When you lease a new number for your SMS marketing, or move from another provider, you need to warm-up your sending number reputation to ensure you avoid carrier violations. Warming-up your sending reputation is the process of re-introducing the new number to your recipients and establishing a positive reputation with the carriers.
WarningImportant: Cold texting, sending text messages to non-opted in recipients, is illegal.
First, it’s important to understand that in SMS text messaging, there are different types of sending numbers:
| Type of Number | Description |
| Short Code | A short code is a 5- to 6-digit number used to send SMS or MMS messages. |
| Toll-free | A toll-free number, in the United States, is a special 10-digit number that usually starts with an 8 (800, 888, 877, 866, etc.). |
| 10 Digit Long Code (unregistered) | A long code is a standard, 10-digit number that also can be used to send SMS or MMS messages. Unlike a toll-free number, the long code is associated with a specific regional area code. |
| 10 Digit Long Code (registered) | A long code that has been 10DLC registered. |
Recommendation: While it is important to warm-up your sending number, it is most relevant for toll-free and long codes.
Short codes, toll-free, and registered 10 digit long codes are all numbers that have been registered and vetted by the carriers.
However, this does not mean that you can ignore your sending number reputation.
When you send SMS marketing or transactional text messages the carriers (AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon and others) monitor your traffic and content. They are constantly looking for abuse or for content that should be blocked. When content is blocked it is known as a carrier violation. And when a carrier violation occurs, it can be detrimental to your entire SMS marketing campaign.
WarningImportant: The monitoring of your traffic and content creates a reputation associated with the sending number.
There are many factors that determine your sending number reputation. Some of which include:
Important: The carriers do not publish how they evaluate sending number reputation. These are factors learned and shared within the industry.
When you don’t properly warm up your sending number you put yourself at risk for a high number of carrier violations and impacting future delivery.
Before you start your SMS number warm-up, we recommend following the steps in this checklist.
The type of number used for sending impacts how you need to approach warming up your SMS number. An unregistered long code is the most difficult type of number to warm-up.
WarningImportant: Sending number warm-up is most critical for unregistered long codes.
A sending list validation is the process of taking your numbers and validating the type of number, the carrier and determining if the number is mobile capable.
WarningImportant: We recommend validating a list if you haven’t sent a message in the past 30 days.
If you need assistance validating your SMS sending list, please contact us as we can help.
Ideally for every new mobile number added it should be validated to ensure it is a valid mobile number capable of receiving SMS messages.
Segmentation is the process of grouping your contacts by common characteristics. When it comes to warming up your sending number use segmentation to create smaller audiences that you can use in the warm-up sequence:
Recommendation: For SMS warm-up we recommend trying to create segments with no more than 1,000 recipients.
We’ve put together a list of common block words that can cause problems for your email marketing and SMS marketing. Get the full list as a Google Sheet or fork it from GitHub.
800+ Email and SMS Spam Trigger words View in Google docs
800+ Email and SMS Spam Trigger Words Fork or contribute on GitHub
WarningImportant: Block list management is built-in to DailyStory’s SMS delivery score.
Depending upon the type of sending number you are using, you may need to consider using multiple sending numbers. This typically applies to 10 digit long codes.
Each sending number is assigned a through-put that each carrier will allow. This is the maximum number of messages per minute/hour/day they will allow you to send.
WarningImportant: Exceeding your sending number through-put will cause carrier violations and prevent message delivery.
The general guidance for 10 digit long codes is approximately 1 number for every 1,000 recipients sent in a 1 hour time window. This also assumes no message variability, i.e. the same message to 1,000 recipients. And, ideally, you have multiple sending numbers to match recipients area codes.
Unfortunately text message blasts and text message blast services are no longer as effective as they once were. This is due to changing consumer acceptance of text message marketing as well as changes in carrier regulations around customer communication.
WarningImportant: Avoid services that advertise as a text blasting service or mass texting services. Using these types of service will only cause damage to you brand’s reputation.
Unless you are using a short code for sending your text messages, you can no longer send high volume text messages.
SMS marketing should be one of many digital marketing channels you are using. And, ideally, email marketing and social media marketing are both in use as well.
Below are some ideas for how you can reenforce your SMS marketing through other channels:
Recommendation: Promote your SMS marketing through other digital marketing channels.
Something we often recommend is pairing your SMS marketing sends with your email marketing sends. For example, in your email marketing campaign reference, “be on the lookout for a text message from us”.
A best practice is to include details about your SMS marketing in your website’s terms of service. We’ve put together a sample terms of service you can start with.
The most difficult part of creating a successful SMS marketing strategy is content planning and creation.
It’s important to resist the urge to send text blasts. Instead you will need to create a content strategy for your SMS marketing that follows best practices and matches the customers where they are in their journey with your brand.
We recommend creating a unique message per-500 recipients. And, the more unique messages you create the better.
RecommendationWe recommend one unique message per-500 recipients.A unique message does not include simple applications of personalization.
Using AI to help you write content is a great way to use modern tools like ChatGPT.
ImportantA ChatGPT writing assistant is built-in to DailyStory.You can take a single SMS message and ask the writing assistant to create variations. Make the variations more sales-focused, less sales-focused and so on. Experiment with multiple versions of your message and then use tools like A/B testing to test different messages.
Your text message recipients will be at different places in their journey with your brand. Using the four stages of the marketing funnel is a simple way to break this down:
When building your SMS marketing content for customers at the awareness stage:
In this stage we like to use keyword automations, drip campaigns and other non-marketing style messages to warm the audience up to your send frequency.
Once a customers is successfully transitioned through the awareness stage, whose primary purpose is to establish brand identity and trust of the sending number, now you can start marketing and selling.
The goal in the stage is to motivate your prospect to do something. This something can be click a link, reply with a keyword, make a purchase or perform another transaction with your business.
RecommendationIncluding URLs in your text message can be done here once you’ve established your sending number with the recipient. But you should still be cautious as URLs can cause delivery issues.You’ve successfully acquired a prospect. You’ve navigated them through the awareness and consideration phase and slowly introduce sales-specific messaging.
They have now converted, whether in-store or online.
Once you’ve converted a customer your marketing campaign changes to focus on loyalty and cross- selling.
Resist the temptation to focus exclusively on outbound marketing and sales messages.
ImportantUnfortunately most brands want to focus exclusively on outbound without investing on inbound. Inbound replies help build your sending reputation.In our experience with long code and toll-free sending numbers, it is best to ensure that at least one out of every three messages encourages a reply.
Examples of messages that encourage replies:
The goal is to encourage replies. When the carriers see replies to your messages these are positives signals about your sending number reputation.
Imagine from the other perspective where all a brands sends is sales and promotional materials. The only replies received back are optouts: STOP, QUIT, UNSUBSCRIBE, etc.
ImportantOpt-out messages are huge negative signals.Non-opt-opt out messages are positive signals whereas negative and optout messages are negative signals about your numbers sending reputation.
Below are some recommended best practices for warming up a new sending number.
We’ve repeated this multiple times in this article, but it can’t be stated enough: replies are a positive signal.
Putting together a plan for how you warm-up your sending numbers is important. And, it depends on whether you are trying to warm up a number you have not previously used or if you are moving your SMS marketing list to a new platform.
The warm-up schedule below is an example of how you would warm-up a list of 10,000 numbers sending from new sending numbers. It assumes that the customer has not received an text message from this number previously:
The very first thing to do is to run your list of 10,000 numbers through a list clean up. This is something DailyStory can help with. Next, create segments for the major providers: AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile. Finally, create segments for your different audiences.
We’ve covered this extensively in the above sections.
Send to 300-500 unique recipients per-day.
Ideally, during this phase you are sending to contacts that are engaged and expect your messages.
ImportantIf you see any issues with deliverability or high opt outs, slow down the send rate.At this point everyone on your list has received at least one text messages, but possibly more. You can now slowly start working up the volume of sends.
The rules laid out in days 1-30 still apply. If you start seeing any delivery issues, slow down the sending.
Below are some common mistakes to avoid when warming up an SMS sending number.
This is especially true if you haven’t sent a text message in more than 30 days or if this is the first text message you are sending.
RecommendationUse an MMS (multimedia text message) with your brand’s logo to help reinforce the identity of the sending number.MMS messages are more expensive. So if you don’t want to use an MMS make sure and include brand information the text of your message.
While not applicable to registered sending numbers, sending number rotation – known as snowshoeing – is highly discouraged. Not only does this cause confusion for your customers, as they will receive messages from a number they previously have never received from, but it requires a full warm-up of your sending number.
ImportantAvoid releasing and leasing new sending numbers. As you will need to go through the entire warm-up sequence again.Unfortunately one of the the most common mistakes is attempting to reactivate opted-out contacts. It’s important that when you bring data from one platform to another that you bring this data with you, but that it is brought-in as opted out.
RecommendationRoutinely remove unengaged numbers from your list.Similarly, you should routinely pare down your sending lists and remove unengaged contacts. These are contacts that have not replied, clicked or perhaps even purchased recently.
The next most common mistake is sending too many text messages too quickly. Known as text blasting, this type of messaging strategy is ineffective and will only cause carrier violations.
At one point carriers allowed senders to use shared short codes. This was the practice of a short code owner allowing multiple brands to send text messages using that short code. This is no longer allowed.
When you port a number you move your sending number from one provider to another. For example, moving a number from Twilio to Sinch.
In our experience, when a number is ported from one provider to another the reputation of the number is carried with the port.
RecommendationPorted numbers can be considered warm.However, just because the ported number is considered warm you should ensure that your audience engagement.
Carrier violations: What to avoid during SMS text marketingIn "Blog"
How to warm-up an email IP addressIn "Tutorial"
Text message blasts: How to mass text successfullyIn "Blog"
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