Sending SMS messages to New Zealanders

The distribution of bulk SMS into New Zealand is now tightly controlled.

What the New Zealand law requires

The practical implications of New Zealand's Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act (UEMA) 2007 are that all commercial SMS messages to New Zealand mobiles must:

• Only be sent to people who have explicitly consented to receiving marketing or promotional SMS — you cannot imply consent.
• Make opting out possible by simply replying to the message in a specific, obvious way.
• Be sent from a number (no alphanumeric senders), because you can't reply — and therefore automatically opt out — from an alphanumeric sender.
• Include the business name of the sender and their contact details.
• Be sent via a short code dedicated to a particular sender.
• Use short codes that are applied for and distinguish between marketing and transactional messages, so that replies to all marketing messages are free.
• Comply with Do Not Call / Do Not Disturb registries, and therefore be sent through a compliant telecommunications network.

These requirements respond to concerns around scammers' use of SMS to trick and defraud citizens. An SMS arriving on your phone is harder to test or identify as a scam than an email — which can contain more visual clues — and is far more likely to be opened because it's on your phone, so stricter controls were deemed necessary.

eNudge provides an unsubscribe facility via instructions included at the end of every SMS, which simply requires the recipient to reply with ‘REM’ to be removed from your SMS database.

Marketing vs transactional

New Zealand's anti‑spam legislation distinguishes between commercial marketing and transactional messages, determined by the content. If any part of your message (or where it leads people) is trying to make a sale or profit in any way, it is most likely to be deemed a marketing message.

The impact of that distinction is as follows:

• Short codes are in a different format — transactional short codes are generally 4 digits starting with a ‘3’, and marketing short codes are 4 digits starting with an ‘8’.
• The fees for replies to marketing messages are paid by the original sender, not the recipient sending the reply.
• Transactional messages must not contain any marketing content — they must be solely informational, as part of providing products or services to existing customers.

Applying for a short code

The application process for a short code (marketing or transactional) is quite involved, and can take 1–2 months to be processed and approved. You must supply examples of the content you plan to send, and provide evidence supporting your choice of marketing or transactional type.

Applying requires pre‑planning. You can't just give some random example messages — you must supply the messages you are actually going to use, or run the risk that your messages are stopped from being delivered when they differ from the samples provided. SMS messages to New Zealanders are actively monitored by the controlling authority.

If you are seen to be doing the wrong thing and have your messages stopped, it can take weeks or months to be approved again. The Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) has successfully brought cases against organisations and individuals breaching the law, involving significant fines — the current maximum penalty is NZ$500,000.

Australia is planning changes to its own SMS legislation to require businesses to send via registered sender IDs — more about that in our article on the new SMS Sender ID registry for Australia.