Complying with France's SMS Regulations When Using Yotpo SMS & Email

This information is not legal advice. While we do our best to provide useful information as a starting point, Yotpo SMS & Email advises all merchants to obtain professional legal advice to ensure that all marketing campaigns are sent in full compliance with all applicable laws.

If you plan on sending SMS or email marketing messages to customers in France, you must familiarize yourself with France’s Postal and Electronic Communications Code. You can easily adhere to it by following a few simple steps.

In this article, you’ll learn about the main points of France’s Postal and Electronic Communications Code and how Yotpo SMS & Email help you comply with those regulations.

How to stay compliant with France’s SMS and email regulations

When sending marketing messages to recipients based in France, you must:

• Obtain explicit consent

• Include a free and available opt-out mechanism at all times

• Identify your brand

Quiet hours

Marketing text messages are prohibited from being sent between 8 PM and 8 AM on weekdays, and at any time on Sundays and bank holidays. Carriers operating in France have implemented a quiet hours mechanism that automatically blocks messages during these times. This means that any messages sent on a Sunday will not be delivered until after 8 AM on Monday.

If you want to expand these Quiet hours intervals, you can adjust them in the General Settings > Compliance tab.

Obtaining consent

According to the regulations in France, customers must explicitly agree to receive promotional text or email marketing messages from you. When collecting subscribers on your website through a pop-up or another subscriber collection tool, you must clearly state that the individual agrees to receive recurring marketing messages. You must also be transparent about what information you are collecting and how you will use it, mention that consent is not a condition of purchase, and provide links to your Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

With Yotpo SMS & Email, consent can be obtained at your store’s checkout or via our various subscriber collection tools all of which are built-in for compliance with the regulations and include the required legal verbiage. To learn more, see Customizing Your Shopify Checkout Opt-In Box and Introduction to Subscriber Collection Tools.

Be aware that pre-ticked consent checkboxes are prohibited.

Please note:

Consent to receive promotional SMS messages does not extend to emails and vice versa. The customer needs to provide consent separately for each messaging channel.

Providing an opt-out method

The regulations in France require you to give customers clear instructions on how to opt out, such as an opt-out link in your text messages or an unsubscribe link in email messages. It is important to remember that opting out must be free and available at all times.

Tip:

The Yotpo SMS & Email campaign builder ensures compliance by automatically including an unsubscribe link in all your text messages. For email campaigns, it automatically includes an unsubscribe link in the footer of all your email messages.

Identifying your brand

Regulations in France require that you identify yourself in every message. By default, all text messages sent via Yotpo use a Business Sender ID, which is your brand name. Additionally, you can easily include your brand name in text messages using the “Sitename” shortcode.

For emails, in the General Settings > Email Settings tab, you can enter your store name and set up a dedicated sending domain so that the emails you send appear to come from your brand instead of Yotpo.