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SMS deliverability guide

Overview

SMS marketing is a growing channel for marketers to connect with their audience. While it's often compared to email, SMS has stricter rules in comparison which must be followed to ensure maintained continued use.

This guide covers best practices, compliance requirements, and tips for troubleshooting SMS delivery issues.

Learn more about SMS non-delivery and complaints.

SMS best practices

This section outlines a number of best practices for SMS marketing.

Goal metrics

While industry, audience, and content-type can all affect engagement expectations, here is a general guide of goal engagement rates for a healthy SMS campaign:

  • Click rate: > 7.5%
  • Bounce rate: < 1.5%
  • Unsubscribe rate: < 1%

NOTE: If your SMS campaigns do not meet these thresholds as they should, then it is an indicator that your SMS strategy / opt-in practices / technical configuration requires further investigation to identify opportunities for improvement.

Compliance requirements

Ortto’s SMS feature is supported by Twilio. The below compliance requirements are in alignment with Twilio’s Messaging Policy which are in place to protect your SMS deliverability.

NOTE: These requirements are in place due to the heavy restrictions by carriers, which means that not following the requirements will result in SMS deliverability issues.

Consent:

  • All recipients must have explicitly opted into receiving SMS communications from your organization.

Sender identification:

  • You must clearly identify yourself as a sender in every message.

Ability to revoke consent:

  • All initial contact via SMS should include clear instructions for the recipient on how to opt out (For example: Reply “STOP” etc).

NOTE: While providing an opt-out link or reply to opt-out option with each message is not always required by certain regions, it is a requirement within Ortto when sending SMS messages.

Content restrictions:

Follow all regional-specific requirements (including delivery time and content restrictions, for messages):

  • SMS deliverability may vary based on your country and the recipient's country, and additional requirements may apply.
  • Ensure that all messages follow the rules of the recipient's country. Twilio provides country-specific requirements for select regions, which should be reviewed before sending messages to recipients in / from those countries.

CAUTION: You should not enact sending practices that attempt to evade and sneak past abuse-monitoring/reporting measures.

Best practice guidelines

Your SMS campaign performance and deliverability is impacted by everything, from your technical setup to your messaging strategy.

Here are some best practices to help maintain reliable deliverability and strong engagement metrics:

  • Choose the Optimal sender ID that is recognizable by your audience. Learn more about Ortto’s sender ID feature.
  • Utilize confirmed opt-in. Learn more about opt-in consent.
  • Keep the content focused, organic, and as un-spam-like as possible. Here are some suggestions on how to ensure this:
    • Keep messages under 320 characters to avoid issues with carriers.
    • Avoid public link shorteners like bit.ly. Use your own personalized domain for link shortening.
    • Avoid over-using emojis.
    • Avoid unnecessary capitalization and punctuation.
    • Keep the tone friendly and engaging, not like a flyer or radio ad.
    • Use SMS for personalized, relevant messages, and reserve general outreach for other channels.
  • Some countries do not allow two-way messaging, especially when sending from outside the recipient country.

TIP: SMS is best used for transactional purposes, such as confirming orders / deliveries, in response to a customer’s actions. It should be sent in a way that feels expected and valued by the recipient.

Some surveys have found that SMS sees a 90% open rate on average. If your click rate is below industry benchmarks, it's time to review your strategy using the best practices mentioned above.

SMS delivery troubleshooting

Delivering SMS messages involves multiple factors, and there can be various elements which affect deliverability. There are various reasons for an SMS message bouncing and steps which can be taken to prevent this from being a persistent issue.