A2P 10DLC Brand Approval Best Practices Follow

When you register your A2P Brand with your Business Profile, Salesmate will submit your business information to The Campaign Registry for review which will determine your eligibility and throughput for your messaging Campaigns. Below is a summary of how Brand approval works and our best practices to ensure your Brand is approved.

Article contents:

• How Brand Approval Works
• How To Maximize Your Trust Score
  • Use a valid EIN for US-based companies – not a DUNS number
  • Enter your Legal Company Name exactly as registered with the IRS
  • How to find your EIN number (for US companies)
  • Use a Valid Tax ID for companies based outside of the U.S.
  • Guidance for companies in Canada
  • Guidance for companies in the rest of the world
  • Common customer errors for EIN/Tax ID
  • Check Your Business Address
  • Supported Stock Exchanges
  • Other Factors
• Frequently Asked Questions

How Brand Approval Works

The approval process starts with a primary vetting of your brand completed by The Campaign Registry. As part of the approval process, Salesmate will automatically submit your brand for Secondary Vetting, an additional review process that can lead to increased throughput and messaging limits. Once that vetting is completed, you will receive a Trust Score that determines your long code messaging throughput to US networks as well as daily message limits to T-Mobile as described in Message throughput MPS and Trust Scores for A2P 10DLC in the US. To see a full walkthrough of the Brand registration process please see our A2P 10DLC Onboarding Guide.

How To Maximize Your Trust Score

To make sure your Brand is approved and you receive the most accurate Trust Score, you want to make sure you submit your business data properly. Below are some best practices to follow along with some of the frequently asked questions regarding Brand registration.

Use a valid EIN for US-based companies – not a DUNS number
For private and public for-profit companies, the provided EIN and Legal Company Name must match business registration sources. Please ensure:

• For Standard A2P 10DLC brand registration, customers with a US presence must use an EIN number.
• A DUNS number is not acceptable for US companies creating Standard A2P Brand registrations. A DUNS number should only be used in Business Profile creation if you do not want to use US A2P messaging and only want to use Stir/Shaken for Voice.
• For Non-Profit and Political organizations, the EIN provided has to match the Legal Company Name available in the list of Tax-Exempt Organizations or Registered Political Organizations. Learn more in Nonprofit and Government Guide to A2P 10DLC Text Messaging.

Enter your Legal Company Name exactly as registered with the IRS

If you’re registering a US entity, please enter the exact Legal Company Name as registered with the IRS, which can be found on the CP 575 EIN Confirmation Letter. An exact match between the Legal Company Name and the EIN as displayed on CP 575 is required for the Brand to be successfully registered. Please do not use the Legal Company Name found on the W2 or W9 forms as they may be different from what you have on the CP 575 notice.

If you do not have access to your company's CP 575 notice then contact your company's accountant or financing office and ask for it. If the CP 575 notice has been misplaced, you may request a 147c letter from the IRS and use the information there for registration.

How to find your EIN number (for US companies)

• Review your CP 575 / 147c forms for your EIN
• Contact your company's accountant or financing office and ask for the EIN

Use a Valid Tax ID for companies based outside of the U.S.

For private and public profit companies, the provided EIN and Legal Company Name has to match registration sources. Please ensure:

• ALL customers creating a Business Profile must provide a valid Tax ID.
• For Standard A2P 10DLC brand registration or customers with an International presence, a Tax ID from their country is required.
• For Businesses outside US /Canada, there may be a requirement for additional vetting to successfully verify their brand.
  • In such cases, they will no longer be able to register as Low Volume Standard Brands.

Guidance for companies in Canada

On July 27th, for companies in Canada, we switched to ONLY accepting the Business Number (BN) rather than the Corporation/Incorporation/Registry ID numbers for Canadian Brand Registration.

We will only accept the first 9 numeric digits of the BN (BN-9). Here is an example of the format of a BN where the bolded part is the part we will collect in the Canadian Brand.

Tax/Corporation ID field: 123456789RT0001

As always, please ensure that your legal company name and address is consistent with your business registration and is properly spelled.

Enter your Provincial Corporation Number as your Business Registration Number.

For example:

• Alberta Corporation Number
• Ontario Corporation Number (make sure you enter only the numbers after the first two leading zeros)
• British Columbia Corporation Number (make sure the BC prefix is part of the number)
• Saskatchewan Corporation Number
• Nova Scotia Corporation Number
• Quebec Corporation Number
• Manitoba Corporation Number
• If this does not work for you, alternatively, you may use your federally-issued Canada Corporation Number.

Until July 27th, please do NOT enter your business number or federal tax ID number, as that is not readily cross-referenced. Please ensure your legal company name is properly spelled and consistent with your corporation registration. The address you enter should also match the address you registered with Corporations Canada.

Guidance for companies in the rest of the world

• Companies in Europe should use the VIES VAT number validation lookup to look up their brand information before submission.
• Companies in Australia should use their Australian Business Number (ABN) and use the official ABN Lookup tool to look up the information.
• Companies in New Zealand should use New Zealand Business Number (NZBN) and use the official NZBN lookup tool to look up the information.
• Companies in Hong Kong should use your Companies Registry (CN) number. You can use the official CN lookup tool to find it.
• For other countries, please enter the numeric portion of your VAT ID number. If you don't have a VAT ID, please provide the primary corporation registration number or tax ID number for your country.

Common customer errors for EIN/Tax ID

• Using an incorrect business name, such as the name of the messaging provider, DBA, or a trade name of the company instead of the official legally registered name. The Legal Name must not be abbreviated in any way and must appear exactly as it is filed with the IRS (US) or the equivalent tax authority in other countries.
• Entering a number in the EIN or Tax ID field that is not a valid EIN or home country company ID number.
• Providing a DUNS number instead of an EIN for a US-based company.
• Using SSN to register your brand. If you used your SSN to file your taxes, you are a sole proprietor and should await further guidance from Salesmate on registering your brand.

Further recommendations:

• For US businesses, to ensure you’re providing accurate information, enter your business's EIN into the HIPAA Space lookup website. If your business appears in the results, please fill in your business name exactly according to the business listing information.
• If you are an ISV-type customer and need to validate and enter information for multiple brands in the US, you could use the subscription-based EIN verification service provided by TINCheck.
• For validating a brand’s status as a nonprofit, you can use Results for Tax Exempt Organization Search from the US IRS.
• Newly issued EINs or equivalent tax IDs won’t propagate across the relevant database validation systems for a few weeks. So, if your brand registration failed due to a tax ID mismatch and you recently registered your business for a tax ID, please share documentation with support to help your brand get verified manually by third-party vendors. Any such documentation has to be from the federal level and not the state level.

Check Your Business Address

For all entity types, a mismatch in one of the following might produce a lower Trust Score:

• Address/Street line
• City
• State
• Postal Code/Zip Code
• Country

Supported Stock Exchanges

For Public Profit companies, the stock ticker symbol and the designated stock exchange must match available sources. Available Stock Ticker values are as follows:

• NONE
• NASDAQ
• NYSE
• AMEX
• AMX
• ASX
• B3
• BME
• BSE
• FRA
• ICEX
• JPX
• JSE
• KRX
• LON
• NSE
• OMX
• SEHK
• SGX
• SSE
• STO
• SWX
• SZSE
• TSX
• TWSE
• VSE
• OTHER

Other Factors

The following factors will impact the Trust Score, but cannot be influenced by data submitted:

• Company size: For all companies, points are earned for the detected size of the company based on independent sources of employee count and revenue.
• Years in operation: All companies earn points for their years in operation and domain age.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is an EIN number mandatory?

For A2P standard brand registration for US entities, EIN is required and mandatory. DUNS will result in an error and put the brand in an Unverified state preventing customers from proceeding with the next steps. DUNS is not an acceptable format for A2P brand registration.

If you are a business outside of the US then for Standard Registration you can use your business country Tax ID like BN9 for Canada, Company Number for the UK, Company Number from ASIC(ACN) for AUS, etc],

I received an error stating “We are unable to retrieve your TCR Trust Score” What does that mean?

During Brand approval the vetting process is automated, however, our vendor Aegis is going through some vetting issues, due to which there is a delay in populating the Secondary Vetting score. If we cannot retrieve your TCR Trust Score during Brand registration, it means that it’s undergoing this review which can take up to 7 business days. If your Brand is not approved after that time, please contact Twilio Support.

I received an error message stating, “Your brand registration failed” What does that mean?

If you receive any error messages stating your brand registration has failed, please follow the instructions provided to resolve your brand information. Your brand registration information is vetted by TCR, and if the vetting rejects your brand information, you will get this error. Some reasons for the failure of registration are:

• The business registration number (e.g., EIN or Tax ID) does not match your legal name. You need to update one or both fields to resolve such an error.
• The stock symbol or ticker you provided does not match your brand information. You need to update one or both fields to resolve such an error.
• The organization could not be verified as a US-registered non-profit organization or government entity. To resolve such an error, you need to update your entity type (a.k.a company type) or provide documents for manual verification of your entity type. For more, see Nonprofit and Government Guide to A2P 10DLC

I received a low Trust Score; how can I increase the score?

The best way to improve your Trust Score is to ensure you have followed the above best practices including using a valid EIN and are using an accurate Business Address. If you have followed the guidelines and are still seeing a low Trust Score, don't hesitate to get in touch with Support.

Another company acquired my company; whose information do I provide?

The guidance is always to provide the same business information you would use for your tax reporting at that given time.

My company’s business information has changed; how can I update my A2P Brand?

Your registered business information must stay accurate and up-to-date for your Brand. Once your Brand and Business Profile is approved, you cannot make changes to them through the Console or API, so if you need to update any information in your Brand/Business Profile, please contact Salesmate Support with the necessary changes.