What you must know before texting customers marketing offers in Australia (ACMA Spam Act)

🚨Caution

This article is general information, not legal advice. Before finalising your messaging policy, have it reviewed by an Australian legal professional.

“Your booking is confirmed” and “20% off this week!” are both SMS messages, but under Australia's Spam Act 2003 they're treated completely differently. Only the second one is regulated — and real fines have been issued for breaches.

The distinction that matters

Transactional messages — booking confirmations, changes, cancellations, and reminders that carry purely factual information with no promotional content are, in practice, treated as outside the scope of the Spam Act. An unsubscribe link isn't mandatory here, but the business must still be clearly identifiable.

Commercial (marketing) messages — anything intended to sell, including win-back offers, birthday discounts, or promotional announcements, follows an entirely different set of rules.

⚠️Warning

The moment a promotional element gets mixed into a transactional text, the marketing-message rules apply to the whole message. “Thanks for your booking! Enjoy 10% off your next visit” is exactly this trap — don't mix the two.

What a marketing message legally requires

According to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), commercial messages must have (ACMA, “Avoid sending spam”):

Prior consent (opt-in) — the customer must have actually agreed to receive marketing messages.
A working unsubscribe mechanism — it cannot require a login or extra personal information, and cannot charge a fee.
A processing deadline — an unsubscribe request must be actioned (marketing sending fully stopped) within 5 business days. Sending a marketing message after that window is itself a breach.
A minimum functioning period — the unsubscribe facility must keep working for at least 30 days after the message was sent.

In practical terms, for a salon

Confirmation and reminder texts are fine to send as-is — until you add a discount or promotional line, at which point it becomes a marketing message.
Win-back texts and promotions should be sent separately, with an unsubscribe link included every time.
Once a customer opts out, it needs to be reflected as close to instantly as possible. The “5 business days” figure is a hard ceiling, not a comfortable buffer.

Biseo automatically attaches an unsubscribe link to marketing-type notifications (like win-back messages), and a customer's opt-out click is reflected immediately — so this isn't something you have to track manually every time.

Want to send notifications without tracking opt-out compliance by hand? Start free.