Troubleshooting: Mobile Messaging Delivery
(4 min read)
When you are running a Mobile Messaging effort, your broadcast SMS messages may fail to reach your contacts for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, this may be because of temporary conditions on the carrier network or the phone number you’re trying to reach. In other cases, you may be trying to reach a number that is permanently unreachable, such as when it’s a land-line that is unable to receive SMS messages. Continuing to send to these numbers can hurt your deliverability and risk all your messages being flagged as SPAM by carriers.
Mobile Messaging helps your messages from being flagged as SPAM by automatically omitting any phone numbers which are repeatedly bouncing messages back as undeliverable.
Read more about mobile messaging fundamentals
Understanding the Send process
When your Mobile Messages are sent, the carriers for the phone numbers you are trying to reach will send detailed delivery information back to our servers. If you’ve already tried to reach the phone number three times without being able to deliver it, we will flag the phone number as opted-out or with an unknown opt-in status, depending on the response codes sent from the carrier. This will keep those numbers out of your future Mobile Messaging efforts unless your contact later definitively opts in to your program.
Read more about managing SMS opt-ins
Understanding Bounces
There are two kinds of bounces that are recorded by our servers depending on the carrier response.
Hard Bounces usually happen when the number is not reachable or able to receive an SMS message. Examples of Hard Bounces could be:
- An invalid country code on the number
- The phone number is not able to receive SMS communications
- The number is no longer in service
After three consecutive hard bounces on a phone number, it will be marked with an Opt-out in your database. The only way the phone number can be restored to an opt-in status is if your contact uses the JOIN keyword to confirm that the number can actually send and receive text messages.
Soft Bounces can happen if there is a carrier error or the number has a temporary issue. Examples of Soft Bounces could be:
- The end-user is out of prepaid credit/minutes
- The mobile operator experiences a temporary network error due to heavy load or service interruption
After three consecutive soft bounces - or a combination of hard and soft bounces - a failing phone number will be marked as Unknown. This will exclude the number from your Mobile Messaging efforts until you can confirm that the number can receive your messages. To restore the opt-in status, you can invite your contact to submit an Online Actions form or self-service page that includes an SMS opt-in or ask them to use a mobile keyword to confirm their opt-in. You can also restore these numbers to an opt-in status using a Bulk Upload.
Using reports for troubleshooting
There are three default reports in Report Manager that can help you troubleshoot unexpected opt-outs and monitor the health of your SMS list.
Read more about tracking results in Mobile Messaging
The Mobile Messaging Performance Report helps you compare all your efforts or learn more details about contacts who received an individual message. In the summary of this report, you can track:
- Total Message Parts - The total message parts that were attempted for Broadcast Messages
- Delivery Rate - Phone numbers that successfully received a message divided by the number you attempted to reach
- Unique Click Rate - Unique links clicked per message divided by the number of messages delivered
- Conversion Rate - Number of form submissions from your mobile messages divided by the number of messages delivered
- Contributions - The number of contributions made as the result of your efforts or individual messages
- Amount Raised - The sum of the contributions as a result of your message or messages
- Avg. Contribution - The sum of contributions received divided by the number of contributions
- Hard Bounce Rate and Hard Bounces - Shows the count and percentage of phone numbers that were unreachable
- Soft Bounce Rate and Soft Bounces - Shows the count and percentage of phone numbers that could not be reached due to a temporary issue
Try filtering the report by Bounce and then grouping on Contact or Phone Number to easily identify numbers that are frequently unable to receive your text messages. You can then manually opt those numbers out of your SMS program.
The Mobile Messaging Opt-In/Out Report gives you an easy way to see who has opted-in and -out of your SMS program. Group by the Most Recently Sent Message to see if specific campaigns are driving opt-outs.
Contacts can opt-out of your messages using predetermined keywords, but sometimes they will send you unexpected responses. The Mobile Message Inbox Report will help you monitor how supporters are responding to your messages. You can Group by > Keyword to scan for replies that indicate a given contact may no longer want to receive messages. Additionally, you can use this report to scan for people who are indicating an interest in volunteering or looking for other ways to get involved with your organization.