Text Messages and Notifications: Compliance and Emergency Alerts

Our mission at Simplified Alerts is to allow secure, easy and fast sending / receiving of important text messages and alerts for your organization.

In doing so, we are careful to remain in compliance with the law that governs text messaging (the Telephone Communication Protection Act – TCPA) as well as MMA (Mobile Marketing Association) and CTIA (CTIA – The Wireless Association) that set the standards for sending text messages.

We know that many organizations like yours require an emergency alerts system that allows for instant, uninterrupted sending of text, voice and email.

Remember, if you are sending Text Notifications you must request a text message send waiver from us to send 24/7.  It’s a simple process, designed to protect you and all our customers from unauthorized use. 

Text Messaging Compliance

Simplified Alerts offers our customers two distinct shortcode options for sending messages; sends from a shared shortcode (95577) or sends from our ‘Virtual Dedicated Shortcode’ 64800.  Our shared shortcode 95577 is available for all customers, but we reserve our 64800 shortcode for approved business-class customers.

To remain within compliance, messages sent from our shared shortcode 95577 are subject to review at any time by our audit team.  This can delay your messages.  We pull messages at random to review content for inappropriate subject matter that could impact the use of the shortcode by everyone.

On the other hand, our 64800 shortcode has fewer customers, each approved for sending by our audit and compliance team.  It allows us to remove the standard review process and not impede the sending of messages (by a random check).

Text Marketing versus Text Notifications

Some customers use our platform for sending text marketing campaigns.  Typically marketing messages include a promotion or incentive (Example: text Coupon1 to 95577 and get 5% off your next purchase).  We treat our marketing customers a bit differently.  By default, all marketing customers are placed on shortcode 95577.  In compliance with the TCPA law, text marketing customers are restricted to sending text messages between 8am and 9pm recipient time.  Each message is subject to a review and hold by our compliance team if any messages are deemed inappropriate (see this page to learn more about inappropriate material).

One other type of text marketing is Text to Win (TTW).  TTW campaigns require a dedicated shortcode; one that is assigned exclusively to your organization.  While this can be expensive (often $1500/month) it’s worth it for many large organizations doing national or global marketing campaigns (ask us how to get a dedicated shortcode).

Text notifications (we often refer to them as Alerts) include messages critical to the organization.  They may include alerts about closings, schedule changes and emergencies.

Our text notification customers can request a 24/7 exemption to allow them to send alerts at any time around the clock (follow this link to learn more).  Our SimpleSend text messaging app integrates with your desktop system to quickly send messages from your phone; in most cases messages are created and received in 20 seconds or less.  SimpleSend is available with our business-class text messaging packages.

Additionally, the 64800 shortcode is available to our business-class notification customers.  Since we approve all customers on this shortcode no message-holding review is required.  This allows us to ensure that all text notifications sent on 64800 are distributed instantly.

There are great sources to review the TCPA law, CTIA and MMA guidelines.

Contact Us

Questions?  We’re always happy to help.

You can contact our support team for more through our Help Desk; email us support@simplifiedalerts.com or text GoSupport to 64800.

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