How to read sender ID rules before you send

What a sender ID is

The sender ID is the text a phone shows as the origin of a message: a brand name such as METEOR, a long number, or a short code. It is set per message, it costs nothing extra, and it is the single most visible part of your campaign. It is also the part most often changed on the way to the handset, because every country has its own rules about who may display a name and under which conditions.

The three rules

Every destination on our coverage page carries one of three rules.

• Alphanumeric delivered. Operators pass the name as typed. Most of Europe, much of Africa and Oceania work this way. No registration is needed; you type the name and it appears.
• Numeric sender. Operators do not deliver names at all. The United States, Canada, most of Latin America and China are in this group. Your message is sent from a local number that we assign automatically, and recipients can reply if you rent a dedicated number with inbound.
• Registration required. Operators deliver names only after the sender has been registered, usually with a document trail: India, the Gulf states, Turkey, Indonesia, most of South and South-East Asia, several African markets. Until the registration is approved your traffic goes out from a shared numeric sender so it still lands.

Why countries differ

The rules follow two forces. The first is fraud: a name is easy to spoof, so regulators in markets with heavy phishing insist on knowing who is behind it. The second is the local business model: in the Americas, carriers built their messaging economy on numbers, not names, and never opened the door to alphanumeric traffic. Neither force is going away, which is why the rule is treated as a property of the destination and shown before you send, not discovered in the report afterwards.

Planning a mixed campaign

A list that spans forty countries will hit all three rules. Set one alphanumeric sender as the default and let the platform apply the rule per destination: the name where it is delivered, a numeric sender where it must be, a shared sender where registration is pending. The cost preview shows the split per country and the report tells you, per message, which sender was actually used. Write the text so it works without the name: mention your brand in the first words, because a recipient in a numeric-only market will not see it in the header.

Registration in practice

Registration is a file: the name you want, who you are, sometimes a sample message and a reason. Support prepares it with you where the destination accepts foreign senders; some markets only register locally established companies, and for those the shared sender is the durable answer. Approval takes from a few days to a few weeks depending on the country. Once approved, nothing changes in your campaigns: the same name simply starts appearing.

Checklist

1. Look up each destination's rule on its country page or with the route checker.
2. Keep the alphanumeric name within 11 characters, letters and digits, no special characters.
3. Put the brand in the first sentence of the text.
4. For numeric-only markets that need replies, rent a number with inbound.
5. Start registrations early for the markets that require them; send with the shared sender meanwhile.
6. Read the sender column of the report after the first send and adjust.

Something unclear or out of date? Write to [email protected]; corrections are folded back into the guide and the update date changes.