Twilio U.S. SMS & MMS Short Code Heightened Awareness Period for Black Friday & Cyber Monday

Twilio U.S. SMS & MMS Short Code Heightened Awareness Period for Black Friday & Cyber Monday

Updated November 4, 2020

2020 has undoubtedly brought upon massive change in consumer digital spending habits. B2C companies across the board have quickly evolved their strategies to adapt to the new normal, implementing digital communications at different touchpoints in the customer journey. Whether it’s contactless delivery or channel expansion, companies have innovated to continue creating differentiated experiences for their customers.

As we head into the holiday season, and specifically Black Friday and Cyber Monday, digital communications will play as critical of a role as ever. Retailers will no longer be able to have people packed into lines or stores. Shopping will be predominantly, if not completely, digital. While it will look different this year, the season is far from cancelled. In fact, we anticipate digital communications to be significantly leveraged so companies can provide their customers with the products and information they need.

Leading up to and during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, we anticipate a dramatic spike in SMS and MMS messaging sent over short codes, as these sender types are available specifically for high volume traffic. The reality is there are downstream limitations of throughput capacity within the short code messaging ecosystem. Simply put, at some point demand could outweigh supply. If this volume is not maintained appropriately, downstream networks could get overwhelmed, causing major slowdowns or even outages. This means you, as the customer, would not be able to reach end users in the way you need.

To ensure we maintain a healthy network so all customers can reliably reach their end users, Twilio has put measures in place derived from years of experience serving customers during these heightened peaks. We have combined data-driven decision making and network expertise alongside full customer transparency to ensure our customers are able to create a strategic, informed approach to messaging at scale during times of abnormally high-volume messaging.

From November 23 to December 1, 2020 Twilio is implementing a Heightened Awareness Period for U.S. SMS and MMS messaging via short codes. This period will set account-level rate limits for customers based on the following criteria:

SMS Account-Level Rate Limit

1. Customers with 1 U.S. short code will have an account-level short code SMS rate limit that equals their current short code MPS. In other words, you will not see any change unless you add additional U.S. short codes during the HAP.
2. Customers with 2+ short codes will have an account-level rate limit that is equal to the highest value between:
   1. Peak sustained (60-seconds) MPS within the past 12-months.
   2. Calculated account-level rate limit based on number of short codes.
   3. Calculated account-level rate limit + additional throughput that has already been purchased on short codes.
3. For customers with multiple short codes, the account-level rate limit will be automatically shared across short codes. This means customers could get higher peak throughput than typical on a single short code depending on message sending patterns. For example, if customers have 10 short codes, they can now utilize up to 400 MPS on a single short code without any additional costs.
4. Any additional MPS above the account-level rate limit can be purchased at a rate of $7 per MPS. If you are already paying for additional MPS on short codes currently, that will be applied to your account-level rate limit.

MMS Account-Level Rate Limit

1. Customers with 1 short code will have an MMS account-level rate limit of 50 MPS.
2. Customers with 2+ short codes will have an account-level rate limit that is equal to the highest value between:
   1. Peak sustained (60-seconds) MPS within the past 12-months.
   2. Calculated account-level rate limit based on the number of short codes, up to 150 MPS.
3. For customers with multiple short codes, the account-level rate limit will be automatically shared across short codes.

A secure and reliable platform ensures all customers can consistently reach their end users. We believe that customers should understand both the possibilities and limitations of high-volume messaging, and we are committed to partnering with our customers to strategically plan during this critical time. For any additional questions, please reach out to your Twilio point-of-contact.