Topic

SMS - Unsubscribe, Opt Out, Remove, Stop From Receiving Everbridge SMS Notifications.

Description

In compliance with SMS regulations in all countries for which Everbridge has a local SMS code, Everbridge allows contacts to opt out of receiving SMS messages by replying with certain keywords. You will not be able to disable or modify this feature for your organizations. See knowledge article EBS: SMS - Is There a Setting to Prevent Contacts From Unsubscribing or Opting Out of Receiving Everbridge SMS Notifications? for more information.

How SMS Message Recipients Can Unsubscribe From SMS Messages

Follow the video and/or written steps below to learn how contacts and other SMS message recipients such as residents can unsubscribe from Everbridge SMS messages. The feature described below will function with responses from your contacts in any country.

Video:

Written:

Contacts who receive Everbridge SMS notifications can respond to an SMS message using one of the recognized keywords below to opt out of receiving SMS messages from the organization. Accepted unsubscribe keywords are:

• STOP
• END
• UNSUBSCRIBE
• QUIT
• CANCEL

IMPORTANT: Note there are no buttons or options called "STOP" or any of the other accepted keywords. Instead to unsubscribe from SMS messages, type the keyword as a reply to the message.

The Process:

1. You send a notification with SMS selected as the delivery path. Available delivery paths are set from the Organization under Settings > Organization > Delivery Methods and for each individual notification under Notifications > New Notification > Settings > Edit > Delivery Methods.

Note: Settings > Organization > Delivery Methods is also where you allow unsubscribe from Phone and Email but as noted above, this option is not available for SMS.

2. Your contact receives an SMS notification on their mobile device.

3. Your contact opts out by replying to the received message with one of the five acceptable keywords (STOP, END, UNSUBSCRIBE, QUIT and CANCEL). Keywords must be spelled out and be in the English U.S. language. The contact may use either the microphone or the keyboard to compose the keyword message.

In this example, the keyword STOP is being used to unsubscribe.

4. Your contact presses the send button on their phone to send the reply.

Depending on the country and carrier used, your contact may receive an auto response informing them they have been opted out:



*** Not receiving an auto response is not an indication of the unsubscribe process not having worked: your contact will be opted out even if they do not receive a confirmation message back and will no longer receive messages from Everbridge Alerts. ***

5. If the Everbridge application finds any of the keywords as the first word in a response (from left to right), the application will add the mobile phone number to the Everbridge unsubscribe list.

NOTE: The system will treat a response as an unsubscribe request if someone responds with "Stopping at data center on the way back to office." This is because the word "Stop" was in the first four positions of the SMS message received by the Everbridge application. Please provide clear guidance to all message recipients to avoid starting any response with "stop..." if they are not opting out. Also, the Everbridge application will treat a response as a request to unsubscribe if "stop" is preceded by blank spaces, e.g. " stop" as long as the blank spaces are at the very beginning of the response. The Everbridge application will not treat a response such as "I am going to stop at home before heading to the airport" as a request to unsubscribe because "stop" is not the first four characters of the message (reading from left to right).

6. When you send a subsequent notification via SMS and Email (for example) to the same contact who has opted out, the Everbridge application will block the SMS message to the contact. However, the Email message will still be sent to the contact. You can view the call result for the contact under EB Suite Notification History. The call result will display as Not Attempted - Unsubscribed for the SMS attempt on the notification report.

NOTE: If you sent this notification only via SMS, then the contact in the above example will be aggregated under the UNREACHABLE category in the Notification Details. However, if you used other delivery methods for your notification and we were able to send the notification via another delivery method to the same contact, then they will be listed under the appropriate confirmation status category.

The STOP keyword (or any of its aliases as described earlier in this document) also blocks messages to contacts who have not previously received any SMS messages from you. For instance, you add a new contact to your database today. Tomorrow, the new contact sends "STOP" via SMS to the Everbridge SMS code even though he or she has not received a message from you via SMS. The Everbridge application will add their mobile phone number to the unsubscribe list for all Organizations containing this mobile phone number.

How All Other Recipients Can Unsubscribe from SMS Messages

Recipients of SMS Messages such as residents or public incident recipients (i.e. those users who receive Everbridge SMS but are not contacts or users in Everbridge), may opt-out of receiving SMS messages in the same way as contacts by replying with one of the five acceptable keywords (STOP, END, UNSUBSCRIBE, QUIT and CANCEL). Please note there are no buttons labelled with these keywords. The keywords must be spelled out and be in the English U.S. language. The contact may use either the microphone or the keyboard to compose the keyword message.