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Ads and Pixels / Texting

Text message marketing for lead follow-up, not mass blasts

A lead comes in from your ads or your site, gets enrolled in a follow-up sequence, and the text lands from a number your business actually owns — not a shared shortcode. Every send passes a 10DLC check, an opt-out check, and a quiet-hours check first, every time.

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Recent messages for a plumbing company: the first follow-up text naming the business and ending Reply STOP to opt out, delivered at 15:04 UTC, and the lead's reply at 15:12 UTC saying tomorrow at 9 works.
First follow-up text with its STOP line Product screen · example data
One place. Every screen.Explore below
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How text message marketing works here — lead follow-up, not blasts

This is text message marketing built around one lead at a time, not a list you blast on a schedule. A lead comes in through lead capture — a form, a call, a chat — and can be enrolled in a follow-up sequence: a short series of texts sent from a number your business provisions and owns. There's no shared shortcode you're renting space on, and there's no purchased list to upload — every recipient is someone who already reached out to you. A lead can be stopped from a sequence at any time, either because they reply with an opt-out keyword or because someone on your team manually removes them from the queue. That's the whole shape of it: consented follow-up on real leads, not automated sms marketing blasted at a cold list.

An active Quote follow-up sequence for every new lead, with 3 active, 1 completed and 1 opted out, and three timed texts after 0 minutes, 2 hours and 24 hours.
A timed text follow-up sequence Product screen · example data
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10DLC, explained in plain English

Carriers filter text traffic from business numbers that haven't been registered, because unregistered bulk text is exactly what spam looks like from the network's side — so unregistered messages get flagged, throttled, or blocked outright before they ever reach a phone. 10DLC registration is how a business number gets recognized instead: you register a brand (your business) and a campaign (what you're texting about and why) through our carrier partner, then it goes through review. If your business already has a 10DLC registration somewhere else, you can record that instead of registering again from scratch. Either way, the rule is the same: nothing sends until that registration is approved. There's no way around that step, because it's the carriers' rule, not ours — this gate is what keeps a legitimate text message marketing sequence from getting caught in the same filter as spam, and it's why a2p 10dlc registration exists as its own category separate from consumer texting.

The Carrier registration (10DLC) panel with a campaign and a brand, both registered through the API and approved, with the time each was last checked.
10DLC brand and campaign registration Product screen · example data
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STOP, HELP, and the opt-out every legitimate sender includes

Every sequence carries the same opt-out and help words carriers expect, because a lead's right to stop hearing from you isn't optional. STOP, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, QUIT or STOPALL, in any reply, removes that lead from every sequence immediately. HELP or INFO gets an automatic reply with your business's own help contact — a phone number or email a real person answers, not ours. That contact isn't optional either: a sequence can't go live at all until a HELP contact is set for it, so there's no way to launch a sequence that has no way for someone to reach a human being about it. Manual opt-out works the same way from your side — if a lead asks you to stop by phone or in person, you can remove them from the queue directly, and it holds the same as an automatic one. Those two rules, together, are what turn a sequence into responsible text message marketing instead of a message a lead has no way to stop or ask about.

Recent messages showing an inbound HELP answered with the business's help line, and an inbound STOP answered with an unsubscribe confirmation, each sent automatically within seconds.
Automatic STOP and HELP replies Product screen · example data
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Quiet hours and sending limits that hold every time

Texts only go out inside an 8am–9pm window by default, and a client can narrow that window further for their own audience — say, 10am–6pm for a business that doesn't want an 8am text on a Sunday — but the window can never be widened past 8am–9pm. On top of the window, there's a per-minute send cap so a sequence doesn't fire a burst of messages all at once, and a per-recipient daily cap of at most 10 texts to any one lead in a day, so a lead who's in more than one sequence still isn't flooded. None of these checks happen once, at signup, and then get forgotten — consent, opt-out status, quiet hours and every cap are re-checked immediately before each individual text goes out, not just when the sequence starts. If a lead's status changes between message one and message three of a sequence, message three sees that change before it sends. That re-check on every single send, not just at enrollment, is the difference between text message marketing that holds up over a multi-message sequence and one that only checks the rules once and hopes nothing changed.

Sending number and rules for a plumbing company: quiet hours from 9 until 20, 20 texts per minute and 3 texts per person per day, with a note that quiet hours follow each lead's own time zone.
Quiet hours and sending limits Product screen · example data
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Numbers hashed, not written in plain text

The audit log for texting keeps a record of what sent, when, and why — the sequence, the timestamp, which check passed — the same way every action across Ads and Pixels is logged. What it doesn't keep is the plain phone number: numbers are hashed before they're written to the audit log, so the log proves what happened without becoming a plain-text list of every lead's phone number sitting in a database. That's part of the same approach covered in full on Security — the record a text message marketing sequence leaves behind should prove it followed the rules without becoming a new privacy problem of its own.

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What this doesn't do

  • It doesn't send a mass blast or a broadcast to a purchased or scraped list — every recipient is a lead who came in through your own ads, forms or calls, tracked the same way as everything on Call tracking and stored the same way as Audience Vault.
  • It doesn't send anything before that number's registration is approved.
  • It doesn't promise you're legally compliant — this text message marketing tool is built to help you follow carrier and TCPA rules, not to guarantee compliance on its own, and you should check your own obligations with counsel, since rules vary by state and by what you're texting about.
  • And it doesn't have a set price for texting usage yet, so we're not going to publish a number that isn't real; ask when you see pricing and we'll tell you exactly where that stands. Agencies running text message marketing across several clients see the same rules apply per client, per number — covered on Agencies.
PricingLead CaptureCall TrackingAudience VaultAgencies
A little more clarity

Frequently asked questions

Real answers before you make a decision.

Is this mass text marketing or a blast tool?

No. Every recipient is a lead who already came in through your ads, your site or a call — there's no purchased list, no shortcode you're renting, and no scheduled blast to everyone at once. This text message marketing tool is lead follow-up sequences, sent from a number your business owns.

What is 10DLC registration and why does it gate sending?

10DLC registration is how carriers recognize a business number instead of filtering it as likely spam. You register a brand and a campaign through our carrier partner (or record a registration you already have), and nothing sends on that number until the registration is approved — that's a carrier rule, not something we can skip.

What happens when a lead replies STOP?

STOP, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, QUIT or STOPALL, in any reply, removes that lead from every sequence right away. You can also remove a lead manually if they ask you to stop some other way, like a phone call.

Can a lead get texted at 3am?

No. Texts only send inside an 8am–9pm window, and a client can narrow that window further for their own audience but can never widen it past those hours.

How many texts can one lead get in a day?

At most 10, across every sequence they're in, plus a per-minute cap so messages don't fire in a burst. Every one of those limits, along with consent and opt-out status, is re-checked right before each text sends, not just when the sequence starts.

Does this guarantee I'm TCPA compliant, and is this what people mean by "sms marketing compliance"?

No — this text message marketing tool is built to help you follow carrier and TCPA rules (10DLC, opt-out keywords, quiet hours, consent checks), but it isn't a legal compliance guarantee. Sms marketing compliance still depends on what you're texting and to whom, which is why we say "helps you follow the rules," not "makes you compliant" — check your own obligations with counsel.

Are phone numbers visible in the audit log?

No. The audit log records what sent and why, but phone numbers are hashed before they're written, so the log doesn't become a plain-text list of every lead's number. More on how we handle data is on Security.

What does text message marketing cost here?

Pricing for texting usage hasn't been set yet, so we're not publishing a number until it's real. Check Pricing for what's live today.

Can this help with sms lead generation, or only follow-up on leads I already have?

Follow-up only, not sms lead generation from a cold list — a text goes to someone who already reached your ads, site or phone number, and gets enrolled in a sequence from there.

Your next move

Follow up your own leads, without risking the number

Connect a number, register it, and set up your first text message marketing sequence — nothing sends until the registration clears and every check passes.

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