The Book-Again Text Pack

The relationship the rules recognise has a number on it. Five hundred and forty days from a client's last transaction with you, or ninety days from an enquiry, and after that you are outside the established business relationship as the regulation defines it.

Which reframes a rebooking programme from a nice habit into something with a clock running. A client who fished eighteen months ago is inside the window; one who fished nineteen months ago is not. Whether any of the rules built on that definition reach a particular message is a separate question, and the definition itself is the useful part because it tells you how long a relationship is treated as live. Below the definitions and the timing restrictions are read from the regulation, then the messages follow. None of this page is legal advice, and the rules do move: ring the Commission and verify the exact current requirements before you scale any of it. Sibling templates are indexed under the running the business hub.

What is an established business relationship?

Two routes in, with two different clocks.

Section 310.2 of Title 16 defines an established business relationship as a relationship between a seller and a person based on either of two things.

The first is the person's purchase, rental or lease of the seller's goods or services, or a financial transaction between the person and the seller, within the five hundred and forty days immediately preceding the date of a telemarketing call.

The second is the person's inquiry or application regarding a good or service offered by the seller, within the ninety days immediately preceding.

Five hundred and forty days is roughly eighteen months, which for a seasonal business means a client has one full season plus most of a second before the clock runs out.

Part 310 is carried on the eCFR.

How that window should drive the sequence is covered in the rebooking piece.

Blue Line, MA

Why does the number matter to a guide?

Because it is the only defensible definition of a live client.

Operations tend to treat everybody who ever fished with them as a current client, and to treat an enquiry from two years ago as a lead.

The regulation supplies a considered answer to how long a relationship stays live for these purposes, and it is dramatically shorter for an enquiry than for a transaction.

Ninety days on an enquiry is the figure that should change behaviour, because it means somebody who asked about a trip and did not book is outside the window within a season.

Which argues for following up an enquiry inside that period rather than adding it to a list and mailing it every winter.

And it argues for a rebooking sequence that reaches a client well inside eighteen months rather than whenever you remember.

What the enquiry follow-up should look like is covered in the response time piece.

Lake Fork Premier, TX

What is telemarketing, as defined?

Narrower than it sounds, and interstate is part of it.

Section 310.2 defines telemarketing as a plan, program or campaign conducted to induce the purchase of goods or services or a charitable contribution, by use of one or more telephones, and which involves more than one interstate telephone call.

Two elements there are worth noticing. It has to be a plan, program or campaign rather than an individual message, and it has to involve more than one interstate call.

Which means a guide texting three local clients about a cancellation is a long way from the definition, and a guide running a systematic campaign across several states is closer to it.

The definition also excludes the solicitation of sales through the mailing of a catalogue meeting stated conditions, where the person soliciting does not solicit customers by telephone but only receives calls initiated by customers.

Whether any particular practice falls inside is a question for an adviser rather than for this page.

Keeping a state against every record is the tooling piece.

When may an outbound call be made?

Between eight in the morning and nine at night, in the client's time zone.

Section 310.4(c) provides that without the prior consent of a person, it is an abusive telemarketing act or practice for a telemarketer to engage in outbound telephone calls to a person's residence at any time other than between eight in the morning and nine at night, local time at the called person's location.

The words local time at the called person's location are the operative ones for a guiding operation, because a guide in Montana texting a client in Connecticut at seven in the evening is reaching them at nine.

That is a discipline worth adopting for messages regardless of whether the rule reaches them, since a text arriving at ten at night is a text that annoys somebody.

The practical answer is to send between ten in the morning and six in the evening in the recipient's zone, which is safely inside any reading of it.

Which means the client record needs a state against it, and most do not.

What the client record should hold is covered in the numbers piece.

What must an outbound sales call disclose?

Four things, promptly and clearly.

Section 310.4(d) provides that it is an abusive telemarketing act or practice for a telemarketer, in an outbound telephone call or upsell to induce the purchase of goods or services, to fail to disclose truthfully, promptly and in a clear and conspicuous manner the identity of the seller, that the purpose of the call is to sell goods or services, and the nature of the goods or services.

Read as a model for a message rather than as a requirement, that produces a useful test: does the first line say who you are and what you are asking.

A text opening with hey, got a cancellation Thursday fails it, because a client who has not stored your number has no idea who is writing.

Which is a practical failure rather than a legal one, and it is the most common defect in guide text messages.

Every message below therefore opens with a name.

Why the descriptor and the name should match everywhere is covered in the naming piece.

The autumn message

Sent within weeks of the trip, while the day is fresh.

Text: Evan here, Driftline. Good day on the Madison with you in June. I am opening next season's calendar in January and holding a few of the better weeks for people who fished this year. Want me to pencil something in?

Name first, the specific trip second, then the offer, then a question that can be answered with one word.

The specific trip reference does most of the work, because it proves the message is not a blast and it reminds them of a good day.

Pencil something in is deliberately low commitment, since the object at this stage is a reply rather than a deposit.

And it sits comfortably inside the transaction window with over a year to spare.

How the autumn work should otherwise run is covered in the fall wrap-up piece.

The January message

Shorter, with a date attached.

Text: Evan, Driftline. Calendar for the season is open. The week of 20 June and the first week of July are the ones you liked. Want either?

By January the client has thought about the season, so the message can be concrete rather than exploratory.

Naming the specific weeks they fished previously converts far better than offering the whole calendar, because it removes the decision.

Where you do not know which weeks they liked, the sequence has already failed at the record-keeping stage rather than at the message.

And a two-word question at the end is what produces a reply from somebody reading on a phone.

What the fuller announcement should contain is covered in the season announcement piece.

The cancellation fill

Named, private, and immediate.

Text: Evan, Driftline. Had a cancellation on Thursday, water is in good shape. Yours at $500 if you can move, and I am only asking you.

Sent to one client at a time in order of who is most likely to say yes, rather than broadcast to a list.

Broadcasting a discounted date teaches everybody to wait, which is a slow and expensive way to fill Tuesdays.

The I am only asking you clause matters, because it is true and because it explains why the price is what it is.

And it goes out immediately, since a Thursday cancellation known on Monday has three days of value and none by Wednesday.

Why the private version protects the rate is covered in the discount scripts piece.

The lapsed client message

Honest about the gap, and asked once.

Text: Evan, Driftline. It has been a couple of seasons since we fished. No pitch, just checking whether you are still chasing them and whether I should keep you on the list.

Somebody at or beyond eighteen months has fallen outside the transaction window, and the honest move is to ask whether they want to stay in contact rather than to keep sending.

Which produces three outcomes, all useful: a booking, a clear yes to staying on the list, or a removal that improves everything you send afterwards.

Asking once and honouring the answer is the whole of it, and asking twice converts a lapsed client into an irritated one.

It also keeps the list to people who want to hear from you, which is worth more than its size.

Pruning the list before a send is the season announcement piece.

What should be recorded against each client?

Four fields, and none of them is a note.

The date of their last trip, because that is what the transaction window runs from and it is the field that decides whether a message is worth sending.

The state they live in, because the timing restriction is expressed in local time at the recipient's location and a guide cannot apply it without knowing.

The week or weeks they fished, because the January message converts on a specific date and not on an open calendar.

And whether they have asked to be left alone, which is the only field that overrides all the others.

Four fields in a spreadsheet is enough, and the absence of any one of them is why most rebooking sequences produce generic messages.

What else the records should carry is covered in the bookkeeping piece.

Does a text beat an email here?

For short, dated, one-question messages, comfortably.

A rebooking ask is one question with one answer, which is the shape a text handles better than any email.

An email is better where the message carries several pieces of information the client will refer back to, which is the announcement rather than the ask.

Which suggests the division that most operations get backwards: the ask by text, the detail by email.

It also means the text should never try to carry the rate card, the calendar and the terms, because a client scrolling a phone will not read them.

One question, one answer, and the detail follows once they say yes.

What belongs in the email instead is covered in the season announcement piece.

How many messages is too many?

Three a year, and the third should have a reason.

Two proactive touches inside the transaction window, in autumn and January, plus whatever operational messages a booked trip generates, is a sequence nobody objects to.

A third is defensible where something has actually happened: a cancellation, a genuine change to the water, or a date they asked about becoming available.

A fourth is a pattern, and a pattern from a business people fish with once a year reads as pressure.

Which means the discipline is not the wording but the restraint, and the restraint is what makes the two that matter get read.

An operation texting monthly has trained its clients to ignore it by March.

Why the reminder messages sit outside this count is covered in the trip reminder piece.

Where do text packs go wrong?

Five ways, and the first is anonymity.

Opening without a name, so a client who never stored your number has no idea who is writing and does not reply.

Broadcasting a discounted cancellation, which teaches the whole book that waiting is rewarded.

Sending in your own time zone rather than the client's, which is the difference between a message at six and one at nine.

Keeping no record of which weeks a client fished, so the January message offers a calendar rather than a date.

And continuing to message somebody well outside the window without ever asking whether they want to be there.

What the intake record should capture to prevent that is covered in the intake form piece.

How the review ask fits alongside it is covered in the review request piece.

What about the client who never replies?

Two messages, then leave them alone until they surface.

Silence after two well-timed asks is an answer, and treating it as an invitation to try a third framing is how a guide acquires a reputation.

Which does not mean removing them, since somebody who ignores a text may open an announcement email or walk up at a show.

It means dropping them out of the text sequence and leaving them in the once-a-year email, where the cost of being ignored is nothing.

That distinction is worth making explicitly in whatever list you keep, because otherwise the sequence keeps running on autopilot.

And it preserves the possibility of the relationship rather than exhausting it.

Why the annual email is the safer channel for that is covered in the email automation piece.

Should the messages be automated?

Scheduled, not generated.

The timing should be automatic, because a sequence that depends on remembering fails in the month it matters.

The content should not be, because the whole value of the autumn message is the specific reference to the specific day, and no template produces that.

Which points at the same arrangement as everywhere else in this trade: an automated prompt to you, and thirty seconds of typing.

Ninety clients at thirty seconds is forty-five minutes twice a year, which is the cheapest marketing work available.

Anything fully automatic ends up telling somebody they had a great day on water they never fished.

How that prompt should be built is covered in the tooling piece.

What is the working pack?

Four messages, two scheduled, two situational.

Autumn, within weeks of the trip: name, the specific day you had, the offer of a held week, and a one-word question.

January, when the calendar opens: name, the calendar is open, the specific weeks they liked, and a two-word question.

Cancellation fills: named, private, immediate, with the price and the reason it is private.

Lapsed clients at or beyond the transaction window: honest about the gap, asked once, and the answer honoured.

Send everything between ten and six in the recipient's local time, open every message with your name and business, and keep a state and a favourite week against every client.

The rulemaking authority for the part is at 15 U.S.C. 6102, with a parallel text on govinfo.

How the whole rebooking machine should be built is covered in the rebooking piece.