How does a person opt-in to receive school text messages?
Text message recipients can opt-in to receive school texts by sending a text to the 5-digit number 79041 which contains the word “Yes”, “Si”, "optin", "opt-in", "opt_in", "opt in", or "subscribe".
FCC & carrier spam prevention rules require that a text message recipient must opt-in to provide explicit consent to receive texts. All text message recipients get an opt-in message with the initial school text message sent to their specific phone number but some may not have responded. No additional school text messages will be sent to these phone numbers until an opt-in is received.
SchoolWise can't opt-in text message recipients automatically to ensure school texts are delivered. As of 2018, the FCC ruled that SMS/MMS message are informational services instead of telecommunications services. This gave carriers the ability to reclassify all SMS/MMS messages sent from a mass notification system as A2P (application-to-person) messaging. A2P has certain requirements to prevent spam/fraud. One of them being the express consent (opt-in) is required to continue sending texts. This is why school text messages require an extra opt-in but school phone calls and school emails do not.
Is there any other way I can help a person opt-in?
Yes. Other than sending a message to 79041. the person can also opt-in via a link. You can add a link in your next email message from our system. Copy and paste the line below into your message and a link will be provided for each person to opt-in.
<a href="https://target.brightarrow.com/msg.aspx?a=[[HistoryContactId]]">Click here to opt-in to BrightArrow for text messages</a>
What happens if a phone number is in the list and hasn’t opted in yet?
Our system will first check if that number has been invited yet. If it hasn’t then the person will get the initial text message message the old way this one time (message will be truncated to 160 characters and it will not have a link to see more of the message) and then receive an invite to opt into future messages.
If the invite had already been sent and the person had not not responded to the opt-in message, they will not get the message you are sending. In the delivery report, you’ll see the phone number and the status will say that it was not contacted for opt-in reasons.
My users have been used to 87569. What is 79041?
Due to high demand we found we needed to switch services and now only use 79041. 87569 is no longer valid to use, and texting this number will result in an error message.
We already opted-in using 87569, do we need to opt in again for 79041?
No, your prior opt-in to 87569 automatically applies to 79041. We transferred all contacts who had previously opted-in to the new short code number, 79041.
I have someone who said they received a message today and then received a message saying they’ve been opted out and would no longer receive messages from us. What happened?
This sometimes happens with iOS users when they try and “Like” a text you send them. That action sends the entire message back to the sender, in this case the 79041 number. If your message has one of the opt-out keywords in it then it looks like the user is requesting to be opted out of future messages.
To undo this the user should reply with the word “Yes” to that same number (79041).
How does someone opt-out after they’ve already opted in?
They simply need to send an opt-out keyword to 79041
The following opt-out phrase can be anywhere within the response:
Unsubscribe
wrong number
wrong person
please remove
please stop
not a working number
do not send
take me off
The following opt-out word that must start the response (or be the entire response) to be considered an opt-out:
stop
opt-out