SMS deliverability best practices

This article describes some actions you can take to make sure your SMS sends reach your recipients.

Follow regional marketing regulations

Certain regions and countries have stricter regulations on marketing messages, which can impact delivery.

See: SMS country specific marketing compliance

SMS content

If your message content closely resembles known spam messages, it could be flagged by some carriers.

Additionally, using words like "FREE" and/or capital letters can trigger spam filters. 

Make sure that your message content is not overly promotional or misleading. 

Avoid using all caps, excessive punctuation (e.g. !!!!!), or 'spammy' language.

SMS campaigns sometimes face issues like domain blocklisting if you include URLs in your messages. 

Blocklist checking tools

There are many free online tools (e.g. MXToolbox, MultiRBL), that allow you to enter your domain/URL to check if it's on any major blocklists.

Message volume and frequency

Sending a large volume of messages in a short time can trigger carrier filters, especially if the sending pattern is unusual for your account.

Make sure your sending frequency aligns with what recipients expect.

See also: Frequency capping

Monitor SMS engagement

If recipients frequently report your messages as spam, it can harm your sender ID reputation.

Your Customer Success Representative can check your spam complaint rate for you, and you can monitor metrics like SMS click through rate, SMS unsubscribes, SMS conversion rate etc. in automation campaigns performance.