It is important for us to talk about SMS marketing and compliance at the state and federal levels. Unlike Email marketing, SMS requires a clear opt-in to send any kind of marketing message to your prospects and customers. Yes, your current customers require an opt-in as well.
ServiceTitan released a new feature recently called SMS for Unsold Estimates Follow Ups. These messages are strictly transactional and can only be sent to your customers who have recently requested an estimate and haven’t booked a job based on that estimate. When targeting these customers you should always use the estimate open filter and make sure that your message doesn’t contain any kind of sales, promotional, or marketing content. The message should only be a reminder about the customer’s open estimate. If you have the customer portal enabled, you can also link directly to the open estimate for the customer’s convenience.
Why is this distinction important?
Transactional SMS messages don’t require an opt-in and should be sent to customers for transactional purposes only.
On the other hand, any kind of marketing message requires an opt-in and confirmation from the customer that they want to receive those messages.
What’s a good transactional message?
What is NOT a good transactional message?
Here's one that falls into the promotional category. This is a direct violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and could get you fined anywhere from $500 to $1,500 PER message.
A common misconception we have seen across many customers is that because someone is their customer, they automatically opted-in to receive marketing messages. That is incorrect. SMS marketing opt-in needs to be granted by the customer via specific opt-in and confirmation methods.
If you are currently using a third party provider to send SMS marketing messages, please check with your lawyer(s) about the legality and compliance of those campaigns. Many marketing software companies do not properly disclose this information and leave the customer open to large lawsuits.
Additionally, when you use the SMS Unsold Estimates feature, you agree to abide by our policies and not violate the TCPA rules:
So when will ServiceTitan offer SMS Marketing?
Very soon! We will be providing LIMITED availability access to select customers to try out our new Marketing Pro - SMS Marketing feature and get feedback. If you want to get added the interest list, fill out the form here! This does not guarantee everyone will be selected but will let us know you want to participate.
