Why aren’t my business text messages getting delivered?
If you text through software, check registration first. US carriers require businesses that text through software — a booking app, a texting tool, a phone system — from an ordinary 10-digit number to register their brand and what they’re texting about, a process known as A2P 10DLC. Unregistered texts can be filtered or blocked, often without you seeing any error: your screen says the text went out, and the customer never gets it. If you are registered, look at the simpler causes next — texting a landline, a customer who opted out, or a mistyped number.
The registration, in plain words
A2P stands for application-to-person: a text sent by software rather than typed by hand on a phone. 10DLC means a standard 10-digit long code — an ordinary, local-looking phone number. Carriers want to know who is sending business texts from those numbers and why, so you register two things, usually through the texting software you already use: your brand, meaning the business itself, and your campaign, meaning what you send — appointment reminders, replies to customers, missed-call texts. One third-party setup guide puts approval at “a few days to a few weeks,” so give yourself room.
Registration is not permission to text strangers. It helps legitimate messages reach people who expect them; it doesn’t make cold texting acceptable. And if you only text customers by hand from your own phone, one at a time, the rule described here — which is about texting through software — probably isn’t what’s stopping your messages. Skip to the simple causes below.
Signs you’re being filtered
- Your software shows texts as sent, but customers say they never got them.
- Replies to your reminders or text-backs dry up suddenly, with nothing else changed.
- Texts reach some customers and not others, with no pattern you can find.
- A test text from the business number to your own cell doesn’t arrive.
What to check, in order
- Registration status. In your texting software, find the brand and campaign status. Both need to show approved, not pending or rejected. If you never registered, that’s your starting point.
- Your business name. The brand should match your legal paperwork — the exact name and details on your formation and tax documents, not the nickname on your sign. A mismatch can hold a registration up.
- Your message content. Say who’s texting in every message and keep it about the customer’s appointment or question. Stay away from what filters are built to catch: all-caps shouting, pushy sale wording, and anonymous shortened links.
- Your opt-out wording. Registrations generally expect you to tell people how to stop — for example, “Reply STOP to opt out” — and to honor it the moment they do.
- The simple causes. Landlines can’t receive texts. A customer who once replied STOP is usually blocked from your texts until they opt back in. One wrong digit sends a text to a stranger or nowhere. And some customers’ own phones filter messages from unknown senders.
Work down the list and test after each fix with a text to your own cell and one to a willing regular. If missed-call texts are the main reason you’re setting this up, read what missed-call text-back can and can’t do before you register anything; it may change what you put in your campaign.