SMS Marketing industry has not been very transparent. Each country and carrier has their own rules about what type of traffic is allowed and it is difficult to know the intricacies. Here I’ll tell some of the main problems we encounter when helping people increase their message delivery :
Carrier Filters
Similar to email, some cell phone carriers have implemented filter systems that can block spam, phishing attempts, and other unwanted messages. One of the primary ways that carriers block spam is by separating “A2P” and “P2P” messages. P2P messages are messages sent between individuals and they always have a valid alphanumeric senderID. These messages are likely to be delivered without being filtered.
A2P messages are messages sent from mass texting applications. Some carriers will “filter” these messages, and prevent them from being sent to individuals, in an attempt to prevent spam.To avoid this, DialMyCalls uses advanced A2P routing to send messages through A2P-enabled routes. However, some messages may still be blocked if they contain certain keywords, though this depends on the specifics of each individual’s carrier.
Filtered Content
If I asked you to think of a few obvious examples of countries with banned or filtered content, it would probably be easy for you to come up with a few like China or Saudi Arabia, where the government controls what information citizens are allowed to receive.
Aside from the government filtering certain types of content, there is also the issue of what the carriers will allow. In Japan, for example, if there is a URL in the body of the message then the message delivery will fail. Those messages are classified as illegal and are either discarded completely or the part of the text that is illegal will be removed. Before starting an SMS initiative, we recommend taking a look at our Country Specific Features and Restrictions to make sure you are set up for obtaining the highest SMS delivery rate possible.
“Long Code” Text Messaging
If you’re using a free online SMS messaging application instead of a powerful application like DialMyCalls to promote your business SMS Marketing, this is probably the most common reason that your messages will fail to deliver. This is because most free SMS services use email – which is a form of “long code” text messaging. Long code text messaging is intended for use by private individuals. Because of this, long code messaging has a variety of limitations.
You’ll be limited to sending 1 message per second and 500 messages per day. If you exceed this limit, your number will be blocked. You must also have a legitimate pre-approved US virtual number that uses the international format – eg “15028675309”. However, there is a solution to this problem. “Short Code” text messaging was developed specifically for mass communications and marketing. And DialMyCalls offers powerful shortcode SMS messaging that’s perfect for your organization!
Incorrect Sender ID
The Sender ID of a message is the “from” field that is shown on the users mobile phone . When they receive the message. The fragmentation and complexity of the global bulk SMS Marketing industry are also shown here due to different countries and carriers having different rules as to what can be displayed. In the US, only numerical Sender IDs are allowed. And all application-to-person messages must be sent from a text short code. Whereas in the UK it can be alphabetical.
Encoding
Last but not least is the SMS encoding. At a basic level, encoding determines the possible combination of characters for which characters can be sent. Typically, messages are sent using either Unicode, which allows for 70 characters. Or using the global standard GSM 3.38 which allows 160 characters. It’s important to know that different carriers and countries require different encoding. Some carriers simply will not deliver messages that are sent in Unicode while others will deliver the message incorrectly.
