10 Mistakes To Avoid With Your US SMS Campaign Submission

OpenMarket – May 5, 2015

You have worked hard to finally get your SMS campaign submitted to the carriers for their approval. The waiting is over in a rush, like the verbal equivalent of a bucket of ice water poured all over you and your fabulous campaign brief. Rejected!

The request for information (RFI) response from the carrier will usually detail ‘what it is you missed.’ However, you could have avoided all of that by… working with an OpenMarket Account Manager! Our knowledgeable (and fabulous) Account Management and Carrier Relations teams provide excellent consultation, recommendations and reviews of your campaign to ensure rejection never happens. Our team gladly helps you make any necessary corrections before submitting your program to the carriers, and avoid that icy chill down your spine!

While other mobile providers’ customers experience high rejection rates, RFIs (Requests for Information), delays in launching campaigns, and a slower time-to-market, over 95% of OpenMarket’s carrier submissions are approved on the first review. We help our customers proactively review and resolve issues and, therefore, avoid rejections and RFIs.

So, let’s go down the list of “oh, you mean I was REALLY meant to do that?” so that we can help your original campaign submission be your ONLY campaign submission!

  1. The fabulous campaign brief that you have submitted bears little to NO resemblance to what the carrier finds when they visit the website you have created for this campaign!
  2. As required by all major US carriers, a Terms & Conditions page must be available, either via a link or hover-over action. You have decided NOT to have one at all anywhere on the website, OR it’s not clearly identified, OR it’s missing required details!
  3. After the campaign brief has been submitted, you decide that changing details such as the URL or the keyword(s) is a really good idea.
  4. Excited about adding MMS to your SMS campaign, you forget to provide what the MMS message being sent will actually be.
  5. Our Account Managers are very good at ensuring you have the latest info on all the supported carriers that need to be listed. You probably should not leave them off then.
  6. There are required details around the CTA (Call-to-Action). Please try and make sure you include them.
  7. The carriers love to see what kind of “alerts” you will be sending to their customers. So if there is more than one type of alert, they REALLY would like to see a sample of each one…weird huh?
  8. We should all know to include “STOP to cancel” within a message that is a part of a subscription service (if not sending renewal reminders and confirmations)…well, we SHOULD all know that, so why exclude it?
  9. You have a wonderful website for prospective customers to visit and opt-in to your program. But look…it is not working! HELP/STOP and the opt-in itself cannot be tested. Working websites ARE a MUST.
  10. Not listening to your OpenMarket Account Manager, not taking their advice, not responding to their requests can all be harmful to your campaign brief’s health!

So there you have it. This is not an exhaustive list, but it does cover some of the top mistakes and why a campaign might be rejected. Please talk with the mobile messaging industry experts about your SMS campaign requirements. Don’t try guessing or taking shortcuts, as we are here to help and advise you. Let us make your life easier when you submit your campaign briefs!

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