Why use a short code for marketing?

Short code numbers are a great choice for high-volume A2P (application to person) messaging. Short codes can send SMS at 100 messages per second, and this high throughput is perfect for applications needing to send time-sensitive messages to many users at once. Our short codes are MMS (media attachments) enabled by default.

Toll-Free messaging is a great choice for transactional use cases including things like one-time password resets or account alerts. Toll-Free numbers are limited to 3 messages per second throughput by default. Toll-Free SMS can be used for some promotional or marketing-type traffic, however it is extremely important to ensure that all users have opted-in and that you maintain a low opt-out (“STOP” reply) rate to avoid carrier filtering.

If you are sending the same (or very similar) message contents in your texting campaigns it is very important you do not attempt to load balance or increase throughput by sending the messages across multiple Toll-Free numbers, the carriers refer to this as “snowshoeing” and it is specifically targeted for filtering on Toll-Free numbers.

Since carriers vet and approve all short codes for their intended use case, filtering is not an issue. In fact, short codes are the only way to ensure deliverability of your messages without the risk of them being filtered by carriers.

Examples of applications that are well-suited to a short code include: marketing communications, large one-to-many bursts, and high volumes of one-to-one transactional notifications.

The important things to consider when deciding which is best for you:

✔️ Rate limits
✔️ Deliverability
✔️ Redundancy
✔️ Carrier filtering
✔️ Long term outlook
✔️ Branding
✔️ Costs

When it comes to high volume marketing campaigns a Short Code is still the best choice!

 

If you have questions or would like to discuss our short code service contact us for more details.