General Information

Welcome to the privacy policy, cookie policy and marketing & communications policy for SMS Expert Limited. SMS Expert has its registered address at Oak Business Centre, 79-93 Ratcliffe Road, Sileby, Leicestershire, LE12 7PU and is a limited company registered in England and Wales, no. 12106151. For the rest of this document we will use the SMS Expert name in place of SMS Expert Limited. For clients this document also makes up part of the overall Contract and Data Protection Agreement we have with you and which can be found within your Dashboard.

This document is meant to help you understand what data we collect, why we collect it, and what we do with it. When you share information with us, we believe that by using it we can make our services even better for you. For example, we can use it to help us identify the most relevant of our services that you may require, both now and in the future, or to help us develop new services for the future that we believe would be useful to you. As you use our services, we want it to be clear to you how we're using information and the ways in which we look to protect your privacy.

SMS Expert is committed to protecting the privacy of all its clients and website users. SMS Expert is a B2B (business to business) company, primarily providing SMS related marketing and communications services and products to other businesses. However we accept that from time to time an individual person may wish to visit our website or use our services. We hope it will be understood by such persons that the services we offer are primarily for businesses and as such we would look to communicate with them in a business capacity. But in all cases we will attempt to be fair in how we hold, manage and process personal data, whether it is for an individual in their own capacity or as a sole-trader, or a person who is visiting or using our service on behalf of a business.

Use of our websites as well as the services and products provided through our sites indicates your consent to the collection and use of information as described in this policy as well as your consent for us to communicate with you as described in this policy. Any changes to the policy will be posted on this page.

What information is collected and how is it used?

We ask you to supply certain information when you enquire with us as a sales-lead about our services or sign up with us as a client. This information may include your name, the name of your business, your postal address, email address, landline telephone and mobile numbers, website address and how you heard of us. We may also make notes in our CRM (customer relationship management system) about your requirements and service needs. This information will be used in the management of our own business and to enable us to contact you about the service you have enquired about, requested or signed up for, and to contact you about similar services that we believe may interest you now or in the future. We may also combine details of more than one sales-lead or client together when performing analysis to identify trends and common requirements so that we can continually improve our services and future offerings.

You can find further details below about the methods by which we may contact you and how you can change these contact methods or opt-out from future contact altogether. In addition, when you use our website we store your IP address and may use this information to administer our website and help to diagnose any network or server problems. We may also use it as part of our security if we believe we have identified a credible threat to our systems or our business, or an act of fraud, money laundering or other illegal behaviour or acts that are against current regulations and laws.

Sub-Processors and Divulging your data to other parties

SMS Expert will not, without your consent, divulge, sell, lease, rent or provide in any other way personal information about you to a third party, except in the following circumstances...

1. If required to do so by law or by any organisation with appropriate authority including but not limited to any formally recognised regulatory body who wish to investigate an alleged breaking or possible breaking of any relevant regulations, codes of practice, legislation, applicable laws or other rules and regulations as laid down from time to time by the Mobile Operators, police or other regulatory authorities including but not limited to those relating to the sending or receiving of SMS, MMS, RCS, email or voice messages and data or the carrying out of other marketing and communications.

2. If you have signed up for optional services which require us to pass your personal information to another company. From time to time SMS Expert may offer additional services to our clients or sales-leads that we believe to be relevant or similar to those that you currently use or have enquired about. In some cases these services may require us to pass personal data held by us to a third party. Any such service will be optional and the opt-in process will clearly show that personal data will be shared with another company. Before passing your personal data and other information to a third party we will seek your approval.

3. To any financial institution or other payment processing organisation with whom we work for the purpose of processing payments and direct debits from you, verifying credit status and/or validating financial transactions. In the case of a business we would only seek to do these things from the business entity that we are contracting to, rather than you personally. Note that SMS Expert does not gather or hold any credit or debit card information or any bank account details for our clients; this is all managed by the organisation that we currently work with for these purposes, as shown below...

    • Tide Bank Our bank that takes payments from our clients. ordinarily we do not give them your details, they simply accept your payments

    • Experian Ltd If we need to do a credit check on a company or sole-trader that requires credit terms. we will ask you before we pass your company or sole-trader details to them

    • Paypal Sometimes we allow a client to pay us using Paypal. As such you may need to setup an account with them. You are advised to read and understand their own terms and privacy policy before deciding if you wish to use their payment service

    • GoCardless Sometimes we allow a client to pay us using GoCardless which allows you to setup a direct debit facility to pay us regularly. As such you may need to setup an account with them. You are advised to read and understand their own terms and privacy policy before deciding if you wish to use their payment service

4. We may disclose data as part of a corporate transaction such as a merger or sale of assets.

5. We may share data with service companies, agents or contractors working for SMS Expert and on our behalf and as listed below. For example, a company to provide assistance in answering our sales and support telephone lines. Such service companies may need access to or be able to view personal data in order to provide those functions and in such cases, these companies must abide by our data privacy and security requirements and will only be given access to data that is strictly required for them to carry out their tasks.

    • Olark We provide a free chat facility on our website for clients and other website visitors to chat to SMS Expert staff about our Services. Olark provide this chat service and they will place cookies in your browser. You are advised to read and understand their own terms and privacy policy before deciding if you wish to use the chat service.

    • Skype We use Skype to make and receive phone calls and do online chat with clients and other website visitors about our Services. You are advised to read and understand their own terms and privacy policy before deciding if you wish to chat or speak with us.

    • Moneypenny We use Moneypenny to make and receive phone calls and to log callers details for both accepted and missed calls. You are advised to read and understand their own terms and privacy policy before deciding if you wish to speak with us.

    • Google We use Google Analytics to analyse our website visitor statistics and they will place cookies in your browser. You are advised to read and understand their own terms and privacy policy before deciding if you wish to visit our website.

Policy on data carried by us as a Communications Provider

Clients contract with SMS Expert to provide a gateway and platform allowing them to carry out a number of services such as the sending or receiving of SMS, MMS, RCS, email or voice messages and data or other marketing and communications activity. These services may require us to process additional data on their behalf...

1. We provide a web-based platform, email-to-sms gateway, sms-to-email gateway and https API's to let you send SMS to your contacts and to allow them to send SMS back to you by way of virtual numbers or 5 digit shortcodes. SMS Expert respects the privacy of this data and it is only available to you via your account. You may view logs of this information from within the dashboard found at the SMS Expert website. As part of the service we offer, we keep a log of such data for upto 12 months. We then delete this data

2. We provide an Address Book facility on our dashboard found at the SMS Expert website for you to store the names and mobile numbers of your contacts so that you can more easily contact them using SMS when you require. SMS Expert respects the privacy of this data and it is only available to you via your account. You can delete it at any time from within the dashboard found at the SMS Expert website

3. The forwarding of incoming SMS to you by way of email. These emails may be disabled by you the client at any time from within your SMS Expert dashboard found at the SMS Expert website

4.SMS Expert does not act as a Data Controller in relation to the Services we offer. We are a Data Processor that is contracted by you the client to act purely as a gateway and platform provider, allowing you, under your own full control, to send and receive your own SMS, MMS, RCS, email or voice messages and data or carry out other marketing and communications activity for yourselves through our platform and gateway

5. SMS Expert may offer an sms communications and marketing advice consultancy service. In such a case we may give advice about how sms marketing and communications may aid your business and the optimum ways to use such services, but we always do so with the strict proviso that the advice does not constitute legal advice and that you are free to seek alternative advice and any actions you take in relation to advice we have given are based on your own final decisions

Our Servers and location of your data

All your information is stored on and our services run on secure servers in the EU. Our services, client dashboards and API's all use relevant up to date secure tehnology throughout which is constantly reviewed and maintained.

Advertising and links to other websites

Our websites may contain advertising and links to other websites. However no personal information is passed to other websites if you follow one of these links. SMS Expert is not responsible for the privacy practices or content of linked websites and we would encourage you to read the privacy statements of other websites, since their privacy policy may differ from ours.

Right to view, change or delete your data

You have the right to view, change and delete the information that we store about you. If you wish to do so then please login to the relevant dashboard if you have an account with us, or email us at care@smsexpert.co.uk.

Cookie Policy

Some cookies are used on our websites which are essential to allow us to manage and secure your account and logins to the SMS Expert service and without these cookies it will be extremely difficult for us to easily or safely manage the service. We may also use some non-essential cookies to anonymously track visitors or enhance your experience of the website. We do not divulge any cookie details or information gained from our use of any cookies to third parties, unless the cookies have been placed by companies that we use to help us manage services within our website. Such third party services that we currently use are from www.olark.com to help us provide a real-time online chat service for our website visitors and clients, and www.sharethis.com who provide an easy mechanism for website visitors to share our web and blog content with their followers on various social media platforms. If you're not happy with our cookie policy then please contact us in order to discuss your requirements. To control or disable cookies from us and third parties you can also adjust your browser settings but please note that this may cause our service and website to not function correctly.

Communication and Marketing Policy

As mentioned above, SMS Expert is a B2B (business to business) company, primarily providing SMS related marketing and communications services and products to other businesses. Whilst we accept that from time to time an individual person may wish to visit our website or use our services, we hope it will be understood by such persons that the services we offer are primarily for businesses. As such we would look to communicate in a business capacity with clients or those who have shown an interest.

There are 2 primary reasons that we may communicate with you...

1. We would like from time to time to contact people and businesses with a view to using our current or future business-related services or products and to do so by phone, email, SMS text message, Twitter or Linkedin messaging. We would only do this with those who have become our clients, those who have shown an interest in our business, services or products, or with those who have communicated or connected with one of our Directors, staff, contractors or agents via a conference, exhibition, networking, phone, email, sms, or a recognised social media platform such as Linkedin or Twitter. We would like to communicate with such people if we feel we have a relevant service that may be of interest to you or your business, either now or in the future. We would like to also do this in future if we have a new service or product that is similar to one you currently use, have enquired about or used with us in the past. When we first communicate with you we will attempt to find out from you if you wish to receive future communications from us.

2. If you or your business are signed up and contracted to use our services or products then we would like the ability to email, sms or call you with mandatory service communications that are designed to update you about the status of the services or products or that alert you that any pre-paid funds are running low or that services will soon expire or have expired. These communications are designed to inform you about the service you or your business have contracted for. We hope that you will agree to accept such communications to allow us to run your services or products smoothly. However please contact us if you have any concerns about the communications we have with you.

We fully recognise that you have the right to not receive communications or to stop receiving further communications at any time from us and so you may email us at care@smsexpert.co.uk to request that we no longer contact you. You can also reply to any email that we send you or click the relevant 'unsubscribe' link or similar options that will be presented in marketing and newsletter emails.

To clarify, please contact us if you have any requests or queries regarding our communications and marketing. We will be happy to remove your account and data (or sales-lead data if you have not yet signed up to be a client) or modify the settings we hold so that we may only contact you by sms, email and/or phone call. You have the right to request we use any, all or none of these communication methods.

Contact Information

You may contact SMS Expert at any time to discuss our services and privacy, cookie and marketing & communications policies by emailing our Director Steve Procter...

care@smsexpert.co.uk
01509 606305