This Election Season, Make Sure You’re Sending Political Texts Consumers Want to Receive

Text messaging is as popular as ever-over 67,000 texts are exchanged per second in the U.S., and consumers open and read nearly every single one. That shows how much consumers trust texts. Consumers' embrace of text messaging results from the hard work and multi-layered approach the wireless industry brings to maintain this trust and support innovative and meaningful services on the texting platform. Thanks to these efforts, all types of message senders can continue to communicate effectively using text messaging, including political campaigns and other organizations who want to connect with voters via text.

With the 2024 election season in full swing, political organizations are reaching out to engage potential voters. Text messaging is a powerful and effective tool for communicating with people across the country, and it is a great way for campaigns of both parties to help organize, inform, and engage voters. The industry's new website-www.politicalmessaging.com-is a great resource for political campaigns, their partners, and wireless consumers to better understand how to navigate political outreach via text message so that it is a positive experience for all users.

• For political campaigns and organizations, the website provides information about setting up effective, consumer-friendly texting operations, the importance of getting opt-in, consumer consent before beginning to send text messages, and reasonable methods of obtaining consent.
• For consumers, the site includes resources about how to stop unwanted messages, tips for reporting spam, and what to consider when giving your contact information to a campaign. And it provides additional information on how the wireless industry protects consumers from unwanted and illegal text messages.

Our research shows that if there's one thing voters agree on, it's the importance of getting consent before sending consumers political text messages. In fact, 90% of Democrats and 85% of Republicans believe that political campaigns should be required to get consent before sending text messages. And that applies to all types of text messages-consumers on both sides of the aisle agree that spam is spam, no matter what.

To respect consumer expectations, campaigns should get clear consumer consent to send text messages, as CTIA's Messaging Principles and Best Practices suggest. In addition to communicating only with consumers who have opted-in, senders should:

• Clearly identify themselves
• Tell consumers how to opt-out, by replying "STOP," for example
• Honor those opt-out requests; and
• Maintain and display clear privacy and security policies and practices

These best practices are designed to apply the same standards and same consumer protections regardless of whether the sender or the consumer is an airline or a bank, a hospital or a college, or a political campaign.

Consumers, you too play an important role in protecting yourself from spam. If you provide your phone number to a message sender, make sure you know what type of communication you are opting into. If you receive a text that is legitimate, but you did not want, you can simply respond "STOP" to opt-out of getting any more texts from that sender. If you receive an unexpected or suspicious text, do not respond or click a link. If you receive a text that looks suspicious, you should forward the message to 7726 (SPAM).

Political campaigns, consumers, and other parties can find helpful information like this and other resources at www.politicalmessaging.com.