Retail | SMS Message Language Limitations

*** BLAZE will not reimburse for any flagged / not delivered messages due to invalid phone numbers or failure to follow our SMS guidelines ***

Certain banned words prevent mass SMS / text messages from being successfully received.

If you send a mass SMS message that contains one of the following words it is likely your customers will not receive it:

• Weed
• Kush
• 420
• Cannabis
• Preroll ('pre-roll' works fine, as of January 2020)

Some retailers get creative with their spelling and spacing (ex., 'kush' as 'k-u-s-h') as a way to circumvent this issue.

• NOTE: Some phone carriers (Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, etc) are able to detect when you are "tricking" the system and will block these messages from sending. It is best to avoid cannabis-related words all together if possible.

We recommend sending a "test" message to a few phone numbers, before sending a complete blast.

• In Global Settings > Current Shop Settings > Shop Information, add an "SMS Testing" Member Tag. 
• If you have a handful of employees with customer profiles, add a "SMS Testing" Member Tag to their account.
• When selecting Members to send the SMS blast to, select Customers with the following Customer Tags.
• Select the SMS Testing tag and continue with the process of creating and sending an SMS blast out.

Additionally, it is recommended that the language of the text sent sounds / reads like a conversation, and not like marketing.

• The more marketing / sales it sounds, the more possible phone carriers (Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, etc) will filter your messages and prevent them from being delivered.

This is an on-going list as we uncover any other words that prevent SMS from being received - reach out to the support team at support@blaze.me if you have SMS that do not contain these terms but are still not being received, as well as read this article here. 

Failure to follow these guidelines may result in your shop being flagged / blocked by our 3rd party messenger, Twilio, and prevent your SMS blast from being delivered. 

• If you believe your SMS messages have been flagged / blocked, please contact support@blaze.me to "reset" your number.
• Until our Support Team has confirmed that your number has been reset, please refrain from sending more messages, as it is highly likely they will NOT be delivered by our 3rd party messenger, Twilio. 
• BLAZE will not reimburse for any flagged / not delivered messages due to invalid phone numbers or failure to follow our SMS guidelines.