As of September 30, 2020, the larger U.S. carrier industry will begin to more strictly enforce their policies and guidelines across the entire application-to-person (A2P) messaging ecosystem (over 10-digit Long Codes, Short Codes, and Toll-free), specifically focusing on opt-ins, opt-outs, public domain links, and snowshoe messaging. As an important note, the CTIA defines A2P messaging as messaging originating from a business, organization, or entity to communicate with consumers (not consumer-to-consumer messaging).
While this notification is in no way a change to the policies put forth by carriers, it is a reminder of what is and what is not acceptable within the North American messaging community. Carrier partners have indicated that there will be greater enforcement of messaging policies and we expect to see increased filtering of the following:
- Traffic, as identified by increasing customer complaints, that shows evidence of not gaining appropriate opt-in.
- Informational and promotional traffic failing to have a clear description of how to opt-out, meaning STOP language is not clearly shown to the end user. As a reminder, conversational traffic is consumer-initiated and does not require including STOP language in each response.
- Traffic using URL shorteners with public domains rather than custom domains owned by the company.
- Traffic that appears to be snowshoe messaging – a technique used to spread messages across senders for the purposes of overcoming filtering systems.
- There is a 260 character limit on SMS templates. The SmartWiFiPlatform reserves 30 characters per Twilio credit for merge keys.
- Templates under 130 characters will count as 1 Twilio credit.
- Templates exceeding 130 characters may count as 2 to 3 Twilio credits depending on if a merge key is used.
- If special characters (non GSM 7) are used, a Twilio message credit is reduced to 70 characters per SMS.
To create a SMS text simply follow the steps below:
- Under the Marketing tab, click on “Campaign Templates” and select “Add SMS Campaign Teammates”
- Assign a name and enter your desired SMS message.
- The Firstname and Lastname merge codes are available for SMS templates.
- You can enable a Coupon for the SMS template that will be added to the end of your message.
If an test SMS Campaign is generated from the Campaign page using an SMS template with a coupon the message delivered will not contain a coupon link as the platform will not generate a coupon without a guest profile to associate it to.
- Submit the page when you are satisfied with your template messaging.
- Create the SMS Campaign to start sending out the campaign template.
- Under the Marketing tab, click on “Campaign Templates” and select “Add SMS Campaign Teammates”