A text from a shop is either the most welcome message on a phone or the most resented, and the difference is not the offer. It is whether the person asked for it, whether they know who sent it, whether they can stop it, and how often it comes. The law covers the first three. Good manners covers the fourth.
The law, in plain words
Australia's Spam Act 2003 applies to commercial electronic messages, which includes text messages and emails from a business to a customer. It asks three things of every message.
Consent. The person must have agreed to receive messages from you. Express consent is best: they did something that clearly meant yes. A customer who typed their mobile into your join page, received a code and entered it to join your club has given express consent to hear from your shop. A number copied from an order book has not.
Identify yourself. The message must say clearly who it is from and how to contact you. Your shop name at the front of the text, every time.
A way out that works. Every message must include a functional way to unsubscribe, and you must honour it within five business days. A link that goes nowhere, or a STOP that is ignored, is a breach.
The penalties are real and the regulator does act on complaints. But the practical point is simpler: a shop that breaks these rules loses the customer and the customer's friends.
How Counter Club handles each one
Consent: members join only themselves, at the counter by QR or from your link, and confirm the number with a texted code. There is no owner form to type a number in. You cannot upload a list. Every member in your club was put there by its owner.
Identify yourself: a campaign text reads your shop name, a colon, then your words. You do not have to remember to sign it.
A way out: every message carries that member's own opt-out link, and if your words run long the words are trimmed, never the link. On Local Favourite your texts come from a number that is yours alone, so a reply of "STOP", "unsubscribe", "opt out", "no", "cancel", "end" or "quit" opts that person out of your shop at once. Opted-out members are marked on your list and skipped by every future send. You cannot override it.
Email is the same shape: only members who typed an address and confirmed it from a link get email, and every email carries the opt-out link in the footer.
The habits the law does not cover
Being legal is the floor. Being welcome is the point.
Send when you have news. The best shop texts are about something that happened today: the mangoes are in, the new vintage landed, it is pouring and there is soup. A text with nothing in it but an offer reads as a sale; a text with news in it reads as a note from a shop you like.
Send rarely. A greengrocer with produce news can get away with twice a month. A butcher is once a month. A boutique is a handful of times a year. If you are not sure, halve it. Watch the opt-outs on the Members page after each send: a jump means you sent one too many or said too little.
Send at a sensible hour. Mid-morning or early afternoon, never before eight or after seven, never on a Sunday morning. The quiet-Tuesday text goes out at noon for a two to four window, not at nine for a vague afternoon.
Say the price. A text that makes people come in to find out what something costs annoys the half who would not have come. A text with the price in it is a courtesy.
Keep it short. Your words have to share the message with your shop name and the opt-out link. Write under 160 characters of your own and it reads as one text on most phones. Counter Club allows up to 300 and the whole message is kept under 480 with the link, but shorter is kinder.
Mean the offer. If the club gets 15 percent on Thursday and the public gets it on Friday, the club text was a trick and the next one is ignored.
What to do when someone replies
A STOP is handled for you. Any other reply is not shown in the dashboard yet, so you will not see a question sent back to your number. That is the reason to put your shop's phone number in any text likely to prompt one, or to say "ask at the counter" instead of "reply". If someone complains in person or by phone, apologise, and check that their row is marked opted out, which it will be if they used the link or a stop word. If it is not and they still want out, email us and we will do it.
One text a year with nothing to sell
The message members remember is the one that asked for nothing. Once a year, usually at the end of it, send a thank you with your holiday hours and no offer. It costs one message per member and tells the club something about the shop that no discount can.