Getting messages delivered is less about technical tricks than about not being the kind of sender that recipients complain about. This page collects the habits that keep a programme healthy.
Put your organisation's name in the message itself, not only in the sender identifier. Recipients on some networks see a number rather than a name, and an unidentified message reads as spam.
The first few words appear in the notification preview. Lead with the reason for the message so it can be understood without opening it.
A short instruction such as 'Reply STOP to opt out' is expected in promotional traffic. In transactional traffic it is good practice and sometimes required.
A message that is nothing but a URL looks like phishing, and it is filtered more aggressively. Give the recipient a reason to trust the link.
If someone agreed to delivery notifications, do not send them a promotion. Consent for one kind of message is not consent for another.
Furcata does not restrict when you send, and it has no built-in quiet-hours window. If you need to send only within certain hours, enforce that in your own scheduling.
- Avoid late night and early morning for anything that is not genuinely urgent.
- For a global audience, schedule per region rather than per campaign.
- For non-urgent messages, working hours on weekdays are the safest default.
A number that suddenly sends thousands of messages attracts scrutiny. If you are starting a high-volume programme, build up to it over days rather than starting at peak.
Split large audiences into batches and pace them rather than firing everything at once. This also makes a failure easier to isolate.
Watch for numbers that cannot receive messages. A list full of undeliverable numbers looks like abuse to a carrier and costs you money on every send.
- Validate numbers when you collect them, not months later.
- Remove contacts who have not engaged in a long time. An unengaged list generates complaints.
- Segment by what people actually agreed to receive.
- Never re-add an opt-out to a list under a different identifier.
A block is expensive to reverse
When a carrier blocks a number, the number is out of service for messaging and recovering it takes time and evidence. The habits above are cheap; a block is not.
Volume and delivery rate tell you about the programme's health. Complaints and opt-out rate tell you about its quality. A rising opt-out rate is the earliest warning that a campaign is being received badly.
Next: security
The security section covers the technical side of keeping an account safe.
Security overview