What is Message Deliverability?

When it comes to business SMS & MMS texting, “deliverability” refers to the ability your messaging API provider has to get a message to its intended recipient.

Why just the “ability” to get the message to the recipient?

Here’s a bird’s eye view of how this works: when your customer sends an A2P message through your platform, your messaging API provider (e.g. Telgorithm) then sends the message out to its Direct Connect Aggregator (DCA). Finally, the DCA will send that message to the Carrier’s network (e.g. Verizon), and the Carrier to the recipient.

DLR vs. HDLR

A DLR, or a delivery receipt, refers to confirmation of whether or not a message was successfully delivered to the Carrier’s network. It does not necessarily mean that message made it to the recipient.

An HDLR, or a handset delivery receipt, refers to when the recipient’s cell phone sends a ping back to the Carrier signaling that the phone received the message (not that the recipient opened the message), which triggers an HDLR to the Carrier. It’s important to note that according to the Carriers, getting an HDLR is best effort. But if one is received, it doesn’t mean the handset received the message. Carriers know that the intended end user may not open the message, may have changed phone numbers, blocked the sender’s number previously, and so on.

What is a False DLR?

The intent behind false DLRs is actually to protect end users from spamming. If spam text messaging is suspected, a Carrier may send a DLR even if the message wasn’t received to stop the spammer from continuing to try to send. False DLRs are very unlikely for anyone who’s legitimately compliant and sending acceptable content.

But without rate limiting technology…

Put simply, none of this even matters if you don’t currently have technology in place to manage your approved rate limits in the first place. In A2P messaging, “rate limits” or “throughput limits” refer to the number of texts you are able to send within a specific period of time.

One factor that determines your rate or throughput limits is whether or not you’ve verified your Toll-Free messaging traffic or paid to register your 10-digit long code (10DC) messaging traffic. Both processes lead to higher rate or throughput limits because your business and messaging use case has been vetted and verified (like doing a background check).

The other factor is which Carrier each of your message recipients are using, and how each Carrier monitors rate or throughput. For example, Verizon monitors by messages sent per number per minute; AT&T by messages sent per Campaign per minute. T-Mobile, on the other hand, has a daily cap, monitoring messages sent per day, inclusive of all Campaigns that sit under the given Brand.

Without rate / throughput limiting technology automatically managing your A2P messaging, you cannot take advantage of your higher limits. If you or your API provider are not proactively tracking this, your messages are either being capped well below their limit, or the ceilings are being lifted, putting you at risk of exceeding limits which results in dropped or blocked messages. Our conclusion: it’s a scam.

Guaranteeing Message Deliverability

Telgorithm was founded on principles of transparency and accountability. Our mission has always been to revolutionize A2P messaging, even if that means simply making it work the way it should.

We’ve never focused on guaranteeing something like HDLRs because the Carrier can’t guarantee them.

Our claim is that as the only API provider in the industry offering rate / throughput limiting technology to proactively track and manage your limits, we enable you to send at exact rates at the fastest speeds possible without ever exceeding your limits for guaranteed deliverability. Our average deliverability rates are around 99% – this is unheard of in this industry.

Our technology is called Smart Queueing and it’s offered to each of our customers at no extra cost because rate / throughput management is a fundamental necessity for A2P messaging.

Unmatched Message Deliverability Starts with Your API

With the right API partner, you can offer your customers the best SMS & MMS deliverability in the industry. DLRs and HDLRs are good indicators of a message’s status after it’s sent out, but if your API provider can’t guarantee deliverability from their end through proactive and automated message management, what’s the point?

If you think you might need an audit run on your current A2P messaging deliverability and are interested in learning more about Telgorithm’s next gen technology, reach out to one of our experts today.