Texting 101: Number Registration

Text messaging is one of the most effective ways to communicate with your customers, prospects, or other key stakeholders. Using an A2P (Application to Person) solution like Mogli, which is built on Salesforce, allows you to easily send text messages at scale. 

There is, however, one final key to the puzzle that makes all of this work - the phone numbers that actually deliver your messages. We covered the different types of numbers available for use with A2P in a previous post. Once you have your A2P platform in place and have selected your number type, the next step is to register your number with the telecom carriers, which is the topic we’re covering in this post.

When you register your A2P phone number(s) you are essentially pledging to the carriers that you are a legitimate business operation and declaring the reasons for which you will send messages to contacts that you have received consent to message.

If your organization is planning to use a 10-digit long code (10DLC) or short code, registration is essentially mandatory to send messages. (Starting in the fall of 2023 unregistered 10DLC traffic will be blocked for outbound messages under some senders). Messages sent from short codes may not be delivered until the verification process is complete. Currently, Toll-Free numbers are able to send messages from unverified accounts, but traffic has a higher risk of filtering and message delivery caps are in place. The outbound message caps for Toll-Free increase once an account has submitted its registration and is in the pending verification stage. Carrier filtering becomes less restrictive during this phase as well.

There are two main components to your registration: your brand and campaigns. 

Your brand is pretty straightforward; it represents and declares who you are as an organization. Campaigns are essentially the use cases you plan to use text messages in support of. Each functional use case you plan to use text messaging for will require a specific campaign application, though it is possible to submit for a mixed-use case campaign. 

If you complete the registration process and have your use-case campaigns approved, but then begin sending messages outside of those approved types, you risk those messages being filtered or blocked entirely. Additionally, if you do not provide detailed, specific plans for your campaign use cases, it is possible that your campaign will be rejected, forcing you to resubmit.

If this all seems onerous or burdensome, there is an easy way to understand why these processes are in place. Simply open your email messaging application and then open up your text messaging application and compare the number of unsolicited messages you have in each. 

Chances are you have hundreds, if not thousands, of messages in your email inbox that represent a combination of marketing inquiries, newsletters, notifications, personal emails, and SPAM messages that have gotten through your trash or junk filters. Compare that to your text message application, which is likely dominated by personal messages, notifications from businesses you have an active relationship with, as well as marketing messages you’ve opted into. SPAM or junk messages do show up occasionally, but are remarkably rare. 

The registration process and the additional requirements dictated by the government and messaging carriers are why your text message inbox is so much cleaner than your email inbox. 

If you are serious about using text messaging as part of your communications plan (which you absolutely should be), you'll want to gather information about the registration process from all of the vendors you are evaluating so you can begin preparing your documentation on a parallel path. 

Once submitted, the verification process can take anywhere from 4-12 weeks depending on the type of number you’ve selected. (10DLC numbers can be approved in as little as 2 weeks, but can take up to 8 weeks depending on the number of campaigns being evaluated by the carrier.)

Ideally, you want to be able to submit your number registration application once you sign a contract with your selected vendor. To learn more about this process or ask any other questions you may have about using A2P for text messaging, schedule some time to meet with a Mogli solutions expert today!