Chapter 1

Marketing made to ensure SMS meets requirements

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SMS, MMS, and RCS

If you want to get close to your customers, it’s hard to beat marketing to them through the following messaging channels:

Short Message Service (SMS): The common text messages sent to our mobile phones.
Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS): Used when a text message includes items such as graphics, pictures, videos, etc.

Rich Communication Services (RCS): A new, advanced messaging protocol that includes features such as branding, interactive content like scrollable carousels, call-to-action buttons, and more.

These are high engagement channels with a 98% open rate, and industry studies show 90% of users will read their messages within three minutes of delivery. For the rest of this guide, we’ll use “SMS” as a term that refers to any of the three aforementioned channels.

You can use SMS for every type of marketing program, from welcoming new subscribers and conducting surveys, to sharing promotional discounts and driving customer loyalty campaigns. And as a near-real-time communication channel, SMS generates a great ROI.

However, compliance around SMS is strict, and each country has its own rules, carrier policies, and regulatory bodies. Plus, unwanted SMS messages are not only ineffective and prohibited by providers, but also often illegal.

Red graphic with text 90% of users will read their messages within three minutes of delivery

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Looking for reliable guidance on consent and compliance?

Twilio provides SMS regulatory and compliance information by country, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.

Read here

Top 5 SMS compliance tips

1. SMS marketing is permission-based

2. Always give your subscribers a clear opt-out with every message

3. Understand regional differences when it somes to sending SMS messages

4. Adhere to local phone number regulations

5. Limit the risk of Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) penalties in the U.S.

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Want more guidance on regulations? Find it here

Diagram of messagingx pathway to consumers

Cellular Telephone Industries Association (CTIA) (U.S.)

Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) (U.S.)

Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) (Canada)

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (Europe)

Digital Personal Data Protection Act (India)

Twilio’s SMS API in action

Twilio Programmable Messaging helped financial services platform Hearsay navigate complex regulatory requirements to deliver a safe and effective enterprise SMS program, bringing advisors even closer to customers.

Hearsay needed a solution to build channels for new calls quickly and compliantly—enabling remote workers for banking, wealth management and insurance organizations to safely serve customers using their own devices, meeting regulatory requirements from any global location.

Each agent has a unique branded number, making them easily recognizable to customers, and proxied phone numbers anonymize conversations for compliance and privacy.

Using Twilio Programmable Messaging and Voice API, Hearsay delivered a scalable multi-channel offering to more than 200,000 financial advisers, increasing client engagement by 7X and new business conversion by 37% while fulfilling complex regulatory requirements.

“Complex regulatory requirements meant that most of our customers did not previously have an enterprise SMS program in place. Working with Twilio allowed us to quickly deliver this channel. When you think about the impact on communication, it’s been a paradigm shift for our customers.”

Steven Latow Platform Team Lead