We're excited to share some Spoke updates as well as new requirements for compliance language in your initial messages. As always, feel free to reply to this email with your questions!
Compliance Language
To comply with wireless carrier policies, our telephony partner is now requiring that initial messages must have these two elements: 1) standardized opt-out instructions using phrases like “Stop” or “Unsubscribe”, 2) proper sender identification. You can read more about these requirements here.
Opt-Out Language: Opt-out instructions have been required in initial messages for a while: Spoke won’t allow you to launch campaigns without them. But our telephony partner is asking for new, specific language to be used - phrases that were acceptable in the past, like “reply remove to opt out” or “remove2quit”, will no longer work. To meet the new requirements, please use a standard word like Stop or Unsubscribe in your instructions. Examples of acceptable opt-out language include “Reply stop to opt out”, “stop2optout”, and “stop2quit”. Starting today, our script function will require users to include the new, acceptable opt-out language in each outgoing script.
Sender ID: In addition to opt-out language, your initial messages will need to identify your organization. This is commonly done with phrases like “I’m John with the Big Organizing group” or “It’s Jess, volunteering with Nancy Betsy’s campaign”, or by including a signature like “- Progressive Organizing Team” or “Paid for by Organization”.
Texting Hours Updates
Required texting hours: We’ve updated Spoke to help protect you from texting outside of legal texting hours (8 am - 9 pm in the time zone of your contact). Spoke will now require you to set texting hours inside your Settings page. As we outline below, these hours are fully customizable!
Customize texting hours on a per team basis: If you utilize multiple Spoke teams, you’ll be pleased to find you can now customize the texting hours of each individual Spoke team on that team’s Settings page. So if you have teams operating in different time zones, you can get as specific as you like! If you want to learn more about Spoke teams, feel free to respond to this email.
Customize texting hours per campaign: It's now much easier to set campaign-specific texting hours. If you used the texting hours feature in the past, you'll recall that it selected the hours related to the zip codes of your contacts. You can now set texting hours without worrying about uploading zip codes.
Moved campaign-specific texting hours to “Basics”: To simplify the campaign creation process, the texting hours settings for campaigns are now located inside the “Basics” section.
Area Codes Updates
Set your own default area code: You are now able to set your own default area codes for your Spoke account inside the Settings page. And if you have multiple teams, you can set your default area code for each team. You can still select specific area codes on a per campaign basis, though, if you prefer.