To send SMS campaigns, you need to have an account with an SMS provider. When you choose Iterable SMS, Iterable manages SMS services for you. Iterable SMS is an easy and cost-effective way to stay focused on your marketing activities without having to manage another third-party account.
This article reviews Iterable SMS service availability, optional settings, and customizations for Iterable SMS.
NOTE
For the most up-to-date listing of available regions, services, and settings for Iterable SMS, check with your customer success manager.
# In this article
# Supported regions for Iterable SMS
In general, Iterable SMS follows these conditions:
-
Short codes and toll free numbers:
- Are only available in Canada, New Zealand, UK, and US.
- Are unique to each country. For example, you need one short code for the US and a different short code for Canada.
-
Alphanumeric sender IDs:
- Only support outbound SMS traffic.
- Are overwritten to short or long codes before delivery in some countries, as noted below.
-
MMS support varies by country:
- MMS services are only available in the US and Canada.
- When unsupported, you can enable the MMS Converter setting. Iterable attempts to convert the media URL into a link, and then sends the message as SMS (with or without a link).
Continue reading this section for more information on supported regions.
# United States and Canada
| Sender ID type | United States | Canada |
|---|---|---|
| Long Code (10-DLC) | Two-way SMS and One-way MMS (outbound only) | Two-way SMS and One-way MMS (outbound only) |
| Short Code | Two-way SMS and One-way MMS (outbound only) | Two-way SMS and One-way MMS (outbound only) |
| Toll Free | Two-way SMS and One-way MMS (outbound only) | Two-way SMS and One-way MMS (outbound only) |
| Alphanumeric | Not supported | Not supported |
# United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand
| Sender ID type | United Kingdom | Australia | New Zealand |
|---|---|---|---|
| Long Code (10-DLC) | Two-way SMS | Two-way SMS | Not supported |
| Short Code | Not supported | Not supported | Two-way SMS |
| Toll Free | Not supported | Not supported | Not supported |
| Alphanumeric | One-way SMS (outbound only) | One-way SMS (outbound only) | Not supported |
# Countries with alphanumeric support
These countries are also available via Iterable SMS. At this time, Iterable supports only one-way outbound SMS sent from alphanumeric sender IDs.
- Austria
- Czech Republic
- Denmark
- Estonia
- Finland
- France
- Germany
- Greece
- Ireland
- Israel
- Italy
- Latvia
- Lithuania
- Luxembourg
- Malta
- Netherlands
- Norway
- Poland
- Portugal
- Republic of Cyprus
- Romania
- Slovakia
- Slovenia
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
# Countries that overwrite alphanumeric sender IDs
These countries overwrite messages from alphanumeric sender IDs to random short or long codes when unregistered:
- Belgium
- Brazil
- Bulgaria
- Chile
- Colombia
- Hungary
- Mexico
- New Zealand (short code)
# Supported regions for Iterable MMS
MMS services are only available in the US and Canada.
For all other countries, Iterable attempts to convert the MMS file into a link and then sends the message as SMS (with or without a link).
# Features available for Iterable SMS Services
NOTE
These settings are managed by Iterable. Available settings may vary depending on your plan. To learn more or make changes to your Iterable SMS setup, contact your customer success manager.
Depending on your Iterable SMS plan, you may have access to the following optional settings:
- Number Pooling, which creates a pool of phone numbers to send SMS messages from.
- Skip Unhealthy Numbers, which automatically removes unhealthy phone numbers from the pool.
- Sticky Sender, which assigns a specific sender to each contact for a set period.
- Geomatching, which selects an SMS long code sender that matches each contact's country code and area code when available.
- MMS Transcoding, which compresses MMS media files (images and videos) to meet carrier size restrictions.
- MMS Converter, which converts MMS messages to SMS messages for destinations where MMS isn't supported.
- Advanced Opt-Out keywords, which allows you to add custom opt-out keywords in addition to the default keywords.
# Number pooling
When an SMS messaging profile uses more than one long code or toll-free number, Number Pooling automatically selects originating numbers for messages from the pool of phone numbers.
It balances usage across all numbers, ensuring high deliverability and maintaining number health. This feature is crucial in today's environment where carriers have strict regulations to combat spam, including maximum throughput.
# Skip Unhealthy Numbers
Availability varies by plan. Ask your customer success manager for help.
When Skip Unhealthy Numbers is enabled, all unhealthy sending phone numbers are automatically removed from the pool, preventing them from being chosen when sending outbound messages.
A phone number is considered unhealthy when deliverability is below 25% or spam detection is over 75%.
This setting is useful when you want to maintain high deliverability and avoid sending SMS from phone numbers that are likely to be blocked by carriers.
# Sticky Sender
When Sticky Sender is enabled, Iterable SMS assigns a specific sender to each contact for a set period. Senders remain sticky for 30 days.
Using Sticky Sender avoids confusing users with messages coming from multiple numbers. This ensures users receive SMS messages from the same number, providing a consistent contact point.
# Geomatching
Geomatching selects an SMS long code sender that matches each contact's country code and area code when available.
When customers are dealing with a local company, they expect that business to have a local number. Matching the local area for your customers increases their trust in the message, thus boosting engagement and improving their experience.
# MMS Converter
By default, Iterable SMS uses an MMS Converter, which allows Iterable to send MMS messages to any destination where MMS isn't supported by converting them to SMS.
First, Iterable attempts to convert the media URL to a link. Then, it sends the message as SMS, with or without the link.
This setting is important if you send SMS to international destinations that don't support MMS messages.
# MMS Transcoding
MMS Transcoding compresses MMS media files (images and videos) to meet carrier size restrictions, allowing you to send MMS up to 5MB in size.
When this setting is enabled, Iterable SMS automatically compresses your image according to each carrier's size limitations, maximizing deliverability.
# Advanced Opt-Out
Ask your customer success manager for help.
When you enable Advanced Opt-Out, Iterable SMS allows you to add custom opt-out keywords in addition to the default keywords. This is a great way to customize opt-out instructions for your users, for example, if you want to add keywords in additional languages.
To learn more about standard opt-out keywords, read SMS Unsubscribes and Resubscribes.
# Smart Encoding
Ask your customer success manager for help.
When you enable Smart Encoding, Iterable SMS detects unsupported Unicode characters (like smart quotes or long dashes) and replaces them with GSM-7 equivalents before sending. This matters because a single unsupported character can force Unicode encoding and reduce the number of characters allowed per SMS segment, which increases segment count and cost.
Use this setting to preserve more efficient encoding and make message length and billing more predictable.
Smart Encoding helps with many formatting-related substitutions, but not every character can be converted. Depending on the provider and carrier, emojis and some language-specific characters may still use UCS-2 encoding.
To learn more about character encoding and its impact on SMS segment count and cost, read SMS segment limits and character encoding.
# Global SMS settings page
Org admins and users with the Manage Settings permission can view and update global SMS settings.
To see your current settings, go to Settings > Project Settings, and find Global SMS Settings. Click Manage to visit the Global SMS Settings page.
To learn more about these settings and how to change them, read Customizing SMS Opt-Out Instructions.
# Global SMS usage report
Iterable SMS customers can export usage data for Global SMS that includes granular data for each project, country, and sender ID type. To learn more, read Export project breakdown for Global SMS.
# Unsupported regions
Iterable records a smsSendSkip event when you try to send from Iterable SMS
to countries that:
- You haven’t signed up for.
- Don’t support the type of sender ID you’re sending from (for example, alphanumeric senders cannot send messages to the US or Canada).
- Are in a restricted sending period, such as a holiday. To learn more, read Best Practices for SMS Compliance.
- Are restricted from SMS services.