State of the Business Texting Union: Staying in Carrier and Device Owner Good Graces

Good morning, everybody. Just hang on with us for a couple of minutes here while more registrants are getting online. Some are cutting it close with other meetings, but we’ll be getting started in the next two minutes. Good morning, everybody. We’re going to be getting started here in about another one minute, just given the last the stragglers a second to get logged in and comfortable. Good everybody. Just give us one more minute. Still got a couple of other people that are logging in here. Give them one second to get caught up and we’ll get going. Michael, let’s start it in one minute. Start the countdown. Okay. In the meantime, I’m Michael Kirsch. I lead marketing for True Dialogue. I’m showing the description on the screen so that everybody has a firm rooting in what we’ll be discussing for roughly the next 30 minutes. As John stated, we’ll be getting started. We want to reward those who are here and on time. So we’ll be getting started just in a few seconds. If it’s all right with everyone. I’m going to start with brief introductions of our of our two speakers. John Wright has served as CEO of true dialogue since 2014 prior to his role at true dialogue. John held senior leadership positions with flow network, which was acquired by double click and then double click, double click acquired by Google for TV acquired by proof point digital impact acquired by axiom. John is considered a subject matter expert in online and offline data database marketing. marketing automation and high growth management. Having spent much of his career connecting online and offline audiences with retailers through ad tech, e-commerce and CRM platforms, he is based in Austin, Texas and his phone number, excuse me, his email address is provided on the screen. Eric Perlstein is a communications platform as a service industry veteran. With over 15 years experience, he has worked for global CPath leaders such as SAP and Cinch. and is now Senior Sales Director at NetNumber Global Data Services. has worked with enterprises in a variety of verticals, including mobile application service providers, FinTech and financials, healthcare, retail, and overall technology. He has helped countless companies strategize and navigate through ever evolving communications landscape. Eric is based in Toronto and is a frequent speaker and panelist at industry events, including the Mobile Ecosystem Forum, Canada Telecommunications Association, and many more. So with that, I will stop sharing so that we have John and Eric prominently on the screen and John, I’ll turn it over to you. Great. Well, I think that the first thing that we wanna talk about today is and say today is thank you for taking time. And the purpose of this call from where we are is, there’s a lot of changes, even more changes that are happening on a day-to-day basis with regards to the operators, federal law, state law that impact all of us that are using text as a communication channel. So there’s a platform provider or to our customers who are using text to communicate with their employees, their customers, their vendors, et cetera. And I think that the goal out of this is that there’s a lot of rule books over with regards to the FCC and the TCPA which regulate how the feds regulate things. There’s a lot of governance at an organization level, specifically the CTIA here in the United States, which is a coalition of the carriers that have gotten together and created a playbook of how they want things to operate. Same thing over on the CWTA in Canada. But really what our goal here is today is to really kind of take you through a common sense approach as far as how you should be looking at messaging and the best. efforts that you can take as a leader inside of this, inside of your organization to adhere and play nice with the carriers. And there’s, first of all, you know, I think that, you know, we want to be clear that, you know, there are two main, several main communication mechanisms that are used for communicating today, that being short code, 10 DLC, which is a relatively new in the last really two years has come into its forefront. and then toll-free messaging. We’re gonna look at them kind of collectively because I think in my experience, and I’ll let Eric speak in one moment, is that really the CTIA and the operators are really looking at it holistically and want the behaviors to be the same regardless of what code you’re communicating over. So with that, I think that one of the things that you can… know, provide a best effort for inside of your company is really playing nice with the carriers. And, you know, Eric, who I have had the, when he was at SAP, he was a vendor of ours and he was the main person who helped us maintain a lot of our connectivity, which is a tier one connectivity provider, which is now Cinch. But Eric has led us down a path of righteousness and truth. And I’ve had the, the pleasure of working with him for a lot of years. But really, I think that what we want you to hear you as TrueDialogue clients and prospective clients is that don’t listen to us. We try to tell you what our interpretation of how to play inside the playground is, but really look with Eric and it really kind of boils down to one thing. And I think Eric in our planning for this just really laid this out beautifully. And I’m going to lay it over him to him now with regards to things you can keep front of mind in order to play well inside the ecosystem. Eric, can you take a minute? Sure. Thanks. Thanks so much, John. Thanks for the invitation to speak on this call and share my thoughts. I really do appreciate it. It’s been a pleasure working with you for so many years. And it’s been a really fun industry to be a part of as the industry has evolved over the years and become a significant portion of the communication style that enterprises have with their employees, with their customers. And so much conversation around compliance has been around what we have to do, but it should really be simplified and what should we be doing? Because ultimately the what should we be doing is the driver. It’s really important that everyone who participates in the industry understands that this is not just a conversation between the customers, the employees of a particular enterprise and the business. It’s not like that. The conversation actually has a very important third partner and that is the mobile operator. And we discussed the term mobile operator versus carrier. Operator is the global term, carrier is generally North American. So for clarity sake, I wanted to point that out. The mobile operators are that very important third partner. They’re the ones providing the medium for that communication. And ultimately they are super concerned as to the welfare and satisfaction of their customers. And their customers, in all of these cases, are also the enterprise’s customers. So the message has to be one that satisfies the needs of the enterprise as well as the needs of the mobile operator. You cannot offend the mobile operator. This is not a person-to-person style conversation. where you can say whatever you want and get as upset as you want, you need to maintain a certain degree of professionalism and only communicate messages in a manner and with the content that is not going to upset the operators. Why? Well, it’s an important question. The operators don’t want to lose the business and they don’t want the hassle and cost associated with upset customers. So number one, they want to make sure that their customers are kept happy. Don’t threaten them, don’t upset them, don’t attack them with too many communications. Be mindful of their wellbeing. And two, they do not want the customer’s calling, this is still part of one actually, they don’t want the customer’s calling and complaining. Those calls cost a fortune and they run 50, 60 upwards of a hundred dollars per call if that customer’s upset. And secondly, they don’t want legislation. They don’t want more legislation. There’s enough out there. They want everything to be harmonious without the added costs of millions of dollars that would come into play if this goes into a legislative form and you have to bring the lawyers in. Nobody wants to bring the lawyers in. Nobody wants audits. Nobody wants to deal with this on a legal federal jurisdiction and level. Great. And I think, you one of the things, you know, you mentioned the cost. I think the other thing to kind of keep in mind is that the penalty, although there might be a financial, if you are in fact violating federal laws, but the operator laws, they have another mechanism in place that they can institute, which is probably as enforceful as money is in that you know, if the operators don’t like what you’re doing, all they have to do is turn a switch and say, we don’t want that code anymore. The juice is not worth the squeeze. I think as all of our clients know and prospective customers know, the carriers make a ton of money off of what are called carrier pass-through fees. Those are on 10 DLC, those are on short code and they like carriers like money. However, when they start looking at Well, we made a thousand dollars in carrier pass through fees off one particular client, but we got 15 calls at a hundred bucks a call. The juice is no longer worth the squeeze for a T-Mobile or Verizon or an AT &T. And they can just definitively say, we no longer are going to accept this campaign ID for a 10 DLC number, nor are we going to approve any other 10 DLC registrations that have the EIN associated with this campaign. And on shortcode, they can just say, we’re gonna turn off your connection to your shortcode. And ultimately that is the damning part of business. And again, we don’t see this a lot. However, I think it’s always just good to kind of practice and take two seconds and say, what we’re doing here is extremely effective. My experience prior to being in the on the text side and the text and the voice side of the world was an email. And I think for a long time, email was an extremely effective communication mechanism as was fax, as has voice been for a period of time. But voice and text are very similar in that the carriers have just been very, I mean, they’ve said it out loud. They will not allow their ecosystems to happen, what happened with email to happen inside of their ecosystems, which is that they do not, Negative opt-in, which is what email is predicated off of. And then that’s when all the abuse started. They do not and will not allow that to happen inside of voice. And ultimately, the matters at hand, they have a lot more control over this ecosystem than email providers, which is why the good side of the things here is if you play nice, it is an extremely responsive mechanism for you. and valuable space for you to communicate with your customers. And I think the other thing that, you know, there are some common sense approaches is that, you know, I think that, you know, as we go back and as traditional marketers and communications folks, we say, well, you know, we wanna start digging deeper into our database and saying, okay, you know, the people who I’ve gathered on and collected their information over the last year, we have good communication streams. I wanna now move my 24 to 13 month subscribers to my program on board and start communicating with them, which is fine. But there are other things that are just very simple to think about and the carriers provide tools, TrueDialog provides those tools, which are making sure that those users aren’t on a do not call list. If they’ve gone through the effort of saying, I don’t wanna be communicated with the text or phone calls, probably a pretty good idea to talk to your account manager or your person at TrueDialog or even use a third party. Eric’s company NetNumber has a number of files that are available as well to scrub your file against to make sure that they’re clean. There are connection and disconnect files that are available that the carriers will provide and as part of the TrueDialog system. we’ve implemented that basically will identify numbers as they’re being onboarded. There’s ported numbers that are going on. Eric’s company has one of the best files that’s available for identifying customers who’ve moved and have changed phone numbers. And I think that deploying tools like this, in addition to asking yourself the question, how do I stay out of the contact center for Verizon by not doing this? Eric, I think that maybe a little bit of flavor there as well as far as practices that you can deploy, are tools that are mail available to also help keep you in good graces. So there are a couple of things that I can speak to on this matter. And one of them is, of course, what our company does. part of it, it’s important to understand how the technology has evolved. And I’ll touch on the screen content in a second, but how the technology has involved in messaging. For a long time, we We’re used to having numbers find their way and penetrate the system unwanted numbers into a handset still way less than email the the fast data for messaging versus email the 98 % Open rate for for messaging versus 20 % open rate for for email and the 45 % response rate, 45 to 50 % response rate for messaging versus a six to 10 % response rate for email. That of course varies based on the quality of the content. But the key figure there is a spam rate. The email spam rate is ballpark 50%. Spam rate for messaging is under 3%. That is a huge difference. And it’s getting tighter and tighter and smaller and smaller because the technology is improved. 10DLC is a big part of that. It used to be that the mobile operators were afraid to block traffic that was unregistered because they did not have the tools necessary to filter out content that was not person to person content, yet running on to the person to person connections. And that is how some of these unwanted messages were able to get through the system. Those tools have significantly improved over the years, and that is what has allowed attend DLC to come up. and become a very significant piece of the communication puzzle so that a registered number will not get filtered out. They can then crank up the filtering tools and make sure that non-registered numbers and numbers that would violate the person-to-person portion of the communication side and are actually application to personal enterprise-based communications are going to get filtered out. So this system is only getting stronger and better and tighter. And that is a key change. over the last several years. Compliance, compliance, compliance. You want to stay in the good graces, just comply. Your messages won’t get blocked. You won’t upset the operators. It won’t cost you more money. Follow the guidelines that are set up and communicated by the true dialogues of the world. This is why working with a very active and engaged provider, if you are an enterprise that is getting into it, or even if you’re expert, it changes. The landscape changes. Work with a provider that understands that landscape and is always evolving. What you have on the screen, what net number does, we are interested in the health of the ecosystem as a whole. We are not an aggregator. We are not competing with the true dialogues and the cinches and the Twilio’s of the world. We want every one of them to succeed. They all provide a slightly different service and we want them all to succeed because ultimately what we do is we provision numbers, we route numbers and we create trust in the ecosystem. The provisioning numbers, we are the trusted source. So everyone uses us. That’s an important thing to mention. We are part of everyone’s game plan. The provisioning piece, we make sure that if you get a number from a company like Bandwidth and you are provisioning it for Google Voice or you’re provisioning it on another over the top medium, the ecosystem has to understand how to get to that endpoint. It is our database that is always used in order to determine where that goes. So anybody who wants to get their virtual number properly routed, they will use our database. Similarly, on the routing side, if you’re looking to get data around where that number has to go, we have the ultimate accurate data. We work with iConnective. We work with Newstart. We work with all the different providers. And the trust piece, because we have access to all this number portability data, We can create and all other data points out there. We work very closely with all mobile operators globally. We create a level of trust and knowledge based on the movement of numbers and the activity of those numbers and access to all those do not call lists to ensure that the number that you’re trying to reach is one that is a reachable. It is a landline or it is a mobile number or it is a mobile enabled landline, text enabled landline. blind, we have all that data and provide the ultimate experience. So that’s, that’s, that’s piece about my company. Back to what you guys do. We want compliance. We want everything to run smoothly and we want everyone to use this incredibly powerful medium as often as possible because it is the one that truly works and it is the chosen medium by the people out there. People ignore phone calls in many cases. They ignore emails. They don’t ignore their texts. Well, I think the other thing that kind of bleeds into this a little bit as far as the system being so protected, know, we are our voice business and voice services, you know, have seen a big uptick. I don’t know about other people on the line here, but, know, the the the operators themselves have enacted tools and technology that are in alignment. The most notable one in the last 12 months has been stir shaken and robocall mitigation and the fact that they are now blocking traffic with, in a lot of instances that there’s no number resolution on the other end. There are requirements and filings that need to be made for people who are making phone calls. You guys have to remember that making a phone call and sending a text message, one is a zero and one in bits of information, but they’re both happening over a telephone line, whether it’s a mobile line, which text and phone calls happen or a landline, which is phone calls happen. And the operators have continued to push. They’ve listened for long enough. And with stir shaken and with 10 DLC and the CTIA and rules and regs that are happening on a federal level inside of TCPA and trying to protect, they have deployed tools. Short codes are still, in my opinion, and I’ll let Eric. poses zone is still the most protected with regards to by the carriers. That’s why their onboarding process and vetting process takes longer than 10 DLC. It’s also unfettered and unchallenged with regards to throughput and filtering. It has very little filtering attached to a short code versus 10 DLC. So even though oftentimes you go through a 10 DLC registration, behind the backend, net number is tying in your 10 DLC campaign ID to the carriers and making sure that it reconciles and providing you routing access. But also there are velocity constraints that are just defaulted to your account when using 10 DLC that don’t exist on a short code. And then there are also, since 10 DLC is lot less expensive, they are heavily reliant on technology for that filtering. And that technology is velocity based, it’s content based, very much like email. its content, its velocity, and it also is using AI in order to identify things. And frankly, just like email, the carriers are very specific. And then they’ve got one other mechanism that we, as a conduit into this universe, and Eric has on the number side, they’ve got access to one thing that we don’t, which is that when you’re on your handy device and you click report spam, In email, there is actually a feedback loop that’s created to companies like mine and text, there is not. And they are very protective of that because they have set up traps to look and see if messages that are numbers that they’ve got for their own monitoring, which are dead mailboxes that if they end up on a list and all of a sudden they know they haven’t registered anywhere and it starts getting messages that someone is likely. You know, scraped that number from somewhere. So, I mean, Eric, I don’t know if you’ve got any additional commentary on that, but you know, I think that, you know, the 10 DLC and the filtering that happens there versus short codes. And, you know, again, you know, the carriers getting unlocked, if you’re operating kindly, as Eric mentioned it, with 10 DLC, it’s a pretty easy explanation to say that, you know, this happened here and here’s what happened versus a short code. They’re not going to block you and it’s typically, there’s not a lot of room on the other end if you get a question mark on a short code versus a question mark because of an erroneous or a false positive on the 10 DLC side. So I’ll add to that. I agree with you. Short codes are the tried and true and they’re still the gold standard. They’re more expensive than 10 DLC to set up. They do take a little bit more time, but They also have that unique aspect of having a five or six digit code showing up on your phone. That in itself is incredibly trusted by the public. The knowledge of what that number, and you can look it up. You can find out what that five or six digit code and check to see if it matches. You can go online and figure that out. That provides a lot of trust. And it also allows the operators a very easy way to just turn on and turn off. a particular program if it does not adhere to the rules and regulations. It’s also been cleaned up over the years. They used to allow shared codes, shared short codes amongst clients. That has been eliminated. There used to be premium messaging that was eliminated a long time ago. So it’s constantly improved and it’s evolved because it’s been around for nearly 20 years. That medium in itself is somewhat mature. 10 DLC is less mature. 10 DLC requires that registration piece. It takes a little bit of time. the number you’re receiving still looks like another number that may not be registered. It’s very difficult to make that distinction as an end user, but it will not get filtered. It will get through the system and you will receive that message because it has gone through a process. It’s less expensive to launch. takes a little bit less time to launch. Ultimately, this is the point that I was making earlier about the filtration systems on the operator side being turned up. So if it is not registered, it will likely get blocked while it’s trying to make its way through. And if it has been registered, it’s got that green light to get through. If there are complaints, then it too can get shut down easily. It takes a little bit longer than the shortcode process, not that much longer, but it’s just an improvement of the system and it will continue to evolve. The trick with the 10DLC, system is understanding that the different operators do have different rules and regulations and throughputs for TendLC approved numbers. This is all part of the early stages of a medium being created and it will likely evolve over time to a more standardized format as well. Eric, I’d also, you we’ve gone over this a lot with our clients and I think that it’s just an important designation. based off of your experience. I think one of the other mechanisms that a lot of people think that, and misconceptions in the marketplace is that, toll free can solve this because it’s neither 10 DLC and it’s neither short code, but it has high throughput and it’s not monitored at the same level at the operator level. Can you perhaps just from your experience, explain your, kind of give your opinion and viewpoint from that? A toll free has its place as well. And it’s great that there are three ways of communicating in the messaging space right now. A free currently is controlled by a single entity. There are some delays in its implementation. It does have the ability to use numbers that currently exist and have them test enabled. It could be a single use number, but again, it’s not for everyone going out and getting a toll free and using that and branding with it. it’s not as quick as getting a 10 DLC number and getting up and running quickly. And if you need to have X number of numbers, 10, 20, 30, getting that via toll free could be a little bit more of a process than some enterprises would like, because there’s some enterprises that are using hundreds of 10 digit long code numbers for various use cases. But yeah, every one of these mediums has a place. Toll free is good, 10 DLC is good. And short code is very good and proven over a very long period of time. we’re also just, you know, can you also just kind of maybe speak to, do you think that toll free is going to be going in the same direction as 10 DLC with regards to the requirements that the operators currently have on 10 DLC? I do believe so. I do believe so. I think the requirements are converging on all of these fronts and what’s going to be differentiating them. is going to be time to market costs, the branding aspect. It’ll be more of a marketing difference than a compliance difference. As ultimately the rules and regulations are always serving the same purpose. Do not send garbage, do not attack customers, keep those phone calls from coming and keep legislation away. Yeah. And I think that an important note that’s happened on that side as well is that we’ve already seen from where we set that, the application process for 10 DLC in the last 18 months. And I think that the carriers have seen the success with that. They started out with a baseline where it’s an online filing and almost an auto approval where you are given permission until you act out of accordance and then you’ll get a warning shot. We’ve already seen big changes in that now to where when the 10 DLC application is happening, There’s a lot of things that we’re already seeing bleed over from short code applications to 10 DLC applications. Example of messaging. What are your use cases? What are the verticals that you’re operating inside of? And point as to where your terms and conditions are. They’re viewing of the terms and conditions. It’s long been noted that if you have the word affiliates inside of your privacy policy and you’re wanting to use, a short code, the carriers wouldn’t accept it. They’re moving away now. And if they’ve already hit that level now to where if you are a lead aggregator and you are processing leads to sell to third parties, I think the first thing of note is, that you cannot sell consent in a third party list. And just, if someone tells you that, I would absolutely say, talk with your internal risk department or talk to an attorney. that has got experience inside of TCPA because the salespeople are not trained lawyers. The lawyers that we talked to do this every day for a living. And their rule of thumb is that you can do a lot of things, but you can’t buy consent on a text list. Oh, they’re opted in. Well, they are opted into their list, but they’re not opted in for your use. So again, just Eric shaking his head. think he was on the other side of it for a long time and it was a little bit more lenient. you know, two or three years ago, they’re not asking questions now. All of that feeds into the, please do not allow our phone lines to ring with these complaints point. People, can’t trick people into wanting to be communicated with. If they do not want you to reach them, don’t reach out to them. You’re offending them and you’re going to cause bigger problems for your customers and ultimately for your company as a whole because This is all tracked and it’s getting more and more tracked over time. There’s a big database of who’s doing what, who are the bad actors? They’re getting weeded out. The system is much better than it’s ever been. The response rates are improving constantly and the spam rates are going down. And even the bad actors, the traditional bad actors, and I won’t name them, True Dialogues is definitely not one of them. Even they have said, you know what, we’re changing our tune. Compliance, compliance, compliance is absolutely necessary. So work with people that understand what it takes to run a proper program and listen, listen, you’re not gonna be able to game the system. Thank you. I think we’re kind of at the end of time here, Michael. I wanted to leave a little time for Q and A to see if any of our attendees have questions today. So I guess as part of this, there is a function where you can raise your hand and ask a question. will be a monitor and be able to tell if people have questions. And I encourage you. mean, Eric’s time is extremely valuable. And he does this speaking at the MMA events, CTIA events, and industry events in general. He is well-respected. I consider him to be a He has forgotten more about messaging than I know. And that says a lot. I’ve been doing this for quite a while. And he’s one of my de facto guys that if I’ve got a question in that, Eric, what is your opinion on this? He’s my last stop and a voice of reason in that he is well-trusted because he’s been there and done that. And he’s worked with clients like Bank of America and Wells Fargo on the financial services side. And then he’s worked with thousands of other companies, not only seeing what they’ve done successfully, but seeing what things they’ve done unsuccessfully. And if you don’t want to step in the honeypot and you’ve got a question as far as what you’re doing personally, raise your hand, let us know, and we’re happy to answer any questions. John, two quick questions. I’m not sure which of you would be better to answer this first one. Do you find that texting works on its own or is it best considered as part of a multi-channel approach? I think both of us are qualified to answer that. Yeah, I agree. I’ll start with this. Great. I don’t think texting can work on its own because you need consent in some way and the likelihood of you consenting has to come from somewhere else, whether it’s a billboard or it’s going to be a piece of paper or it’s an advertisement that you checked online. If you are approving communication through a particular medium, more often than not, it’s going to be come through a call to action through another medium. That said, once that application is in place, once your approval is in place, you can have an incredible amount of communication through that. medium exclusively, or you can direct the medium itself. If it’s straight SMS, you may want to direct them to a more graphical medium in some way and move beyond. But I don’t believe it can initially work on its own. But once you are opted in, you can, if you choose to work on your own. In most cases, it is part of a multimodal engagement. That’s a great answer, Eric. And I was just going to add in just a little bit on that is that we have a big presence in a lot of different verticals and sectors. And two that kind of come to mind with this, are just their use cases are not really by use case, the segmentation as far as multi-channel, but it’s by demographics. And for instance, when we’ve got college sports programs that want to reach out to alumni, especially older alumni, email is still a great way to do them. And meanwhile, in-game event messaging is still best done via text, even to the people who prefer to be communicated over email. In education in general, we see that if you need to communicate with parents, one of our CTOs of one of our big universities had a very poignant expression. said, email is a great way to talk to parents. It’s a horrible way to talk to prospective students. So getting a student to take a phone call, you know, the 18 to 24 demo, they don’t answer their phones, they don’t look at their email, but by God, they’ve got this in their hand or within reach, 23 of the 24 hours every day. So I think that, you know, the other thing with regards to multi-channel is, that to Eric’s point, it’s not really just about consent, but if you are trying to initiate a, you know, a end of summer sale, and you wanna use direct mail, Michael, who comes to us from American Express before True Dialogue and Sterling Background Check, it takes months in advance to plan and execute a direct mail campaign. If you wanna do an email campaign, sure you can do it, but you’re gonna be in the same space as every other e-commerce vendor, whether you’ve signed up for them or not, kind of consistent with our earlier calls. And it’s gonna be lost because everyone wants to do an end of… a summer sale at the same time. Whereas text, if you want a clean way to get in touch with a very responsive mechanism with people who’ve consented to receive messaging with you, I don’t think one of them stands above all their others. I think they are reinforce each other to Eric’s point. Thank you. I believe that in marketing specifically to John’s point, in marketing specifically, are the ultimate guiding force. You cannot get a better guide to take you somewhere than a text. you will act on that so quickly. You throw a 25 % off end of season sale message. You need nothing more than that. And your brand is known and off you go and you’re making your buy. There you go. With everyone’s indulgence to go over a few minutes, one other question has come in. So I’ll read it on the screen. I’ve left both John’s and Eric’s email addresses if anyone wants to have one-on-one follow-ups as well. Many text message vendors offer a free trial. I’ve tried some of them to test my use case by sending my tests to a personal number. Usually these get blocked because I’ve not registered the number yet. How do you recommend testing a use case under a free trial? That’s a great question. I mean, Eric can probably speak to it on a wider fashion. I can speak to it more on a macro with regards to the true dialogue system. I’ll let Eric start if you feel you’ve got something to add, Eric. I can start. mean, a lot of these free trials and again, I’ve been in the industry a long time and I’ve seen so many of these unknown companies, these micro entities offer service. Go ahead, throw in a number and send something through the system. Earlier in this call, we were talking about blocking and how the filtering systems are now significantly. tighter than they used to be. This is all part of this free trial. Some of these free trial experiments which are unregulated and the content is unknown, they simply can’t get through anymore. If you want a trial to work, one, you will have to operate within the confines of the system that the operators are approving now, not in the past. This can’t be an old unregistered long code. 50 % of the time or more that will no longer work. The trial has to be within a set of boundaries that has been set by either the Tendulce application that one has, you have to fit in to the content that has been approved, and then you will see exactly what is going to happen when you send that text. It will get to the end user, you will experience it on your handset if you’re doing it with yourself, but that too, even the trials have to be very well managed these days because the days of old where any number can be grabbed from anywhere and just tested and you kind of hope that it’s going to get through, those days are done. I think the other thing just to kind layer on top of that, there are two or three things that you can do when dealing with a free trial, whether our company or others, because there are certain things that the carriers are going to block and they shoot first and ask questions later. The main ones are, there are certain keywords, mortgage, credit, anything that’s kind of finance related. And the second thing is, and probably even more than that is, if you’re using Bitly link shorteners or goo.gl link shorteners, Any type of link shortener is on the heuristic scale as far as the platforms that the carriers use. You use both of those in combination. can tell you even with a 10 DLC registration, you’re not going to get it through. The second thing is, is that I would poke around in a free trial and just figure out if the UI meets your needs. And then I would commit the 25 bucks for a one month trial using 10 DLC and get an understanding. It’s a cheap investment for one month. There’s a $4 brand registration. Companies like TrueDialogue, don’t make any money on this. It’s $20 and then the campaign registration fee go through. The approval process is typically inside of two to three days, but that’ll give you a true feel of what your campaigns are going to act and look like. And then again, stay away from the link shorteners in general. We have several clients. We’ve got a link shortener that’s specific to TrueDialogue that we will extend to our clients on approval. but also the ones that are just generally available. Spammers have used them for so long that the carriers and even on the reverse lookup mechanisms, they’ve seen so much bad traffic on those that are used for fraud and scams that they just do not allow any of it. Bitly will never get through on a 10 DLC circuit, period, end of paragraph. They don’t care who you are. So those are just a couple little tips as well as you can go in through and look at. a lexicon of keywords for 10 DLC that are prohibitive. And, you know, there’s obviously profanity, there’s obviously mortgage, payday is another big one, et cetera, that the carriers simply said they do not want that traffic on their net. So John, bringing us to a close, I’ll just acknowledge that we appreciate everybody’s time and participation. We will be sending each participant a copy of the Buyers Guide for Business SMS, which has some useful tips and tricks. And I guess John and Eric, a few second final bite at the apple. I’ll just kind of add in one thing and leave it to Eric. But I think the one thing, Michael, I just want to mention is that this is being recorded. If you’ve got other people inside your organization and a lot of these are circulated heavily, please make an inquiry and let us know. Just email us back at support or at sales at TrueDialogue or support at TrueDialogue and say you’d like a copy of the webinar to distribute. We will send you the link and a copy of the presentation as well that has Eric and mine’s information in it. And I also want to take a second second and just thank you, Eric again. I know you’re traveling this week and have taken time. to speak with our customers and prospective customers. And just really appreciate you joining us today and I’ll leave it to you to close off, sir. Thank you. Thanks so much, John. I really appreciate the opportunity to chat with your prospective customers, your customers, you and Michael. We’ve worked together as I mentioned and as you mentioned for many, many years and you’ve always been an above board, always making sure to do things the right way. never taking shortcuts and that’s why we’re on this call right now. So I’ve always been an ardent supporter of TrueDialogue. I will maintain that support because in an industry where there a lot of fly-by-night operators, you want to engage with those that are not fly-by-night operators. You want the ones that are going to get your business to where your business wants to be and you have been a student and a supporter of this space as a whole. And that speaks volumes to you and the business. again, I appreciate the time. Glad to help in any way I can in the future for as long as you need me. I appreciate it. And guys, again, message us. We’ll send you a copy of the presentation. We’ll send you a copy or a link to the webinar. And Eric’s contact information and my contact information are in there. And we’d love a chance to discuss any questions that you’ve got offline. Thank you for your time today. Those of you in the East Coast who are in your lunch hour, thank you for making room for us. Those of you on the left coast, thanks for waking up to us and we wish you all a very happy and safe week and a good holiday weekend. Thank you. Thanks everybody.