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Most people picture a "text message campaign" as a big marketing blast. But if you're planning to text appointment reminders, send shift updates to staff or volunteers, follow up with existing clients, or send delivery updates, that's a campaign too, at least as far as the wireless carriers are concerned.
Every group of text messages with a similar purpose (reminders, alerts, internal staff updates, customer follow-ups) gets registered as its own campaign before it can go out. This isn't about volume or intent; a vet practice texting appointment reminders to thirty regular clients registers a campaign the same way a national retailer does.
The good news: most small businesses don't need to register a handful of separate campaigns. There's a "low-volume mixed" option that covers up to five different use cases (say, appointment reminders, customer care, and account notifications) under one registration, and it fits the vast majority of what we onboard. We'll generally start you there unless something about your messaging needs its own dedicated campaign.
AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon require every business sending texts from a regular 10-digit number to register through a shared system called The Campaign Registry (TCR) before messages go through. They built this to cut down on spam and scams, so they want to know who's texting, why, and that the people receiving texts actually agreed to it.
This step exists no matter who provides your texting service. The form looks a little different from provider to provider, but the underlying questions are the same everywhere.
A lot of registrations get bounced back the first time around, usually over small, fixable things: a privacy policy missing one sentence, a sample message that doesn't quite match what carriers expect, an opt-in process that isn't documented anywhere. Each bounced submission means paying the registration fee again.
We review your information with you before anything gets submitted, so the easy-to-miss stuff gets caught early instead of after a rejection and a second fee.
Carriers want to see a clear answer to "how did this person end up getting texts from you?" It has to be specific to texting (not buried somewhere in a general terms of service) and it has to be something we can point to as evidence, not just described after the fact.
Any of the above works fine; we just need something to back it up: a screenshot of the form, the script your staff reads, a photo of the signup sheet, or the QR code itself and where it's posted.
Wherever you're collecting that "yes," a handful of details need to show up alongside it:
This applies no matter how you're collecting the opt-in, web form, keyword, or otherwise.
Carriers look for one specific thing in your privacy policy: a clear statement that you won't sell or share a customer's phone number or opt-in info with other companies for marketing purposes. Leaving that out is one of the most common reasons a registration gets sent back. Your terms need to cover your brand name, what kind of messages people will get, how often, the rates disclosure, how to get help, and how to opt out.
No website to host these on? We can attach them as documents to your registration instead.
Each of these needs to work as its own message, not folded into your welcome text:
HELP should include your brand name and a way to reach you (phone, email, or a link). STOP should immediately confirm to the person that they won't get any more messages, and include your brand name. Your opt-out word needs to stay a real, separate word, STOP, END, CANCEL, or UNSUBSCRIBE. (STOP2END won't work; STOP 2 END will.)
The samples you give us should look like what you'll really send, and at least one should show the opt-out language. If you'll be including links or phone numbers in your texts, show that in a sample too. Carriers compare these samples against what you've described, so generic or mismatched samples tend to draw extra scrutiny.
Carriers check for a website or public page (a verified social media page works too) tied to your business. If the site can't be found, doesn't load, or sits behind a password, that alone can hold up a registration. The same goes if your site happens to mention anything carriers don't allow on SMS campaigns, even if it's unrelated to your texting plans, more on that below.
Carriers won't register campaigns related to cannabis or CBD, sexual content, hate speech, firearms, or (without proper age-gating) alcohol and tobacco. This isn't just about what's in your texts; it covers your website too. A chiropractic office that sells CBD oil on its site, for instance, can get flagged even if the texting program has nothing to do with it.
We'll ask whether your campaign involves things like lending, embedded links, embedded phone numbers, affiliate marketing, or age-gated content. These answers get compared against your actual sample messages, so it's worth double-checking them before we submit, a mismatch here is an easy, avoidable rejection.If something does get bounced back
A rejected submission usually means resubmitting, and resubmitting means paying the registration fee again. That's really the whole reason we review things with you up front: catching a missing sentence in a privacy policy costs nothing during onboarding, but costs real money after a rejection notice.
This process exists because the carriers require it, not because we're adding hoops to jump through. The form would look about the same wherever you signed up. The part we can actually offer you is a second set of eyes before you submit, so the small stuff gets caught early instead of becoming a second bill.
If you're not sure which opt-in method fits your business, or what to send us as evidence for it, just ask your onboarding contact before submitting. That conversation costs nothing; a second registration fee does.
