Introducing MMS Messaging for 10DLC

If you use mobile messaging to communicate with customers and employees in the US, here’s some important news. You can now send and receive MMS messages via 10DLC – the carrier-approved US business messaging route.

This opens up huge engagement potential for all types of businesses.

MMS lets you send and receive images, video, animations, Gifs and audio. You can also include a subject line, and up to 5,000 characters of text. What’s more, the MMS format can be delivered to ALL mobile operating systems and ALL phone types – so you can reach almost everyone with a mobile phone with image-rich, engaging messages.

That’s why we’re so excited to announce that MMS is available via 10DLC – the long code that is changing business messaging in the US. This has been made possible by Infobip’s numbers service. We help you purchase 10DLC numbers, register brand and campaign information, and provision numbers for live SMS and MMS traffic.

MMS messaging offers huge potential for your US messaging campaigns. The ROI on offer in terms of engagement and conversions is compelling. A client of ours in the fashion industry enjoys MMS click-through rates of 30% or more and over 20x return on investment. And some of our messaging aggregator partners have reported that MMS delivers 300% more engagement than SMS-only campaigns.

It’s no surprise that MMS business messaging in the US has become so popular lately. We’ve seen traffic volumes passing through our network increase by more than 700% in the past two years. With MMS available on 10DLC in the US, the use of MMS is set to explode even further.

The benefits of MMS messages for marketing use cases are immediately obvious. Showing off a product rather than describing it in a text is so much easier. Meanwhile, image-based coupons and vouchers are far more practical and tangible.

Using MMS on 10DLC, you’ll be able to share a how-to video to help with a customer issue, issue tickets, temporary credit cards, provide proof of parcel deliveries – the list is endless.

Before we set out how to get started with MMS for 10DLC, let’s quickly summarize what 10DLC is, and why it’s important. If you know all this, feel free to skip to the next section.

You can think of A2P 10DLC (10-digit long code) as both a phone number and a route or system that has been designed for business messaging.

Every organization that uses automated mobile messaging to connect with employees or customers in the US needs to sit up and take notice of 10DLC. It’s important to know that the carriers are stepping up efforts to stop businesses from sending messages to audiences using the types of long codes that have been widely used in previous years.

These long codes were only ever designed for person-to-person (P2P) communications. They have low volume throughput and lack desirable security standards. Carriers have always considered them to be an unsanctioned messaging route so they’re looking to end their use.

Carriers are also clamping down on the common practice of multiple businesses sharing the same short code. In other words, you can only use a short code to send and receive messages if you rent it for exclusive use.

The big takeaway for businesses is they can’t use automated mobile messaging services unless they “own” a registered number that is approved by US mobile operators for business use. That number can be a dedicated short code, a 10DLC, or a text-enabled toll-free landline number.

A short code is the clear choice for brands who message large audiences. Short codes enjoy high carrier support and high potential throughput for campaigns (a thousand messages a second and more). But 10DLC is going to be a hugely important messaging number. They have far lower monthly costs than short codes, healthy throughput, and can be up and running in minutes.

If you’re an Infobip customer, you’ll have the option to turn on MMS when you’re registering a 10DLC number. Then it’s up to you to figure out how you want to handle your outgoing and your incoming messages – using a mix of SMS and MMS if you like.

Of course if you want to integrate MMS on 10DLC into your applications via API, Infobip can help with that. Similarly, if you don’t want to use Infobip’s web based tooling for 10DLC setup, we plan to expose an API for programmatic 10DLC number purchase and registration shortly.