Why Aren’t My Text Messages Sending or Being Received?

Text messages have a 98% open rate and a 45% response rate, so it’s not surprising that it’s become increasingly common for businesses to use text message to communicate with existing and potential customers. This makes it an excellent way to engage with your audience, boost customer loyalty, and grow your business by building better relationships. But this method is only effective if your messages are being received by the intended recipients.

If you find that your text messages aren’t sending or being received, then the bottom line is you just aren’t getting the desired results. Let’s look at how to tell if your texts are being delivered, the top reasons for SMS messages not sending, and how to correct the problem.

There are several ways to tell if a text message failed to send. If you are sending messages from your personal mobile device, your phone should display an alert telling you that the message failed to send. You may also get an “!” symbol as a text error message, depending on your device and messaging app.

If you are sending SMS and MMS messages with business texting software, your provider will likely provide you with an SMS delivery report. This report will show you an aggregate percentage of successfully delivered SMS and MMS messages along with a detailed list of delivery status for all messages sent.

Before you can fix the issue of messages not sending, you need to figure out why your messages aren’t being delivered. There are several potential reasons SMS messages aren’t sending properly. Below are the top 10 causes of message send failure to help you diagnose the problem.

If you’re trying to send text marketing campaigns from a personal phone number, your messages may be filtered by your mobile carrier. This occurs because your personal number is designed for one-to-one communications, also known as peer-to-peer (P2P) messaging, like when you message a friend, not mass messaging.

Business texting platforms are designed for one-to-one and one-to-many messaging. These platforms, like LinkedPhone, are known as app-to-person (A2P) platforms and are intended for legitimate businesses to use to communicate with customers.

Before you can start sending text campaigns with an A2P platform, you must register your 10-digit number with The Campaign Registry, or verify your toll-free number with wireless carriers. Otherwise, your messages may be perceived by the network as fraud, spam, or illegal.

If your text messages contain adult content, drug references, or are related to criminal activity, your carrier may block your messages. That’s because messages containing sex, hate speech, alcohol, firearms, and tobacco, known as “SHAFT” content, are prohibited by the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA)—the regulatory body that enforces SMS message guidelines.

Although using shorted links in text messages is common practice due to character limitations, using a third-party app to shorten your links can cause carriers to filter your messages. That’s because scammers often use link shorteners to disguise phishing links. It’s better just to shorten links within your messaging platform.

Sending to invalid or deactivated numbers that have not opted into your texts may not be delivered. So be sure to keep your list clean and up to date. Plus, if you have any land line numbers on your list, your text messages won’t send to these numbers either.

If your contact has decided that they don’t want to receive text messages from your business any longer they may have unsubscribed from your list by texting “STOP” to your business. But other contacts may not do this and simply block the phone number or report the number as spam to their wireless carrier. These actions all result in SMS messages not sending.

If the recipient doesn’t have their phone set up to receive SMS messages, your message will send but won’t be received by your contact. This may be the case if your contact tends to use other messaging apps like Whatsapp or Messenger.

Although carrier issues are uncommon, they do occur from time to time. Technical difficulties on the carrier network would cause SMS messages not to send properly.

If your contact is past due on their carrier bill or is experiencing billing issues with their mobile carrier, their phone may not be receiving messages temporarily.

Even if you aren’t sending mass text marketing campaigns, you may be sending too many one-to-one SMS messages from your P2P phone number. This may be an indicator that you need to start using a business texting platform and register your number for commercial use.

Recognizing potential reasons for SMS messages not sending is only part of the solution. Now let’s start to correct the issues.

To correct message send failure issues it’s best to start by identifying technical issues and addressing them. Then you can do additional investigating if your text challenges continue.

If you’re experiencing a lot of message send failures on your Android device, you can rule out technical issues first by following these steps:

To check for technical issues on an iPhone that could cause message send failures, take the following steps:

Once you’re sure that technology isn’t the issue, there are additional steps you can take to ensure your contacts receive your text messages.

Consider the differences between SMS and MMS when planning your texting campaigns. Selecting the wrong format can negatively impact your campaign results. Then, follow the best practices of text message marketing to further improve deliverability and open rates.

Remember to follow best practices for business text messaging etiquette when creating and sending SMS messages to existing and potential customers.

The first step to solving text message errors is to understand the potential reasons for SMS messages not sending. Then you need to rule out technical issues and ensure you are taking steps to avoid message send failure. But the best way to improve your text messaging results is by getting consistently reliable SMS delivery with a platform like LinkedPhone. We offer a feature-rich virtual phone system that includes unlimited talk and text.

Receive all the benefits of A2P texting with a LinkedPhone virtual business phone system. Sign up for a 7-day free trial of LinkedPhone and start enjoying reliable SMS delivery today!