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How to avoid getting your SMS and email messages blocked or rejected
How to avoid getting your SMS and email messages blocked or rejected

Helping you reduce your number of blocked and rejected SMS and emails

Lindsey Gagnon avatar
Written by Lindsey Gagnon
Updated over 4 months ago

It sounds like you might be having an issue with your SMS messages being filtered from cell phone carriers. Follow these steps below to troubleshoot.

Links and URLs increase risk of spam rejection

Can you confirm that you aren't sending out any SMS messages or emails with URLs in them (other than the Waitwhile confirmation link)? If you are, this is likely why your messages are being flagged as spam.

URLs and especially link shortener (like bit.ly) often get your messages flagged as spam by the phone carriers.

We suggest that you remove these types of links and symbols from your messages to prevent further messages from being flagged.

Avoid spammy language or unusual characters

In addition to URLs, excessive amounts of symbols, hashtags, exclamation marks, or "salesy" language and slang are all things that might make a message get flagged as spam. We suggest that you tone down your message and stick to plain sentences to reduce the risk of spam filtering.

Check that the phone number is not a landline

Only cell phones are able to receive SMS texts. Often, your customers may provide you their landline number when they register and this will lead to a delivery error.

Stick to shorter messages

A standard SMS message should be maximum 160 characters or less - anything over that has the system send the message in two texts to your customers. This not only effects your overall SMS allotment from Waitwhile, but it's very likely that cell carriers will see your message as a spam message. If you need to give the customer lots of additional information, we suggest that you make your SMS messages shorter and turn on the email option to add that additional information there.

Has the recipient requested a block before?

If you haven't added any wording for an 'opt out' option for your customers, Waitwhile adds it for you to your Confirmation alert. This means the recipient could have previously requested to not receive Waitwhile texts by sending "STOP" back to one of the messages they got from Waitwhile during another visit. Doing this will block all future texts, even if it's for a different business.


You can advise them to try texting "UNSTOP" to your Waitwhile sending number and it should allow new texts to reach them again.

Reporting SMS issues to Waitwhile support

In the event that a large amount of SMS are failing unexpectedly with the same error message, or the error message displayed seems incorrect, please reach out to Waitwhile support via chat or by emailing support@waitwhile.com

If possible, include Message IDs (or screenshots of the Message details box) for a few of the failed messages so that we can reach out directly to our SMS providers for additional assistance.


Have additional questions or need assistance? Reach out to us via chat or at support@waitwhile.com.

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