Can you legally text your fans?

There are a number of high profile lawsuits from consumers annoyed with receiving unwanted texts. We often hear from Artists asking us whether they can legally text message their fans? Before we tell how and when you can text your fans, it’s a good idea to get a little background on the law that determines whether you can text message your fans legally or not.

There's a law about this. It’s actually a federal law, called the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), which is governed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). While you may hear about CTIA or Mobile Marketing Association when researching best practices for SMS marketing, the TCPA is the only actual law when it comes to whether you can text message fans.

Since we're talking about fans that have expressed an interest in receiving texts from you (by texting your bandname to 444999, joining a contest, etc.) we're really interested in what the TCPA says about whether or not you can text messaging mobile phone numbers that you’ve already collected from your customers.

It’s actually pretty simple, if when you collected your customer’s mobile phone numbers, you disclosed the following two things to them in a  “clear and conspicuous” manner, you can text message those customers.

What does  “clear and conspicuous” mean? It means that the disclosures were displayed in close proximity to wherever you were asking customers for their mobile phone numbers. If you did not disclose the following two thing to customers when they gave you their mobile phone numbers, or you didn’t disclose these things in a “clear and conspicuous” manner, you cannot text message them.

Here are the two things you have to tell them:

• By participating, you consent to receive text messages sent by an automatic telephone dialing system.
• Consent to these terms is not a condition of purchase.

The great benefit of the Adva Mobile Service is that we comply with this law "for you", meaning that, when a fan first texts in, we send them a text telling them they can expect to receive additional texts from you. And we provide them a link to Terms, where the second requirement is met.

As you can imagine, most Artists, when they’ve collected their fan's mobile phone numbers in the past (through a sign up sheet at the merch table, for example) have either not disclosed the above two things, or haven’t done so in a “clear and conspicuous” manner. So we tell Artists to get fans to text in, and then everyone is compliant.

Who Owns The Fans?

Hi, At Adva Mobile, we want to help you make the most of your marketing efforts to connect with fans.  Part of that is showing the world more about who you are, your creative talents, and what you know by sharing ideas, starting conversations, and inspiring others with your creative work.  So, that raises a question: who owns all of the content you post on Adva Mobile? You do, and you always have. Whether it's music, a photo, a tour date, lyrics, videos, post, or anything else, we want to make it clear that you're in control of your content. Here are some highlights (you can read more in our blog post): You're in the driver's seat. * You decide when your content goes. If you delete something from our platform, we won't use it anymore. * Share wherever or whenever you'd like. We don't own or have exclusive rights to your content. It's yours, so feel free to repost it anywhere, however you want. What about fans? They're yours. We'll never offer advertisers or other Artists access to your fans. Only you can communicate through us to your fans. So they always know they are communicating directly to you.   We also want to give you even more control over your account so we're introducing some new tools:  * Now there's a single place to see all your fans and how often they are engaging you or your web App. You can upload fan data, either one by one or send us a spreadsheet - to add fans to your mobile marketing campaigns.   * The emails we send when you change your password now include info about the place where the action was taken, so you can rest assured your account is secure.  All of these changes are part of our commitment to put our members first.  With these updates, you can feel even more confident about who controls your content and personal data on Adva Mobile: you.  Thanks for being a member! The Adva Mobile Team