It’s no secret that SMS helps drive higher engagement, more loyal customers, and incredible growth for brands of all sizes. In fact, 90% of text messages are read within 3 seconds, but more than 60% of marketers don’t use SMS for marketing or customer engagement (Textedly). There’s so much opportunity for businesses to engage across channels, like SMS, to drive growth through better customer experiences.
Given the growth of the channel over the years, there has also been a steady increase in the amount of spam messages sent to customers. To combat this, US carriers have been looking for ways to mitigate the volume of unwanted messages sent to phones, thus leading us to A2P 10DLC. Let’s dive in a little more into what changes are happening, and what benefits exist for you and your customers.
What is 10DLC and why does it matter?
A2P 10DLC is short for application-to-person 10-digit-long-codes and is a newly imposed SMS regulation from major US mobile carriers like Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T. This regulation affects any business who intends to send SMS messages to customers within the United States. A2P messaging, as opposed to person-to-person (P2P), is used by businesses all over the world to send reminders, promotions, or other messages directly to customers on their most-used device: their phone. To ensure businesses stay compliant and use SMS wisely, these major carriers have enforced a registration process for businesses sending messages within the US to maintain use of long codes.
10DLC promotes compliant, ethical SMS messaging from brands and businesses to individuals. It helps to protect the end customers from unwanted spam, while allowing businesses to better connect with their audience via SMS. This change will also improve deliverability for businesses because 10DLC allows for higher messaging throughput and reduced message filtering, so your message will reach the intended recipient more reliably.
While this regulation is aimed to protect consumers, businesses also get some benefit out of enhanced SMS compliance. By formally registering your business and campaign use cases, you’ll see faster, more reliable delivery of your messages. When you register, you’ll be asked for details about your business to ensure you are who you say you are. After that, you’ll need to supply info about the type of SMS messages you send to your customers and supply an example. After registering, you’ll get a dedicated US-based long code phone number, a far more economical way to send messages.
How will 10DLC help your customers?
Once you complete registration and have your very own local long code, you’ll see a vast improvement in message throughput and deliverability. Given that, the experience you deliver to your customers through SMS will be better than ever.
First of all, your customers will trust the messages they receive, knowing they come from your business and align to the types of messages you normally send. With the improved fraud and spam monitoring that comes with 10DLC registration, they’ll receive messages they really want to receive, and therefore inspire more action and engagement. Customers will have a better experience and lead to higher sentiment for SMS, as opposed to receiving unwanted and unwelcome messages every day.
Your business will be top of mind for each customer and encourage repeat actions, building your customer base from the inside out. Instead of customers purchasing an item or service once and never engaging again, you are positioned to engage with them more meaningfully with relevant, timely messages across channels. Depending on your business type, you could send promotional messages about similar products or services, or remind them of items still in their cart, or follow up on a support ticket or chat. When you begin to view customers as advocates that can help grow your business, you’ll be glad of regulations such as 10DLC that focus on high quality SMS engagement.
Stay compliant and deliver exceptional experiences with ActiveCampaign SMS
ActiveCampaign customers have a flexible path to engaging with customers through personal and relevant SMS messages. Unlike all-in-one solutions that force businesses into a one-size-fits-all approach, we let you choose the solution that works best to weave SMS into the entire customer journey. Either connect to our powerful native SMS solution, or connect via a third party integration and subscribe users to lists or send targeted, automated SMS messages based on a customer’s actions and behaviors.
You’re in the driver’s seat, and can deliver the right message at the right time through a customer’s most-used channel. By connecting the entire customer journey under one roof, you can improve each customer’s experience at scale, turning one-time customers into loyal advocates via tailored, relevant SMS.
So what are we doing at ActiveCampaign to support you through the rollout of 10DLC? So glad you asked. In an effort to continually support our customers and ensure the best possible service, we have built a registration process within our platform to ensure each customer is properly registered and enabled to engage via our native SMS solution. For those users sending messages to customers in the United States, there are a couple things to do to maintain SMS compliance and deliverability. (Please note: if you leverage SMS in ActiveCampaign via a third party CX App, you will need to register directly with that provider.)
First up is registering who you are. By supplying basic business information like your personal contact details and business address, the Campaign Registry will confirm you are who you say you are. Some information you’ll need to gather and report is:
- Business type (Sole Proprietorship, Corporation, Non Profit, etc)
- Personal contact details
- Business address
Next, you will be asked to register your campaign use cases. As mentioned, these use cases are the types of SMS messages you send to your customers. This is crucial to the registration process and continued success of SMS engagement for your business. You’ll be asked to supply a description of your campaign use case, and then some examples of an SMS you send to your audience. Here’s an example:
- Description: I’ll be sending promotional SMS messages to opted-in contacts.
- Example 1: Thanks for your purchase. Take 10% your next one with the code Save-10.
- Example 2: BOGO sale is this weekend through Sunday!
In an effort to make this process as seamless as possible, we have prepared a number of helpful articles and documents to answer your questions. You can refer to our list of 10DLC Frequently Asked Questions for a broader understanding of what 10DLC is and what it means for you, and then head over to our step-by-step help guide for instructions on how to correctly register your business and campaign use cases.