By: John Wright, CEO of TrueDialog
From the days of direct mail through the many iterations of e-mail marketing to modern marketing through messaging, one thing has remained the same: customers won’t notice you if your messages never reach them.
But while every form of marketing has its own deliverability challenges, the 10DLC ecosystem presents some unique issues that can cause heartburn for even the most experienced senders.
At TrueDialog, we’ve developed an AI-driven tool to identify blocked messages more quickly and allow them to be remedied and resent. Our TrueDelivery tool gives senders a way to evaluate their messages for potential flags ahead of time, allowing them to remove potential issues, reach more customers, and boost sales.
Challenges for 10DLC campaigns
While the 10DLC ecosystem has been through a lot of changes since its early days, it has essentially settled into an efficient system for a variety of organizations to reach customers and users. With the advent of The Campaign Registry and ending the practice of allowing multiple companies to use a single 10DLC number, instances of fraud, abuse, and prohibited content have been greatly reduced.
The challenge for organizations that currently use 10DLC is not to subvert or avoid compliance with 10DLC requirements—in fact, most organizations want to operate on the up-and-up! But many organizations run afoul of carrier filters entirely by accident, resulting in messages being flagged or blocked.
There are a few common scenarios for legitimate senders in the current 10DLC environment:
- Using “prohibited” words in a legitimate way: Carriers are very good at flagging and prohibiting delivery of SHAFT-C content, which is great. However, some companies need to use the words and images sometimes categorized as prohibited. A florist, for example, needs to use the word “flower”—a word often flagged due to its association with the cannabis industry.
- Communicating about topics often associated with spam or phishing: Universities regularly need to communicate with students or their parents about financial aid, which means using words like “loan”—something that could look like a scam.
- Blocking links that appear suspicious: Sports teams or event ticketers might want to send short URLs via 10DLC, but those short URLs can look suspicious to the carrier.
Most of these challenges fall under the heading of a “false positive”—a term used to describe a message deemed undeliverable within the 10DLC ecosystem.
Everyone who uses 10DLC wants the system to remain healthy, and few senders object to carriers blocking problematic content or numbers. But how can senders look out for their own best interests while still maintaining compliance and assuring deliverability?
3 ways TrueDelivery improves 10DLC campaign outcomes
The biggest challenge most senders face in today’s 10DLC ecosystem is deliverability. In fact, 60% of survey respondents for Bandwidth’s 2025 State of Messaging Report said that deliverability is their most important factor in choosing a messaging provider.
Our TrueDelivery tool helps senders by identifying false positives before they hit send so the senders can remedy their messages. It gives our customers a percentage and likelihood of delivery so they can fix potential problems earlier in the process.
TrueDelivery improves campaign outcomes in three important ways:
- Reducing false positives: TrueDelivery uses AI and machine learning to score messages ahead of time and predict the likelihood that messages could be flagged by spam filters. Messages more likely to be flagged or blocked can be remedied to improve deliverability. Customers using TrueDelivery reduced false positives between 50 and 85%.
- Reducing costs: Senders are charged for their messages whether the messages are delivered or not. By catching and remedying false positives early, senders can fix potential problems and avoid paying for messages that never get delivered.
- Improving engagement and revenue: It doesn’t matter how compelling or creative your content is—if it never gets to the customer’s inbox, it’s no good. By helping to ensure 10DLC messages get to recipients, TrueDelivery is driving improved customer engagement and higher revenues for our customers.
Deliverability doesn’t have to be left to chance. With an AI-driven system like TrueDelivery, companies can relax knowing they have a way to quickly evaluate and address potential problems and improve their messaging campaign outcomes.
From universities to sports teams, all kinds of brands rely on TrueDialog for messaging that gets attention. Their AI-driven tool TrueDelivery identifies blocked messages more quickly, allowing them to be remedied and resent. TrueDelivery has been so successful that it earned the company one of Bandwidth’s 2025 Textie Awards!
