Texters Say Opt-Ins from Customers, Other Steps Mean Fewer Blocked Messages
Communicating with the public through 10-digit long codes (10DLC) remains complicated, with many pitfalls for groups that consider it a way to reach the public, speakers said during a virtual Coalition for Open Messaging meeting Tuesday.
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The codes allow charities, public interest groups and businesses to text customers or members using regular 10-digit phone numbers. Proposed carrier rules requiring high-volume text senders to register with a campaign registry, and to impose higher messaging fees on all that don’t file, or potentially block them, are controversial (see 2109230068).
Any enforcement of 10DLC regulations is going to be based on complaints, said Daniel Souweine, CEO of GetThru, a texting company. Souweine founded the company with other veterans of the 2016 Bernie Sanders for president campaign. “Someone has to say I’m unhappy with text messages coming from a particular organization in order for something to happen,” he said. That someone could be a carrier, he said: “There’s not much you can do to avoid that … but that is a real thing.” You could also get complaints because a lot of individuals “flag your message as spam,” he said.
Getting consumers to opt in to your text “is always something that people should be doing at all times,” Souweine said. “Our community has built great systems for building opt-in lists for emails, and we should be doing more of that for texting as well,” he said. “Every time we ask someone for information, we should be asking for their cellphone number, we should be asking for permission to use that cellphone number,” he said. But given the way groups use peer-to-peer texting, opt-in isn’t always possible, he said.
GetThru hasn’t had major reductions in the number of texts that are getting through in various campaigns “despite all the new regulations and processes,” Souweine said. The company also isn’t seeing any systematic enforcement against texts, he said. “What we’ve seen is fairly ad hoc and a little bit unpredictable,” he said.
Opt-in is “the gold standard” for texters, said Phil Gordon, CEO of Prompt.io, a texting platform. “If you’re not building an opt-in list, then you really should be,” he said. Carrier filtering is triggered by consumers who send a text message to 7726, and it doesn’t have to be that many, he said. “Basically any 7726 [complaint] kind of sets off the carrier alarms,” he said. High “stop rates” from consumers also raises concerns, he said. “Great targeting and great messaging is extremely important,” he said.
Registering with a campaign registry is “absolutely key and vital,” Gordon said. All the traffic his company pushes through the networks is registered, he said: “When enforcement happens, if you are registered there are pathways to remediation. If you are unregistered, there are not. There is absolutely nothing that anyone can do for you to get you unblocked.”
Messages are getting through at about the same rates as previous years, agreed Nathaniel Lubin, CEO of Survey 160, which develops survey software. “There have been more hiccups in the communication and back and forth and scrutiny,” he said. Be conscious of the opt-out rates for your campaigns overall, which are tracked by aggregators, he said. “Persistently high opt-out rates across campaigns over time will definitely draw some scrutiny,” he said. Avoid adding links to texts, which can also raise questions, he said.