Retail | SMS Guidelines

It's important to understand that phone carriers have placed filters on incoming SMS messages. This is to prevent excessive spam from reaching their customers. Due to customer complaints, many phone companies have designed their own filtering guidelines to block these spam messages and there is no way to know what these filters are. 

Our current 3rd party SMS messaging service, Twilio, has strict guidelines that MUST be followed in order to deliver a successful SMS blast. Failure to follow these guidelines may result in being flagged / blocked by the carrier or Twilio, which would prevent your messages from being delivered. 

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

NOTE: BLAZE is currently looking into switching from Twilio, but due to nature of our business (cannabis), it has been challenging to find a messaging service that will allow us to use their platform.  

SMS Guidelines

1. If sending out to more than 2k members, SMS blasts need to be scheduled in hour intervals for each set of 2k members. Please also refrain from sending more than 3 consecutive days of messages to the same members. 

• This is to prevent being seen as SPAM by carriers like Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, etc.

2. Keep the content of the messages conversational, avoid using explicitly sounding marketing messages. 

• This is to prevent being seen as SPAM by carriers like Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, etc.

3. Refrain from using cannabis-related words, such as weed, cannabis, 420, preroll, etc. 

• This is due to cannabis NOT being legal on a federal level.

Additional Tips and Best Practices 

Ensure you inform your customers before they are sent SMS related to marketing and include language explaining how to discontinue the messaging; to learn how, click here. 

Keep the messages concise, longer messages might be more likely to get flagged. 

Avoid using words / phrases such as FREE, 100% Guarantee, or BOGO. These messages are often filtered.  

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.