I'm Derek Johnson with tatango.com.
And today, I'm going to be talking about shortcodes and keywords.
Both are part of text message marketing and really a critical part of text message marketing.
So let's first start off with shortcodes.
A shortcode is a five to six-digit phone number that is used by brands to communicate to their
customers.
So there's two kinds of shortcodes though.
There's a vanity shortcode and a non-vanity shortcode.
A vanity shortcode is a shortcode that the brand picks specifically.
And as you can see from some of these examples here, a lot of brands will pick a phone number
that looks really good because it's easy to remember, easy to type into the mobile phone.
So 313-10 is, I'm guessing, a vanity phone number.
256-66, that's most likely a vanity phone number.
Things like 237-687 most likely are not a vanity phone number because it's not only
six numbers, which is more than five obviously, so it's a little harder to remember.
Plus there's no like symmetry in the numbers.
Now, the only thing that could make this a vanity phone number is the brand selected
these numbers because on the dial pad, maybe they spell something that relates to the brand.
A couple others here.
Good one, red box 727-272, that's obviously vanity.
323-232, that's a vanity phone number.
See if I can find another non-vanity which would be maybe like 273-283.
You know, that really doesn't have that much symmetry there so I'm guessing that would
be a non-vanity shortcode.
This one too, 876-642, could be possibly a non-vanity shortcode.
A vanity shortcode is going to cost a brand to lease it $1,000 a month.
Where a non-vanity shortcode is going to cost, sorry, $500 a month to lease a non-vanity
shortcode.
So $1,000 a month for a vanity shortcode, and $500 a month for a non-vanity shortcode.
I prefer vanity for the additional $500 a month.
It's definitely worth it because it's easier for consumers to remember, type in their phone.
It's just a better experience overall.
And for the extra $500 a month, I think, it's worth it for most brands.
So now, let's talk about keywords.
So there's a couple different....
There's actually two different sets of keywords.
One is keywords that are system keywords.
So these are going to be your help, stop, you know, things that are very generic to
all shortcodes across the industry.
Then there's going to be what I like to call your interaction keywords.
These can be things like...
So if I want to interact with a campaign and I want to join a campaign, I could text join3,
that could be a keyword, and this would be a keyword to opt in to a recurring text messaging
campaign.
Now, join3, I could have pizza as my keyword.
I get to select which keywords I want for which campaigns.
So join3 is for an opt-in campaign, and I'll text yes to opt in to my campaign.
And then now, the brand can send text messages in the future recurring basis to this mobile
phone number.
Another type of keyword could be for non-recurring text messaging.
So this could be a same shortcode, but I could use the keyword, let's say, App4.
And this would be a keyword that would trigger a non-recurring text message campaign.
So this would say, "To download our free mobile app, click here."
This is not actually opting anybody into a text messaging campaign.
This is just sending information back to the consumer that they requested.
So that's kind of a high-level summary of both what shortcodes are, you have the vanity
and non-vanity, and then what keywords are.
And essentially, keywords, there are system keywords, and then there's interaction keywords.
And within those interaction keywords, there are recurring interactions, so opting in for
future text messages.
And the non-recurring are single message programs as we call them, that essentially just send
back one message and that's the end of the conversation.
So hopefully, that helps gives you a little background for SMS marketing and now you're
an expert at what shortcodes and keywords are.