Identifying Your Business When Using a Shared SMS Short Code

I received this question via email from one of our customers the other day:

We are currently using your service to text our sales team when real estate comes available or is sold to keep them current with inventory. We also have another department who uses the service to let people know which properties have closed. The only problem is that your service uses 75309 as its number, which confuses some people as to what message came from which department. Is there a feature to have each group have the texts come from a separate number?

This is a great question, and it brings up an important point all our customers should keep in mind when using a shared short code to send SMS messages.

You should always identify yourself in the body of your text message, because recipients won’t otherwise know who your text is coming from. Because all texts coming from a shared short code are essentially coming from the same number, if your business is using the code to communicate from two different departments, you need to find a way to differentiate which department each text is coming from. Further, keep in mind that there are other businesses using the same short code to communicate with their customers, and on the off chance that you happen to share a common customer with another business using that short code, your texts will be coming from the same number. Unless you identify yourself, your customer could confuse your marketing message as coming from another business.

Not to worry. There is an easy workaround for this issue that doesn’t involve you purchasing your own dedicated short code, which can be pretty pricey. This workaround is actually considered a text message marketing best practice, so you should be doing this with all your SMS marketing messages regardless of their origin or intended audience. When sending an SMS, identify your business somewhere within the body of the text.

Here we break down three basic ways of identifying your business when using a shared SMS short code:

Start at the beginning

State your business name at the beginning of your text, as if you were participating in a chat session.

Do it in the middle

Reference your brand name naturally in the body of your SMS.

Sign off

Sign your text messages.