How to achieve great SMS performance in non-consumer text messaging?

First of all, who are non-consumers and what is non-consumer text messaging?

A non-consumer is a business, an organization, an entity or an agent of a business. Examples may include, but are not limited to, large-to-small businesses, financial institutions, schools, medical practices, customer service entities, non-profit organizations, and political campaigns.

Non-consumer text messaging is a messaging communication through which a non-consumer sends text messages to communicate with consumers. Examples of non-consumer messages include two-factor authentication codes, alert or appointment confirmations and notifications, marketing messages, billing related messages, political messages etc.

SMS performance

Invalid recipient phone numbers and spam message blockages are the most common causes of having low message deliverability — the SMS performance which you should aim to reach as high as possible to maximize the value of your text messaging spending budget.

Sending text messages to an invalid phone number, such as a landline phone number or a non-existing phone number, is harmless, but it is a waste of resources and money. The message will never reach the destination and consequently, it will decrease your message delivery rate.

Sending any unsolicited or unwanted text message indiscriminately to any recipient is considered as spam. And nowadays, such text messaging activity will be flagged by wireless carriers. Different wireless carriers apply different spam filtering techniques, ranging from keywords that prevent messages from getting through, to complex, machine-learning filters that protect their subscribers in real-time from being overwhelmed by unsolicited or harmful messages. Spam detection is messy and some carriers are stricter than others. For instance, sending a long capitalized text message or using hyperbole like ‘ABSOLUTELY FREE’, ‘100% GUARANTEED’ could trigger a wireless carrier’s spam filter to block your message. The boundary between spam and non-spam messages is fuzzy, and the criteria may change over time. Also, often filters are activated by subscriber complaints, causing future messages coming from that number to be filtered out.

Wireless carriers constantly evaluate your phone number reputation. They use different factors, such as the frequency of spam messaging violation, the amount of targeted recipients, the severity of the spam messages, and other compliance violations to calculate the reputation score which will be used to decide whether or not to deliver messages to their subscribers. When a phone number reputation score is low, all messages sent from that phone number will be blocked even if a message is innocuous.

With all the anti-spam measures mentioned above, wireless carriers strive to defeat spammers by making it very difficult to anticipate spam blockage triggers. There is no magic or trick to fool spam detections. The only way to avoid getting your messages blocked is not to send spam messages.

Following are some best practices and guidelines which would help avoid getting your innocuous message blocked accidentally, gaining better phone number reputation scores and eventually increasing your SMS performance.

Get recipient’s permission

Get recipient’s opt-in consent before sending messages to their number. This is not only helping you avoid getting customer complaints causing future messages emanating from your number to be filtered out by their carrier, but also protecting your business from violating text messaging regulations, which may cost your business a fortune. Especially when you send marketing or other non-essential messages.

For an implied consent, meaning that when an individual gives you their mobile phone number for some business purpose, but has not explicitly stated that they want to receive marketing text messages from you. In this case, send your first message as a request for an opt-in option. Explicitly ask the recipient to reply “Yes” to opt-in before sending your sales or promo marketing messages. If there is no reply from the recipient, consider it as an opted-out number and stop sending text messages to that phone number.

Your first message to a recipient is very important. You should identify yourself or your business. Your recipients should immediately know who you are when they receive your first message, probably not via your phone number, but likely by your name or your brand. Otherwise, they will not immediately understand the context of your message. Even personal text messages from unknown sources are largely ignored. So why should your customers make the extra effort to determine the source of marketing messages?

Increase and maintain high response rate

High response rate is the good health of your phone number reputation. It would help wireless carriers identify that your message is expected and welcomed by the recipient.

Start your text messaging campaign by sending a brief message to introduce your company and ask if your customers would like to learn more about your product or your promo. For example, adding the text ‘Reply YES for more info’ to your message to induce recipient to respond.

Consider the following sample message:

“Hi Rob, we’re giving away one free appetizer with the purchase of any entree at Steaks Lover restaurant during this Summer. Show this text before Aug 31st when you order at any of our restaurants.”

You can revise the message above to trigger an interactive conversation with your customer to gain response rate.

“Hi Rob, we’re giving away one free appetizer with the purchase of any entree at Steaks Lover restaurant during this Summer. Reply 1 to get a coupon.

Reply STOP to unsubscribe”

If Rob replies 1, send a coupon to him.

“Congrats Rob! Please show this text before Aug 31st when you order any entree at any of our restaurants.”

If Rob does not reply to your message, respect his decision and don’t bother him with another text message for a similar promo, at least during that Summer.

Include opt-out instructions

Always provide clear opt-out instructions. Marketing messages without opt-out instructions are likely to get marked as spam. Including opt-out instructions also ensures compliance with consumer data protection regulations. For example, add this text at the end of a message ‘Text STOP to unsubscribe’.

You don’t need to add the opt-out instructions to every message sent to your recipient. Just the first message and once in a while if you repeatedly send messages to the same recipient, would be sufficient.

Segment your recipient lists

Avoid sending the same text message to mass recipients. Try to segment your recipient lists based on customer preferences, demographics, gender and age or other attributes. Then, send relevant messages to each group to vary your content.

Personalize and optimize your messages

If you know the recipient’s name, greet the recipient by name. For example, consider sending this message “Hi Rob, our records indicate that …”, instead of “Our records indicate that …”.

Sending a message to customers should provide a good customer experience. The reason why SMS is preferred over emails is that it is a concise way of communicating information which helps in building rapport with the clients, thereby, engaging them with the brand. Also, the message should convey useful information in a short and summarized manner which can be read by the recipients on-the-go.

Segment your messages

Sending a very long text message to mass recipients looks like spam. So, break your long message into multi-section messages, then send a brief message with response choices to receive the next messages. As a bonus, this will usually improve your response rates, too.

Consider this long promotion message:

These arm bands will surely come in handy on your next run! Shop the deals now!

Today’s Trending Products: this and that and the others …

Recommended For You: this and that and that one too …

Click https://www.easyshopping.com to Shop now or Refer friends https://www.easyshopping.com/invite?utm_campaign to earn up to $100!

Break the message above into multi-section messages

Hi, EasyShopping provides a fun and easy way to shop online. Reply 1 to get deals, or 2 to get more info.

Reply STOP to unsubscribe

If your customer replies 1, send the next message with current deals

Thank you for your interest!

Today’s Trending Products: this and that and the others …

Visit https://www.easyshopping.com/deals to shop now.

If your customer replies 2, send the next message with more information

Thank you for your interest!

Recommended For You: this and that and that one too …

Refer friends https://www.easyshopping.com/invite?utm_campaign to earn up to $100!

Note: Avoid using the standard opt-out keywords such as “STOP”, “CANCEL”, “UNSUBSCRIBE”, “END” or “QUIT” (case-insensitive) as your request response word!

Do not send messages to opted-out recipients

Sending a text message to an opted-out recipient is violating the text messaging compliance laws, and consequently, a recipient’s carrier will block your message. Keep sending text messages to an opted-out recipient may trigger the recipient’s carrier to block your phone number permanently.

Regularly, read opted-out numbers and remove them from your recipient list. If you receive this error code “SMS-CAR-413 ” after sending a message to your recipient. Take serious action to remove the recipient number from your recipient list.

Avoid sending messages to invalid numbers

To avoid invalid phone number problems, you can use phone number validation services to detect valid mobile phone numbers. For example, using the following services to ensure the phone number type is not a landline number:

Numverify (free): https://numverify.com

Ekata (250 free lookups): https://ekata.com

When exporting your customer phone numbers from your CRM database, make sure that you select the mobile number type if applicable.

However, not all invalid numbers are detectable until a wireless carrier reports it as invalid.

Read your message store, preferably after sending a batch of messages, and look for messages with the “SendingFailed” or “DeliveryFailed” status with the error code ‘SMS-UP-410’ , ‘SMS-CAR-411’ or ‘SMS-CAR-412’, check the recipient number of that message and remove it from your recipient list.

If you use the RingCentral Labs — High Volume SMS app to send campaigns, open the Logs page, select a campaign and click the “Download report” link to get the report in .CSV format. Open the report and look for messages with the “SendingFailed” or “DeliveryFailed” status with the error code ‘SMS-UP-410’ , ‘SMS-CAR-411’ or ‘SMS-CAR-412’, check the recipient number of that message and remove it from your recipient list.

Use single domain links

If you use URLs in your message, the following are important considerations to use them successfully.

• Use links associated with a single hostname per message
• Full domains are preferred. Link shorteners can be used but use a link shortener domain that you own.

Warning: Avoid public/shared link shortener domains!

Hosted link shorteners are easy to set up and use, however you should not use a public/shared link shortener domain as the same domains are often used by attackers to mask phishing and other URLs. Most wireless carriers block messages with this type of shortened links.

If you wish to use one in your text messages, check to see if the service supports using your own domain, sometimes called custom domains or vanity URLs.

Some common public/shared domain shorteners to avoid include:

bit.ly — goo.gl — tinyurl.com — tiny.cc - bc.vc — budurl.com — clicky.me — is.gd — lc.chat — soo.gd — s2r.co

Common sense

Last but not least, a good rule of thumb is to put yourself in your recipient’s shoes and write a message in a way that would be compelling for you.