In the US, business messages sent to consumers over standard 10-digit numbers go through a registration regime that ties your traffic to a verified business identity. Unregistered traffic gets heavily filtered or blocked outright — and you find out from a customer, not from an error.
This is an SMS problem, not an iMessage one
iMessage does not traverse carrier filtering the same way, which is one more reason the blue path is more reliable. But your SMS fallback traffic is fully exposed, and that is roughly half your list. See blue vs green.
What you have to provide
- Legal business name and registered address, matching your official registration exactly.
- Your tax or business identification number.
- A website that describes what you actually do.
- Sample messages representative of what you will send.
- A description of how you collect consent, and often a link to the opt-in form itself.
Mismatched details are the number one rejection
The business name and address must match your official registration character for character. 'Acme Auto' when you are registered as 'Acme Automotive Services LLC' gets rejected, and the resubmission cycle costs days.
Your opt-in page will be inspected
Reviewers frequently look at the actual form where you collect consent. It needs the disclosure language visible next to an unticked checkbox — message frequency, that rates may apply, how to opt out, and a link to your terms and privacy policy. If your form does not have this, fix the form before you apply. Consent covers what it needs to say.
Throughput is tiered
Registration does not just unblock you, it sets how fast you may send. Lower trust tiers get lower throughput, which matters if you send a few hundred reminders in a burst each morning. Ask your provider what tier you land on and what the per-second limit means for your actual send pattern.
Start it before you need it
- Register as soon as you pick a provider, not the week you want to launch.
- Expect days, not hours, and expect at least one round of corrections.
- Warm the number gradually once approved — a new number sending hundreds on day one still looks like a spammer.
- Watch delivered rates from webhooks after launch. A healthy send rate with a poor delivered rate means filtering. See deliverability.
Rules differ outside the US, and your provider is the right source for the market you are in. Ask them directly what registration your traffic needs before you commit.
Next step
Generate a tagged link for whatever you send next with the UTM builder, see what this looks like in your industry, or compare the services that can send it on the providers page.