Texting a worldwide audience might be a little risky. Each nation and carrier has its own laws about what sort of SMS communication is permitted, and some countries only let certain carriers, making it difficult to send a direct (and secure) bulk SMS to specific places.
If your company is operating a worldwide bulk SMS campaign, you’ve definitely observed the industry’s lack of openness and uniformity. Even if you understand the complexities of worldwide communication networks, determining why your SMS is not transmitting and troubleshooting properly might be tough.
This is an issue since bulk SMS is the most efficient method to interact with many of your clients. According to a survey, branded SMS has a 98% open rate and 45% response rate, compared to a 20% open rate and 6% response rate for email. Messages, however, are only opened if they are sent first.
Are you wondering why your bulk SMS isn’t being delivered?
Here are five of the most common issues that have an influence on a company’s message delivery success rate.
1. Low-Cost Routes
The bulk SMS industry has long been plagued by shady characters and margin-maximizing tactics. SIM boxes and “grey” channels are illegal methods for enterprises to connect to the telecom network at a cheap cost. The usual rule when it comes to bulk SMS is that you get what you pay for. SIM boxes are shut down by carriers owing to their illegality, resulting in very unpredictable and poor message transmission.
Consider scalable SMS instead of bulk SMS. You may communicate with your clients and prospects in bulk with the correct communications provider without breaking the bank or jeopardizing data security. When you have a dependable communications platform, it is also a lot simpler to address SMS difficulties.
2. Content Filtered
When you send communications to countries where the government regulates what information residents are permitted to access, such as China and Saudi Arabia, you presumably anticipate your material to be censored or blocked. However, these are not the only nations that strictly control SMS.
In addition to governments censoring certain categories of material, there is the problem of carrier filters. In Japan, for example, if there is a URL in the message body, delivery will fail. Those communications are categorized as unlawful, and they are either destroyed entirely or the illegal portion of the content is erased.
Before beginning an SMS project, investigate the individual criteria and limits in each target country to ensure you’re prepared to achieve the maximum possible SMS delivery rate.
3. Invalid Sender ID
A message’s Sender ID is the “from” field that displays when someone receives a message. Again, the fragmentation and complexity of the worldwide bulk SMS business may present issues for senders, since various nations and carriers have varying laws about what can and cannot be shown in this space.
In the United States, for example, only numerical Sender IDs are permitted. And all application-to-person communications must be transmitted from a text short code, but in the United Kingdom, they may be alphabetical. If you don’t know all of the international laws — or if you don’t use a communications platform that does — an inaccurate “from” field might be the cause of your SMS not transmitting.
4. Message Size
The maximum SMS length in the United States and certain other countries is 160 characters. If you’ve read points one through three. You’ll realize that nothing is as straightforward as it seems when it comes to troubleshooting SMS difficulties. Some nations have length restrictions; for example, Brazilian networks only allow messages of up to 157 characters.
If the length of your message exceeds a country’s restriction, it will be denied unless your SMS carrier automatically divides it into numerous messages, which may split your link in half, leaving it unclickable.
5. Coding
Encoding difficulties might possibly be the cause of your SMS not sending. Encoding, at its most fundamental, establishes the potential combinations of characters for which characters may be conveyed. Messages are typically sent using either Unicode, which allows for 70 characters, or the global standard GSM 3.38, which allows for 160 characters.
It’s critical to understand that various carriers and nations have varying encoding requirements. Some carriers simply will not carry Unicode communications, while others will deliver the message erroneously. When sending to a new nation. Always transmit in plain text rather than Unicode (accents may occasionally appear erroneously). And always review the Country Specific Guidelines to ensure you aren’t missing any crucial information.
Global SMS is complicated, but the additional work pays off when your business engages consumers via their chosen channel, no matter where those customers are.
Check out Guni SMS Gateway to get started. It is simple to use and offers a wide range of SMS services. Including bulk SMS alerts, push alerts, advertising, and commercial alerts.
