Regulations for long codes in outbound SMS campaigns

When using international long codes in outbound SMS campaigns, you need to be aware of and heed country-specific regulations. Genesys customers are ultimately responsible for understanding and complying with country-specific regulations. Genesys takes no responsibility for violations by its customers when conducting outbound SMS campaigns in other countries.

Compliance

When planning your Agentless SMS campaigns, you should consult with qualified legal counsel to make sure that your proposed use cases comply with all applicable laws.

Best practices for compliance

• Make sure you have opt-in consent from each message recipient. This is important for marketing or other non-essential communications.
• Only send messages, during the recipient’s daytime hours.
• Make sure your SMS campaigns support HELP/STOP messages.
• Do not contact users on do-not-call or do-not-disturb registries.

Filtering

When running Agentless SMS campaigns using long codes, keep in mind that long codes are subject to filtering by carriers. Filtering can occur after a certain number of messages have been sent in a day. Carriers use filtering to stop spammers from overloading their systems with junk messages. To prevent spammers from working around these filters, carriers use sophisticated systems that randomly vary the type of filtering being used at any point in time. Unfortunately, this means that legitimate messages may get caught up in these filters. Filtering is only on outbound and does not impact inbound traffic.

Country-specific regulations

While filters are generally mandated by carriers, certain countries may have their own rules and regulations concerning filtering of Agentless SMS campaigns. When running Agentless SMS campaigns in other countries, you are ultimately responsible for evaluating and complying with that country’s guidelines.

Best practices to avoid filtering

To reduce the chances that your messages will be filtered, Genesys recommends the following best practices:

• For optimal delivery results with large Agentless SMS campaign, you should use short codes. Short codes are not as likely as long codes to be filtered.
• Make sure that your message content is easy to understand and that it is easy to determine who sent the message. Users are more likely to report confusing messages to their carriers.
• Make sure that you provide clear opt-out instructions in your messages. Users are more likely to report messages as spam if they can’t easily figure out how to unsubscribe from a message service.
• If you are providing a link in a message, use the full URL. Using a URL shortening service, such as the Bitly, can increase the chances of your messages getting filtered, as short URLs are often used by spammers.