What are SMS shortcodes?

In a nutshell, SMS shortcodes are short numbers (usually 6 to 4 digits) that carriers assign to businesses to be used as sender ids when they send out SMS to their customers.

These so-called shortcodes are distinct from your usual mobile numbers, and are nearly all the time only used by businesses. Shortcodes are only issued by the carriers to businesses through an application and vetting process.

Because shortcodes do not contain country codes, they cannot be used internationally.

 This image is unedited and credit goes to Jhaymesisviphotography

What can you do with SMS shortcodes?

Because shortcodes are pre-approved by carriers, they will have high throughput and are not subject to carrier filtering. This makes them perfect for sending those high-volume or time-sensitive messages.

Shortcodes are uniquely assigned to brands and businesses so they can also be used to identify a brand or businesses to their consumers.

Depending on the support of the carriers, consumers can also send messages to shortcodes. This opens up opportunities for businesses to have a two-way conversation with a customer through SMS. You cannot make a voice call to a shortcode.

Why are they called “common” shortcodes?

Each Mobile Network Operator (MNO) or carrier decides how numbers are assigned on their own network. Some shortcodes can only be used within a carrier, which are called “carrier specific” shortcodes. Common shortcodes are shortcodes which can receive messages from subscribers of any carrier. In other words, common shortcodes have carrier interoperability.

So what will change?

With the announcement (only in Japanese) on 29th June 2021 from NTT DoComo and KDDI, businesses can now apply for common shortcodes from the MNO carriers. Currently, the common shortcodes will only apply on DoComo and KDDI, while Softbank plans to roll them out in October this year. Rakuten, the newest MNO did not give a date of a rollout but says that they are planning to join the scheme.

With carrier interoperability for shortcodes, consumers in Japan will now be able to receive from and send messages to businesses in Japan through a single and identifiable shortcode, regardless of which carrier they are subscribing to.

How does the new common shortcodes help businesses?

Businesses can publish what shortcodes they are using on their websites and emails. Since shortcodes are only issued by the carriers after an application and vetting processes, consumers can be confident that a particular shortcode is used by a certain business and the risk of SMS spoofing is highly unlikely. This will help increase trust between customers and brands and also contributes to the fight againts fraud and phishing.

The new shortcodes are also capable of receiving SMS. Brands and businesses can also respond to customer enquiries real-time through chat-like applications.

How was it before in Japan?

Up until June 28th, 2021, SMS messaging from businesses has been mostly only one-way: The businesses will send out messages to their customers using a sender id which can either be the brand name (i.e “Xoxzo”) or a phone number which the customer can call for assistance.

The MNOs in Japan only had “carrier-specific” shortcodes. Because common interoperable shortcodes was not available, businesses needed to get different shortcodes for each carrier and publish them to let customers subscribing to different carriers to know which shortcode correspond to their carriers. This was confusing, frustrating, and error-prone, because if the customer sent to a shortcode that does not correspond to their carrier, the message will be lost.

How to get your own Japan shortcode?

Are you interested in getting a common shortcode for your brand or business? Contact us at help@xoxzo.com and we’ll assist you to apply and get your own Japan shortcode!

To begin with, SMS (Short Messaging Services) can send only up to 160 ASCII (70 non-ASCII) letters no matter who your recipient is. Although some services provide functions to allow you to send longer than that standard as one message, One Message Up to 160 ASCII (70 non-ASCII) is a golden rule.

Using Xoxzo’s SMS-APIs, long messages can be sent (delivers divided multiple messages) like one message.

But I wonder whether we should send Long Short-messages or not, even when it is technically possible.

I would say No.

Although the opening rate is way higher

Our prior blog post Why you should adopt SMS for your business communication says, the opening rate for SMS is higher than email. Most of the people would open and read SMS within 3 sec of the delivery.

Not a few businesses would shift their marketing campaigns using SMS from sluggish rising emails as they got to know this.

But please note that SMS has its own regulation that can fit only up to 70 letters (non-ASCII) and this is true in the whole wide world, no matter which service you use. In case you find your vender’s sending page says they can accept the message longer than that, the message will be divided on sending and you will be charged for exactly the number of messages divided. There is no assurance that those divided messages are to be delivered in the order you sent.

SMS is an effective tool to send a short message that will trigger an intuitive action. If the marketing SMS is delivered with a long message like an email, which also was in multiple divided messages, unfortunately sometimes not in the right order… that would lower the Customer Experience (UX) for sure, as well as the recipient, would never read the SMS from you.

SMS cost 800 times more

SMS sending costs JPY 10 – 20/per message while email does only JPY 0.025 with a well-established service.

If you try to shift from sending 200 letters to email magazine to using SMS, the cost of one message increases from JPY 0.025 to JPY 30. The total cost to send 1,000 customers will be as much as JPY 30,000 via SMS while it can be done by JPY 25.

So there seem no ways to use SMS sending for what you were to send via email, no matter how good opening rates SMS has.

The high opening rates that SMS has is built up because the messages can be personalized. The customers will leave you if you send SMS like you do email marketing. It, of course, depends on the customers, but this is common to say that 4 times a month marketing SMS would be already too much.

What will we do then?

Please let me repeat here, SMS is an effective tool to send a short message that will trigger an intuitive action. What this action really means is to click on a link or to call a phone.

Different from mass-email sending that could include generic information, the sender has to study and know your customer for sending a short & effective SMS that could trigger the action of your user… This seems quite basic but actually is a high-level work to do, not all people can do who had never up to CRM (customer management). Please know your customer.

Summary

Short-Message-Service is the service to send Short messages as it is named.

In case you really have to inform your customers with tons of sales notices, please prepare a smart-phone sized website full of information, and send the URL via SMS. Please note that the link URL is also counted as the letters, so use URL shortening service to make it short and create a simple message as possible.

Using these URL messages, you are not only sending simple and short messages but also are able to track the effectiveness of the SMS notice by utilizing the link-analysis tools. Our Xoxzo Web API also has released a link tracking tool that additionally shortens links. Read more about the link tracking feature here.

It is important to understand the differences between SMS and emails and take advantage of each tool and select one of them according to the situation, they are both good communication tools.