If your business utilizes application-to-person (A2P) 10DLC text messaging campaigns, you must ensure you’ve registered your brand and are compliant with the latest requirements. These new rules, designed to remove spam and support legitimate campaigns, also require you to register each campaign. Because they’re still evolving, however, and each carrier is using a different set of rules, fees, and procedures, it’s difficult to stay on top of it all. Fortunately, Commio is dedicated to helping you navigate the changes.
It Starts with Your Brand
To reiterate, anyone who might even consider sending a 10DLC texting campaign should register their brand before doing anything else. Why is this important? For starters, your brand must be both registered and verified before you can send a campaign. To be verified, the details you submit with your brand must align with your EIN, including the legal registered business name and address. If you don’t have an EIN, there are “special cases” that might take a bit more work, as well as a sole proprietor option. Read Registering Your Brand(s).
Both brands and campaigns can be registered via The Campaign Registry or directly in your Commio portal where our Support team is happy to help you with the process. (Contact your account manager or the support team to request access.) Once your brand is verified, you will know your maximum campaign size; if you disagree with your allotment, you can consider requesting to be vetted but this takes additional time.
Optimize Your Campaign Before You Submit
If you’ve sent texting campaigns before, you know there are already rules in place to protect recipients. It’s critical to include the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) components. Campaigns have been sent without them in the past, but now they will not be approved. The most critical rule is whether you have the mandatory opt-out for mobile subscribers. Don’t even submit a campaign until that is correct. And, if the opt-out stretches the character limit, adjust your content.
You need to make sure your campaign aligns with the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA) rules, as well. When you submit campaigns for approval:
- They’ll look at the overall topic(s) for which you’re sending content. Gambling, pornography, and tobacco, for example, are some of the unacceptable topics.
- They might look at landing pages, especially if you ask to be vetted, and see if links lead to questionable redirects.
- It’s ideal to use verifiable business domains.
Be aware there are also different types of campaigns and verticals. Depending on the type of campaign, you can have a different outcome on text-per-minute or -second, pass-through, and so on.
The Campaign Submission Process and Fees
Once your content is drafted, you may wish to know the cost before you hit Submit. The mobile network operators have their own sets of fees, with a different surcharge for short code, long code, toll-free, MMS, or SMS, as well as different variables around how they will implement pass-through fees. For example, AT&T is waiving some requirements and fees for emergency notifications while T-Mobile is not. Commio sends all customers an email update on surcharges. Also note that campaigns are registered for three months at a time and paid quarterly.
Once your brand has been submitted and verified, your campaign has been optimized following TCPA and CTIA best practices, and you’re good with the campaign size and cost, you’re ready to submit for approval! Again, you can do this directly in the Commio portal. The good news is this will get substantially easier with each send.
Peace of Mind in a Changing Time
The new application-to-person (A2P) 10DLC requirements will reduce spam and optimize your legitimate texts, allowing your messages to shine more brightly and increase conversions. Commio will help you complete successful A2P 10DLC campaigns while this brave new world is being finalized and provide you with peace of mind.
See also: 10DLC History, Advantages | The Players | Brand Registry | Registration How-To | T-Mobile Fees
