A2P 10DLC campaign approval best practices
Most rejections are self-inflicted and fixable before you submit. These are the a2p 10dlc campaign approval best practices that decide whether you clear review on the first attempt or the fourth.
Six things reviewers check
Real sample messages
Submit the message you will actually send, in full, including your business name and STOP wording. Placeholders like “Hi {name}, your update” read as unfinished and get bounced.
Honest use case
Pick the use case matching your real traffic. Filing customer care and sending promotions is the single most common route to a revoked campaign.
Evidenced opt-in
Describe exactly where consent is collected and quote the wording. A public URL showing the form beats any description.
Published policies
A live privacy policy stating numbers are not sold, plus messaging terms covering STOP and HELP. Reviewers open these links.
Brand consistency
The name in your samples must match the filed brand. A trading name in the message and a legal name on the filing looks like spoofing.
No forbidden content
Cannabis, high-risk lending, gambling and adult content are barred regardless of local legality. No filing quality overcomes a prohibited category.
Writing a sample message that passes
A sample message has to prove three things at once: who is texting, why, and how to stop. Most rejected samples miss the third and half miss the first.
This gets rejected
Your appointment is tomorrow at 2pm. Reply to confirm.
No business name, no opt-out, no context for a recipient who forgot they opted in.
This passes
Northside Dental: your cleaning is tomorrow (Tue 14th) at 2:00pm with Dr Lee. Reply C to confirm, R to reschedule. Reply STOP to opt out.
Named sender, specific purpose, clear actions, explicit opt-out. It is longer — and worth checking against your segment count, since this one fits in a single segment.
One campaign or several?
Splitting use cases into separate campaigns improves approval odds, because each filing describes one coherent thing. It also multiplies your monthly fees and divides your throughput.
The rule of thumb: split when the traffic genuinely differs in purpose — transactional alerts versus marketing. Do not split by department, product line or region. Three campaigns for one kind of message is an expensive way to file the same thing three times.
If you are rejected
Read the carrier's verbatim reason rather than your platform's summary of it. Fix the specific thing named, resubmit once, and do not shotgun variations — repeated near-identical filings from one brand attract scrutiny of their own.