I’m Derek Johnson with tatango.com, and I’m answering the question, “What is a
shared short code?”
So first off, let’s talk about what a short code is.
A short code is a five to six-digit phone number that is used by brands to send and
receive text messages with consumers.
So, an example would be 12345 or 123456.
You’ll see ’em in many different places, used by many different businesses.
So what is a shared short code?
A shared short code is when many different businesses, sometimes thousands or tens of
thousands, are all using the same phone number.
And they can do this by using different keywords on that phone number to interact with different
brands.
So here’s how this works.
Let’s say the short code is 12345, and let’s say it’s a shared short code.
That means the phone number is the same.
But to opt in, let’s say you have a pizza place and a retail store, the pizza place
would use a different keyword, which would be the thing that people text to the short
code, then the retail store.
So to opt in to the retail store, I would text maybe “retail,” which would be my
keyword to the shared short code 12345.
If I want to opt in to the pizza place, I would text “pizza,” which is the key word
to the shared short code 12345.
There are some issues, unfortunately, with shared short codes, but there’s one big
benefit of shared short codes.
The big benefit we’ll start off with is, it is very inexpensive to use a shared short
code.
A short code is either going to be $1,000 a month or $500 a month for whoever owns the
short code, depending on if it’s vanity, which is like a really cool looking, good
looking phone number, or a random phone number, which sometimes isn’t so good looking.
So, $1,000 a month, $500 a month for the owner of the short code.
Now, if you have tens of thousands, or thousands of businesses using the same phone number,
that owner of the short code is still only paying $1,000 or $500 a month.
So that means that each business can pay maybe even…pitch in a dollar.
And if you have 10,000, you know, customers all using the same short code, the same shared
short code, then, you know, that person will be making $10,000, they’d be making $9,000
off the $1,000, you know, cost of the phone number.
So, it allows small businesses to use a short code.
Where, maybe, they couldn’t buy their own short code because $1,000 is out of their
price range.
So, that’s the big benefit to a shared short code.
It’s inexpensive to use.
The owner still pays, you know, $1,000 a month or $500.
But the brands, all those different brands that are kind of sharing the code, they can
pay anywhere from zero to a couple bucks a month.
Now, they’re a bunch of negatives though, unfortunately.
A shared short code means that everybody, all the thousands or tens of thousands of
businesses that are using that short code, they’re all responsible for using the short
code properly.
If one of those thousands or tens of thousands of businesses misuses the short code, the
wireless carrier will shut down the entire short code.
So you can see the problem there.
If you are a legitimate business and you’re using a shared short code, your short code
could be shut down because somebody else using the short code misused the short code.
There are some other issues, too.
You know, if you’re texting a random word or you mistyped a keyword into a shared short
code, you’re gonna get a response from the short code owner, not a response from your
business to help the consumer out.
That’s usually a negative kind of experience for the customer.
Also, with a shared short code, when you receive the text messages, let’s say you’ve opted
in to multiple businesses on the same phone number, the same short code, let’s say the
pizza place and the retail store, the messages are actually gonna come from the same phone
number and be in the same thread, which is sometimes confusing for people, especially
if competitors are using the same phone number, you know, the same shared short code.
Also, another negative is brand.
If you’re concerned about your brand, you don’t know who’s using that phone number
as well.
So there might be businesses that are advertising, text something to 12345 that you might not
be really keen on associating yourself with, and you have your brand over here saying the
same thing to the same phone number, some people think that maybe there might be a relation.
So, that’s always a concern, too.
So, if you’re usually a larger brand or you’re concerned about your brand, that’s
when you wanna move to a dedicated short code.
If you’re a small, one-off location business, and you just can’t afford a dedicated short
code, really, a shared short code is a good option for you.
So, that’s answering the question, “What is a shared short code?”