Age-gating's importance depends on your business. Anything having to do with sex, hate, alcohol, firearms, and tobacco have restrictions across Short Codes, or 6 digit numbers. Currently, only alcohol and tobacco can be sent over short codes and they have to be to age-gated Groups, or a segmentation of your list of subscribers. Age-gating makes sure that the subscribers, or people who opt-in to your groups, are over the age of 18, a legal requirement to receive marketing messages about alcohol or tobacco.
Make sure you fully understand S.H.A.F.T compliance by reading the S.H.A.F.T Guidelines.
How to Age-Gate Your Groups
Step 1:
Go to Groups & Keywords.
Either select/edit an existing group or create a new one.
Step 2:
Under Advanced Features, check the Enable double opt-in box to enable a double opt-in.
Step 3:
From the drop down, select Text Birth Date to confirm.
Step 4:
Click +Add Validation button.
Step 5:
Select Age from the Validation Type drop down, select >= (older or equal to) from the next drop down, and enter the number 21 in the last box on the validation line.
Step 6:
Type in the error message. Here is an example of a compliant one that you can copy and utilize:
Sorry, you are not 21 years of age or older and cannot opt-in to our program.
