During your SMS campaigns, some messages may fail to deliver to the contact you're trying to reach. This can happen for a variety of reasons, including imperfect data and trying to send messages to a phone that isn't SMS capable.
Want to learn more about SMS and Act-On? See our guide here.
View the SMS Failed Messages Report
Visit your SMS Sent Messages Report to find a list of SMS message failures and the errors that caused them. To do this:
- Go to SMS > Messages > Sent Messages
- In the Sent Messages list, click on the SMS message you'd like to review
- In your SMS message's report, click Failed
SMS Failed Send Details will show you the number of send failures for your SMS message. You'll also find a breakdown of error types, including the percentage of messages that failed due to a specific error. Below SMS Failed Send Details, you'll see a list of all recipients who didn't receive your SMS message, their phone number, and the reason that they did not receive your message.
Types of SMS errors
| Reason for error | Description |
| Landline | The message tried to reach a landline phone, which cannot receive SMS. |
| Unreachable Destination |
You're trying to reach a landline (see above) or a handset that is turned off/roaming. |
| Unreachable Carrier | The subscriber's carrier does not support SMS messaging. This often occurs with pre-paid mobile devices or international sending. |
| Message Blocked | The subscriber has blocked SMS messages from your sending number. No further action can be taken. |
| Unknown Destination |
You might see this error when:
|
| Unknown Error |
We know – not very helpful! You might see this error if:
|
| Carrier Filtering |
Your SMS message has been blocked by carrier filtering algorithms. Check your message's content and URLs for any potential violations. |
Solutions
Remove incorrect contact data
Currently, Act-On relies on you and your marketing team to ensure that your contact's data is accurate and up-to-date. We won't take any additional action when an SMS message fails to send because it's trying to reach a landline number. We recommend cleaning your data to keep it error-free. There are a variety of online data cleaning services available to help you do this.
Prevent carrier filtering
Due to the pandemic, 2020 was a banner year for spam. As a result, many carriers have cracked down on potentially spammy SMS messaging. Avoid the following to prevent carrier filters from blocking your SMS messages:
- Over-capitalizing your messages
- Overuse of special characters (such as $, %, or !)
- Leaving out Reply STOP to opt-out at the end of your messages
- Using Bitly, TinyURL, or other link shorteners
- Including terms that apply to the exchange of money (such as loans, credit, gambling, or deals)
- Including content that involves sex, hate, alcohol, firearms, tobacco, and illegal/legal drugs
Act-On will monitor these filtering errors. If you continue to receive a high volume of carrier filtering errors when sending SMS messages, please reach out to your Act-On Account Manager for assistance. We'll likely reach out to you first to discuss how you can mitigate these errors if we notice that your messages are being filtered.