Quick access:

• Before you begin
• Numbers overview
• Step by steps guide
• What happens next?
• Additional information

Before you begin

Make sure you have read the guides to register your 10DLC brands and campaigns before hand. Once you have registered your campaign, and that campaign has been approved by both Vonage and our partners, you can start linking numbers in order to send traffic for that campaign.

Numbers overview

Requirements

Please make sure you understand the numbers requirements for 10DLC campaigns:

• Numbers can only be linked to a single 10DLC campaign at a time
• Numbers can be added to a Vonage number pool, but if linking more than one U.S. or Canadian numbers to a number pool, all the numbers must be linked to the same 10DLC campaign
• Traffic can only be sent from a number once the linking request has been approved

Features

HIPAA

Vonage can offer HIPAA numbers. If you would like to use HIPAA compliant numbers, you need to:

• Reach out to your Vonage Account Manager or our Support team
• Request to enable the HIPAA feature for all your relevant accounts
  • Enabling HIPAA on the primary account (main API Key) will not impact the secondary accounts (sub-API keys)
• New 10DLC campaigns must be reviewed and approved by Vonage & the carriers
  • When approved, a campaign becomes "Active", this is when you can start linking numbers & sending traffic for this campaign

Before you continue:

• To enable HIPAA on a campaign, you must select the HIPAA option when linking the very first number to the campaign
• This action is definitive and determines if a campaign is HIPAA enabled or not
• There is no mechanism to enable or disable HIPAA on campaigns after the initial setup is completed following the initial number linking request sent
• It is not possible to link both HIPAA and non-HIPAA numbers to the same campaign

Once a number is linked to the campaign, having selected the HIPAA feature when linking the number, you will be able to send HIPAA compliant SMS messages to your campaign subscribers.

Coming soon

You will soon be able to enable / disable the HIPAA feature for a campaign directly via a 10DLC campaign attribute. Please note that the limitation preventing to update the HIPAA feature for a campaign after a number linking request has been submitted for that campaign will remain in place. The new HIPAA option as a campaign attribute will allow you to clearly see if your campaign is HIPAA enabled or not, and helps you ensure that all the number linking requests submitted for this campaign are consistent.

If the HIPAA feature was not selected when registering the campaign, it will still be possible to enable HIPAA on your very first number linked. Once the request has been sent, it will no longer be possible to make any changes to the HIPAA option on the campaign or when linking numbers to the campaign.

SMS capabilities

Every number linked to a 10DLC campaign will be automatically enabled for SMS and MMS messages. Every 10DLC campaign is MMS capable, with different throughput rates for some carriers.

Purchasing numbers

If you do not currently own a U.S. or Canadian number, you can purchase a new numbers via our dashboard. If you already own numbers, you can go straight into a 10DLC campaign, under the numbers tab, to link the numbers to your campaign. When purchasing your +1 phone number, make sure that the number has the SMS & MMS capabilities. Note that both U.S. (including Puerto Rico) and Canadian numbers can be linked to 10DLC campaigns and used to send 10DLC traffic to U.S. subscribers.

Porting numbers

If you wish to port existing numbers into Vonage, please check this article.

Linking time

Linking numbers to a campaign needs to be replicated and approved by each carrier to be fully provisioned. Note that linking a number typically takes a few minutes, but we have seen instances of linking requests taking several hours to be completed. We recommend you to link your numbers a few days before you need to start sending traffic, to avoid disruption if the linking time was increased. We also recommend that you link large amounts of numbers in smaller batches to reduce the risk of increasing the linking time across the industry.

Step by step guides

Vonage dashboard

This article outlines linking and unlinking numbers via our dashboard.

Public API

This article outlines linking and unlinking numbers using our API.

What happens next?

Rejected numbers

If the number goes to status rejected after requesting to link it to a campaign (like in the image above); it can be for multiple reasons, including:

• The campaign has reached its limit of approved numbers linked (49 by default)
• The number linking request timed out

Resolution:

• Make sure that you have not linked too many numbers to your campaign
• Try to unlink the number, wait 15 minutes, then link the number again
• Avoid unlinking numbers while the request is still pending
• If the linking failed after 36 hours, wait 15 minutes and try linking the number again

If those steps did not work or if you receive any other error message, submit a support request.

Additional Information

Number pools

If you need to link more than 49 numbers to a single 10DLC campaign, you will need to enable the number pool feature on that campaign. This process is outlined in this article.

Notes:

• Carriers prefer to avoid pooling numbers on 10DLC campaigns, so each request must be reviewed and approved before the feature can be enabled.
  The timeframe to process those requests is one to two weeks.
• On the 10DLC network, throughput is set at the brand or at the campaign level for most use-cases. Having more numbers will not increase the amount of messages that you can send.
• Number pools allow you to link up to 5000 numbers to any "Agents & Franchise" campaigns
• We will soon allow up to 50k numbers on a single campaign for all other use cases

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