Many of the churches using Messaging Lists have seen the delivery rate of their SMS messages drop in last month. We’ve also seen a growing number of 30034 Errors in the last couple of weeks. This is the result of the A2P 10DLC changes that the mobile carriers are making to deal with increasing amount “spam”.
Businesses (including churches) need to register with The Campaign Registry in order to send SMS messages with 10-digit phone numbers. The mobile carriers have announced that they will completely block all mass texting messages from unregistered numbers beginning on August 31, 2023.
NOTE: A2P 10DLC requirements will affect all US numbers and any Canadian numbers that send messages to US recipients.
eAdventist will take care of the registration process and cover the fees (one-time and monthly) for churches using Messaging Lists. Unfortunately, the registration process and our SMS provider’s support team are overwhelmed and it has been challenging to determine the best way to register churches. We have invested in a higher-tier support plan and are finally getting the answers.
Each organization will need to register using one of the following options.
Low-Volume Standard
- Requires the church to have its own EIN (US tax number) or Canada Tax number
- Provides faster delivery
- Allows multiple phone numbers per “campaign”
Sole Proprietor
- For churches without an EIN or Canada Tax number
- Provides slower delivery (1 message/second)
- Allows only one phone number per “campaign”
The registration and monthly cost is almost identical for both types of registration. eAdventist will cover the costs of one “mixed user” campaign for each church.
TLDR: We are hoping to begin registering all churches that currently use SMS messaging next week (August 7-11). To ensure that your church qualifies for Low-Volume Standard, be sure to enter your church’s EIN (or Canada Tax number) and “Legal name” (matching the tax registration exactly) in eAdventist – on the “Settings” tab of the Organization page.
Here are some helpful articles provided by Twilio, our SMS provider:
- https://support.twilio.com/hc/en-us/articles/4405758341659-A2P-10DLC-Brand-Approval-Best-Practices
- https://support.twilio.com/hc/en-us/articles/9550596959643-A2P-10DLC-Sole-Proprietor-Brands-FAQ
Contact us at help@eadventist.net if you have any other questions about A2P 10DLC.
eAdventist team
Frequently-asked questions
Why does eAdventist use 10-digit phone numbers instead of 5-digit “short code” numbers?
The 5-digit “short code” numbers are definitely easier to share and have the highest delivery rate. However, they would cost us $2000/month and are in limited supply. 10-digit numbers, on the other hand, cost us $1/month and local numbers are readily available for almost every area in the US and Canada.
Why does eAdventist limit SMS messages to 320 characters?
SMS messages are delivered in 160-character “segments”. If you send a 300-character message, it’s actually delivered as 2 “segments”. Including an Emoji or Unicode character (e.g. é, —) shrinks the “segment” size to 70 characters. If you send a 2-segment message to 100 people, we are charged for 200 segments.
https://www.twilio.com/docs/glossary/what-sms-character-limit
/https://www.twilio.com/blog/what-the-heck-is-a-segment.html
Does eAdventist allow me to include images in text messages?
Including images in a text messages forces the message to be sent by MMS, rather than SMS – which approximately doubles the cost per segment. Until we add a billing option, we need to stick with SMS.
Dear Brian, Long story short – I put in the Tax Exempt # for our church. Then realized it must be IRS Tax #. I got that from the treasurer- entered it in the Settings/Organization Page. A little note at the top tells me the tax # has already been taken.
Help – it was blank before —so did it take the wrong # I put in first or was it checked and so was recorded as blank?
Help! Thanks for your patience working with those of us who are in need of guidance.
Kaye M Jones Midport SDA clerk Port St. Lucie, FL
The Lord does work in various ways to get things straight because our Tax Exempt # was issued to our church at a Decatur, GA address. The conference is checking that one now. So, there’s the “all things work for good” part of the mix-up with numbers to be recorded.
Good question, Kaye. When you add an EIN, eAdventist checks if any other church or conference already has this same number. We’ve discovered that some churches use the conference’s EIN rather than getting one of their own. However, I see that you were able to enter the EIN eventually – so you know that it’s unique to your church.