If you've been following the public debate over the past year, you should have no doubt about the importance of consent. This also applies when sending marketing via SMS.
Although it comes naturally to many people that consent must be given to send marketing to potential customers, whether it's an email newsletter or an SMS, in the period from January to August 2019 alone, four companies in Denmark were reported for violating the Danish Marketing Practices Act. This was due to more than 70 spam reports because the company had sent newsletters and SMS marketing without consent. The outcome of the case was that all four companies received administrative fines of more than DKK 10,000 each.
What we want to realise is that it doesn't pay to take a shortcut. Instead, in this blog post we highlight why it's important to understand and comply with SMS marketing legislation.
ATTENTION. This article is for guidance only and inMobile does not advise on current legislation. It is therefore important that you always familiarise yourself with it.
If you are in doubt about how the legislation should be understood or complied with, we recommend that you consult a professional, such as a lawyer specialising in the area.
Why do I need consent to send SMS marketing?
With consent, you can legally send offers and news via SMS. This also ensures that the customers you send marketing-related content to have made an active choice to receive news from your company. Someone who has agreed to receive marketing-related content from you is also more likely to become a customer and therefore more valuable to you than someone who has not agreed.
Without consent, you could be reported to the Consumer Ombudsman for spam, which can be expensive and cost you your reputation.
The Consumer Ombudsman has created special legislation for SMS marketing, which basically means that marketing sent without consent will be qualified as spam. That's why a yes vote is crucial!
"Consent should therefore not be seen as an obstacle, but as a help for you to find potential customers and not burn your marketing budget on cold leads. It's a win-win situation."
How do I get consent?
How you ask for consent to send marketing-related content via SMS depends on the target audience you want to send to:
- New stakeholders who could become future customers.
- Existing customers or stakeholders who already receive your newsletter.
Before we offer suggestions on how to get consent, we'd like to address a concern that many of our customers have had and you may have.
We often find that our customers are unsure how to ask their customers and stakeholders for their phone number. This is a normal doubt, as SMS is still perceived as a personal channel, often communicating with family or other important people. However, this shouldn't deter you, and here are some of the reasons why:
- In 2021, SMS has moved up four places to seventh place among consumers' favourite communication channels.
- 72% of Danish marketers use SMS in their marketing portfolio in 2021.
- Consumers prefer personalised messages and offers and are less deterred from giving out their mobile number.
Moreover, in most cases, it pays off to have SMS linked to your marketing. This is because of the high volume of email marketing. Just think about how many emails land in your inbox every day. How many do you read? And how many do you delete immediately, without opening the email? In addition, we will highlight that up to 90% of all sent emails end up in the spam filter and SMS messages do not.
How you can ask for consent
First of all, it's important to define who you want to communicate to. Are these new stakeholders or existing customers?
For new stakeholders who could potentially become future customers, you have several options to get their information while gaining consent. This can be by using lead ads on social media, having a pop up or gamification on your website. Think about who your target audience is and where they are, so you can approach them with your guard down.
If you already have an existing customer list, e.g. a list of newsletter recipients, you can send an email to your list asking if they want to receive SMS messages from you. An important rule of thumb is that agreeing to receive news via a newsletter does not give you the right to send news via SMS.
If you run a webshop, SMS marketing can be a competitive advantage, so it's important that you know how to ask for consent and what you can and cannot do. First of all, let's make it clear that you should never assume that the customer wants to receive marketing from you. Therefore, we never recommend using the default tick where you have pre-filled the marketing consent field. This is also a violation of the law, and if you do this, you cannot receive the e-label.
Please note that if you work at a service company, you are not subject to the same spam rules as webshops are, so you do not need to ask for consent to send SMS messages. But we recommend you do it, because it's good practice.
Conclusion
Consent to send marketing, service notifications or anything else via SMS is super important, and nonetheless due to GDPR measures. If you also want to streamline your sales and find new potential customer groups, we strongly recommend getting consent before sending.
If a potential customer receives a text message from you without giving consent first, you are almost guaranteed a spam report and potentially a lost sale. In short, it doesn't pay to send marketing-related content without consent. It's simply inefficient and a waste of money.
So don't take a shortcut. Scan your customer groups and create a valid strategy for how you will ask them for consent to send SMS messages.
It has a number of advantages:
- Potential future customers
- More conversions
- Competitive advantages
- More for your marketing dollars
In short, it doesn't pay to send marketing-related content without consent. So always remember to get it.
