Avoid Ending Up In SPAM: Improve your SMS Campaign Deliverability
You’ve spent hundreds of thousands buying all these leads that are interested in an offer or a promotion that you have run.
Then when you execute your SMS campaign you see that less than 15% of your messages are actually delivered, the rest have been flagged as undelivered. SIGH! Not only do you have to pay for the undelivered messages, but also you now have to filter out those leads and send them messages individually.
This feels like a total WASTE OF TIME, MONEY & RESOURCES!
Low SMS Deliverability sucks. We know what it’s like to be in that situation and we don’t want that to be you.
We want to share with you 5 things you can do to improve the success rate of your SMS Campaigns.
First, ensure that your business has passed telco carrier compliance, regulatory, and technical aspects in the backend.
This means you need to ensure that your number and your campaigns are compliant, regulated, and have been approved by telco providers.
Second, you can help yourself by following all the best practices on the front end.
5 Things to Improve SMS Deliverability
1. Opt-out Template in Bulk SMS
As of Dec 15, 2022, you must be providing an option to opt-out of your bulk SMS campaigns. This seems trivial, but not doing this can have some pretty serious consequences. If you send multiple messages without providing an opt-out, then the network provider might see your messages as SPAM. Once you are caught in the SPAM filter of the network provider then your deliverability is sure to take a hit.
Reduce the risk by providing an opt-out within the compose section of your bulk SMS. This not only reminds you of adding an opt-out but also makes it super easy to add.
Text-to-win SMS campaigns
This is a basic, effective way to get more opt-ins via SMS. Clients simply text a code to enter a contest, after which they receive an SMS in which you ask for consent before sending future campaigns. It’s a great incentive because it’s similar to offering coupons via SMS. You have to pick the right prize to get subscribers hooked; your potential customers take care of the rest.
2. Register for 10DLC
10DLC is a 10 Digit Long Code (10DLC) and it’s the new standard for Application-to-Person (A2P) text messaging utilizing a traditional 10-digit phone number. There are multiple benefits of registering for 10DLC, however, the biggest benefit is improved deliverability.
This means that now that your number & campaign are officially registered by the carrier it significantly reduces the chances of marking you as SPAM.
3. DO NOT use Shared Public URL Shorteners
We know that end customers like short URLs in messages, but we also know that scammers also like short URLs. The reason is obvious, it hides the fraudulent domain name that they use for scamming people. Hence, network providers are suspicious of such shortened URLs from public domains such as Bitly or TinyUrl. Try using private domains with your business name in them. Think about it… would you click on a link that looked spammy or a URL that isn’t familiar?
4. Solicit a Response
You should always design your SMS content to seek responses. Rather than using SMS as a one-way channel to broadcast promotions, always treat it as a two-way conversation and incite a response from the users. This assures the network provider that you are not spamming people and are having valid and real conversations with users. An example would be: Instead of just giving a link to find out more about your business also give them an option of replying ‘Interested’ to know more about your business.
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5. Avoid Spammy Content
There are ways to ensure that your message does not sound like SPAM. Instead of using generic terms to address individuals such as ‘hi there, friend’ try and use the name of the individual. Make the message more personalized. Also, try using links from domains over which you have control over and that contain your business name rather than external domains. This will increase your chances of not getting caught in a SPAM filter of the network provider.
(this article is writing for information purposes only and is relative to the US telco companies)