SMS Holiday Wine Marketing Compliance – 2024 Guidelines — VinterActive Automated Wine Marketing

What Compliance Regulations Apply to SMS Wine Marketers in 2024?

If you’ve worked in the wine industry for any time at all, you won’t be surprised to learn text marketing for alcohol is highly regulated by federal & state governments, powerful industry associations, and SMS service providers.

At the federal level, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) regulates what form of consent alcohol merchants must obtain before texting consumers. And unlike email marketing, these regulations are strictly enforced by the FCC.

For example, in 2012, Papa John’s agreed to pay over $16 million to settle a class-action lawsuit against them for failure to get proper consent before texting their customers.

At the state level, Alabama, Florida, Minnesota & Oklahoma have laws about business texts.

In addition to federal and state requirements, the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA) requires formal business registration before merchants can send automated texts to consumers.  The CTIA also prohibits alcohol merchants from texting consumers under the age of 21.

SMS wine marketers accepting credit cards should also be familiar with the payment card industry’s PCI-DSS standards for securing payment card data.

These industry standards aren’t the law but often govern relationships with telecommunication companies and credit-card processors.  If you don’t comply with their standards, your business can be subject to costly fines and/or permanently lose your ability to text your customers or accept credit cards.

The great news is that any SMS provider still supporting the wine industry has skin in the game, so most vendors employ extensive in-house legal teams that insist on built-in safeguards to keep their clients from sending non-compliant messages.

But even with help, individual wine merchants are ultimately responsible for sending consumer texts that comply with laws regarding:

1. Consumer Consent – wine marketers must obtain proper consent before texting any consumers.

2. Message Restrictions – wine marketers are responsible for sending appropriate content at a predictable frequency from a verified business number.

3. Customer Service – wine marketers must promptly support SMS subscribers when they ask for help or want to unsubscribe from your list.

3 Types of Business Texts = 3 Types of SMS Consent

Unlike email marketing with binary consent options (subscribe/unsubscribe), U.S. consumers can subscribe to three types of business texts, each potentially requiring different levels of consent.