about it, let’s have a conversation. I would be more than happy to go over this in more detail. And I know a couple of really, really, really smart people who are way better at this SMS marketing than I am and I’d be glad to have them on a future podcast episode if that is of interest to you the listener. But it’s not meant to scare you. Just do your due diligence. Make sure that you’re registered with the campaign register, set the proper expectations and send text message, marketing with intention. You could totally do this.
That’s it for me. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode of the Momentum Marketing Podcast. If listening to this has brought you value, improved your life, or given you any insight on how you can send better text messages. Then please share this with a friend and I will see you on the next episode.
The Momentum Marketing Podcast
By Jillian Kendrick
Episode: # 26
Topic: SMS Marketing Basics Pt. 2
Contact: hello@jilliankendrick.com
Follow IG: instagram.com/automatedmama
