Satterfield v. Simon & Schuster

For all of those mobile marketers out there who are starting their own mobile business or mobile campaign, make sure you follow the rules when it comes to sending out messages to people. The cell phone has great potential and a lot of the potential is bearing fruit, but since the phone is such a personalize item, people who abuse the personalization will definitely go down.

If you haven’t already heard, there was a case going through the judicial court system that pitted a consumer vs. a mobile marketing provider. The story goes as follows:

1.) A woman visited a website which was giving away a free ring tone. The woman entered in her name, email address, and age.

2.) The woman then clicked on a box that read “Yes. I would like to receive promotions from Nextones affiliates and brands.

3.) She clicked submit and agreed to the terms and conditions of the service.

4.) A separate mobile marketing company purchases a list of mobile numbers from a mobile number aggregator that works with Nextones. The mobile marketing company wants a list of 18-50 year olds that are open to mobile marketing for a mobile campaign for a Stephen King book release.

5.) The book release message is supposed to be sent out to 100,000 people in that target age group at 12:30pm, however there is an error in the mobile marketing company’s system and they sent out 20,000 messages (at 12:30am) via the interenet to a mobile aggregator who then sent it to the cell phone companies for them to distribute.

6.) The woman received the text. The woman got mad.

7.) The woman sued.

There were a couple of arguments from the woman’s side. The first argument was that she was not supposed to get any messages from other people that were not Nextones. This was thrown out because, upon sign up for the free ring tone, she initially clicked on the box that said she did want to be sent promotions from Nextone affiliates and brands. The second argument was that the text message sent out violated the TCPA. Under the TCPA, Telephone Consumer Protection Act, automatic dialers were not allowed to call cell phones or any common carrier services that charged the consumer for the call. The judge however ruled that the computers that ultimately sent out the message, were not automatic dialers.

If it had gone the other way, then the mobile marketing industry would have been obliterated. Had it gone the other way, all future text message campaigns would be violations of the TCPA. Good thing it didn’t. Now to make sure that mobile marketers are protected, there is a mobile advocacy coalition being formed. For more info on that or on the case itself visit this website.

I share this story because every mobile marketer should know what is going on. By knowing what is going on, you know what not to do. It just so happens that the companies that were associated with this case made sure that they followed all the rules. Awesome. But what if they didn’t? Then not only would they have lost the case but there also would be a movement to further restrict mobile marketing or even worse, ban it.

Remember the famous line from Uncle Ben in the first Spiderman movie, “With great power, comes great responsibility.” Additionally, everyone think about the end user. The last thing we would want is to turn mobile advertisements into a barrage of useless messages and pictures. I don’t want that on my phone and neither would you.If you haven’t already visit the mobile marketing association’s website and read the best practices document that they have put together. This is a document created by some of the best in the business so this is something you should adhere to as well. Get it here.