Pest control operators already know text messages work.
A customer receives a reminder that service is scheduled tomorrow and replies with a thumbs-up. A technician sends a follow-up after a job and gets a five-star review request completed before pulling out of the driveway.
That's texting most companies are already doing.
Promotional text campaigns are different. During a recent FieldRoutes webinar, "Introducing SMS Campaigns: Expand Your Marketing Reach with Marketing Pro," operators got a look at how the channel works, what the rules are, and how to get started in Marketing Pro.
The channel is more powerful than what most operators are already doing, according to Jason Semthiti, a pro account manager with FieldRoutes, and Mark Anson, a product manager with ServiceTitan, the webinar’s presenters.
"There is immense value to unlock there," Anson says. "But unlike direct mail and email, SMS is a regulated space. There are laws surrounding SMS, and we wanted to make sure we've built a product that not only unlocks this very valuable channel but does so in a safe way."
Here's how to do it right.
Not all text messages are the same, and the distinction matters more than most people realize.
Transactional messages such as appointment confirmations, technician-on-the-way notifications, and service reminders, operate under implied consent. If a customer gave you their phone number, you can reach them that way for messages related to their service.
Promotional messages are different. Anything that promotes a service, offers a discount, or encourages a customer to book something new requires explicit written consent.
Verbal agreement isn't enough. A checkbox buried in an estimate isn't enough. The customer has to actively opt in, in writing, specifically for marketing messages.
Sending promotional texts to customers who haven't opted in exposes your business to real legal risk under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. Fines can be assessed per message, and regulators actively monitor for violations. This isn't a technicality; it's the framework on which the entire SMS channel runs.
Marketing Pro is built around it. The platform will not send a promotional text to a customer who hasn't opted in. That protection runs in the background automatically, so you don't have to track it manually.
Before your first promotional campaign goes out, your business needs to be registered with the Campaign Registry, the verification system mobile carriers use to confirm you're a legitimate sender and not a spammer.
Think of it like a driver's license for texting. You can't send certain types of messages without approval for those specific use cases, and if you try, carriers will block your messages. That means campaigns that go nowhere, a sender reputation that takes time to rebuild, and money spent on outreach that never arrives.
The Marketing Pro onboarding team walks customers through TCR registration as part of setup. It's not something you navigate alone. Once approved, you're cleared to send.
This is where patience pays off. Marketing Pro gives you two tools to collect written consent: an embeddable opt-in form for your website and a dedicated link you can drop into existing email campaigns.
Neither approach builds a list overnight. But as that list grows, it becomes the most responsive segment of your customer base: people who have specifically said they want to hear from you. That's a different kind of audience than an email list, and it performs accordingly. Industry average open rates for text messages run around 98%, compared to roughly 20% for email.
Start collecting opt-ins now, before you have campaigns ready to send. The list is the foundation on which everything else runs.
You don't need to build SMS campaigns from scratch. If you're already running email campaigns in Marketing Pro, such as winback sequences, unsold estimate follow-ups, or seasonal promotions, SMS can be added directly to those existing campaigns.
A practical approach: Lead with a text. SMS is a more immediate channel, and customers are more likely to act on it quickly. Follow with email as the fallback. You can also flip the order, starting with email and using a final SMS as a push to get the customer to act.
Either way, you're layering a new channel onto work you've already done, not starting over.
Once campaigns are running, Marketing Pro manages the compliance mechanics automatically. Quiet hours are enforced by time zone, with messages deploying only during permitted windows. If a customer replies "STOP," the platform immediately opts them out of future promotional messages without any manual action on your end. Transactional messages, such as service reminders, are unaffected.
The campaign dashboard tracks sent volume, reply rates, link clicks, and revenue attributed to each campaign. Revenue generated is what tells you whether the list you've been building is working.
