FAQ

Marketing (Promotional) Messages

Any SMS that is sent to the customer to promote a product or service, asking them to download an application, visiting a website, informing about offers or informational messages sent in bulk are considered as Marketing SMS.

 

Samples:

 

• Spend AED 200 for a chance to win a Mercedez-Benz G500 and AED 200,000 worth of shopping vouchers from BrandName.
• Dear Valued Customer, Bank is conducting a survey and we value your feedback. Take the survey on http://www.surveylink.com. Thank you.
• Please continue to wear face masks and practice social distancing. This is equally important outside of school. Thanks for helping us keep our schools safe.
• Today is the last day to attend the event & meet 40+ Uni reps & win iPads! Log in now for free access: bit.ly/abcdef Visit Dusit Thani DXB till 6pm. Stop3001
• We have launched our new Catalogue for 2020. Visit http://www.websiteaddress.com to view/download now
• We welcome Dr. John, Gynecologist, to our clinic ClinicName. For appointments call 04-1234567

 

Transactional & OTP Messages

Any SMS that is sent to the customer to inform about their transaction or provide details based on their request is considered as Transactional messages. One Time Password (OTP) messages are also considered as Transactional. Avoid providing any incentives within the message, asking the customer to download your mobile application, visiting the website or providing discounts.

 

Samples:

 

• Thank you for shopping with us at Brand Name. Your bill amount is 1850.00 AED. We appreciate your feedback http://bit.ly/abcd
• Your OTP for accessing your account is 8956
• Thank you for using Brand Name Rewards. Your current balance as of 05-Jan-2021 is 189.
• Your order will be shipped today to 3305, Latifa Tower, Sheikh Zayed Road between 10:00 and 11:00 AM. For any change, please call us on 04-4211688 or visit www.tobeprecise.com
• Thank you for making a payment of 4,300 AED online for your Service Charge. We will send you the receipt once the payments are processed.
• Here is wishing you a Happy Birthday from Brand Name.

As part of the new UAE TRA Rules and GDPR rules in European Countries, it is important that explicit Customer Consents are collected to send any Promotional SMS (Marketing SMS). The Do's and Dont's of Consent Collections are:

 

• Consents can be either in Digital or Physical format
• When collected through Digital platforms, consent collection has to be explicit and should not be hidden inside Terms & Conditions
• Can use In-store KIOSKS, where customer can provide electronic signature
• Consent can be collected on a Group company level by stating the Group name

 

Below are the details that needs to be collected and stored for any consent. If requested by the regulatory or operator, Brands should be providing this information as "Proof of Consent".

 

Physical Forms

 

Here, the consent can be collected from Raffle Draws, when registering for Loyalty programs or providing delivery address in the store. These consents can be digitized and stored against the respective mobile numbers.

 

• Name of the Mobile User
• Mobile Number
• Date and Time - to be filled by the customer
• Signature of the Mobile Customer
• Exact words used to capture the consent

 

Digital Forms

 

Here, the consent can be collected from websites, mobile applications, online surveys, Facebook forms or any electronic format where you can record customer's IP address from where they are accessing the digital form.

 

• Name of the Mobile User
• Mobile Number
• Date and Time - system generated
• IP Address (or Facebook ID if using Facebook forms)
• Exact words used to capture the consent

 

Types of Consents Not Allowed

 

• Verbal when in store or through calls
• When providing mobile number at the time of generating a bill from POS
• By sending an SMS to reply or clicking on a link
• By Calling a customer

The latest rules and regulations from CITC, KSA highlighting details related to SPAM control can be downloaded here

Basics
The standard length for English messages is 160. For Unicode character set will decrease this length to 70 characters. If the number of characters crosses 160 characters in length, then the total length of the message is calculated by dividing it by 153 (160 – 7: where 7 characters are reserved for the concatenation details). For Unicode character message, if the total length of the message is greater than 70 characters, then total message length is calculated by dividing it by 67.

 

Standard GSM Supported Characters
In mobile telephony GSM 03.38 or 3GPP 23.038 is a character encoding used in GSM networks for SMS (Short Message Service). If the message characters belong to any of these, then the message length is calculated as Standard English message.Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM_03.38

 

In the above link you will find 2 tables:

 

1. Basic Character set: The GSM 03.38 charset is the standard character set for text messaging on GSM-based cell phones. All GSM handsets and network elements support the GSM 7-bit alphabet. The basic GSM charset contains the letters A to Z (uppercase and lowercase), numbers, special symbols and several symbols from the Greek alphabet.
2. Basic Character Set Extension: Some characters in the GSM 03.38 extension table can only be used at the cost of two characters. The GSM charset uses 7-bit alphabet encoding, but the escape characters require 14 bits to encode, thus taking up two characters. These symbols are: |, ^, {, }, €, [, ~, ] and \.

 

Unicode Symbols & Characters
This encoding allows use of a greater range of characters and languages. UCS-2 can represent the most commonly used Latin and eastern characters at the cost of a greater space expense. Strictly speaking, UCS-2 is limited to characters in the Basic Multilingual Plane. The latest list of Unicode character set supports greater than 100,000+ characters and symbols. Compared to the GSM charset, Unicode encoding supports a huge range of languages and symbols. However, if your text message contains a symbol that isn’t in the 7-bit alphabet, UCS-2 encoding must be used. This type of encoding takes up a lot of space, thus reducing the number of characters allowed in a message to 70.

 

Yes. Starting 15th of December 2018, all operators have made it mandatory to pre-register the sender names for any type of traffic to Saudi Arabia (KSA). In order to register the name, following details are mandatory and should be submitted to the operator through Precise Communications. Once submitted this can take 1 to 3 working days for approvals.

 

• NOC Letter
• Sender name
• Message template(s)
• Website address of the company
• Company name and address in KSA

 

You can download the NOC letter template from downloads section. Operators have blocked all the generic sender names and any SMS that needs to be terminated to KSA should have a valid Sender ID related to the company.

 

Messages template (samples) are provided to the operator in advance to make sure there is no misuse of the sender names or the SMS services. It is advised not to deviate much from the template shared or chances of the sender getting blocked are high.

 

For Marketing Messages, all the sender name should be appended with "-AD", thus leaving the total sender name length to 8 characters. Any marketing message send without "-AD" in the sender name will be considered as a violation and can lead to blocking of the sender name.

A basic and standard SMS text (1 credit) limits are as below (including spaces):

• English Message: 160 characters
• Arabic/Unicode Messages: 70 characters
• Sender Name: 11 characters

Through our platform we allow to send multiple length texts as one SMS where you will be charged based on the total count. 

A2P or Application to Person are all messages that are terminated from an application (software, website, mobile apps, etc) to a mobile handset or received from the mobile to an application.

 

On the other hand, P2P or Person to Person (Peer to Peer) are all messages that are sent from one mobile phone to the other directly. These messages are initiated by humans and send manually.

Yes. The SMS sender name (title) can be of your company name provided it is within 11 character length. Example: ToBePrecise. Space is also considered a character.

 

For certain operators, there will be a prior registration / white listing that is required with certain documents like NOC, Trade License, Message samples etc. Once the details are submitted registration can take anywhere between 1 to 5 working days.

2-Way SMS allows customers to communicate back to your application or system. Helps customers to get information, provide details or request for a service. Highly used for Internet of Things (IoT).

 

2-Way SMS are facilitated using a short code (4 to 6 digit codes) or Long number which is connected directly to Precise SMS server. Messages thus received are routed to respective applications or forwarded to your back end systems.

As per the TRA rule in UAE, customers should be given provision to opt out from receiving any marketing SMS. Precise provides the Unsubscribe platform to all its customers using a short code or portal service. Apart from this customers can also opt out directly with Etisalat or DU operator.

 

If you are using our service to send marketing SMS, please do contact one of our support team to get the short code or website address to incorporate within your messages.

 

To add your number to the operators DND list, send a text message "B SHORTCODE/SENDER NAME" to "7726" number. Example: B TOBEPRECISE

 

To start receiving SMS from the blocked sender name, send a text message "U SHORTCODE/SENDER NAME" to "7726". Example: U TOBEPRECISE

 

At any time if you want to know all the sender names that were blocked for your number, send a text message "GET" to "7726".

 

* SMS to 7726 will be free of cost.

Customers have the option of adding their number into specific Operator's DND list by using the mobile application, calling the support center or by sending an SMS to a short code.

 

If you are a STC customer, send the text "3311" to "900". Your number will be blocked from all incoming A2P SMS. To unblock or to start receiving SMS send the text "3322" to "900".

 

If you are a ZAIN customer, send the text "DND" to "959". Your number will be blocked from all incoming A2P SMS. To unblock or to start receiving SMS send the text "Stop DND" to "959".

 

If you are a Mobily customer, send the text "STOP" to "60445" and to unblock send the text "Resume" to "60445".

Yes. We have developed easy to use APIs that can be used from your application to integrate SMS. These APIs are REST based protocols and can be integrated to any type of back end platforms. Visit Developers section to get more details on API, documentation and sample codes.

 

We also provide SMPP based connectivity that you can utilize if you already have SMS software that supports SMPP. You can use the same account for both SMPP and API based connectivity.

The limit is based on your account settings. If you are having a pre-paid account, then the limit will be based on the credit availability. For post-paid accounts the limit is based on the usage limit set on your account. Apart from the account limits, the total SMS limit is also dependable on the country to which you are sending. It varies between 50 to 600 SMS per second (TPS). For more details, please speak to one of our support team.

Yes. Precise Communications SMS has good coverage in the Middle East and for other regions we work with our partners (1 hop). We cover more than 750 operators around the world. Once your account is setup the team can configure your account to send SMS to any part of the world within minutes. There can be delay in getting specific sender names ready depending on the targeted location.

As our service is mainly for corporate companies and involves large data, we do not recommend using a mobile application for bulk messaging purpose. For personal use we have a separate platform called www.smsarrow.com that has a mobile application.

We have covered the basic queries in our FAQ section under various categories. Our team will be more than happy to assist you with any queries that you may have on your account or related to setting up a new account.

 

You can use the Support section to reach us or email to support@tobeprecisesms.com. For any commercial queries, please use REACH US section and send your requirements and one of our team will get in touch with you at the earliest possible.

Rates vary depending on the geographical location and the volume. We offer a very competitive rates for Middle East regions due to our volume and long term relationship with the operators. Please speak to one of our representative with your requirement and we will be more than happy to share the rates and specifics.

All messages that are processed and submitted to the operators are chargeable irrespective of the final delivery. If a particular submission is getting rejected on Precise SMS server due to invalid formatting or if the number is part of the DND, then you will not be charged.

Yes. We can configure one or more email addresses to receive important notifications related to your SMS account. Daily, Weekly or Monthly summary reports can also be configured to the same email addresses. The main email address configured for the account will receive all other notifications related to SMS credits or account expiry.

Below are the various delivery report (DLR) status that will be available on our platform when an SMS is submitted.

 

• Sent: This is the status that is updated at our end when an SMS is submitted to the operator. This means that the SMS was well received on our server and processed. This report is not returned back as DLR
• Accepted: This is a response from certain operators stating that they have successfully accepted the message to forward to the mobile handset. Not all operators do provide this report.
• Delivered: This status means that the message was successfully delivered to the handset and got confirmation back. Only in rare cases where the operator implements Do Not Disturb (DND or Unsubscribe) list, they return the status as Delivered even if the number is present in DND.
• Error: This status means that we were not able to submit the particular message to the operator successfully or there was an error from the operators side in sending the message. This could be due to connectivity issues.
  
  Operators will also return this status if the mobile number is incorrect (Length, code, etc). For example in UAE if we try to send an SMS with the code 97140XXXXX, then this will be returned as Error.
  
  
• Undelivered: This status indicates that the particular message could not be delivered to the handset. The reason can vary from operator to operator. Various reasons for this are: Non existing number, Temporarily out of service, Disconnection due to non bill payment. Undelivered status is also returned by many of the operators who have DND features set and if the mobile number is in their DND list.
• Expired: Expired status means that the operator was not able to send the SMS to the recipient within the time frame specified. Timeframe varies from operator to operator and how we set during SMPP submission. This can be between 4 hours to 24 hours.
• Unsubscribed: This status is for those numbers that have requested directly through our platform to be Unsubscribed from any marketing SMS. If a number is present in the list, then they are automatically removed from the final broadcast. This list does not reflect any of the DND numbers from the operators.

This is very phone specific and nothing to do with how the sender name was registered or processed. Alphanumeric sender name (Sender ID) allows spaces in the name to provide proper meaning when customer receives the SMS. Some of the smart phones, including all Iphones (IOS), have started removing the spaces from the sender name. This means that if you have 2 or more words in the sender name separated by space, it will be combined as one word. For example, the sender name "TO BE PRCS" will appear as "TOBEPRCS" on these phones. To avoid confusion to the end customer in understanding the original sender, we recommend to Capitalize the first alphabet of each words (Example: "To Be Prcs" will become "ToBePrcs") or use "-" (hyphen) instead of spaces (example: "To-Be-Prcs") so that it is more readable to the end user.

 

Majority of the Android phones do support spaces in the sender ID and it is specific phones that removes the spaces.

Both the operators in Qatar (Ooredoo and Vodafone) has introduced the option for customer to add their number in DND (Unsubscribe) list. Operators maintain the DND list and blocks the messages based on customer preference. Each operator provides different options to its customer to add or remove their number from DND list.

Ooredoo

Ooredoo provides 2 options to block receiving SMS - through their Mobile App or by sending an SMS.

1. Through Mobile App: You can download the mobile App from Ooredoo's website and follow the simple instructions to add your number to the DND or remove from DND.
2. Using SMS: Just text “Unsub ServiceName” to 92600, putting the name of the company that's spamming you in place of "ServiceName". Please note that request is case sensitive, so please type the name accurately. If you want to stop all bulk SMS, just send “Unsub all” to 92600.

Vodafone

Vodafone is asking its customers to call their customer care center to activate/deactivate DND for their number. Once done, they assure that it will be done in 24 hours.Note: Above information are as per the respective operator's website. We request you to contact your operator for more details.