Hello everyone. Derek Johnson with tatango.com, getting a lot of questions recently about
iPhones. And if you are sending mass text messages to iPhones,
are the iPhones or iOS, are they filtering or screening mass text messages? I think
it's coming from a couple articles that have been written about this feature functionality.
So most articles they reference something that kind of looks like this.
As you can see, you got All Messages, Known Senders, and Unknown Senders,
it makes a lot of sense, I would be really concerned about this.
Just to be very clear, though, this is a setting within the iOS setting. You have to go,
I think, into General, then you got to go into Messaging, then you got to scroll down,
then you got to select that setting. So this is not the default setting.
And, you know, things I've researched online, it says, you know, 95%
of people stick with the default. So 95% of your SMS subscribers are just gonna get, you know,
all their messages in one feed. Now, if they do go into settings and they do select Filter Unknown,
you know, senders, the good news is right off the bat, it automatically defaults to all messages.
So, again, you have another shot at just, you know, being listed there.
Then I started kinda testing out in the Unknown Senders, because that's the area that you don't
wanna be again. You don't want to be in the Unknown Senders. Because, you know,
most people I think would kind of play in the Known Senders and the All Messages,
but the Unknown Senders, like that's the spam messaging so you don't wanna be included in that.
Now, I've been testing it, and I'm on the beta of the 14.4, I think,
Unknown Senders, if they're not in your address book,
or you have not replied or messaged them, so if you're texting an SMS campaign, let's say you text
Join to 12345, automatically it goes into the All Messages category from that phone number, 12345.
Even though it's not in your address book, you've engaged with them, therefore, Apple thinks that,
you know, you know that person so it goes into your Known Senders category. That's number one.
So, again, if people are texting Help, if they're texting Stop, if they're,
you know, texting Join, if they're replying Yes to an opt-in confirmation message,
that is all going to bump them up into the Known Senders or All Messages obviously.
Second one, which is a little more interesting, and we're recommending this a lot for our clients
right now is, if the contact, if the phone number, let's say, 12345 is in your contact,
you know, address book, on your phone, then it automatically goes to Known Senders as well.
So, we're seeing a lot of clients that during the opt-in workflow so, you know,
they're sending out a message saying, "Please reply yes to confirm. This is, you know, your
phone number, you just entered it onto, you know, this website or that website," they replied yes,
which again would put them right into the Known Senders anyway,
then after they replied yes, hey thanks, be sure to add, you know, this vCard essentially add,
you know, this phone number to your address book. The nice part about that too is when you do that,
not only are you, you know, going to be in the known senders, you are also, you know, instead of
the 12345, you can customize that to be, you know, the brand, business organization name there. And
then also you can customize the little face logo so it could be the logo as well, which is great.
So two different ways here, but I don't see this being an issue. It's not like, you know,
Gmail with their, you know, their Promotions tab, it just launched and then everybody kind of
freaked out, or at least, marketers did. Now, if you do look at the very bottom of my screen here,
as you can see Filtered By, now, maybe this is what's causing some
of the confusion because that looks a little more like what Gmail did
with the Promotions tab, as it says right there, Promotions, Transactions and Junk.
This is actually...I installed an app, SMS Filter+, onto my phone then I had to go into,
I think, the Settings, then I had to like say filter messages with the SMS Filter+ app. It
was very complex, and even right now, it doesn't work. You've got to set up all of the filters that
you want to have. It seems pretty advanced. So I don't think people are going to, number one,
turn on the known sender functionality, then go download the SMS Filter+ or whatever app they're
using to filter the messages, and then set it up. I just don't think people are gonna do that.
Now, that all being said, I think the future Apple knows that SMS spam, you know, sucks,
and no one likes getting it. So I think they're going to start implementing things like, you know,
similar to the Gmail Promotions tab. So the best way that you can avoid all of this is to do the
vCard essentially add...or make the consumer add the vCard, the address, you know, that
phone number, the short code, long code, whatever you're using, to their phone. So in the workflow
definitely remind them, definitely encourage them to add the vCard to their phone so that no matter
what Apple does, you know, in the future if they add, you know, Promotions tab. If they filter
messages, they're never gonna filter people that are in your address book. So it's a good reminder.
Anyway, hopefully that helps, but, again, I don't think a real big issue right now. But
if you're looking out the next few years, definitely get your brand, short code,
long code, whatever you're using, into your consumers' address book because that's gonna
essentially protect you going forward, no matter what Apple does.
Anyway, my name is Derek Johnson with tatango.com. Drop a comment below if you know of anything
that I don't know. But that's all I know at this point about kind of what's going on,
and what I'm seeing, you know, on the iOS devices in regards to kind of spam SMS filtering.