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Our digital world changes every day. Every minute really.
The vast majority of this change is both non-detectable to you and frankly not important. That’s good news.
However, we at FranFunnel believe that when the world materially changes, we want to let you know. And today is one of those days.
And before we dive deeply into what’s shifting, we need to make sure you know what the world looks like today. So let’s start with an acronym: A2P10DLC.
Let’s break the concept into its components.
If you’re using any software to send text messages, that’s A2P, or Application to Person. This is in contrast to the alternative, P2P, or Person to Person.
In some ways P2P is much easier to understand. In simple terms, this is when two or more people communicate over text messaging. It's that easy. As long as a person is texting another person, that's the P2P world. Almost all the texts you send and receive are P2P.
A2P, on the other hand, is any kind of message in which a person is receiving them from an application. It becomes applicable the second tech is used to achieve communication with any sort of scale. Common examples would be:
From FranFunnel’s perspective, any message sent in an automated fashion would be considered A2P. Any message sent manually through our platform is P2P.
This acronym stands for Ten Digit Long Code. It’s a normal phone number with area code. For example 1 (555) 555-5555. See.10 digits.
The vast, vast majority of phone numbers provisioned in the U.S. and Canada are simply these. They are so ubiquitous, that you probably didn’t even realize that they had a name other than “phone number.”
These 10DLCs are notable in contrast to what’s called a “short code, a special telephone number designed for high-throughput business messaging. Short codes are shorter (usually five to six digits), compared to their 10DLC counterparts. Short codes were created with A2P, Application to Person, in mind.
A key point about the length of your phone number is the number of messages you send per day. If you’re texting more than a few hundred times in 24 hours from your 10DLC, then you run the risk of being flagged as spam. This is when short codes are useful, as they’re pre-approved by carriers and are not subject to filtering.
We think this chart easily explains what we’re talking about:
Put simply, A2P short codes make sense as they are regulated business texting. P2P10DLC makes sense as they are simply the way that most people text each other. A2P10DLC is the ugly hybrid between the two i.e. what happens when businesses look like people.
For a long time, these types of messages were unregulated and treated more like P2P10DLC. However, that world is changing.
Stay tuned for our next post when we talk about what’s changing in A2P 10DLC, and how your company can take advantage of those trends to close more deals.
Eli Robinson is the General Manager at FranFunnel. His favorite acronym is IHALPIMC, which stands for, I Have A Live Penguin In My Car.
