Anyone who has ever implemented an SMS campaign in the U.S. using a common shortcode knows how challenging it can be to conform to all the guidelines and best practices.  For those of you who don’t know, these rules are a common set agreed upon by the MMA and the mobile operators like AT&T and Verizon. They lay out key elements

that must be present in any SMS campaign in order to be ‘certified’ to run your program across the carrier networks. These include disclosures about the price of messages, if any, as well as the handling of universal functions that apply to all programs such as the ability for the end user to learn more about your program by sending the word ‘HELP’ or to opt-out by sending ‘STOP, END, CANCEL, UNSUBSCRIBE or QUIT.’

As more programs have launched these rules, while sometimes challenging to follow, have helped reduced SMS spam and provide a safe environment in which users can feel free participating in SMS programs knowing they can always stop the delivery of messages to their phone. The mobile operators have done right in agreeing to these standards.

But.

The rules don’t apply to the operators themselves. Here’s the latest SMS marketing effort by Verizon:
“Free Verizon Msg: You currently have a 250 text messaging package to upgrade to our $10/500 text package, reply “TEN” to this message to sign-up.  Excess messages billed at $0.10 sent/received.  To stop Msgs reply X.“

Uh, “To stop Msgs reply X?” What the hell is that? Where’s the ‘STOP’ keyword required by the MMA and enforced by Verizon themselves? Was there nowhere they could save a few characters so that ‘stop’ would fit? Hardly.

FAIL.

In fact, I didn’t even explicitly opt-in to these messages per another set of MMA rules. But I won’t go there. What’s the point? You see the hypocrisy.

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What could have saved this campaign?

Well, I think the answer here is obvious. If Verizon had simply followed the MMA rules they require everyone else to follow this simply would have been an annoying message rather than a failure.

Additional relevance might also have saved it. Had the message stated that I am consistently over my 250 msg plan this message would turn into a customer service rather than blatant spam thereby diminishing the importance of the opt-out clause. As-is, why would I upgrade if  I’m only averaging 200 messages?