Interactive Preferences

The most abundant and flexible tools for maintaining your plan for TCPA compliance fall under the “Interactive Preferences” category. As peoples’ day-to-day lives change, so do the frequency and methods with which they wish to be contacted. Whereas they may have initially been happy to get a recorded phone message at any time of day, they may now be unable to accept calls and prefer they instead get a text message, email or push notification. Their interest in the types of messages sent may also change.

To make sure you can provide the recipients of your messages with the means to inform you of these preferences, SchoolMessenger has a number of always-available options for you and your contacts:

Telephone Voice Opt-Out

At any time, while listening to a phone message broadcast through SchoolMessenger Communicate, recipients can press “5” on their phone to initiate the opt-out process. After pressing 5, they will be given 3 choices:

1.    To unsubscribe from messages like these, please press 1

2.    To unsubscribe from all Non-Emergency messages, press 2

3.    To opt-out of all phone notifications, please press 3

Following a recipient’s completion of this process, a report of their election is sent to your Communicate account. There are two ways which your account can be configured to handle requests:

1.    Account administrator views the report and makes manual adjustments to individual contacts

2.    System automatically adjusts preferences and/or blocks phone numbers

Detailed information and instructions about opting out from voice messages, as well as instructions on configuring your account to take full advantage of these options, please review the comprehensive PDF guide, Voice Call Opt-Out Guide.

SMS Opt-Out/Opt-In

From a mobile phone, a contact wishing to opt out of further text messages can send “STOP” to your organization’s SchoolMessenger SMS “short-code”. Immediately following that, they will receive a message confirming their election and will no longer receive any of your broadcast text messages. If a contact later wishes to change that preference, they need only to send “Y” or “YES” to subscribe again.

Important: Opting-Out, for both Voice and SMS Text, is done on a phone-by-phone basis and will only initiate a request for the phone number upon which the recipient is currently receiving a message.  They must complete the process from every phone for which they wish to change preferences or opt-out.

The SchoolMessenger AppTM

Any contact, for which you have an email imported into your Communicate account, should be encouraged to sign up for and log in to the SchoolMessenger app at go.schoolmessenger.com. Not only will they find the options to provide consent to deliver notifications to their various phone numbers, but they will also be able to view previous messages, manage individual communication preferences for each phone number and email address, as well as notify the school of changes to contact information.


Visit https://www.schoolmessenger.com/schoolmessenger-app/ or contact SchoolMessenger Support if you have further questions about the SchoolMessenger app and how to implement it within your organization.

Manually Update Contact Info in Communicate

No matter which way school officials are informed of a contact’s preferences, there is always the option for an authorized user to log in to SchoolMessenger Communicate and adjust those preferences manually. The Contact Details for each person can be found in your “System” tab under “Contacts”, and every phone has a series of checkboxes indicating their “Consent Status” and settings for upon which broadcast types that phone will be called.  

More information and instructions on manually updating contact information can be found in the online Help for your Communicate account.

Important: Only those features that you have been granted access to will display. For access to additional features contact your system administrator.

 

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