How do I text past customers about a promotion without getting in trouble for it?

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Text marketing works because people actually read texts, usually within minutes, unlike email which can sit unread for days. That same immediacy is exactly why the rules around sending marketing texts are stricter than most people assume: an unwanted promotional text feels more intrusive than an unwanted email, and the regulations in most countries reflect that.

Calilio is one phone system that offers bulk SMS as a built-in feature for sending a promotion to a list of past customers. Email marketing tools are the other real option, and worth testing on the same list first since email carries a lower compliance bar than text. I'm using Calilio's version here as a concrete example, with the consent rules below applying regardless of which tool sends it.

The consent rule that actually matters

In the US, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act generally requires prior express consent for marketing texts, which is a higher bar than what's needed for purely transactional or service messages like an appointment reminder. A customer who booked a service from you and is fine getting a reminder text about that booking hasn't automatically agreed to receive a promotional text about a sale three months later; those are treated as different categories under most consumer-protection frameworks, even though they both arrive as a text from the same business number. Outside the US, similar distinctions exist under local telecom and consumer-protection rules, and if you're sending into the UAE specifically, sender and consent rules there weren't something I could verify in detail against Calilio's own pages, so confirm directly with Calilio or local counsel before running a UAE promotional campaign at volume.

This isn't legal advice for your specific business or jurisdiction. If a promotional text campaign is worth running at real volume, it's worth the time to actually understand which consent rule applies where your customers are, not just where your business is based. The wider rules and tools are in text message marketing for small business.

How to run this the right way

1. Check that each customer actually agreed to texts, specifically marketing texts, not just service communications. If your opt-in records don't distinguish between the two, treat anyone without clear marketing consent as excluded from the promotional list.
2. Write a short offer with a clear opt-out line, something as simple as "reply STOP to opt out," included in the message itself, not buried somewhere else.
3. Send to a small group first. Test the message, the offer and the timing on a subset of your list before committing the full send.
4. Check replies from that test group, both opt-outs and genuine responses, before deciding the campaign is ready to scale up.
5. Send the rest once the test has confirmed the message lands well and the opt-out mechanism is actually working.

What Calilio's bulk SMS supports for this

Verified on Calilio's own feature page: bulk SMS sends one message to a large contact list at once, with options to send immediately, schedule for a specific time, or run a recurring campaign. It's included on Calilio's Premium plan, $35 a month or $28 a month billed annually, confirmed on Calilio's pricing page. What it doesn't do is check or enforce consent on your behalf; that's entirely your responsibility to manage through your own customer records before you ever open Calilio's bulk-send tool. Saved replies, included in the same feature set, help you handle the responses a promotion generates (questions about the offer, opt-outs, booking requests) without typing the same reply by hand every time.

Why sending an email first is a smart test

If you're not sure the offer itself is strong enough to be worth a text campaign, send it to the same list by email first and see how many respond. Email carries far lighter consent requirements than SMS marketing in most places, which makes it a lower-risk way to test whether the actual offer lands before committing to the stricter rules and higher per-message cost of a text campaign. If the email gets a strong response, that's a good signal the text version, sent correctly, will do even better given how much faster people check texts.

A worked example: a seasonal promotion for a home services business

A home services business running a seasonal discount, say 15% off furnace tune-ups before winter, has a customer list that's actually several different groups: customers who've booked in the last year, customers who haven't booked in two or more years, and customers who explicitly asked not to be contacted for marketing. Sending the same promotional text to all three is both a consent risk for the third group and a weaker campaign for the other two, since a recent customer and a long-lapsed one often respond better to different framing (a loyalty-style thank-you offer versus a "we haven't seen you in a while" re-engagement message). Splitting the list into these groups before writing the message, rather than after getting a weak response rate, is usually a bigger lever on how well the promotion performs than the specific discount amount offered.

Common mistakes with promotional texting

• Re-adding opted-out customers to a later campaign. An opt-out needs to be permanent and respected across every future send, not just the current one. Accidentally re-including someone who opted out is one of the fastest ways to turn a minor annoyance into a formal complaint.
• Sending at a bad time of day. A promotional text at 7am or 10pm reads as inconsiderate regardless of how good the offer is, and many jurisdictions have specific quiet-hours rules for marketing messages on top of the general annoyance factor. Stick to normal daytime hours as a default.
• Running campaigns too frequently. Even customers who genuinely opted in will start opting back out if every week brings another promotional text. Save the channel for offers that are actually worth the interruption, not a default weekly habit.

What I'd actually tell you

The businesses that get into trouble with promotional texting almost never do it maliciously, they just treat their whole customer list as one undifferentiated group and blast everyone the same message, including people who never agreed to marketing texts specifically. The fix is boring but effective: keep marketing consent as its own clearly tracked field, separate from service-communication consent, and only ever pull the promotional list from that field. It's a five-minute setup that avoids the entire problem this page is about.

When to skip this

Skip a bulk promotional text campaign if your opt-in records don't clearly distinguish marketing consent from service consent; fix that distinction first, even if it shrinks your sendable list, rather than texting your full customer base and hoping it's fine. It's also worth skipping SMS in favor of email if your offer is complex enough to need more than a sentence or two to explain properly, since that's a format email handles better than a text message ever will. Appointment reminders count as service messages, as in sending text reminders for tomorrow's appointments.

How I'd approach this

Where I usually get involved here is building the consent tracking itself properly, a clear field distinguishing marketing opt-in from service opt-in, tied to your actual customer records, so your team can pull a genuinely compliant send list with confidence instead of guessing or over-excluding out of caution. That's a small, worthwhile build for any business planning to run promotional texting regularly, not a one-off campaign. Texting from a business number also keeps the records with the business, as in texting customers without giving out your personal number.