Short Code Text Messaging

Normal text messaging we send to each other uses real phone numbers that are 10 digits or more if you need the country code as well. These text messages can be sent without any pre-approval but are restricted to the rules of the receiver's phone carrier. The rules tend to restrict messages to 160 characters and can often be censored for things like adding a URL in the message. Also mass messages can look like spam when they are all coming from the same source number. This forces us to either send text messages slower (100/min/message) and to spread them out across a bank of many phone numbers. This means your recipients don’t have a single phone number you can tell them where your messages will be coming from, instead they may have different numbers even within people in the same household.

It’s becoming fairly common to get text messages from companies from a number that doesn’t look like a phone number. These numbers can be 5 or 6 digits and often require us to give permission to continue getting messages. These shorter texting numbers are called short code texting. Because of the opt-in nature of them they don’t have the same restrictions as the old long code texting. With these you can send as much information as you want and as of right now you won’t be censored by the phone carrier. This means you can have more confidence that your message is getting to the intended recipient as long as they’ve opted in.

BrightArrow has moved to short code texting. Our short code phone number is 79041 or 87569 and will be the same for everyone. For the first time you can tell your parents exactly which phone number to look for. The first time you send a message to a new phone number it’ll send as the old 10 digit phone number but then prompt the recipient to opt (invite) into getting further messages from the 79041 or 87569 number. From that point on once the invite has been sent no other texts will be sent to that number until they opt-in. There is also a new opt-in report in the reports section that will show you what phone numbers have opted in and which have not.

The increased reliability should give you more confidence that your messages are getting through. Opting in is a one time extra step but it does make a very big difference.

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