SMS stands for “Short Message Service.” It is a text messaging service that allows users to send and receive short, text-based messages on mobile devices. SMS messages are limited to 160 characters per message.

MMS stands for “Multimedia Messaging Service.” Unlike SMS, MMS allows the transmission of multimedia content such as images, videos, audio, and longer text messages in addition to standard text.

Text marketing, also known as SMS marketing or mobile marketing, is a promotional strategy that involves sending short text messages to customers’ mobile devices. It is used by businesses to reach their target audience, promote products or services, and engage customers through text messages.

SMS marketing involves businesses collecting customer phone numbers through opt-in methods. Once permission is obtained, businesses can send promotional messages, offers, updates, and more to their subscribers’ mobile phones using SMS.

Text marketing can benefit a wide range of businesses, including political campaigns, retail stores, restaurants, service providers, e-commerce stores, nonprofits, and more. Any business that wants to communicate directly with its customers in a quick and personalized manner can utilize text marketing.

According to the FCC:

“Political campaign-related autodialed or prerecorded voice calls, including autodialed live calls, autodialed texts, and prerecorded voice messages, are prohibited to cell phones, pagers or other mobile devices without the called party’s prior express consent.”

However, the FCC’s rules further note: “As text messages generally go to mobile phones, robotexts require the called party’s prior express consent. However, political text messages can be sent without the intended recipient’s prior consent if the message’s sender does not use autodialing technology to send such texts and instead manually dials them.”

North American carriers are moving away from unsanctioned long codes and are launching 10DLC as a sanctioned A2P messaging service. In order to create this sanctioned channel, carriers are requiring use of TCR to know who is sending messages and what messaging is being sent. TCR allows carriers to have access to this information, and with this transparency, CSP’s will have their registered campaigns fully supported.

Learn more at The Campaign Registry.