Text Message Deliverability Score

Christy Cook Updated by Christy Cook

The Text Message Deliverability Score is a built-in tool within the text message editor to help you avoid getting your message flagged as a carrier violation.

This is only a tool and guide for our customers. It cannot ensure what the carriers will utlimately block, so please take that into account when crafting your messages.
A carrier violation effectively means that the carriers (AT&T, Verizon, etc.) flagged your message as SPAM and are actively blocking message delivery.

When editing a text message, click the "Check Deliverability Score" button. This will generate a score and some helpful reasons as to what is impacting your score.

In general you should attempt a score of 85% or higher. And while this does not guarantee that your message won't be blocked, there is a much higher chance of delivery.

What impacts the deliverability score

DailyStory maintains a list of over 1,500 words and phrases that are known to impact carrier deliverability. For example, a low impact phrase may be "get 15% off" whereas a higher impact word or phrase uses terms that may be illegal, "buy cannabis today".

Keep in mind that our tool may not include restricted terms or phrases around product categories, product names or attempts to mis-spell words, however the carriers do scan for these and block for these.

Here are common examples of items that can cause messages to get blocked:

  • Overuse of sales-y language that presents like SPAM
  • Restricted words (words or phrases that fall under SHAFT laws)
  • Misspelled words that try to "trick" or get around restricted words
  • URLs
  • Bitly and other link shorteners (these are typically seen as SPAM)

Including URLs

Including URLs in your text message does impact deliverability. Furthermore, the content found at the URL also may impact delivery as some carriers follow the URLs in text messages.

DailyStory's deliverability tool examines your website's content and may display a warning if potentially troublesome content is found.

We strongly recommend shortening your own URLs using a domain that is unique and only used by your company. Public URL shorteners, such as https://bit.ly are known to cause issues and should be avoided.

The reason for this recommendation is that shared shortener domains, like bit.ly and goo.gl, are used by a wide variety of messaging industry-wide, potentially including spam or unwanted content which is filtered by carriers.

DailyStory has a built-in shortener: https://txts4.me that is used automatically. However, if content found at the website this shortener redirects to, you will be required to use a password protected link.

You also cannot use a DailyStory Tracking Link in a text message.

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