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Texting your audience: an overview

This series covers what your organization needs in place before registering a texting program with the carriers and before sending the first text. It's written for marketing directors, box office leads and whoever manages your website.

Texts are sent through Bird, the messaging provider Encore Pro uses. The rules come from Bird, the US wireless carriers and CTIA, the wireless industry's trade group. They aren't Encore Pro's rules. The articles restate them in plain terms for arts and entertainment organizations, and where Bird publishes a requirement, the articles follow it as written.

Registration

Your organization and your texting program have to be registered with the carriers before you can send. We submit the registration through Bird. It includes your organization's details, your use case, sample messages and proof of how people opt in. The carriers review it, and part of that review is looking at your website.

If the review finds missing wording or a page that doesn't load, the registration is declined. Every submission has a fee, whether it's approved or declined, so it's worth getting the website and sign-up wording right before we submit.

That makes most of the preparation about your own site and processes: your privacy policy, your SMS terms, the wording beside every phone number field, and how staff collect numbers in person. Once you're sending, you'll also need to pass along any opt-out requests that reach you by phone, email or at the box office.

The articles

  1. What you can and can't text about covers the prohibited list and where arts organizations tend to run into it.
  2. Consent for text messages covers what counts as consent and which records to keep.
  3. Opt-in wording for your website covers the checkbox wording, with samples.
  4. Collecting opt-ins at the box office and on paper covers scripts, forms, text to join, and handling opt-out requests.
  5. Updating your privacy policy for texting covers what to add and what to change.
  6. Writing your SMS terms covers the nine items the terms must include.
  7. Welcome, STOP and HELP replies and sample messages covers the automatic replies and the sample messages submitted with registration.
  8. Registering your texting program covers what we need from you and the usual reasons for a decline.

Checklist before your first text

  • Your privacy policy is live and includes the text-messaging clause, and none of its sharing language covers text data
  • Your SMS terms are live and include all nine items
  • The opt-in wording appears beside every phone number field, with unchecked boxes
  • Service texts and promotional texts have separate opt-ins
  • The box office script is written and every shift has it
  • Consent records are being kept for every sign-up
  • Someone is responsible for passing opt-out requests to us
  • Your sample messages match what you registered
  • Nothing in your program is on the prohibited list

Notes and sources

This series covers texting US numbers. Bird's prohibited content list also applies to Canada, but its registration and consent guidance is written for US numbers. Canadian numbers are covered by Canadian rules that these articles don't address. If you plan to text Canadian patrons, talk to your counsel and let us know.

Bird's documentation isn't consistent everywhere. Its guidance on alcohol is one example, covered in the first article.

Sources, as of October 16, 2026:

This article is general guidance, not legal advice. Your counsel should review anything you publish. The requirements come from Bird and the carriers and can change. If this article differs from Bird's current documentation, follow Bird's documentation.