Rave Operational Messaging
For emergency preparedness over the past couple of years, a greater need has emerged for mass notification solutions than simply unplanned or emergency messaging. Day-to-day, operational, non-emergency messaging is equally as important, especially as remote working and learning continues across the country.
What is 10DLC?
Mobile carriers are introducing new restrictions that require communication between you and your recipients, no matter what vertical or industry you play in, to take place over unique, sender-identifiable 10-digit long codes (10DLC). The one exception to 10DLC compliance is emergency SMS messages. But how do you differentiate between the two? Can you send both emergency and operational messages through Rave? The short answer is ‘Yes.’
Rave is here to help you prepare and make your compliance with 10DLC regulations seamless and beneficial. At its core, any recipient of a SMS message must be able to identify who sent that message. Like receiving a message from a spouse or family member, carriers are working to bring that same level of trust and accountability to every message you receive.
All major carriers in the U.S., including Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile are offering carrier-supported Application-to-Person (A2P) 10DLC. This requirement means that each entity that sends text messages needs a uniquely identifiable phone number. Legacy long-digit codes and shared short codes could be blocked, even penalized, if standards are not met.
Terms to Know
Drivers to Industry Change
The landscape on who and how SMS messages are sent is changing. The motivation is to prevent unwanted spam messages from being sent to consumers.
Preventing spam messages
The carriers are making changes to the messaging ecosystem to prevent their subscribers from receiving spam messages, or better yet, to make sure these spam messages are never sent in the first place.
Strengthening emergency messages
If notifications are critical to life and safety, they are urgent and priority emergency alerts. We want to strengthen emergency messages, which should come from an authoritative source.
Expanding to operational messages
Messages that provide informational updates or sales promotions are operational or marketing in nature. We want to expand the ways in which our customers leverage Rave for non-emergency, operational messages. Businesses can engage with customers on the go and in the moment on mobile channels with personalized and targeted messages. Omnichannel messaging streamlines the messages that consumers receive from a brand and ensures consistency across multiple communication channels like SMS, voice, email, newsletters, websites etc.
Definitions
Emergency vs. Operational Messaging
Emergency Messages
- Emergency SMS messages are for situations that pose an immediate threat to life, health, and/or property, and require urgent action to respond to, lessen or avert potential impacts.
- Drill and test messages that simulate an emergency also qualify as emergency messages because of their crucial part in allowing organizations to practice proper response measures.
- All messages must be clearly labeled “Emergency” in the message.
Examples of Emergency Messages
- Active Shooter/Active Assailant
- Shelter in Place
- All-Clear
- Weather Warnings
- COVID-Related Warnings
- Office Closed or Campus Closed
- Parking Bans
- Post-Disaster Assistance Info
- Staffing Alerts in Public Safety or Healthcare
- Clery Act Required Messages
- Critical Cybersecurity Breach Alerts
- Time-Sensitive, Critical Operational Incidents
- Drill or Test Messages
Operational Messages
- Operational SMS messages are for situations that do NOT threaten life, health and/or property at time of sending.
- They may require urgent action, but do not carry sufficient risk to categorize as an emergency.
- May require eventual response actions to mitigate impact, which are not urgent.
- May be routine, planned or standard events.
- May occur for commercial, PR or recreational purposes.
Examples of Operational Messages
- Marketing messages
- Event Updates
- Thank you message after an event
- Forecasts and weather notifications
- Temporary road closures
- Staffing alerts for most non-public safety and healthcare organizations
- Class cancellations due to teacher absence
- Reminders like parking bans, street sweeping, appointments or deadlines
What Changes are Coming?
If you send text messages (SMS) to your community, employees, customers, or students in the U.S., it is time to prepare for upcoming changes mandated by 10DLC.
- Need to comply with 10DLC brand and campaign registration requirements.
- Need to designate emergency vs. operational message when sending to confirm compliance to new carrier requirements.
- Unique opportunity to provide branded operational messaging, such as campaigns for public information, athletics, events, marketing, IT department, alumni affairs and more.
How can Rave Help?
Rave is a long-established mass notification vendor used to communicate to millions of people across the U.S., for both emergency alerts and operational messaging for everyday situations and scheduled events.
Rave connects you (our customers) to messaging services that the carriers provide. Those messaging services are what ultimately connect you to your community/users/consumers. As a result, when the carriers make changes to their messaging services, they impact the way that you can reach your users via the Rave platform.
By providing customers across state, local and federal governments, corporate organizations, healthcare facilities, higher education institutions, and K-12 schools, with a critical communications and collaboration platform, Rave is trusted to protect and inform the people in your care.
The Rave platform is easy to use, reliable and secure to provide you with the peace of mind to know you are doing all you can to maximize safety and emergency response.
Rave is Your Trusted Partner
Rave is committed to providing you with emergency messaging at current levels of enterprise-grade performance and reliability. We will also be offering operational messaging to extend the use of SMS messages for non-emergency, routine, planned or promotional events.
Rave is proactively engaged with stakeholders in the dynamic messaging ecosystem. We are at the forefront in discussions with industry partners, including mobile carriers, regulatory bodies and SMS aggregators, advocating for the messaging needs of the public safety and corporate security community.
Rave is implementing technology to enable 10DLC registrations and operational messaging as solution offerings to meet the new carrier requirements.
Rave will provide updates for customer training, onboarding and compliance as soon as available.
Read more from our FAQ, or reach out to sales@ravemobilesafety.com for more information.
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