Perhaps learning from the experience of email marketers, the industry association regulating text messaging made a widely anticipated announcement this summer.
Beginning on September 15, 2022, the Communication Technology Industry Association (CTIA) announced any business texting their customers from a toll-free number must verify their brand by completing a detailed compliance check designed to weed-out marketers who don’t play by the rules.
After September 15, national carriers and SMS service providers are expected to restrict or ban business texts sent through an unverified number. So for the thousands of small- and mid-sized businesses that rely on toll-free SMS messaging, this news is a game changer.
For wineries that take the time to verify their toll-free SMS numbers, they’ll be able to continue texting their customers this holiday season – delighting them and selling more wine in the process.
But for wineries that don’t verify their SMS numbers, the sky-high message delivery and click-thru rates generated by text marketing will soon be out of reach.
Making SMS marketing more exclusive by requiring a thorough background check, the telecommunication industry hopes to avoid the same fate now plaguing email marketing. Once the darling of DTC wine merchants but now overrun by spam, email marketing has become a growing burden for consumers and merchants, costing valuable time and money.
The hope is that making text marketing harder for spammers to exploit, the popularity of text messaging will continue to grow for years.
With today’s consumers – even baby boomers -- preferring text messages 2-to-1 over email and wine merchants reporting 32-times better results from SMS vs. email marketing, we applaud the CTIA for proactively protecting the goose that lays golden eggs.
To help wine marketers looking to verify their existing toll-free SMS numbers, VinterActive now offers a free verification service to learn if their current SMS numbers can be verified by September 15.
And for wine marketers looking to add SMS marketing to their mix, VinterActive now offers new toll-free and local SMS numbers fully verified for wine marketing.
By acting quickly before September’s deadline, savvy wine marketers can use SMS messaging to gain a decisive competitive advantage this holiday season while other wineries still struggle with email as their only way to reach thirsty customers.
Now with prices starting at less than $100/mo, it’s never been a better time to make the move to SMS wine marketing.