10DLC - Campaign registration guide

Quick access:

• Before you begin
• Campaign overview
• Campaign status
• Campaign registration
• Step by step guides
• What happens next?

 

This guide outlines what you need to know about campaign registration for 10DLC messaging. For guidance on registering your brand(s), you can review our brand registration guide or more generally our 10DLC guide of guides.

 

Before you begin

Please make sure that you have registered a 10DLC brand.

In order to be able to register a 10DLC campaign, your brand needs to meet the relevant verification requirements for the campaign use case you want to create. When you have a brand properly verified for your campaign use case, make sure you can provide all the 10DLC campaign requirements. We recommend every customer to apply for an external vetting in order to unlock most campaign use cases and allow your brand and campaigns to benefit from the highest throughputs possible for your brand.

 

If you are using our public APIs to register your campaign, you must call the qualification endpoint to enable your brand to create a campaign for a specific use case.

 

Please note that since January 2024, the carriers require 10DLC brands to prove that they have implemented a compliant call to action (CTA) for all consent mechanisms available to subscribers. You will need to update all your call to actions to match exactly the legal verbiage Vonage adds on your behalf to increase the chances of your campaign being compliant upon first submission, and provide screenshots, documents, images, scripted texts etc. -- that shows that legal verbiage.

 

Campaign overview

10DLC campaigns allow carriers to understand the purpose of the messages originating from the numbers assigned (linked) to that campaign. Campaigns have a minimum duration of three (3) months. They renew automatically until canceled, and are billed on a monthly basis, starting after Vonage's compliance team deems the campaign compliant. The Campaign Registry (TCR) does not offer refunds, so when requesting the cancellation of a campaign, you have a choice to either immediately cancel the campaign (without refund) or to keep the campaign active until the next billing period. Canceling a campaign cannot be reversed.

 

Campaign applications go through several reviews to ensure compliance to 10DLC requirements and CTIA guidelines. These reviews have increased the processing time, so we advise you to submit your campaign applications several weeks in advance to reduce the risk of disruption.

 

Once the campaign has been approved, you can start linking numbers and sending traffic to your subscribers.

 

Campaign status

Campaign status	Description
Pending Review	Your campaign is with our compliance team for review and approval
Updates Required	You are required to make changes to your pending campaign. Please go to our dashboard or use our public APIs to update the campaign accordingly
Carriers Review	Your campaign has been approved by Vonage and is now being reviewed by our partners & carriers
Active	Your campaign is now active. You can link numbers and start sending traffic
Pending Cancellation	Your campaign will remain active until the next billing period, which will mark the end of your paid subscription
Canceled	Your campaign is now canceled. Please create a new campaign if you wish to resume traffic for this program
Rejected	Your campaign failed our compliance review. Please check the explanation for more details Partner customers only*
Ported Out	Your campaign was ported out of our platform. -- Coming Soon Partner customers only*
CNP Canceled	Your campaign migration request was canceled or timed out. -- Coming Soon Partner customers only*
Suspended	Your campaign has been suspended due to a possible violation with 10DLC T&Cs. Our teams may reach out to you or terminate your campaign upon their review
Terminated	Your campaign has been terminated due to a confirmed violation with 10DLC T&Cs. For more details, please check the reason provided in the events section

* Partner customers (also known as CSPs) register their campaigns directly with The Campaign Registry (TCR) and share their campaigns with Vonage.

 

Campaign registration

Before you begin

Before registering your campaign, please be aware that the process can take around 10 minutes. Incomplete registrations will not be saved.

You will be required to provide links, screenshots or documents showing the Call to Action (CTA) you present to your subscribers. Those documents must be hosted in a publicly accessible website, such as Google Drive or Dropbox. Please ensure the links remain active for several weeks and be accessible to multiple individuals throughout the campaign review & approval phase.

In order to ensure compliance, Vonage will add to your campaign registration some specific legal mentions. You must update your CTA to replicate this exact verbiage in order to have your campaign approved by the carriers:

• For all recurring campaigns:

"[BRAND NAME] [CAMPAIGN description] Message and data rates may apply. Message frequency varies. Text HELP for help. Text STOP to opt-out. [Link to terms & conditions] [Link to privacy policy]."

• For 2FA  campaigns:

"[BRAND NAME] [CAMPAIGN description]. Message and data rates may apply. One message per request. Text HELP for help. Text STOP to opt-out. [Link to terms & conditions] [Link to privacy policy]."

 

Note: If you cannot update your terms & conditions and privacy policy to include the carrier disclaimers, If you must add "Carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages" to the text above.

 

 

Campaign use-case

The campaign use case determines the nature of the messages you will send to your subscribers. This campaign use case will have an impact on the information that needs to be provided for the program. Some use cases require you to elect sub-use cases.

Note that the campaign use case will also determine the subscription cost to run the campaign, and will be used alongside your brand vetting score to define the maximum throughputs allowed by the carriers.

Finally, our brand new campaign registration form will automatically unlock the campaign use cases allowed for your brand (impacting factors: entity type, vetting status, etc.). For brands that have not gone through vetting, only the Low Volume Mixed use case can be selected.

 

Important information:

If your entity (company, organisation, non-profit, etc.) is legally registered for less than a year, and if you have never used messaging in the past, we recommend you to register a Low Volume Mixed campaign for an initial period of 6-12 months to build up history on the ecosystem, before submitting your brand to vetting. As newer brands will usually be assigned a low vetting score.

 

Please check our article to understand all the 10DLC campaign use cases available to you.

 

Campaign details

In this section, you will need to provide these important details about your campaign:

• Reseller ID
• Label
• Description

 

Campaign reseller ID

Later this year, if registering multiple 10DLC brands and campaigns -- either on behalf of your customers or integrating our APIs to your services; you will be required to provide your unique reseller ID whenever the specific brand or campaign being registered does not represent your legal entity. To register a new reseller ID, you can check our guide to resellers.

Please note that it will not be possible to add, change or remove the reseller ID information from your campaign after submission.

 

Campaign name / Campaign label

This is an alphanumeric name you can give to your campaign. This allows you to easily recognize each of your campaigns.

 

Campaign description

This field must contain at least 40 characters and provide a description of the campaign. Please note that the description must be clear and explain what types of messages are sent to subscribers, in what context and for what purpose.

Example: "Vonage sends recurring account notification text messages to their customers to alert them of the latest products or when their account balance is low."

 

Message Flow

The Message Flow is used to explain the methods subscribers can follow to enroll to your campaign. This is the equivalent of the Call to Action (CTA) which refers to the exact verbiage exposed to subscribers to ensure proper consent is collected from new subscribers. In our new campaign registration form, we have decided to collect the different elements constituting the message flow in different sections:

 

Message frequency

Please select whether your campaign will send recurring messages, or if it will only send a single message per request (typically, only 2FA campaigns are considered non-recurring).

The legal verbiage added to your campaign message flow (and that you must add to your CTAs) is:

• For Recurring: "Message frequency varies"
• For One-Time: "One message per request"

Brand name

Every messages you send on your 10DLC campaigns must begin with your brand name. Here you can specify which brand name will appear. You can use your company's legal name, or any more commonly know name for your brand (DBA name).

Note that you are only required to show your brand name on the very first message of each interaction when engaging in a conversation with your subscribers.

 

Consent mechanisms

There are several methods to collect subscriber consent when joining a campaign, those are:

• Online forms
  websites, applications, mobile apps
• Text-to-join
  also known as SMS opt-in
• Live operator
  or verbal or physical interactions, contact centres, etc.
• Point of sales
  which includes paper forms, flyers, checklists, contracts, etc.
• Other
  for anything else

You may offer multiple opt-in methods to your subscribers. In this section, you must provide documentation showing that all the required legal mentions are visible and understood by the subscriber. 

 

For each consent method you select, you will be asked to provide:

• A link to an online form or document showing the full call to action (CTA)
  e.g. online account registration, scan of paper form, scripted interaction in a text file, etc.
• Details about how or why subscribers get presented the CTA and provide consent
  e.g. "customers create an account when downloading our app", "Customers sign our car rental agreement"

For Text-to-Join method (also known as SMS opt-in), you will also need to provide the Keywords subscribers need to text to enroll. Please note that re-opt-in is considered as opt-in under 10DLC, so keywords can be "JOIN", "SUBSCRIBE", "START", "BEGIN", "REJOIN", "RESTART", etc.
Please make sure to specify to which number(s) subscribers need to send the keyword(s) to enroll. You can find examples of valid CTAs for each consent method on our campaign requirements article.

 

Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions

Please provide a link to your privacy policy and terms and conditions here. Note that those pages must be hosted on a domain name that matches your brand name & website.

There are specific requirements relative to the verbiage of your policy and terms pages, please make sure you have updated the language to comply with 10DLC requirements and CTIA guidelines.

 

Carrier Disclaimer

Finally, if you were not able to update your privacy policy or terms and conditions to add the exact mention that "Carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages", you will need to select the carrier disclaimer checkbox. This will automatically add this mention to your message flow, but it also means that you are required to expose that same legal mention in all your CTAs. In other words, you need to make sure that sentence is visible on your online forms, paper forms, scripted texts, etc.

 

Attention: if you are leveraging our API to register or update campaigns, please submit your request providing the new "message_flow_details" object, which contains specific attribute for each of the required information within the message flow, instead of the older "message_flow". "message flow" will continue to be used as the unified message flow dynamically created from the details provided in the "message_flow_details" object.

 

Content Attributes

This section allows you to define the automated messages that will be sent to your subscribers when an opt-in, opt-out or help keyword is sent to any number linked to the campaign. If you have enabled the Opt-Out Assist feature on your account, Vonage will automatically send those responses on your behalf and take the appropriate measures to prevent further messages after an opt-out (or until a re-opt-in). Please note that if not enabled, you must implement a similar mechanism on your end to handle those mechanisms.

 

Opt-in mechanism

To allow opt-in keywords to join the campaign, you must go back to the Message Flow screen and enable Text-to-Join. There you will be able to determine the accepted keywords.

Examples of recommended keywords: "JOIN", "START", "BEGIN", "SUBSCRIBE", "REJOIN", "RESTART"

 

Regardless of the ability to join the campaign via text, every recurring campaign is required to send an opt-in message to new subscribers when joining the campaign. This initial message must be sent to your new subscribers, and including the following information:

• Your brand name
• A confirmation of the subscription
• The message frequency disclosure
  "Message frequency varies" or "One message per request"
• The pricing disclosure
  "Message and data rates may apply"
• The help & opt-out instructions
  "Text HELP for help, text STOP to opt-out"
• If applicable: The Carrier disclaimer
  "Carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages"

 

Attention: If your message is longer than 255 characters, the legal verbiage must appear in the first segment of the message. Public shortened URLs are prohibited.

 

Example: "Geri’s Limo: Hello, welcome to our member's campaign. Message frequency varies. Message and data rates may apply. Text HELP for help, text STOP to opt-out."

 

Opt-out mechanism

Every campaigns must accept the "STOP" keyword sent by subscribers to opt-out of a campaign. You may allow additional keywords.

The recommended keywords under CTIA Guidelines are: "END", "QUIT", "UNSUBSCRIBE", "CANCEL"

 

Please then specify the message that will be sent to subscribers upon reception of any of the opt-out keywords. This message must contain the following:

• Your brand name
• A confirmation of the removal of the subscriber from the campaign
• A confirmation that the subscriber "will no longer receive any further messages"
• Optional: You may add instructions to re-opt in the campaign

Attention: If you have not enabled our Opt-Out Assist feature, you must implement logic in your application to ensure the subscriber is removed from your recipient list.

 

Example: "Geri’s Limo: You have successfully unsubscribed & will no longer receive any additional messages." [optional: "Text HELP for assistance or JOIN to rejoin."]

 

Help mechanism

Every campaigns must accept the "HELP" keyword sent by subscribers to get assistance regarding your campaign. You may allow additional keywords.

The recommended keywords under CTIA Guidelines are: "SOS", "ASSISTANCE", "INFO"

 

Please then specify the message that will be sent to subscribers upon reception of any of the help keywords. This message must contain the following:

• Your brand name
• The instructions to follow in order to contact a support team. It can be either of:
  • The email address of your support team
  • The phone number of your assistance
  • A URL leading directly to your website's support page
• Optional: You may add instructions to re-opt in the campaign

Attention:

• If you have not enabled our Opt-Out Assist feature, you must implement logic in your application to ensure the help message is sent automatically and immediately upon reception of an help keyword. 
• Automated help messages can contain a URL matching your domain name, even when the feature allowing to send links is not enabled. Public shortened URLs are prohibited. If sending a phone number however, the appropriate campaign feature must be selected.

Example: "Geri’s Limo: For support, please visit www.website.com, or contact us at care@email.com, or call 1-XXX-XXX-XXXX."

 

Sample Messages

You must now provide a few examples of the messages you will send to your subscribers. Depending on the use case of your campaign, you may be required to provide from 1 to 5 sample messages, please check our campaign requirements article to understand how many messages you should provide. Please also take a minute to read the traffic compliance article, to ensure that you do not send disallowed content within your campaign.

Note that templated messages are not advised as they can be rejected by the carriers:
Instead of: "Dear [customer name], your order [order number] has been received."
Write: "Dear Alex, your order 12345 has been received."

 

Note:

• Every campaign use case except 2FA require a minimum of 2 sample messages
• You should also provide at least one sample message per use case when submitting campaigns with sub-usecases.
  Example: a Low Volume Mixed campaign with Marketing and Account notifications requires 2 samples
• All our 10DLC campaigns are enabled to send MMS messages. However, we do not currently offer the option to attach media files to sample messages. Be assured that this does not impact your campaign in any way.

 

Campaign features

Embedded links

Are you expecting to send web links (URLs, files, applications, etc.) within your campaign traffic?
Note that public URL shorteners (such as bit.ly, tinyuri) are not accepted.

URLs are flagged by carriers as high risk and will trigger heightened scrutiny of the campaign and traffic. When selecting this feature, you ensure that messaging containing URLs are less prone to being filtered.

 

Embedded phone number

Are you expecting to send phone numbers in your campaign's traffic? You do not need to enable this feature if you only send a phone number to your subscribers in your automated HELP message.

Text messages containing phone numbers are at a higher risk of being labeled as spam, so enabling this feature will reduce the risk of your messages being filtered. 

 

Age gated content

Are you sending content that can be age restricted? If this feature is enabled, you need to provide the proof of having implemented an age gate to your campaign in the message flow.

If the content you send through this campaign falls under the scope of the CTIA guidelines around age-gated content, please make sure to tick this box to ensure the carriers can filter messages delivered to underaged subscribers.

 

Direct landing (loan arrangements)

Will you send messages related to loans or financial lending services to your subscribers? These types of messages are more likely to be identified as spam, please tick the box when registering your campaign to ensure the carriers are aware that those messages are to be expected.

 

10DLC terms & conditions

At the end of the registration process, you are required to confirm that you accept the terms and conditions of 10DLC. These terms are dynamically provided by The Campaign Registry (TCR). Currently, they only consist of a one line text: "I confirm that this campaign will not be used for Affiliate Marketing."

 

Registration recapitulative

At the end of the registration journey, we will expose a recapitulative of the campaign you registered, accompanied with the detailed pricing the registration will incur.

 

Step by step guides

 

Vonage dashboard

This article provides a step by step guide to register a campaign via our dashboard.

 

API endpoints

This article provides a step by step guide to register a campaign using the API.

 

What happens next?

Your campaign application has now been received and will be reviewed by our compliance team. Once the campaign has been approved by our compliance team, we will send it to our partners and carriers for their review. Please keep an eye on the campaign status in case we need you to amend your application in order to comply with 10DLC requirements.

Once all the reviews have been approved, your campaign becomes active and you can start linking numbers and sending traffic for this program.

 

Note that from September 2nd 2024, when updating your campaign, our compliance team will review your updated campaign and ensure it remains compliant with 10DLC requirements. Do not worry, we will also introduce a new traffic flag on campaigns, and you will be allowed to manage your numbers and send traffic on the campaign during the review.

 

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