Present a greater buyer expertise with A2P 10DLC registration

It’s no secret that SMS drives more 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 retention (Texted). There are so many ways for businesses to get involved through channels like SMS to drive growth through better customer experiences.

As the channel has grown over the years, so has the volume of spam messages sent to customers. To combat this, US carriers looked for ways to reduce the volume of unsolicited messages to phones, which led us to A2P 10DLC. Let’s delve a little more into the changes that are happening and the benefits for you and your customers.

What is 10DLC and why is it important?

A2P 10DLC stands for Application-to-Person 10-Digit-Long-Codes and is a newly introduced SMS regulation from major US wireless service providers such as Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T. This rule affects any company that wants to send text messages to customers within the United States. A2P messaging, unlike person-to-person (P2P), is used by companies around the world to send reminders, promotions, or other messages to customers right on their most common device: their phone. To ensure companies stay compliant and use SMS wisely, these major wireless carriers have enforced a registration process on companies sending messages within the US to maintain long code use.

10DLC promotes compliant, ethical SMS messaging from brands and companies to individuals. It helps protect end customers from unwanted spam and enables companies to better connect with their audience via SMS. This change will also improve deliverability for businesses as 10DLC enables higher message throughput and reduced message filtering so your message reaches its intended recipient more reliably.

While this regulation is designed to protect consumers, businesses will also benefit from improved SMS compliance. Formally registering your business and campaign use cases, your messages will be delivered faster and more reliably. When you register, you will be asked for information about your company to make sure you are who you say you are. After that, you need to provide information about the type of SMS messages you are sending to your customers and provide an example. After registering, you will be given a dedicated US long code phone number, a far cheaper way to send messages.

How will 10DLC help your customers?

Once you complete the registration and have your own local long code, you will see a huge improvement in message throughput and deliverability. Because of this, the experience you deliver to your customers via SMS will be better than ever.

First of all, your customers trust the messages they receive because they know they are from your company and they are guided by the types of messages you typically send. With the improved fraud and spam monitoring that comes with 10DLC registration, they get messages they really want to receive and therefore inspire more action and engagement. Customers will have a better experience and sentiment for text messaging rather than receiving unwanted and unwanted messages on a daily basis.

Your company will be front and center for each customer and encourage repeated action by building your customer base from the inside out. Instead of customers buying an item or service just once and never getting involved again, you can interact with them more meaningfully with relevant, timely messages across all channels. Depending on your business type, you can send promotional messages about similar products or services, remind them of items that are still in the cart, or follow up on a support ticket or chat. When you start to see customers as advocates who can help your business grow, you’ll find yourself pleased with regulations like 10DLC that focus on high quality SMS engagement.

Stay compliant and deliver exceptional experiences with ActiveCampaign SMS

ActiveCampaign customers have a flexible way to get in touch with customers through personal and relevant SMS messages. Unlike all-in-one solutions that force companies to take a one-size-fits-all approach, we let you choose the solution that works best to embed SMS into the entire customer journey. Connect with either our powerful native SMS solution, or connect via a Third party integration and subscribe to user lists or send targeted, automated SMS messages based on a customer’s actions and behaviors.

You sit in the driver’s seat and can get the right message across at the right time through a customer’s most-used channel. By connecting the entire customer journey under one roof, you can scale up the experience of every customer and turn one-off customers into loyal advocates through tailored, relevant SMS.

What are we at ActiveCampaign doing to help you roll out 10DLC? I’m glad you asked. In order to continuously support our customers and ensure the best possible service, we have set up a registration process within our platform to ensure that every customer is properly registered and is able to get involved via our native SMS solution. For users messaging to customers in the United States, there are a few things to do to maintain SMS compliance and deliverability. (Please note: If you use SMS in ActiveCampaign via a third-party CX app, you must register directly with this provider.)

First you need to register who you are. By providing basic business information such as your personal contact information and business address, the Campaign Registry confirms that you are who you say you are. Some of the information you need to collect and report is:

• Company type (sole proprietorship, corporate, non-profit, etc.)
• Personal contact details
• Business address

Next, you’ll be asked to register your campaign use cases. As mentioned earlier, these use cases are the types of SMS messages that you send to your customers. This is critical to the registration process and the continued success of SMS engagement for your company. You will be asked to provide a description of your campaign use case and then some examples of a text message that you will send to your target audience. Here is an example:

• Description: I will send promotional SMS to registered contacts.
• Example 1: Thank you for your purchase. With the code Save-10 you take 10% of your next.
• Example 2: BOGO sales are from this weekend to Sunday!

To make this process as smooth as possible, we’ve 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 fuller understanding of what 10DLC is and what it means to you, then go to ours Step-by-step help Instructions for correctly registering your company and campaign use cases.