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Country specific guidelines and restrictions for SMS campaigns

Most countries put regulations in place to protect customers from unsolicited SMS messages. To be able to send your SMS campaigns and have them delivered to your recipients, you must follow these regulations to avoid suspensions. Depending on the country where you are sending your SMS marketing communication, there are different types of guidelines to follow and restrictions.

To help you out, we've gathered those guidelines and restrictions for our top-sending countries: 
💡 Good to know
If the country to which you are sending your SMS campaigns is not on the list, ensure you check and understand the SMS marketing regulations in this country before sending your SMS campaigns.

Before you start 

  • Only send campaigns to contacts that consented to receive your SMS, and are expecting to receive and open them. Remember that opt-in is mandatory for every country. To learn more, check our dedicated article Best practices for SMS deliverability.
  • Always include an unsubscribe option in your SMS messages. To learn more, check our dedicated article Include an unsubscribe option in your SMS messages.
  • Your Sender ID has to contain between 3 and 11 characters. 

  • The message length limit depends on the encoding used to write the SMS content: 

    Encoding used Single message Long message
    GSM or ASCII 160 153 (per message)
    Unicode and emojis 70 67 (per message) 
    Latin 140 134 (per message)

    To learn more, check our dedicated article Is there a limit on the number of characters used in an SMS message?.

🇫🇷 France 

Marketing SMS messages sent to France are limited to certain regulatory conditions. Any SMS identified as marketing content will be subject to the conditions listed in the sections below. 

💡 Good to know

Transactional SMS messages are not subject to those regulations. 

📝 Content guidelines and restrictions

Prohibited content

❌ Prohibited content topics
  • Politics 
  • Religious
  • Unsolicited promotion
  • Gambling

Time restrictions

Marketing and promotional SMS messages can be sent from Monday to Saturday between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m. Any marketing or promotional SMS sent outside those hours will be blocked and sent again at the next authorized time slot. 

⚙️Sender ID conditions 

Alphanumeric Sender ID
  • French operators recommend using alpha sender IDs to send Application-to-Person (A2P) traffic to all networks in France. 
  • Person-to-Person (P2P) traffic is prohibited over alpha sender ID.
Numeric Sender ID
  • Numeric sender IDs are not supported unless offered by Brevo.
  • Numeric Sender IDs may be overwritten to ensure delivery.
  • Vonage French Long Virtual Numbers (LVNs) are strictly for P2P communication only, and cannot be used to send any A2P messages.
  • To avoid spoofing of identities, numeric Sender IDs that are not virtual numbers are not allowed. 
Generic Sender ID

Use a representative brand or business name to ensure delivery. Generic sender IDs such as VERIFY, INFO, SMS, NOTICE, etc are prohibited.

🚫 Unsubscribe conditions

It is mandatory to add the STOP au [STOP_CODE] mention as an unsubscribe instruction at the end of your marketing SMS messages for France. To learn more, check our dedicated article SMS opt-out keywords (HELP, STOP, START, INFO).

🇺🇸 United States of America (USA) and 🇨🇦 Canada

SMS messages sent to the United States of America are limited to certain regulatory conditions. Any SMS identified as marketing content will be subject to the conditions listed in the sections below. 

📝 Content guidelines and restrictions

Organization prefix

Your business name or any word or phrase that could help your customers identify your business is mandatory in marketing SMS messages for US recipients. To learn more, check our dedicated article Comply with the United States SMS marketing regulations with our compliance feature.

Restricted content

  • It is prohibited to use public URL shorteners default domains such as bit.ly or tinyurl. Custom domains on these services are allowed.
    ❗️ Important
    Deactivate the Automatically shorten links option when creating your SMS campaign for the USA or Canada from Brevo to prevent it from returning a soft bounce. To learn more, check step 5 in our dedicated Message content: create your SMS content section in the Create an SMS campaign article.
  • The Euro symbol (€) is not supported.

Prohibited content 

❌ Prohibited content topics
  • Sexual or pornographic
  • Abusive or harassing
  • Firearms (including fireworks) 
  • Alcohol, tobacco, or illegal drugs 
  • Gambling 
  • Investment opportunities
  • Persistent receiving or sending of one-time passcodes from or on behalf of other service providers
  • High financial risk
    • Loans or loan forgiveness
    • Credit repair
    • Debt collection or tax-related 
    • Cryptocurrency including OTPs
  • Unsolicited real estate inquiries such as WeBuyHomes
  • Multilevel marketing

⚙️Sender ID conditions 

Marketing SMS messages have to be sent with a toll-free number, short or long code.

❗️ Important
Short codes are only available under request and on an Enterprise plan. 

Toll-free number registration

Your registration for a toll-free number is mandatory if you send SMS campaigns to recipients in the United States or Canada to comply with the regulations of those countries. If you send an SMS campaign without complying with these regulations, your campaign will not be sent and will be suspended. To learn more, check our dedicated article How to register for a toll-free number (TFN)?.

🚫 Unsubscribe conditions

Adding unsubscribe instructions at the end of your marketing SMS messages is mandatory. To learn more, check our dedicated article Comply with the United States SMS marketing regulations with our compliance feature.

🇬🇧 United Kingdom

SMS messages sent to the United Kingdom are limited to certain regulatory conditions. Any SMS identified as marketing content will be subject to the conditions listed in the sections below. 

📝 Content guidelines and restrictions

Restricted content

If you are sending adult or gambling content, you have to ensure that your recipients are age-verified in compliance with the PSA & Ofcom guidelines. 

Prohibited content

❌ Prohibited content topics
  • Politics 
  • Religion
  • Unsolicited promotion

⚙️Sender ID conditions 

Alphanumeric Sender ID
  • Sender IDs contained in the MobileEcosystemForum's (MEF) SMS SenderID Protection Registry require validation to be used. 
  • Special characters such as @, $, #, etc. are prohibited. Only the following characters are allowed:
    • A to Z (Uppercase),
    • a to z (Lowercase),
    • 0-9 (numeric), 
    • ' ' (space),
    • '.' (full stop),
    • '&' (ampersand),
    • '_' (underscore), and
    • '-' (Dash/hyphen).
  • BT has introduced protective measures to protect some specific brands. Their name cannot be used as Sender IDs and they need to be whitelisted to send communications. 
Numeric Sender ID

International numeric senders are prohibited. Only the following numeric Sender IDs are supported:

  • Long Virtual Numbers (LVNs) starting with +44xxxx and with a maximum of 12 characters. LVNs can be purchased from Brevo.
  • Short Codes starting with 6, 7, or 8 and of 5 characters. Or, any approved exception Short Code Sender ID with restricted digits.
Generic Sender ID Use a representative brand or business name to ensure delivery. Generic Sender IDs such as VERIFY, INFO, SMS, NOTICE, etc are prohibited. All variations of generic Sender IDs are also prohibited. 

🚫 Unsubscribe conditions

Add a Send STOP to [STOP_CODE] mention as an unsubscribe instruction at the end of your marketing SMS messages. To learn more, check our dedicated article Include an unsubscribe option in your SMS messages.

🇮🇹 Italy 

SMS messages sent to Italy are limited to certain regulatory conditions. Any SMS identified as marketing content will be subject to the conditions listed in the sections below. 

📝 Content guidelines and restrictions

Prohibited content

❌ Prohibited content topics
  • Politics 
  • Religion
  • Unsolicited promotion
  • Gambling

⚙️Sender ID conditions 

Alphanumeric Sender ID

In compliance with the regulator AGCOM, the code of compliance states that international alphanumeric senders are prohibited. Only the following numeric Sender IDs are supported:

  • Long Virtual Numbers (LVNs) starting with +39xxxx. LVNs can be purchased from Brevo.
  • Person-to-Person (P2P) traffic is prohibited. 
Numeric Sender ID Numeric sender IDs are not supported unless offered by Brevo.
Generic Sender ID Use a representative brand or business name to ensure delivery. Generic sender IDs such as INFO, SMS, NOTICE, etc are prohibited. 

🚫 Unsubscribe conditions

Add a Invia STOP a [STOP_CODE] mention as an unsubscribe instruction at the end of your marketing SMS messages. To learn more, check our dedicated article Include an unsubscribe option in your SMS messages.

🇪🇸 Spain

SMS messages sent to Spain are limited to certain regulatory conditions. Any SMS identified as marketing content will be subject to the conditions listed in the sections below. 

📝 Content guidelines and restrictions

Prohibited content

❌ Prohibited content topics
  • Politics 
  • Religion
  • Unsolicited promotion
  • Gambling

⚙️Sender ID conditions 

Alphanumeric Sender ID Alphanumeric Sender IDs are supported. 
Numeric Sender ID

Numeric Sender IDs are supported. Long Virtual Numbers (LVNs) may also be offered by Brevo.
Generic Sender ID Use a representative brand or business name to ensure delivery. Generic sender IDs such as INFO, SMS, NOTICE, etc are prohibited.

🚫 Unsubscribe conditions

Add a Envíe STOP a [STOP_CODE] mention as an unsubscribe instruction at the end of your marketing SMS messages. To learn more, check our dedicated article Include an unsubscribe option in your SMS messages.

⏩ What's next?

🤔 Have a question?

If you have a question, feel free to contact our support team by creating a ticket from your account. If you don't have an account yet, you can contact us here.

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