The rules are not complicated, but they are enforced. Ten minutes before your first campaign is worth more than ten minutes after the first complaint.
Not every message is marketing
The distinction that matters:
- Operational message. A reminder for an appointment the client made themselves is sent in performance of the contract. You do not need separate marketing consent.
- Commercial message. A promotion, an offer, a discount. Here you need explicit consent, given separately, for exactly this purpose.
A reminder that ends with "and we have 20% off treatments" is a commercial message, however it started.
Consent must be provable
Knowing you obtained it is not enough. You must be able to show who gave it, when, and for what. A pre-ticked box is not consent. A form that makes the service conditional on accepting commercial messages is not consent either.
STOP is not optional
Every commercial message must allow unsubscribing. The platform handles STOP replies automatically: the recipient enters the unsubscribe registry and is excluded from all future sending from your account, permanently. You do not have to do anything, but neither can you work around it.
Purchased lists
They are the fastest route to a fine. Consent does not transfer with the list: someone who agreed to hear from another company has not agreed to hear from you.
The checklist
- Do I know the legal basis for each type of message I send?
- Can I prove consent for the commercial ones?
- Is the sender identifiable from the first few words?
- Do I have a sending window set?
- Are unsubscribed contacts excluded automatically?
If the answer is yes to all five, you can send with confidence.