Managing Opt Out/Ins
| Texting customers in a responsible way requires adherence to and managing the customer's consent status (opt in/out status) for text messages from your business. This article outlines the tools to help understand and manage to the customer's status. |
Managing the Opt In/Out Statuses
The Textel platform has the ability to automatically track and store the consent status of mobile contacts for each individual outbound line within your account. If the act of opting in or out happens on lines that are managed by Textel, then our system can automatically update the statuses for the appropriate contact.
In addition to assisting with tracking opt ins/outs, our platform will automatically prevent messages from being sent to contacts who have opted out. So, even if you intentionally or erroneously attempt to text a contact that has opted out of receiving texts from you from your number, we will not proceed with sending the message. This offers some assistance in keeping your texting practices compliant.
Opt Out Status Display in Conversations
If a mobile contact has an open or closed Conversation and has opted out, Textel will display their status on the Conversations page when clicking on their Conversation in the sidebar. The opted out mobile contact's name will be displayed in red text and a message will let the user know of their opted out status.
System Generated Opt-In Lists
For every phone number that you have text-enabled within your Textel account, our platform will automatically create a system-curated list of contacts who have opted in to receiving texts for that phone line. As contacts opt-in or opt-out, the list will automatically be updated in real-time to ensure that the contact list is only comprised of contacts who have opted in, allowing you to select the list safely for scheduling Blasts or using for any other purpose.
Reporting & Referencing
There two ways that you can reference your account's opt in and out status across contacts.
Contacts Page - View Consent Status Modal
If you navigate to the Contacts page, there is an option for each contact, to view their Consent status. By clicking the View button, you will see a modal pop up that will display that contact's opt in or out status across all of the lines you have within your account. In this view, we will display "Not Defined", if our system has no record of that mobile contact either opting in or out of messages on that line.
Account & Line Opt In/Out Report
In the Reporting section, you will find a Report category labeled Account & Line Opt In/Out. This report will allow you to select one or more lines within your account and give you a list of the contacts who have either an opt out or an opt in status for that line, providing you transparency on the status across your lines.
Custom Keywords to Update Opt In/Out Statuses
We offer a feature within Keyword Responders that allow you to setup custom Keywords that will update a mobile contact's opt in or out status when utilized. Not all carriers manage default opt in/out signals and so it is important that you ensure that you have at least one default responder setup for each of the statuses, e.g. one for opting in and one for opting out. You can set up as many as you would like, especially for opting in if there are some specific keywords you would prefer to use to align with your tone and messaging.
For more information about this functionality, read our Custom Opt-In and Opt-Out Keyword Responders article.
Consent Status Import
There is an option to to have your contacts consent status, by line, imported into our system. This will set the status of the contacts to either Opted In or Opted Out for the specified line.
To do this, visit any of the three Contacts pages and click the "Import" button on the top right of the page. From there you will be able to select "Consent Status Import".
The file you are uploading must be in CSV format and have two required columns mapped: Mobile Number and Status. The accepted values for Status are "Opted In" and "Opted Out", anything else will result in an error upon import.
Opted Out Status via Import
It is important to remember that defining a contact as "Opted Out" on the Contact Consent file cannot be reversed unless the mobile contact texts back into the line using the defined Opted In keyword.