Consent First: How We Handle Email and Text Message Permissions

Email newsletters, event reminders and text messages are some of the most effective ways an organization can stay in touch with its community. They are also some of the easiest ways to lose that community's trust. A message someone never agreed to receive feels like an intrusion. Repeated messages after someone asked to stop feel like disrespect, and in many places they also break the law.

Our communications tools are built around a simple principle: organizations should message only people who agreed to hear from them, and anyone should be able to stop at any time. Here is how that principle shows up in the product.

Consent is its own decision

Buying a product, registering for an event or becoming a member does not automatically mean someone wants marketing messages. Those are different decisions. Our platform keeps them separate: transactional messages, such as a receipt or an event confirmation, are part of the task the person started, while newsletters and promotional messages require their own permission.

When forms ask for that permission, the choice should be clear and separate, with wording that says what the person is agreeing to receive.

Unsubscribe and STOP always work

Every marketing email includes a way to unsubscribe, and unsubscribing applies to future sends. Text messaging is designed the same way: a reply with a stop word removes the person from that organization's text messages. These requests are honored automatically; nobody needs to process them by hand, and nobody can accidentally override them by re-importing an old list.

Suppression lists remember

When someone unsubscribes or asks not to be contacted, they are added to a suppression list. Suppression is checked before every send. That means a person who unsubscribed last year stays unsubscribed even if their address appears in a new spreadsheet someone uploads today.

Imports do not create consent

Organizations often bring contacts from other systems: a spreadsheet of members, an export from an old website, a list from an event. Our import tools are careful about what they bring. Importing members does not silently subscribe them to marketing messages, and importing contacts does not override existing suppression. When an import needs to bring consent records, it brings them as records of what the person actually agreed to, not as a default.

Drafts, review and explicit sending

Messages to many people deserve a second look. Our communications tools follow a draft, review and send flow, where sending is an explicit action rather than a side effect of saving. Scheduled sends are visible in advance, so a mistake can be caught before it goes out. That rhythm prevents the most embarrassing mistakes, like sending a half-finished newsletter to the whole list.

Some channels stay off until ready

Text messaging carries stricter rules and higher stakes than email in many regions, including requirements for registration, consent records and opt-out handling. On our platform, text messaging stays disabled until every part of that handling is complete and verified. Holding a channel back is better than launching one that could put organizations at risk. We describe that approach in holding unfinished features back.

Prospecting has extra limits

Some tools help organizations find and contact potential customers, not just existing members. Those tools carry additional limits: a do-not-contact flag that is honored everywhere, shared suppression across tools and respect for regional restrictions on unsolicited outreach. Finding a business does not mean it is appropriate to message it.

Records of consent

Consent is not only a checkbox at the moment of sign-up; it is a record that should be possible to look up later. When someone subscribes, the platform keeps a record of that choice. When they unsubscribe, that is recorded too. Those records protect organizations if they are ever asked how a person came to be on a list, and they let the platform honor a person's latest choice reliably.

Deliverability follows respect

There is a practical benefit to all of this. Email providers watch how people react to messages. When people mark messages as spam, deliverability suffers for everyone sending from the same system. Respecting consent keeps complaint rates low, which keeps messages landing in inboxes. We describe the infrastructure side in watching email reputation.

Frequently asked questions

Does buying a product subscribe someone to a newsletter?

No. On our platform, transactional messages related to a purchase are separate from marketing messages, which require their own permission.

What happens when someone replies STOP to a text message?

Text messaging on our platform is designed so a STOP reply removes the person from that organization's text messages automatically, and text messaging stays off until that handling is fully verified.

Can importing a list re-subscribe people who unsubscribed?

No. Suppression is checked before every send, so people who unsubscribed stay unsubscribed even if they appear in a new import.