Last week's newsletter discussed the need for associations to collect mobile phone numbers for use in communications. Several readers noted that I didn't address opt-outs. Opting out should be implicit in all our data management, but I'll address it explicitly here.

As a rule, we need to provide our members, customers, and prospects the ability to opt out from any marketing communications we send. What's critical here is that, for associations, the opt out should notexclude the recipient from receiving association business-related emails (e.g., emails about voting, receipts/order confirmation, or dues renewals). So when a member opts out of "everything" there are still certain communications we can send them. (The same is NOT true for non-members and prospects. If they opt out of everything, we need to completely stop communicating with them, other than receipts/order confirmation.)

In addition to opting out, we need to provide our members, customers, and prospects the ability to choose which forms of communication we use with them. For example, as a member I may agree to have you send me email, but to not send me text messages. (And beyond both of these issues is privacy and GDPR which I'll address in a future newsletter.)

So if you're going to start collecting mobile phone numbers, you'll need to be sure you allow anyone to opt out of receiving information via that channel.