In the United States and Canada, carriers will not reliably deliver application-to-person messages sent from a standard ten-digit long code until the brand behind the messages and the campaign they belong to have been registered. This registration is commonly called 10DLC.
Registration is not a formality. Unregistered traffic is filtered, and a rejected campaign can take your number out of service for messaging.
The brand is the organisation sending the messages. You provide your legal details, and the brand is assigned a type based on your size and structure: sole proprietor, low volume standard, or standard.
The campaign describes what the messages are for. It carries a use case, a description, sample messages, and the messages that handle opt-in, opt-out and help.
- Your legal business name and registration details.
- A business registration identifier. Use your EIN rather than a DUNS number.
- A use case that matches what you actually send.
- A use case description of between 40 and 500 characters.
- Between two and five sample messages, each between 30 and 900 characters.
- Your opt-in, opt-out and help messages.
- An estimate of your daily volume in segments or MMS.
Your volume estimate cannot be changed later
The expected daily volume you declare is fixed at registration. Estimate honestly and with headroom — a figure that is too low can limit what you are able to send, and it cannot be revised.
The use case determines how your traffic is treated. The common ones include:
- Two-factor authentication.
- Account notifications.
- Delivery notifications.
- Customer care.
- Marketing.
- Low volume mixed.
- Public service announcements.
- Emergency alerts.
- Fraud alerts.
- Higher education and K-12.
- Charity and nonprofit.
- Political.
- Polling and voting, non-political.
- Proxy.
- Agents and franchises.
Some use cases require approval after registration before you can send on them. Pick the narrowest use case that covers what you send — a broad claim that does not match your samples is a common reason for rejection.
Political campaigns, political action committees and similar organisations must be verified by Campaign Verify before they can register. This is an additional step beyond standard brand vetting, and it takes time.
Some brands go through an additional vetting step, which confirms the identity of the organisation behind the brand. Where vetting applies, you will be asked for a vetting identifier and the provider that issued it. AEGIS Mobile is one such provider.
The samples are read by a reviewer, and they are the part most likely to cause a rejection. Make them representative of real traffic, not polished marketing copy.
- Show the actual wording you send, including any placeholder text.
- Make sure the opt-out instruction is visible in at least one sample.
- Match the samples to the use case you declared.
- Avoid anything that reads as promotional if you registered a transactional use case.
Registration is not instant. Until it completes, sending on that number may be limited or rejected. Furcata surfaces the state of the registration so you can tell the difference between a message that failed because of content and one that failed because the campaign is not yet approved.
Toll-free numbers follow a separate verification path with their own use case. They are not covered by 10DLC registration, so the requirements differ — check which applies to the number you are using before you assume.
Keep it accurate as you change
If your sending practices change materially — a new use case, a different kind of message — revisit the registration. A campaign that no longer describes what you send is a campaign at risk.
Next: messaging best practices
Registration gets your traffic accepted. Best practices keep it that way.
Messaging best practices