10DLC Registration Demystified: What Businesses Need to Know

Your marketing team spent two weeks crafting the perfect SMS campaign. Messages are written, list is segmented, send date is scheduled. Then your SMS provider mentions something called 10DLC registration and suddenly you're looking at a three-week delay nobody warned you about during the sales process.

Here's everything you actually need to know about 10DLC registration before it derails your next campaign.

What 10DLC Registration Is and Why It Exists

10DLC stands for 10-Digit Long Code. It's the standard phone number format businesses use to send SMS messages: (555) 123-4567. Until 2021, you could buy one of these numbers and start sending business texts with minimal oversight.

That changed when US carriers got overwhelmed with spam, scams, and phishing attempts coming from regular phone numbers. Their solution was The Campaign Registry (TCR), a central system that requires businesses to register their identity and describe their messaging campaigns before carriers will deliver messages.

This isn't a recommendation. It's mandatory. Send business SMS without proper 10DLC registration and carriers will either block your messages completely or throttle your sending speed so severely that your campaigns become useless.

The registration exists to separate legitimate businesses from bad actors. Once you're properly registered, your messages get better delivery rates and higher sending speeds than unregistered numbers. But getting there requires jumping through specific hoops in a specific order.

Two Required Steps: Brand First, Then Campaigns

You can't skip around in 10DLC registration. The process has a fixed sequence.

Step One: Brand Registration

Brand registration proves your business is real. You submit:

• Legal business name exactly as registered with the IRS
• Tax identification number (EIN for most US businesses)
• Business entity type (corporation, LLC, partnership, sole proprietor)
• Physical business address
• Business website URL
• Industry vertical
• Contact email and phone number

Carriers verify this information against public databases, IRS records, and business registries. If your EIN doesn't match your legal business name, registration fails. If your address doesn't match public records, you'll get flagged for manual review that adds 10-15 days to the process.

Sole proprietors and newer businesses face longer approval times because they're harder to verify through automated systems. Having a legitimate business website, consistent business listings across directories, and matching information everywhere speeds things up.

Step Two: Campaign Registration

After your brand gets approved, you register individual campaigns. Each campaign represents one specific way you'll use SMS:

• Marketing promotions
• Account notifications
• Two-factor authentication codes
• Delivery updates
• Customer support messages
• Appointment reminders

For every campaign, you describe:

• What the messages are for
• What kind of content you'll send
• How people opt in to receive messages
• How people can opt out
• Example messages showing actual content
• Expected monthly message volume

Carriers review these details to make sure you're following CTIA messaging guidelines. Campaigns with clear descriptions, proper consent processes, and legitimate business purposes approve faster. Vague descriptions or suspicious use cases get stuck in manual review.

Trust Scores Determine Your Sending Limits

When you register your brand, The Campaign Registry assigns a trust score. This score directly controls how many messages you can send.

High trust scores (usually established corporations with strong business verification) receive:

• Daily message limits of 200,000+ per number
• Better filtering protection from carriers
• Faster message delivery

Low trust scores get:

• Restricted limits of 2,000-6,000 messages per day per number
• More scrutiny on message content
• Higher risk of carrier filtering

Your score depends on several factors:

• How easily your business can be verified
• Your industry (some verticals are considered higher risk)
• How long your business has existed
• Whether you pay for enhanced vetting services

Newer businesses and sole proprietors typically start with lower scores. Your score can improve over time as you build a clean sending history with low spam complaint rates.

How Long Registration Actually Takes

Timeline varies based on your business profile and whether you trigger manual reviews:

Straightforward brand registration: 5-7 business days Brand requiring manual review: 10-15 business days
Standard campaign approval: 2-5 business days Campaign requiring manual review: 7-10 business days

These timelines stack. If both your brand and campaign need manual review, you're waiting 3-4 weeks minimum from submission to sending your first message.

Planning an SMS campaign launch? Start registration at least 30 days before your target date. This buffer accounts for rejections that require resubmission with corrected information, which happens more often than providers admit.

Five Mistakes That Slow Down Approval

Inconsistent business details: Your EIN is registered to "Anderson Consulting LLC" but you enter "Anderson Consulting Group." These small mismatches trigger manual review or outright rejection. Use exactly what's on your IRS paperwork.

Generic campaign descriptions: Writing "marketing messages" tells carriers nothing useful. Write "Weekly promotional SMS to opted-in subscribers featuring product discounts, new arrivals, and exclusive offers with clear opt-out instructions" instead. Specificity matters.

Vague opt-in process: Saying "customers opt in on our website" isn't good enough. Explain where on the website, what the form says, whether there's a checkbox, and what happens after they submit. Carriers want to see you have a real consent process.

Missing opt-out mechanism: Every campaign needs a clear way for people to stop receiving messages. "Reply STOP to unsubscribe" is the standard everyone expects. Include this in your campaign registration and in every message you send.

Wrong industry vertical: Picking the wrong category can hurt your trust score or trigger extra scrutiny. Cannabis, debt collection, gambling, and other regulated industries face stricter requirements. Choose accurately, even if it means more paperwork.

What Happens After You Get Approved

Approval doesn't mean you can do whatever you want. Registration creates ongoing compliance requirements:

You must stick to the use case you described. Register a customer service campaign, then send marketing promotions? That's a violation that can get your campaign suspended.

Message content should match your registered samples. If you described sending appointment reminders and suddenly start sending political content, carriers notice. Dramatic content changes from your registration raise flags.

Stay within your estimated volume. Register saying you'll send 10,000 messages per month, then send 100,000 in week one? That triggers review. Carriers watch for sudden unexplained volume spikes.

Honor your consent and opt-out processes exactly as registered. Change how people opt in without updating your registration? That's a problem. Ignore STOP requests? That's a bigger problem that gets your campaign shut down fast.

Carriers monitor complaint rates, STOP request rates, and invalid number rates. If these metrics spike, they'll review your campaign and potentially reduce your sending limits or suspend you entirely.

Why Multiple Campaigns Make Sense

If you send different types of messages, register separate campaigns instead of trying to cram everything into one.

A company might run:

• Marketing campaign for promotional offers and sales
• Transactional campaign for order confirmations and shipping updates
• Authentication campaign for two-factor login codes
• Reminder campaign for appointment confirmations

Separate campaigns provide clearer categorization. Carriers understand what you're doing. Delivery rates improve because carriers can apply appropriate filtering rules. Mixing multiple use cases into one campaign creates confusion and risks approval problems.

How Signalmash Handles 10DLC Registration

We walk customers through registration step by step in our dashboard. Each field includes an explanation of what carriers are looking for. We flag common mistakes before you submit to avoid rejections that waste time.

For campaigns, we provide templates based on common use cases that already meet carrier requirements. You customize these with your specific details, which reduces vague descriptions that slow approval.

After submission, you can track registration status in real-time through the dashboard. We notify you immediately when brands or campaigns get approved or when carriers request additional information.

We don't hide 10DLC requirements until after you sign up. It's part of onboarding because we'd rather set accurate expectations upfront than promise instant SMS capabilities we can't deliver.

Registration Costs Are Industry Standard

Brand registration costs $4 (one-time fee). Campaign registration costs $10 per campaign (one-time fee). These fees go to The Campaign Registry, not to Signalmash or any provider. Every legitimate SMS platform charges the same amounts because they're fixed by TCR.

Enhanced vetting services like Aegis can improve your trust score but cost extra. Most small and medium businesses don't need enhanced vetting. Standard registration works fine unless you're in a high-risk vertical or need maximum throughput immediately.

Start Registration Before You Need It

If business SMS is part of your plans for the next six months, start 10DLC registration now. Waiting until you're ready to launch a campaign means accepting a 2-4 week delay you probably can't afford.

These requirements apply to every legitimate SMS provider. Anyone claiming you can skip 10DLC registration is either using workarounds that risk carrier blocking or isn't being honest about what's required to send compliant business messages.

Handle registration properly once and you're done. Try to skip it or rush it and you'll deal with blocked messages, compliance issues, and campaign delays that cost far more than the time investment upfront.

‍