Intro
Consent plays a key role in your business' ability to get the most out of SMS. While gathering the proper SMS consent can be done in a number of ways (learn more about gathering consent here), tracking a contact's consent status has been a bit of a challenge for many. Beetexting and other business SMS applications have helped users track opt-outs, but what about tracking the consent that we do have? Beetexting's Consent Management tool allows you to easily see and adjust the consent level assigned to a contact, as well as provide you with functionality to make sure your organization stays in compliance.
Industry Standards
This tool is great for keeping your team on the same page, but a contact's consent level must be managed along their SMS journey with your business and it is ultimately your business' responsibility to follow industry guidelines. For this reason, we encourage you to review our Compliant Business Texting blog post, get a high level understanding of what SMS consent is and how it works (feel free to ask questions), and make sure these requirements are communicated with the team members utilizing SMS.
Consent Levels
There are three types of SMS consent a contact can provide your business. Consent can be thought of as, "What kind of information has this contact agreed to receive via SMS from my business?". Consent level can adjust at any point, and you should track it as closely as possible with your contacts to ensure the best SMS experience for your business.
Conversational
Conversational consent is only obtained when a contact texts you. The contact implies, by sending a text, that they are willing to receive a reply message back. Your replies should be relevant to the subject mentioned when the customer texted you. Conversational consent DOES NOT give you perpetual permission to text with the contact.
Informational
Informational consent can be obtained in a number of ways; via text, web form, verbally and more. Informational consent allows your business to proactively send text messages (not a direct reply to a received SMS message) that are relevant to whatever kind of information they agree to receive. For example, a contact agrees to receive account updates via SMS while signing up for a service, or the contact tells their account manager they want to receive text message reminders of upcoming deadlines. Informational consent does not give you permission to promote your products or services to the contact, simply provide relevant information in a proactive fashion.
Promotional
Promotional consent must be obtained through "express written consent". This means promotional consent is only provided if the contact uses a defined Automated Keyword within your system, or agrees to receive optional promotional messages using a webform. Make sure to maintain evidence of consent being provided by the contact. Promotional consent is the level of consent required if your are sending any kind of marketing material. Make sure to provide relevant and valuable information to these contacts to ensure you keep the level of consent that they provided.
Consent Management Settings
If you have the proper permissions, you can set exactly how the consent level associated with a contact will effect your users ability to message with that contact. You can find these options within Settings > Security + Compliance/Compliance > Consent Manager.
Contact Consent Restrictions
Disallow
When Disallow is set, a user will not be able to send a text message to any contact unless the contact has provided some form of consent.
Show Warning
When Show Warning is set, a user will be able to text a contact that has not provided consent, but the user will see a warning message, notifying them the contact has no consent level tracked within Beetexting.
No Show
When No Show is set, a user will be able to text all contacts within your Beetexting system. The only way a user will be notified that the contact they are about to text has not provided consent by a small warning icon within the Consent section of the contact's information.
Broadcast Restrictions
All Broadcasts to All
If you're not tracking your contact consent within Beetexting, you can allow broadcast text messages to deliver to all contacts, regardless of their consent status.
Restrict to Only Informational and Promotional Consent
Block broadcast text messages from delivering to contacts without Informational or Promotional consent.
