Webinar Recap: 5 Consent Strategies to Grow Your Texting Audience

Most consumers want to hear from companies by text. In fact, 85% say they would opt in to payment reminders. Yet 41% never received a text of any kind while setting up their first payment. Nordis Technologies and SBT explored how to close that gap in 5 Strategies to Gain Consent and Fuel Your Digital Communications, part of our Compliant Text Messaging Webinar Series, held on September 23rd.

Bonnie Wood, Vice President of Compliance at SBT, joined Nordis Chief Revenue Officer Richard O’Rourke and me in leading the session.

We kicked off the webinar with research findings and discussed consumers’ response to the channel. Recipients open 98% of texts and reply to 45%, with an average response time of 90 seconds.

Late payments are rarely about unwillingness to pay. More than half of consumers (54%) paid a bill late in the past 12 months, and 39% of those late payers simply forgot. A text can change that, with 85% of consumers saying a text reminder makes them more likely to pay on time. That’s why payment reminders are the most common use case Nordis sees across its verticals.

Our Expresso CCM platform supports three text messaging formats through SBT, which Nordis selected for its expertise in consumer finance, auto lending, healthcare, credit and collections and other highly regulated industries we serve. SMS handles short messages of up to 160 characters. Multimedia Messaging Service, MMS, allows up to 1,000 characters, as well as an image or logo and draws three times the engagement of SMS. In credit and collections, clients use MMS to send an image of a model validation notice’s first page. Recipients can then click through to view the full document in their browser.

With Rich Communication Service, or RCS, communications appear in consumers’ native smartphone messaging app using data networks (Wi-Fi or cellular). Messages display a verified sender badge and include branding and matching color palettes. Customers can swipe carousels of embedded rich cards with high-quality media, offers or status updates and action buttons displayed. We see strong interest in RCS for mortgage and auto loan welcome communications. Carousels can direct new customers to the portal or show them how to sign up for auto pay and paperless billing. RCS click-through rates run three to seven times higher than SMS.

Bonnie pointed out that every successful texting program begins with compliance. She explained that carriers review three items when deciding whether to approve a campaign: your privacy policy, a messaging terms page on your website and the opt-in language customers see when they sign up. When these are incomplete or don’t match, approval stalls. A common reason for rejection is privacy policy language suggesting opt-in data may be shared with third parties.

Bonnie said that in her experience, compliance doesn’t slow programs down; it helps them stay operational and scale their texting over the long term.

We walked through a playbook for collecting consent where customers engage with your organization today. Those touchpoints range from credit applications and patient intake forms to online payment pages and mailed statements. Webinar participants weighed in on which strategies offer the biggest opportunity. The live poll allowed attendees to choose more than one:

For call center conversations, Bonnie stressed that verbal consent alone isn’t enough for marketing messages. Agents need a follow-up step that captures written confirmation. We walked through each strategy with examples, including what a text keyword looks like on a printed letter.

If you already use Expresso for print and email, adding texting is straightforward. Your existing content, data fields and business rules can all be used to compose a text, and our team works with SBT to take you through the approval process. See all five consent strategies and sample language in the on-demand recording. Then join us for the next webinar in the series, Driving Results with RCS.

Contact us to learn more.