Why Can’t I Manually Opt a Customer In?
Referrizer requires text-message opt-in to come from the customer. This article explains what changed, why, and what you and your customers can do.
To help you stay compliant with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), consent to receive marketing text messages must come from the customer – not from staff acting on their behalf. To support this, Referrizer has removed the ability for staff to manually opt a customer into texts anywhere on the platform.
What changed
- New customers are opted out of texts by default. The opt-in checkbox that used to appear when creating a contact has been removed. This applies to every contact-creation form: the quick pop-up and full-details views, in both the Contacts and Inbox modules.
- Staff can no longer re-subscribe an unsubscribed customer. In a contact’s profile, the opt-in option is disabled for any contact who is opted out of texts.
- The rule is enforced everywhere, including through the Referrizer API, so it can’t be worked around, and it applies to all user types (account, master, and others).
Why it changed
Under TCPA, valid consent to receive marketing texts has to be given by the customer themselves. Allowing staff to opt customers in, even with good intentions, creates compliance risk. Making opt-in customer-initiated protects your business and keeps your text list clean and fully consented.
What you can still do
You can still unsubscribe a customer from texts at any time. When you do, you’ll see this confirmation:
“After unsubscribing a customer from texts, you won’t be able to resubscribe them. Only the customer can resubscribe, by texting START to your smart line number.”
How a customer opts in
A customer opts in, or re-subscribes after being unsubscribed, by texting START (or SUBSCRIBE or YES) to your Smart Line number. As soon as they send it, they’re opted in automatically.
When you create a new contact, the form shows a reminder of this:
“New customers are opted out of text messages by default. To comply with TCPA, the customer must text START to your Smart Line (xxx) xxx-xxxx to opt in.”
And in the profile of an opted-out contact, the disabled opt-in option shows:
“To stay TCPA compliant, the customer must opt in to marketing texts by texting START to your smart line at (xxx) xxx-yyyy.”
Tips for collecting opt-ins
Because opt-in now happens on the customer’s side, make it easy for them to send that START text. Referrizer gives you several compliant ways to capture consent: SMS opt-in QR codes, subscription forms, offer claims, landing pages, and WiFi capture. See Contact Acquisition & Subscription Management and How to Increase Your Number of Text Subscribers for the full list.