When collecting phone numbers for opt-in text campaigns, the question inevitably arises: Who owns the list? The short answer: the owner of the short-code used to collect the opt-ins. The complete answer is much longer, my friends . . .
Every few years, we invent new ways to communicate. In my lifetime: newsgroups, chat, sms, cell-phone, voice-mail, chat rooms, 900-number chat, psychic friends, Facebook, Twitter, teleconference, webex, video chat, Skype, social gaming, Four Square, etc. What am I forgetting? New sites, menus, abbreviations, etiquette, all add up to delicious adventures despite the complaining. These new tools come with increasing frequency, and we opt-in like ants on a picnic march.
Personally, I believe desire for intimacy and growth drives these inventions. People like space to be themselves – all of their selves – with one another. Some like to “try it on” with pretend selves. We like to get away from everyday life and start fresh. New technology lets us do that, even with people we see every day. A new way to communicate, for a time, stimulates new substance to our communication, and therefore new opportunities for growth and intimacy. And of course, occasional misbehavior (or so I’ve heard).
Then . . . the marketers arrive, and screw it all up.
Gotcha!
Using new communication technology is like being in the witness protection program, with a twist. There you are, in bucolic Butte, Montana, anonymously collecting your modest salary as a dental hygienist, your fast paced life in the big city real estate business a distant memory. It’s easy to forget your fear, and one day you really need to talk to Aunt Mary Sue, it’s her 75th birthday for God’s sake. Couldn’t you make just one call? So you do, and BAM! Louie the Louse, monitoring the lines all these years, snags caller id, and you are dead meat. He locates you in 2 minutes and dispatches not an assassin, but . . . Jim Carrey as The Cable Guy to bug the crap out of you forever! Louie the Louse has his revenge. The Cable Guy, everywhere you turn. Can I please be your best friend and give you stuff? And go on your dates with you? That’s what marketing can feel like to the consumer.
I am a marketer. So I am not talking about marketers like ME. Oh no. My methods are refined, studied, graceful. People want me to market to them, certainly. Ahem. No, I am talking about the Viagra email guys. Their sole objective: get someone’s attention, ANYONE’s, cheap. A dollar earned at the expense of a million cumulative dollars of distributed distraction paid by millions of someone elses. All they need is . . . a list! Any list. Your list, my list, that list over there. Stolen lists, fake lists, old lists, new lists, list of lists. Lists of the living, the dead, the non-existent; old, young, married, male, female, neutered, human, pet. They just need a liiiiiiiiiiist!!
Every new communication tool eventually becomes this: your precious “id”, no matter how carefully you select and protect it, makes it onto “a list”. That id gets spammed to smithereens, and you abandon it; or use filter technology and shake your fist at the protection racket.
Into this Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam World was born the text campaign “opt-in” list, and it was goooood! Put your hand up if you were ever truly text-spammed. Now put it down if it only happened once or twice, and so long ago you don’t quite recall. No hands? The reason is at the heart of the question “Who owns the list?”.
The Gatekeeper
Text spam is rare because the phone companies that we sometimes love to hate kick butt here. They aggressively manage access to the special infrastructure used to send texts from a computer.
To understand how and why, let’s examine the four ways to send a text:
- Personal. Type into a phone and text people. This method is not susceptible to spam, since a person can only type so fast.
- Phone-Computer Interface. A computer attached to a phone (or a program running on a smartphone) can send messages to one or more people. This method is susceptible to abuse, but not in high-volume, because the phone network limits how fast texts originate from a single phone — about 10 per minute. This rate can’t possibly make money for spammers.
- Email. As a legacy service from when email was king, you have an email address for your phone. For example, 9175551212@vtext.com for Verizon. This method seems tailor-made for spammers, yet is almost never abused. Why? This address is an occasional convenience, not a high-volume service. The servers are heavily throttled, and purposefully wimpy. A single source trying to send more than a couple hundred messages per day would find itself black-listed, and coordinated multi-point campaigns would simply crash the email gateway servers before they managed to send much volume.
- Short-code. Short-code technology allows high message volume, a spammers dream. However, it is immune to direct abuse. Why? First, the input method is not email. It is a specially designed technology called SMPP (Short Message Peer-to-Peer) which is expensive and requires a special due-diligence process that takes weeks. Second, each message costs a few pennies. Third, each campaign must be described, approved, and audited. Fourth, the phone companies have efficient consumer complaint processes around suspected text spam. Fifth, and finally, crucially, a company must send a) only to those opted-in, and b) only using the short-code which collected the opt-in. If a marketer trips, their privileges are revoked. In this way, would-be or even accidental spammers are detected and shut-down, fast and hard. An authorized message sender – and there is no other kind – gets flagged in a very short time (less than 24 hours usually) if they misbehave.
So as you can see, short-code messaging is tightly controlled to prevent spam. Senders are never anonymous or hidden. List ownership is critical because it anchors accountability for opt-in.
The Primrose Path
An example: What would happen if a well-intentioned marketer stored a mobile phone number for later use, detached from any specific short-code? Perhaps the user clicks “yes” on the web and enters a mobile number. This marketer can take one of two paths:
- Path 1, the marketer acquires a short-code or two and sends content to the mobile phone numbers. The marketer’s thought is, the users won’t complain, they opted-in. Big risk. First, an audit will fail the campaign. Second, any subscriber that does complain will trigger a request to the short-code owner to validate short-code opt-in, which will fail, and that short-code will get shut-down for all traffic. Or worse.
- Path 2, the marketer takes a crucial step prior to sending content: they send an opt-in request. The user must reply confirming opt-in, creating an opt-in record connecting their mobile phone and the short-code used for the specific content. This extra step insures that the phone company, through text message logs on their servers, can prove opt-in to any complaining consumer or oversight authority.
One might argue that the first path is sufficient to protect the consumer. However, allowing the first path prevents the carrier serving as the sole guarantor of opt-in compliance. I would argue that the spectacularly successful job they have done at preventing text spam is tied to this sole guarantor status.
Some additional tidbits on short-codes
This article speaks only to the U.S. market. In general, the rules outside the U.S. are more permissive, since the U.S. is the most aggressive consumer protection country.
A “short-code” is a special, short phone number (usually 5 digits instead of 10) which allows a company to let you send a text message from your mobile to their computer. When a billboard shows “text HAMBURGER to 12345”, the “12345” part is the short-code; HAMBURGER is called a keyword (but if you dial “12345” you can’t talk to a hamburger; that would be very advanced; I think they have it in Europe). Short-codes can be owned by anyone, but they are expensive and require specialized technology.
The rules for short-codes are controlled by the mobile phone carriers, i.e., Verizon, AT&T, etc. They have a trade association, CTIA, which helps coordinate official policies, lobbying, etc. These policies are driven by their collective desire to stay on the right side of legislation granting them the public airwaves. This legislation is written broadly, and interpreted by the phone companies for their various services (voice, location, email, texting, apps, etc.). They obviously consider their rights to the airwaves valuable, and so they take seriously staying on the right side of the law. They set rules based on this motivation, and so a business desiring to stay on the right side of consumer protection laws is safe to follow the carrier rules
