B2B SMS prospecting in France: legal, under three conditions

I will admit it: while building Phantera, we first believed that every prospecting text needed the recipient’s prior consent. For B2B in France, that is wrong. We corrected our reading, then our product. Here is the exact rule, as it applies to prospecting in France.

What the CNIL says

For SMS or MMS prospecting aimed at professionals, the CNIL, the French data protection authority, accepts legitimate interest as the basis, without prior consent, when the subject of the message relates to the profession of the person contacted. Prior consent remains the rule for private individuals.

The three conditions

1. The message relates to the recipient’s job.
2. It makes the identity of the sending organization known.
3. It offers a simple way to refuse further messages.

As with email, the person must have been informed that their number may be used, including if you got it from a third party.

STOP and sending hours: what the gateway does

A prospecting text is sent from a sender name, for example your company’s name, which cannot receive replies. Opting out therefore goes through a short code: “STOP au 36xxx” (French for “STOP to 36xxx”). With Brevo, the message ends with “STOP au [STOP_CODE]” and the platform replaces that marker with its short code; Brevo is the one that receives and handles the STOP replies. Brevo also states that marketing texts are not sent between 10 pm and 8 am, on Sundays or on French public holidays: they wait for the next allowed slot.

How Phantera applies it

• You connect your own Brevo account: texts go out under your sender name and are billed to your account.
• An SMS step in your sequence goes out automatically on the planned day, as a marketing text, with the STOP mention.
• The first sentence introduces the sender, and the message invites a reply to the email already sent, since the text cannot be replied to.
• A STOP moves the lead to “Do not contact”: no more email, no more LinkedIn, no more texts.
• Without a Brevo account, the step lands in your “To send” queue and you send it from your phone.