Effective SMS communication starts with consent. At Element451, we stress the importance of securing a student's opt-in to uphold trust and meet regulatory standards. Without this consent, messages risk being marked as spam, damaging your institution's reputation and trust score with carriers.

By leveraging the user-sms-updates field, you ensure your messaging practices are not only compliant but also respected and welcomed by students and other contacts, safeguarding your ability to engage effectively.

Here's how you can effectively use the recommended system field:

The user-sms-updates field is universally applicable across forms, events, applications, etc., reflecting a student's opt-in status for SMS communications across their entire record. When a student opts into SMS updates through any interaction point, this field is set to true, indicating their consent to receive SMS messages.

To ensure that you only send SMS messages to students who have explicitly opted in, using a filter to segment your audience based on their opt-in value is essential. As a reminder, Element451 does not automatically remove students without an opt-in value on their record when sending SMS communications.

To avoid sending messages to those students who haven't opted in, you should use the following filter when creating a Segment:

While user-application-sms-updates exists, it is scoped specifically to applications and presents limitations due to its narrow scope. Institutions that completed implementation before late 2023 might still be using this field. However, we strongly recommend updating any applications or processes to utilize user-sms-updates instead. This shift will streamline your SMS opt-in process, ensuring a consistent and compliant approach to student communication.