Ensuring your company’s use of SMS is in line with SMS laws and regulations is very important. Not only can you face financial penalties, but you can also lose the ability to send SMS messages. This article is designed to provide general information, not legal advice - please work with your legal team to evaluate and ensure your company is complying with all relevant laws.

Below is some useful information on frequently discussed SMS requirements. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list.

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) is a U.S. federal statute enacted to protect consumers’ privacy. Its restrictions on telecommunications via voice calls, SMS, and fax are designed to allow consumers to choose which auto-dialed calls and SMS messages they will accept. If you violate the TCPA, consumers can sue for damages of $500 per call or SMS or $1500 per call or SMS if you knowingly violated such restrictions.

These are general SMS guidelines and best practices expected of most companies. This is not legal advice, and you should check with your own legal counsel for a thorough evaluation of your sending practices.

It is imperative that you collect customer consent before you start sending them SMS messages. The purpose of these requirements is to ensure people receive the SMS communications that they want to receive from businesses or organizations. Other important laws around commercial communications that may be in scope are: the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the ePrivacy Directive (ePD), and Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL), each of which may be amended from time to time.

There are 3 different types of consents:

Some businesses and message types may be exempt from requiring consent, such as tax-exempt nonprofits, or for Healthcare (HIPAA managed) and emergency purposes.

Make sure your customers understand from whom the messages will be coming, what types of messages they will receive (promotional, transactional, onboarding), and how you will be using their number to communicate with them.

In all your messages, you need to provide customers a way to opt-out of SMS messaging. We’re making it simple with our Subscriptions center. From here, your customers are able to unsubscribe to specific types of messages (promotional / transactional) or unsubscribe from all messages. Customers can also opt-out of receiving text messages by responding with opt-out keywords which are configured in your SMS keyword settings.

Under the TCPA in the US and as a best practice in some other countries, promotional SMS and other non-sensitive SMS messages cannot be sent between 9pm and 8am. You can address these restrictions by adjusting your quiet hours in SMS settings.

In the US, there are several types of content you cannot send to your customers. They include SHAFT (sex, hate, alcohol, firearms, and tobacco), federally illegal and other substances (marijuana/cannabis (CBD), vaping, prescription medication), depictions or endorsements of violence, profanity, and hate/discriminatory speech. Carriers will typically block this type of content, and Intercom also reserves the right to completely turn off your access to SMS through our services.

Some carriers further restrict the content you can send - such as, content related to high-risk financial services (gambling, cryptocurrency, payday loans), MLM (pyramid) schemes, 3rd party debt collection/reduction, pornography, and scams.

As you’re building out your SMS campaigns, you need to be aware of all applicable regulations and laws in your customer’s countries. Be sure to seek legal advice to confirm your company’s use of SMS is compliant.