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Best Practices with Twilio

Paul Polansky
Updated

Warning! The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), which includes the National Do Not Call Registry, imposes strict limits on how real estate agents make calls, send text messages and/or leave voicemails. The law requires that you check all Do Not Call registries before calling or texting, and honor requests to be placed on all Do Not Call lists. The law also may require callers to meet certain consent requirements before making a call or sending a text message using an auto-dialer, or using or a prerecorded/artificial voice. Agents must follow this law or face stiff penalties and/or potentially catastrophic legal damages for violations. Contact your attorney to determine if your practices conform to the TCPA.


You should exercise best practices for contacts/lead collection and maintenance. You can store phone number information in Command, even for contacts who have not consented to or signed up to receive text messages from you. However, sending messages to contacts that have not consented to receive marketing content from you increases the risk of being involved in abuse complaints and compliance issues.

 

Opt Out/Opt In
Twilio integration with Command offers the ability for recipients to send a text with the industry-standard KEYWORDS to Opt Out (Unsubscribe) / Opt In (Resubscribe). One credit will be charged for the Opt Out and Opt In KEYWORDS Incoming Messages. The first time you send a text to a phone number, Command sends the following text to communicate the option recipients have to stop receiving messages:

"Prefer a phone call or email? Reply STOP to unsubscribe. Msg&Data Rates May Apply."

No credits are discounted from your account for this message.

  • Click here to learn more about how your contacts can opt in/out of texts sent from Command.

 

Daily Unique Recipient and Daily Segments Limits
When using Twilio in Command, there are two daily limit counters to keep and eye on.

  • First, be sure to keep in mind how many unique recipients you are texting through out the day, the Daily Unique Recipient Limit is 200. You can text up to 200 different people in one day, and even send multiple texts to those 200 people, but don't send to more than that. You can track how many unique recipients you have contacted during the day when you are composing a text message and also in the Command Settings.
  • Second, there is a Daily Segments Limit of 3000. If the text message you compose is more than 160 characters, or 70 characters if emojis or special characters are included, a second text message will seamlessly be created to accommodate the longer message, and the cost will go up accordingly. Even though it looks like one message, the system actually breaks that up into secondary segments.
  • The system won't let you go over this limit, when sending one-off texts. If you hit either of those limits through text steps in a SmartPlan, you run the risk of your messages being filtered out by the recipients phone carrier, and the number being blocked by the phone carrier. Neither KW nor Twilio have control of messages being filtered or a phone provider blocking your Twilio number.
  • Learn how to track Twilio usage.
contacts_twilio_limits.png

 

SMS Privacy Notification (Teams)
When an agent on a team sends a text message for the first time to client from within the team account, they will receive an opt-in/opt-out message and the following day they will receive another text message that states: "To better serve you, messages may be shared with other team members. Please call or text me with questions." This message is only sent once when an agent on a team is texting a client for the first time using Twilio. It will not count towards their daily unique recipient limit and it will not count toward their credit limit for the month. Also, this message will not logged to the contact record timeline of the client.

 

Text Contacts in Command

When crafting a message for texting with Twilio through Command, it's recommended that you don't copy and paste a message from something like Microsoft Word or similar products. Word processors sometimes include characters that are read as special characters by Twilio, which could make your text cost more.

If you have a message that you need to copy and paste in this way, paste without formatting to ensure this doesn't happen.

In Command, you are able to text contacts using Twilio in two different ways:

  • Contacts - You can navigate to the contact(s) within the Contacts applet and sending a text message to the recipient(s) individually or multiple recipients at once.
  • SmartPlans - You can also send automated text messages to contacts through the SmartPlans applet. Without having Twilio set up in Command, any text steps you set up in a SmartPlan will trigger the following message to be written on the timeline of the contact, "A text message from (app name) was not sent. You need an active Twilio subscription."

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