The Federal Communications Commission instituted new rules Monday that it hopes will eliminate or reduce unwanted marketing messages sent via cell phones or PDAs to consumers.
As part of the Can-Spam Act enacted earlier this year, the new provisions ban unsolicited commercial text messages to consumers, unless they have opted to receive such messages or already have a relationship with the sender. Marketers may not send SMS (short message service, or text) or MMS (multimedia, with images or audio) messages through the Internet to wireless devices. However, the provisions don’t apply to ads sent to e-mail addresses that are then forwarded to wireless devices such as BlackBerrys.
More than in any other channel, marketers must get permission from consumers before sending a message via mobile phone, experts say. Via in-store displays or packaging, promotions may invite a text inquiry from consumers and request permission for a response, but the direct marketing model of churning through a list of phone numbers to send messages proactively doesn’t apply.
“The only saving grace is that it costs cash money to send a text message, unlike e-mail, where a million messages can be sent for pennies, says Wes Bray, CMO of Hip Cricket, a mobile marketing firm in Essex, CT. Both senders and receivers of messages pay for calls, under U.S. protocols, and receivers may willingly pay only for messages they want.
“The telcos won’t stand for it,” says Roman Bodnarchuk, CEO of Toronto-based mobile marketing firm N5R. “E-mail spam isn’t free and the carriers can shut it down faster than spam on the Internet.”
And now, thanks to the FCC, the courts will also have powers to shut it down. Even prior to the new rules announcement, the FCC had worked with Verizon Wireless to prosecute 51 people accused of mobile phone spamming under Can-Spam and other state and federal statutes. This past summer, a lawsuit was filed by Verizon in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey against Jacob Brown of Pawtucket, RI, and 50 of his cohorts, accusing them of sending 4.5 million messages pushing mortgages, herbal supplements, free software and porn content.
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