Get a number, send a blast, count the clicks. That is how most businesses approach text messaging, and it is why so many of them eventually get shut off. The operators who last treat the channel the opposite way. Texting is a privilege, not a right.
It was never supposed to be a marketing channel
SMS marketing was an accident of timing. Smartphones landed in 2007, but for years the mobile web was too clunky to matter for business. In 2012 Google started rewarding mobile-friendly sites in search, phones became genuinely usable, and texting quietly became the most direct line to a customer that anyone had.
Then came the years nobody romanticizes but everybody remembers, roughly 2014 to 2016, the Wild West of long-code SMS. Almost no oversight, plenty of abuse. It took a case called Twilio versus Verizon to end it, and the framework we now call 10DLC grew straight out of that ruling. The workarounds people tried in between, SIM farms and snowshoeing, all shared the same fate. They worked until the carriers caught up. They always catch up.
What TCPA really changed
People talk about TCPA like it is a box to check. It is not. The 2013 move from implied consent to express written consent changed the whole posture of the channel. Pre-checked boxes went away. Disclosure had to be plain.
The lesson that took me longest to fully respect is that consent alone does not protect you. What protects you is proof: documented, timestamped, specific proof of when and how a person opted in. A claim is not a record. That single distinction is why some operators sail through scrutiny and others have no defense at all.
Texting is a privilege, not a right. The operators who guard the channel are the ones still standing to monetize it.
The privilege, restated
When you treat texting as a right, you blast. When you treat it as a privilege, you earn it: clean opt-ins you can prove, messages timed to actually help, and restraint when restraint is the smart play. The irony is that the respectful version is also the profitable one. The operators who guard the channel are the ones still standing to monetize it, through cart recovery, promo timing, and the partial-lead strategies most people never build.
What is coming
The next chapter is RCS: verified branding, rich cards, buttons, real analytics. It will make good SMS look even better and make lazy SMS look even worse. Either way, the rule does not change. Respect the channel or lose it.
I get into all of this in more depth when I speak, most recently at Contact.io in Denver. If you want the background on my companies and how I think about building them, that lives at joedelfgauw.com.
This essay is educational and is not legal advice. Talk to counsel about your specific SMS program.
Next read The Day I Closed Six Call Centers