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WARNING: Political & Non-Profit Two-Way Text, P2P Content Restrictions
AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile are running high blocking mechanisms across traffic to catch & eradicate texting that looks like “spamming” or deemed overly offensive. Violations of the following rules could result in a carrier ban and you and your candidate could get permanently blacklisted from the carriers.
What’s permitted from carriers
Source: AT&T
Acceptable political ads include:
- Ads expressly advocating the election or defeat of clearly identified candidates that are placed by candidates, political parties, or third parties.
- Comparative advertisements focusing on the positions of the candidates and/or parties are acceptable.
- Ads soliciting financial contributions, or other support, to political candidates or parties.
- Ads that are sponsored by qualified candidates for office.
Unacceptable political advertisements include:
- Messages that have the potential to be libelous, defamatory, or where the purpose of the message is to share an extremely offensive/negative view point (hit piece) towards one person.
- Messages that contain hate, violent or racist rhetoric or symbols, or material that could reasonably be expected to be offensive to users, without regard to ideological or partisan content.
- Messages that utilize a “pop-up” or a “daughter screen.” Note: Ads utilizing unsolicited audio content must conform to existing “Publisher” advertising guidelines.
Tips to prevent message blocking from carriers
- Texts must always come from the human sender: Tip: (Ex: “This is Mike Anderson from Senator Smith’s Campaign”)
- Texts should come directly on behalf of the candidate: Tip: texts should be from you on behalf of who you are helping & should always be in 1st person. (Ex: I’m contacting you to remind you to vote.)
- No Identical content: No two messages should be identical: Tip:– Use all/lots of your agents names when sending texts. – The more
- the better. – Use dynamic field replacements to add more variation to your messages.
- NO SPAM like messages: Tip: Messages MUST always look natural. Just one person texting another person. P2P is 1:1 texting and if it does not look and feel like a person is just sending out a message it will be blocked.
- No Shortened URLs (ie bit.lys, tiny etc) – Tip: use a real domain name.
- Always use the recipient’s name – Tip: (Hi John, this is Ed Lewis with Mike Smith’s Campaign)
- No Redirect URLs Tip: 301 & 302 redirects where the domain stays the same are okay)
- No Use of flagged words & prohibited topics: Tip: See Below
- Links must go to a legitimate site for the registered sender. Tip: Site must contain contact information & the site owner/purpose must be clearly labeled. Ex: Elect John Smith
- No repeat sending: do not send more than one message to a same person within a 72 hour period
Flagged Words: The following words can get your campaigns flagged and/or banned by carriers. Businesses, COVID-19, pandemic, learn more, register, smallbiz, biz, free quote, free, bank, HARP, Department of Education, entitled, reduced, refi, refinance, payment, discharge lend, lending, profanity, lender, loan, loans, fund, funds, bank, approval, approved, debt, money, rate, apply, application, CBD, transfer, qualify, forgive, forgiveness, sex, sexual, firearm(s), gun(s), weapon(s), tobacco, cannabis, marijuana, vape, vaping, $ symbol, any drug or alcohol related words, repeating symbols (Ex !!!) (ALL CAPS are also prohibited).
Prohibited Topics: The following content is prohibited. Any commercial or sales messages and messages containing personal attacks, sex, hate, alcohol, firearms, tobacco content, vaping, weapons, drugs, cannabis, gambling, fraud, spam, phishing, deceptive marketing, distribution or malware or app downloads from non-secure locations, loan, debt consolidation, debt relief and student loan programs from any enterprise that is not able to grant loans itself, affiliate marketing programs that seek to obtain opt-in subscriber lists, lead generation campaigns that indicate the sharing of collected information with third parties, work from home opportunities.
Disclaimer: Peerly is not responsible for any errors or omissions, or for the results obtained from the use of this information. It shall be the sole responsibility of Users of Peerly services to familiarize themselves with all applicable laws and conduct.
