Registration is a vital part of any company's U.S. text message campaigns and should not be overlooked. To avoid unwanted fines and penalties, there are some important rules to follow when it comes to SMS (short message service) and MMS (multimedia messaging service) distribution in the United States.
Businesses are permitted to register with The Campaign Registry to send business text messages to consenting customers. If you haven't completed this process already, you may have to fill in some forms before sending any more business text messages.
Do I Need to Register My U.S. SMS Campaign?
To put it simply, the answer is yes.
U.S. Campaign registration applies to all companies and enterprises that utilize SMS messages, whether that be for text message marketing campaigns, appointment reminders or delivery updates — all must register to comply with these regulations. This even includes small companies that use person-to-person (P2P) text message communication, as opposed to business-standard application-to-person (A2P) messaging.
As mentioned earlier, if campaign registration is evaded, you put yourself in danger of receiving hefty financial penalties or even usage restrictions — preventing you from using text message services in the future. That's why it's essential you know how to register properly and ensure you're complying with standard regulations.
Alternatively, in Canada registration only applies to short code and Toll-Free channels. It does not apply to 10DLC SMS text messaging.
How Do I Register?
When it comes to the registration process, there are three main steps to complete: Business Profile Registration, A2P Brand Selection and Registration and SMS campaign use cases.
Let's look into these stages in more detail.
1. Business Profile Registration
For this first step, you'll need to provide a general overview of your business information. This includes the following:
- Business name.
- Head office address (city, state, zip code).
- Industry.
- Business identity.
- Business type (non-profit, corporation, co-operative, etc.).
- Company type (public or private).
- Tax ID or Employer Identification Number (EIN).
- Country of registration.
- Regions of operations.
- Business phone number.
- Link to the company website.
Then you need to supply an authorized representative's contact information. They function as your organization's point of contact:
- Name.
- Email.
- Title.
- Phone number.
- Job title.
For start-ups, collect individual contact information for each starter customer profile that's created — this information cannot be duplicated. For larger organizations, you can assign someone from your own company as an authorized representative. This works across all customers for registration purposes.
2. A2P Brand Selection and Registration
There are two main options for this stage:
Standard Brand Incl. Secondary Vetting
$40 Brand Vetting one-time payment — Carriers deliver an additional brand review that allows for higher daily message limits of 15,000 and greater, with maximized throughput levels for your business. This streamlines the approval process and guarantees your information is accurate.
Standard Brand Excl. Secondary Vetting
$4 per Campaign one-time payment — Despite a significant reduction in price, the cheaper costs, unfortunately, lead to reduced capabilities. You're restricted to a limited set of use cases with a daily message limit of 6,000 messages a day. This is for initial and for resubmissions
Carrier Vetting
$15 per Campaign initial and resubmissions — This is an additional cost levied by the carriers.
3. SMS Campaign Use Cases
In this, you must provide your company's intended uses for SMS. Below is a list of the available options for A2P SMS use cases:
- Two-factor authentication.
- Account notifications.
- Customer care.
- Delivery notifications.
- Marketing.
- Polling and voting.
- Higher education.
- Security alert.
- Public service announcement.
- Mixed.
Be mindful of special use cases where certain services require additional requirements, including emergency services, charities or political parties.
Campaign Fees and Registration Fees
There's a distinct difference between campaign fees and registration fees. Where campaign fees are billed by The Campaign Registry every three months, a registration fee is a one-time payment.
Registration Fees
These are broken down into three categories:
- Brand Registration: $4 per brand.
- Brand Reverify: $4 per brand if the original registration attempt was unsuccessful.
- Third-Party Vetting: $40 per brand upon customer request.
Campaign Fees
The campaign you choose depends on the number of texts you aim to deliver and how fast you wish to send them.
Standard Campaign: $30 every three months.
Low-Volume Campaign: $4.50-$6.00 every three months.
The more your company uses SMS, the more you're going to notice the impact of these registration fees.
Want to learn more about your SMS options? Get in touch with Swift SMS Gateway where our expert teams can help you find the best-fitted solution for your business.
