How to manage SMS unsubscription

If you regularly send business messages to your clients, it’s necessary to follow some basic rules.

One of those rules is giving your clients an option to unsubscribe from receiving the group SMS messages. The unsubscription process must be clearly and unambiguously specified and of course free of charge. In the following thext, we describe 3 different ways to integrate the unsubscription text into the message body.

SMS unsubscription options

Sending a pre-determined SMS reply to a given phone numberAt the end of your SMS message, state a pre-determined string formulation (word, letter etc.) and a phone number where the user will send its reply. As soon as you do receive an unsubscription request on the given phone number, you are obliged to remove this client’s phone number from your list of SMS contacts.

SMS message sample: „OS: Use our discount promotion to buy XXX running shoes. Visit www.eshopname.com Stop receiving SMS? Reply STOP to 777112233.“

Sending an unsubscription e-mail

If you don’t want to use the SMS unsubcription method, you can instruct your clients to send the unsubscription request to your email address. Again, after receiving the unsubscription e-mail, you must remove this client’s phone number from your contacts database.

SMS message sample:
„OS: Use our discount promotion to buy XXX running shoes. Visit www.eshopname.com Stop receiving SMS? Write STOP + your phone number at info@eshopname.com“

Using an unsubscription web form

This is a slightly more advanced method, where you direct your clients to a prefabricated web form, after which you’ll receive the information about the client’s unsubscription. After that, the user’s contact number must be either automatically, or manually deleted from your database. For this purpose, we recommend a URL shortener, such as www.bitly.com , who can shorten the URL into just a couple of characters.
SMS message sample:

„OS: Use our discount promotion to buy XXX running shoes. Visit www.eshopname.com You can unsubscribe from these SMS at bit.ly/unsubscribe.“

You can get inspired how this form could look at the GoSMS webpage: https://www.gosms.eu/personal-data