How can my tattoo shop text its clients?

Your shop can text its tattoo and piercing clients once each one has said yes in writing and the phone carriers have approved your shop. The yes is a box on your tattoo waiver that a client ticks or leaves empty. The approval is a registration your shop files once, and it usually takes a few days. After that, the aftercare note, the review ask and your flash day go out by text from your shop's own number, inside the hours the law allows.

This is a plain-language summary, not legal advice. Your local health department has the final word on your tattoo consent form, and a lawyer has it on this. Ask them, and keep your consent records.

Where does my texting list come from?

From your waiver form. Below the terms box every client has to tick, the form asks 2 more questions, and each box starts unticked with Optional written beside it. The first, the aftercare box, lets your shop text or email the client after today about their aftercare and how they're healing. The second, the news and offers box, lets you text or email them your news, offers and events. A client who ticks a box and gives a mobile number can get texts of that kind, and everyone else gets the email instead.

That is the shape the federal rule asks for. A marketing text needs the client's prior express written consent, and the written agreement has to say that "the person is not required to sign the agreement (directly or indirectly), or agree to enter into such an agreement as a condition of purchasing any property, goods, or services." A box a client has to tick to get tattooed fails that test. A box they can leave empty and still sit down passes it.

Clients who signed before your form had the 2 boxes are never texted on that old signature, because the old form folded the yes into the terms everyone had to accept. They still get your emails, and the next time one of them signs and ticks a box, your texts reach them too.

Why does my shop have to register before it texts?

Because the phone carriers want to know who a business is before they carry its texts, and that covers every business, down to a one-chair shop. Twilio, the company our texts go through, says anyone sending them from software to US phone numbers has to register, and the carriers call it A2P 10DLC registration. Registering tells them 2 things: your shop is a real business, and your clients say yes with a box on your waiver form.

You fill it in once, on the Texting screen in your dashboard, and we file it for you. It asks for your shop's legal name exactly as it reads on the IRS letter that came with your EIN, the EIN itself, and the business address on that letter. A business with no EIN registers as its owner, with the owner's own mobile number. The review usually takes a few days, and now and then more than a week. If it comes back, the screen says why in plain words and what to do about it, and Registering your shop for texting walks through every answer.

A shop not on Pro yet fills in the form first and checks out for Pro next. Nothing goes to the review before the payment clears, and the registration goes in the moment it does.

What can my shop text its clients?

Under Marketing in your dashboard, each automatic message has its own switch for texting. Once a message's switch is on, it goes by text to each client who ticked that message's box and gave a mobile number, and by email to everyone else:

• The thank-you, right after a client signs, with a link to your aftercare sheet, since a text can't carry the sheet itself. It goes to clients who ticked the aftercare box.
• The touch-up check-in, 4 weeks after a tattoo, to the aftercare box too.
• The Google review ask, the day after a visit. This one and the rest go to clients who ticked the news and offers box.
• Not back in a year, the note to a client who hasn't been in for a year.
• Your piercing and tattoo offers.

Texting your clients, in the help section, says which client gets which one, and when.

A message you write yourself can go by text too. A flash day on Saturday, written in your dashboard, goes out to the clients you email: by text to each one who ticked the news and offers box and gave a mobile number, and by email to the rest.

Each text goes in our words until you write your own, and every one starts with your shop's name and ends with the line that lets a client stop. Here is the touch-up check-in from a made-up shop:

Ink & Iron Parlor: It's been 4 weeks since your tattoo. If any spot healed light or patchy, come see us for a touch-up. Reply STOP to opt out.

A client gets at most 1 text a day from your shop, whatever is due. Your texts come from your shop's own local number, in your area code when one is free there, or else in your state. texting.tattoo shows 2 of them on a phone, word for word.

When can a text go out?

A text goes out only from 8am to 9pm on your shop's clock, inside your state's own hours where it sets them, and never on a day your state closes. 32 states have a texting rule of their own, and the table there has every state's hours, with its caps and closed days beside them. A text that comes due outside the hours waits, and goes when they open.

The thank-you is the exception, because it belongs to the moment of signing. A client who signs outside the hours gets the thank-you by email, with the aftercare sheet attached.

What does texting cost?

Texting comes with Pro, which is $150 a year or $15 a month on top of your waivers.tattoo account, itself $50 a year or $5 a month. In October 2026, filing the registration costs nothing beyond that: its fees are ours.

When your shop is approved, there is $5 on your texting balance to start. Each text takes 1.5 cents from it, and a long text that goes in 2 parts takes that twice. If the balance can't cover a text, the client gets the email instead. Texting isn't open to a shop in HIPAA mode.

What happens when a client replies STOP?

Their texts stop. Every text ends with the line "Reply STOP to opt out." A client who replies STOP gets no more texts from your shop, and their emails keep coming. If they text START later, the texts come back on. You can also turn a client's texts off yourself, on their page in your dashboard.

Any other reply comes to you by email with the client's number, and you answer from your own phone. That includes a client who says stop in other words, like "please stop texting me", and the federal rule counts that too: a client may take back consent in any reasonable way, and a shop has to honor it "within a reasonable time not to exceed ten business days from receipt of such request." So when that email comes, turn their texts off on their page the same day.

Why texting starts at your waiver form

A text to a tattoo client is a few switches once the yes is on file, and nothing at all without it. The registration takes a few minutes and a few days. The list takes as long as your clients take to come back, because it grows one signed waiver at a time. That is the one part of texting no registration can speed up.