What's My Text Marketing Sender ID (From) for Customers in the U.S?

Sending marketing text messages your E-Commerce products in the United States has a lot of benefits. Compared to email, text messaging is a much faster, more cost-effective, more personal and direct channel for reaching customers.
 

To send text messages safely in the USA you need to be aware of some TCPA (Telephone Consumer Protection Act) and CTIA (Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association):

1. The appropriate time of day for sending text marketing messages

2. Explicit Opt-in consent

3. Business name in the message

4. Link to the specific product or service being advertised

5. Approximate number of messages consumers will receive per month

Let’s talk more about the FROM that U.S. businesses can use when sending text messages to their customers.
 

1. What’s a Sender ID?

The Sender ID is the name or number your recipients get when they receive an SMS from you. This corresponds to the “From” you see when sending a text marketing campaign or an automation in SMSBump.
 

2. What Will be My Sender ID?

Customers based in the United States will be receiving your messages from the following shortcode, which will be displayed as your Sender ID by default:
 

81787
 

3. Will You Display My Phone Number?

No.

SMSBump needs your phone number only during your registration for the service. We use it to verify your account and nothing else. After that, your phone number will not be used to send messages to your customers.

Still… all text messages sent to the users in the United States will originate a U.S. short code by default. Alternatively you can get a dedicated number. More on that below.

SMSBump will not display the actual phone number you’ve configured in your app settings. Instead, all messages will originate from a carrier approved shortcode.
 

4. What is a Short Code?

If you’re just getting into text marketing, you should know this is the backbone of reaching customers straight on their mobile phones through SMS.

Short codes are 5 to 6 digit short numbers that are used by businesses to opt-in users to their text messaging campaigns and then send promotional and marketing SMS with discounts and special offers.

(Source: U.S. Short Code Directory)

In return, customers can respond back to those messages by replying to the short code numbers.

For example: “Text ‘HOMER’ to 8***4 for a free donut”

Short codes are especially recommended for bigger businesses, due to their high initial cost.

They are a good idea to start with when you’re already sending messages and gaining ROI in high volumes.

If you want to obtain a short code for your business, you can reach out to SMSBump for more information (shoot us an email at sales@smsbump.com).
 

5. Can I Use My Business Name as a Sender ID?

Using your brand name as a Sender ID (Alphanumeric ID) is not supported in the United States.

This means that you cannot use your brand name as the sender of your text marketing messages.

Important

However, one of the TCPA guidelines about text marketing states that you must mention your company name.

Since you cannot use your business name as a sender, this means that you have to include it in the text message. Luckily, SMSBump allows you to do that easily with this short code:

Learn more about TCPA guidelines here.

Learn more about CTIA guidelines here.

So. We established that all of the text marketing messages for the USA are sent via our carrier approved short code 81787.

This is a requirement imposed by the operators (you need to undergo an assessment and verification so you can message customers).
 

5. Can I Have My Own Dedicated Number?

If you want your own long number (standard 10 digits phone number), what you can do is get a Dedicated Number for your SMSBump account.

This means that you will have your own number and short code to use as a Sender ID.

However…

There is a limit of 500 text messages per day with the dedicated number.

So if you want to use it for Text Marketing messages and campaigns and you have more than 500 recipients, you will not be able to reach all them in a single day.

Good news for Automations though is that in our experience most stores don’t pass the 500 messages per day limit.

This means you’re all good for Automations with the Dedicated Number, but if you want to send out huge Text Marketing campaigns with it, there are the limitations.
 

Dedicated Numbers Can Receive Messages!

The dedicated number also gives you a great feature which is to receive messages instead of just sending them out.

You just receive the messages via email, not to your phone number. They are received by the Dedicated Number. Let’s explain how this works.

You’re a E-Commerce store owner using SMSBump and you just purchased a Dedicated Number.

Step 1: A customer makes a purchase on your website.

Step 2: Your store sends them an automated text message with their order details.

Step 3: The customer replies to the message saying “Thanks!”

Step 4: Their message is sent to the Dedicated Number and to you via email.

This also goes for all other kinds of text messages where customers need to reply to your message. For instance to subscribe to a list.