Texting is a great way to communicate with people. They are amazing for quick reminders or calls to action as well as sharing hyperlinks to access other information from a smart phone.
However, cell phone carriers are starting to filter out any messages they feel are spam or not authentic conversation. To avoid your messages being filtered out, or even being black listed by a cell phone carrier, follow these tips for the best delivery.
- A standard Text or SMS is considered 160 characters or less. You can go over this length, but it will count as multiple messages and count get jumbled up on the receiving end of the message. Shorter messages are more personable and look less like SPAM. A text message is for conveying quick information. If you need to write more then use an email or place it on your website and then text a hyperlink to that site.
2. A Text must be part of the 7-bit Alphabet. What does this mean? The 7-bit Alphabet contains some, but not all special accent and exclamatory symbols. In addition to the list below try to avoid a lot of // [] and {}
3. You should not copy and paste content into a message. This goes for both Email and Text. Word or other such programs use different code and will not translate over well into a text or email. They can break your SMS into multiple parts which can also flag as SPAM.
4. If you are sending many messages with identical content to a large number of users, you are at high risk of having your messages filtered by carriers. Carriers use automated systems take into account both the rate of send, as well as the content of the messages and behave very much like email filtering systems. Messages receive a cumulative score based on how many messages have come from a phone number during a time period, how many similar messages have transited the carrier’s network, or if the message contains content that makes it a high match for spam. Time periods are measured by the second, minute, hour and day. So it's not recommended to send identical messages at the same time or day each week.
5. Limit or don't use photo/attachments. Your deliver rate can go down or you can even be blocked by cell phone carriers for sending mass amounts of photos with texts. And people do not care about images or graphics in a text. And often they don't even look that close. Save your beautiful graphics for an email to follow up to the text.
6. Personalize your message! This allows each message to be unique. Add the first name to your SMS messages so that it's not several of the exact same message going out to multiple people.
7. Encourage replies! Interaction shows cell phone carriers that they want to receive the messages you are sending.
