If you're like most of us, you've
probably sent thousands of texts from
your personal phone and never wondered, "Will my text get
delivered?"
In the realm of mass business
texting, however, delivery is an important
question. Cell carriers are constantly
monitoring mass texting traffic over their
networks for potential spam or phishing, and
they have the prerogative to delay or block
messages from being delivered to end
recipients.
Here are a few suggestions from
TeamSense to improve your text message
delivery when sending Communicate
messages.
What can I do to optimize my text message
delivery?
The most important thing you can do
is to respect your message recipients (your
employees 👷♀️) and respect the codes and
regulations of cell carriers 📱.
Here are a few tips:
Respect your employees (and their
inboxes)
We know many of you LOVE to send
Communicate messages - and we love that you
love it! However, please respect your
employees and hold yourself back from sending
too many texts. It's frustrating to be an
employee and receive multiple texts a day from
your employer, and employees will quickly tune
them out or simply unsubscribe from messages.
After all, you don't want this to be your
employees' reaction when they open their
texts:
⚠️ If a pattern emerges where employees
are complaining or unsubscribing from your
messages, this is a red flag to cell carriers
that your messages are unwanted and should be filtered or blocked.
Please respect your employees and
reign in your excitement in sending messages.
At TeamSense, we recommend sending no more than 2-4 Communicate messages to a
given employee each week. If you find
yourself feeling limited by that
(we totally get it), talk to your Customer
Success Manager about creative ways to use the
TeamSense Portal to help employees find
information on their own.
Refrain from using public URL shorteners like
TinyUrl or Bitly
Free, public URL shorteners are
frequently used in phishing attempts, and
carriers consider them extremely
suspicious. According to The Code of Conduct for
the AT&T Short Code and 10-Digit A2P
SMS Messages and the T-Mobile Code of
Conduct:
The practice of using public URL shorteners in bulk messaging is highly discouraged, and messages containing them may be subject to blocking.
In our experience at TeamSense, free
links from public URL shorteners like Tinyurl
or Bitly almost always will cause your message
to be blocked by the carrier. If you must use
a URL shortener, we recommend setting up
a unique, branded shortener (e.g., through a
paid plan with a URL shortener service like
Bitly) - you stand a much higher chance of
having your message delivered.
Use emojis sparingly and watch your spelling
& grammar
An explosion of emojis and poor
spelling or grammar can be an indicator of a
spam or phishing attempt.
Keep your content clean
Text
messaging is
regulated in
the United
States and
Canada in
order to
protect
individuals
from unwanted
messaging like
spam, fraud,
abuse, or
illegal
activity. As
a result,
applications
(like
TeamSense) are
forbidden from
sending text
messages with
content that
may be illegal
or suspect. If
you are
attempting to
send a message
via TeamSense
Communicate
and see an
error that the
message
"violates our
terms," it
means your
message could
not be sent
due to content
that is
forbidden by
regulators
and/or cell
carriers.
Examples
of content
that are
forbidden
by
regulators
and/or
cell
carriers
include
(but are
not
limited
to):
- Potential scams, such as messages
about high-risk financial services
like payday loans or cryptocurrency,
or "get rich quick" schemes
- Messages regarding debt collection or
credit repair
- Messages related to gambling
- Messages discussing activities illegal
by federal law, including illegal drug
use (*Note this includes references to
cannabis, which is federally illegal
in the United States)
- Messages related to hate speech,
firearms, sex, tobacco, or
alcohol