Texting Customers in Texas? Here's What SB 140 Means for Your Business

If your business sends appointment reminders, promotions, or "we're open" texts to customers in Texas, a 2025 state law changed the rules around that. It folds SMS and MMS marketing messages into roughly the same category as telemarketing calls — meaning the consent and recordkeeping standards that used to apply mainly to phone sales calls now reach your texts too.

This matters most for businesses that grew their customer list casually:

• A sign-up sheet at checkout
• A group chat that turned into a broadcast list
• Numbers pulled from old invoices or a wedding guestbook you kept for the business

Laws like this exist because that kind of list-building usually skips the one thing regulators care about: real, documented consent, not just "we had their number for another reason."

You don't need a law degree to get ahead of this. You need three things in place — how you get permission, how you prove you got it, and how easy you make it to say stop — and a habit of not treating your phone's contact list as a marketing list just because the numbers are already sitting there. Get those pieces right, and texting becomes one of the more reliable ways of turning visitors into loyal customers, rather than a compliance risk you're hoping nobody notices.

The distinction that matters most in practice is between transactional messages and marketing messages, and a lot of business owners blur the two without realizing it. A text confirming an order, telling a customer their food is ready, or reminding them of a booked appointment is transactional — it relates to something the customer already initiated. A text telling that same customer about a weekend sale, a new menu item, or "we miss you, come back in" is marketing, even if it's short and friendly.

Here's where owners get tripped up: adding a promo line onto the end of a transactional text turns the whole message into marketing in most reasonable readings of these rules. "Your order is ready for pickup! Also, 20% off all bao this weekend 🥟" is not a pickup notification anymore — it's an ad with a receipt attached. If you want to do both, send them as two separate messages, and only send the second one to people who opted into promotional texts specifically, not just anyone who's ever ordered from you.

This split is worth writing down somewhere your staff can see it — a sticky note by the register, a line in your onboarding notes for whoever handles the phone. "Order updates go to everyone who orders. Sale texts only go to people on the promo list." Simple as that, but it's the rule most small businesses break first.

Whatever the exact statute says, the practical standard is consistent and worth building your habits around regardless of what state you're in:

• Get explicit opt-in before texting someone for marketing purposes — not just "they gave us their number once"
• Keep a record of when and how they agreed
• Make opting out as easy as replying "STOP"

Explicit opt-in means the customer took a specific action to agree to texts, separate from giving you their number for another reason. None of these count as opting in to future marketing:

• Handing you a business card
• Paying with a card that has a phone number tied to loyalty rewards
• Texting you once to ask a question

It has to be a clear yes to that specific thing.

Set real sending-hour rules for your business and don't text customers late at night or early morning just because it's convenient for your own schedule — a promo text sent at 9pm from your phone while you're closing up reads very differently to the person receiving it than it does to you sending it. A safe range most businesses land on is roughly 8am to 8pm local time, and holding to it consistently is worth more than trying to memorize an exact legal cutoff.

If you're texting people in Texas specifically, check whether your business needs to register with the state before sending marketing messages — this is worth a few minutes confirming with a current source or a local attorney rather than guessing, since penalties for skipping registration can be real and this is the kind of detail that changes as agencies issue guidance.

The cheapest fix is the one you make before you ever send a text: add a clear checkbox or spoken confirmation at the point of collection — "Text me appointment reminders and promotions" — and keep a simple log of who agreed and when. That log is your protection if anyone ever questions whether you had permission, and it can be as basic as a spreadsheet column with a date next to each phone number.

Think through every place a phone number enters your business right now, because consent needs to happen at each one separately. A customer who opts in on your website's booking form hasn't opted in on your in-person sign-up sheet, and vice versa. If you collect numbers in three different ways, such as:

• Online booking
• A paper form at the counter
• A QR code on your table tents

Each of those needs its own clear opt-in language, not one blanket assumption that covers all of them.

For spoken confirmation, like a stylist asking a walk-in "can I text you when your color's ready?", the safest habit is following up with a one-time text that restates what they agreed to: "Thanks for confirming — you'll get appointment reminders from [business]. Reply STOP to opt out anytime." That single message does double duty: it's your written record and it's the opt-out notice, both automatically, at the moment the relationship starts.

If you already have a list you're not sure about, the safe move is a one-time re-permission text that does three things, in order:

1. Introduce yourself
2. Explain what they'll get
3. Ask them to confirm

Anyone who doesn't respond gets dropped from the list. It costs you some numbers, but it's far better than texting people who never actually said yes — and a list of people who genuinely want your texts converts better than a bigger list full of people who forgot they were ever on it. Think of the cleanup less as losing contacts and more as keeping the customers you already have engaged instead of annoyed.

A re-permission message might read: "Hi, this is [name] from [business]. We'd like to text you about appointments and occasional promotions — reply YES to stay on our list, or ignore this and we'll remove your number."

1. Send it once
2. Wait a reasonable window (a week is common)
3. Actually follow through on removing the non-responders

Keeping people "just in case" defeats the purpose of doing the cleanup at all.

While you're at it, separate your list into two: a transactional list (order and appointment updates only) and a promotional list (sales, announcements, seasonal offers). Only people who explicitly opted into promotional texts belong on the second one. This split also protects you operationally — if a customer complains about a promo text, you can show exactly when and how they opted into that specific category, rather than pointing to a single undifferentiated list and hoping it covers you.

Texting customers from your own personal phone works fine at a handful of numbers, but it stops scaling the moment you need to prove consent, honor opt-outs automatically, or send at the right time of day without babysitting it. A dedicated business texting platform — the kind built for appointment reminders and customer messaging rather than a personal messaging app — usually handles STOP requests automatically, timestamps consent, and blocks you from sending outside your configured hours.

When you're comparing options, the features worth checking for are:

• Automatic STOP/opt-out handling that actually removes the number rather than just muting it on your end
• A consent log you can export if you're ever asked to show it
• Scheduled send windows so a message written at 11pm doesn't go out until morning
• Separate lists or tags for transactional versus promotional messages so you're not manually sorting contacts every time you send something

While you're evaluating a new platform, it's also worth reviewing basic cybersecurity habits to pair with it, since you'll be storing customer phone numbers and consent records in one more place.

Many point-of-sale and booking systems Hmong-owned restaurants, salons, and service businesses already use — the kind that handles appointments or online ordering — have this built in or as an add-on, so check what you're already paying for before adding a new subscription. The goal isn't a fancier tool for its own sake; it's removing the parts of compliance that depend on you remembering to do them correctly every single time.

An opt-out has to work the moment it's requested — not "we'll take you off next time we update the list." If your texting tool doesn't handle STOP automatically, build a same-day habit: check replies at least once a day, and remove anyone who says stop, unsubscribe, or anything that clearly means "don't text me" even if they don't use the exact keyword. "Please stop texting me" and "take me off this list" count just as much as the word STOP does.

Someone replying "who is this?" or "how did you get my number" is a signal worth taking seriously even if it's not a formal complaint. It usually means they don't remember opting in, which means your consent record for that number is weak. Respond politely, remind them where the number came from, and if they don't confirm they want to stay on the list, treat it the same as an opt-out.

If you ever do get a real complaint — a customer who says they never agreed to receive texts and wants it escalated — your consent log is what protects you. Being able to say "here's the date and method they opted in" turns a potential dispute into a quick, calm conversation. Not having that record is what turns it into a real problem.

None of this has to be complicated to maintain once it's set up right — the habits that protect you are small and repeatable, not a compliance department. Revisit your opt-in language and your list split every few months, especially after you add a new way for customers to reach you, like a new online ordering system or a referral program that starts collecting numbers on its own.

If you bring on staff who handle customer communication, walk them through the transactional-versus-promotional split directly rather than assuming they'll figure it out — it's the single most common way businesses accidentally drift out of compliance, one well-meaning employee adding a discount code to an order-confirmation text. This is really just one piece of the broader communication habits that move a business forward — clear expectations, written down, rather than assumed.

And because state rules in this area are still developing, treat this as a living practice rather than a box you check once. A quick check-in with a current source or a local attorney once a year, especially if you're growing your list quickly or expanding into new communication channels, costs far less than untangling a complaint after the fact.