Compliance Update: Florida Messaging - Effective July 1, 2021 – Postscript

Effective July 1, 2021, Florida (FL) is imposing new compliance regulations (CS/SB 1120) in addition to nationwide, federal TCPA regulations and industry standards required by Twilio and cellular carriers. This is due to new legislation that was just passed within the last week and is unrelated to the compliance updates we communicated in May. If your brand is headquartered or has significant operations in Florida, these regulations may apply to a good portion of your messages.

The penalty per violation (per person receiving non-compliant messages) is between $500-$1,500. These legislation-level changes will affect all brands who have subscribers in Florida, regardless of what SMS platform they’re using.

What Are The Key Changes?

Longer quiet hours for Florida subscribers. Quiet hours must move up to begin at 8 pm in the recipient’s local time (Florida does have some residents in CST, but we will be adhering to EST as the majority of residents are in that time zone).

Limitations on Quiet Hour Messages. Conversational (replying to messages from the customer) and transactional messages (shipping confirmations) may no longer be permitted during quiet hours.

Note: If a Florida resident subscribes to (or unsubscribes from) your store during quiet hours, Postscript will still send opt-in or opt-out messages as required by federal law.

Limit of 3 messages within 24 hours for a specific campaign or product. You cannot send more than 3 messages for a specific campaign or product within 24 hours.
- A campaign and automation addressing different products are likely unique enough to be counted separately (allowing for 2 sets of 3 messages).

How We're Solving for Quiet Hours

Postscript's current global campaign and automation waking hours will remain unchanged.

Global campaign waking hours: 8 am - 11 pm EST
Global automation waking hours: 11 am - 8 pm EST

Note: It’s important to be aware that waking hours vary due to time zones. The optimal compliance time for messages is 11 am - 8 pm EST

In the case of Florida quiet hours, effective July 1st Postscript will screen subscribers and customers by area code and shipping address state (provided by Shopify) to identify Florida residents and prevent messages from going to Florida numbers during Florida’s quiet hours (8 pm - 8 am EST).

Below is information regarding how Florida's new quiet hours will impact automations and campaigns.

If a subscriber with a Florida-based phone number triggers an automation (ex: abandoned cart) during Florida quiet hours, the automation will send during the next waking hours window of 11 am - 8 pm EST (in their phone’s current time zone).

If a campaign sends during Florida quiet hours, it will not send to subscribers with Florida-based phone numbers. Postscript will not send a campaign to a Florida-based subscriber unless you schedule the campaign in the waking hours window of 8 am - 8 pm EST (in their phone’s current time zone).

How You Can Prepare

There are additional optional steps you can take to prepare for these changes. We've outlined them below.

To prepare for these changes, you can update your Terms and Conditions (T&C). We have provided updated disclaimer language here. Refer to item #3, highlighted in green, for recommended T&C updates for the new Florida laws.

The new section regarding Florida law reads as follows:

12. Florida Law: We endeavor to comply with the Florida Telemarketing Act and the Florida Do Not Call Act as applicable to Florida residents. For purposes of compliance, you agree that we may assume that you are a Florida resident if, at the time of opt-in to Program, (1) your shipping address, as provided is located in Florida or (2) the area code for the phone number used to opt-into the Program is a Florida area code. You agree that the requirements of the Florida Telemarketing Act and the Florida Do Not Call Act do not apply to you, and you shall not assert that you are a Florida resident, if you do not meet either of these criteria or, in the alternative, do not affirmatively advise us in writing that you are a Florida resident by sending written notice to us. Insofar as you are a Florida resident, you agree that mobile messages sent by Us in direct response to mobile messages or requests from You (including but are not limited to response to Keywords, opt-in, help or stop requests and shipping notifications) shall not constitute a “telephonic sales call” or “commercial telephone solicitation phone call” for purposes of Florida Statutes Section 501 (including but not limited to sections 501.059 and 501.616), to the extent the law is otherwise relevant and applicable.

With such a short deadline for when this law comes into effect, you may want to give yourself extra time to implement the necessary changes. To do so, you can temporarily exclude FL area codes and shipping addresses from your automations and campaigns.

Postscript created and added two new segments to all stores that exclude Florida subscribers. These segments are All Customers And Subscribers (Florida Excluded) and All US/CANADA Customers and Subscribers (Florida Excluded).

Now, when you create a new campaign, you can apply either segment to ensure Florida subscribers do not receive campaign messages during the updated quiet hours.

Once you feel comfortable with the new compliance requirements, you can remove this filter.

Postscript: Your Partner In Compliance

At Postscript, we believe in a product-led approach to compliance. This means that compliance will be built into every part of Postscript so you don’t have to think about all of the different requirements.

We’ve added new updates to our platform to help keep users compliant with these new laws, and we are committed to consistently updating our platform to meet changing requirements in the future.

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Have questions? Please feel free to reach out to our wonderful Support team at support@postscript.io or via live chat. You can also submit a support request here!

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