Emailing and texting clients is fast and convenient when you run a photography business but there are risks.
A digital response isn’t as personal or complete as a phone call or an in-person conversation. There’s room for misunderstandings and hurt feelings. Certain usages of email and text communications also may expose you and your business to professional or legal risks.
It’s important to know what risks exist, how to manage your exposure and what you can do to better protect yourself and your business. Here are four areas to watch out for.
Marketing Communications Risks
Everyone has received unwanted marketing messages and most people just ignore them, unsubscribe or put themselves on a Do-Not-Call registry. But sending certain types of unwanted marketing can result in legal actions and hefty fines. This is a major risk for texting businesses.
Sending out a series of SMS text marketing messages to all your past clients may seem like a fast, easy way to advertise a discount or new photo package. But without written permission to market these offers to your past clients, you could face liability of up to $1,500 per text message, state civil actions or FCC penalties.
To protect yourself, familiarize yourself with FCC rules and regulations, read the Mobile Marketing Association’s best practices, document written consent to market to your clients and insure your business to minimize your exposure.
Privacy and Security Risks
In photography, you handle many types of digital information. Your clients trust you with their contact and payment information. However, you may also share other data digitally. In email or text, clients or vendors may share venue, door or gate access codes or other sensitive information. You may email a client’s private family photos or collaborate with a corporate client on confidential intellectual property.
All these communications entail privacy and security risks. Your computer and phone are vulnerable to physical loss or theft. Data could also be compromised in a hack or cyber attack. Email and text have weak encryption and messages could be read by others.
To protect yourself, always give your physical devices a secure login or lock-screen password, conduct payments securely with a reputable processor, avoid sharing sensitive info through unencrypted channels and be cautious of cyber attacks.
Business Risks
Emailing and texting clients can carry other liability risks for your business. Clients often expect an immediate response, outside of normal business hours. Constant texting and email can be a drain on time and productivity and lessen professionalism.
The brevity of texting also makes it easy to miscommunicate with clients. It’s easier to miss appointments or deadlines. Your device or its data could get lost or damaged leading to business problems. Your client’s devices and data are also vulnerable.
To minimize problems, start each project with some ground rules for emailing and texting, use the contract set expectations for when and how texting and email should be utilized.
Legal Risks
You and your business could also face legal risks related to texts and emails if one of your clients takes you to court. Text and email records are often considered relevant in disputes between businesses and clients and may be requested as part of discovery or litigation.
In these circumstances, most businesses have easy access to email records, but not text records. It can be difficult to preserve and produce the necessary documentation. This may lead to a court finding there has been a data spoilation, that records are missing or charge a failure to produce requested data. These scenarios can result in poor claims outcomes, high legal costs and legal fines or penalties.
To protect yourself, use an app or tool to archive your text messages with clients, and ensure you are adequately protected with insurance coverage.
Emailing and texting clients can make running your photography business more convenient and efficient, but you must address the added risks these communication tools introduce. Protect yourself and your business with insurance coverage from Lockton Affinity.