Tag: MMS

Error codes returned by the carrier on SMS or MMS

You might receive error codes returned by the telephone carrier after you’ve sent a SMS or MMS.

The telephone carriers filter all the messages to protect the mobile subscribers from spam and other forms of unwanted messaging.

And, these systems look at both message content and volume.

Filtering in the United States and Canada can affect the delivery of your SMS and MMS messages.

Where do the error codes appear in aNinja

When in the lead view, in the history section, you can see error in red on the right corner under the sent SMS or MMS.

Hover your mouse over “error” to see the error code.

Error codes on SMS or MMS

Then, search for this code in the below section to understand the reason for this error.

Error codes references on SMS or MMS

Below are the most common error messages returned by the carriers.

  • 11751 => Media exceeds messaging provider size limit.
    • Maximum size limit depends on the messaging channel.
    • aNinja supports an MMS of 600KB.
  • 12300 => Invalid Content-Type.
    • Our carrier is unable to process the Content-Type of the provided URL.
    • You must return a Content-Type for all requests. Requests without a Content-Type will appear in the Debugger as a 502 Bad Gateway error.
  • 30003 => Unavailable or unreachable destination.
    • The destination handset you are trying to reach is switched off or otherwise unavailable.
  • 30005 => Unknown or inactive destination number.
    • The destination number you are trying to reach is unknown and may no longer exist.
    • The device you are trying to reach is not on or does not have sufficient signal.
    • The device cannot receive SMS (e.g. the phone number belongs to a landline).
    • There is an issue with the mobile carrier.
  • 30006 => Landline or unreachable destination.
    • The destination number is unable to receive this message. Potential reasons could include trying to reach a landline. Or, in the case of short codes, an unreachable carrier.
  • 30007 => Your message was blocked by the carrier due to spam, phishing, and fraud content.
  • 30008 => Delivery of your message failed for unknown reasons.
    • Our carrier receives a very generic error from the destination carriers that they have no further details about. They associates the message with the error code 30008 letting you know that they truly don’t know what caused this error from the provider.
  • 30019 => Content size exceeds carrier limit.
    • Message failed because the size of the content associated with the message exceeded the carrier limit.
  • 30410 => Provider timeout.
    • The provider used may be experiencing disruptions resulting in errors or request timeouts. Messages are failed and not retried to avoid duplicate message delivery.
  • 32017 => Carrier blocked call due to poor reputation score on the telephone number.
    • The calling number has a low answer rate from end users; or, generates low-duration calls; or it is responsible for large volumes of unwanted calls.

Adding Attachments to Templates

Adding attachments to the templates sounds interesting especially if you’re trying to launch a special campaign with a nice catchy design.

Attachments to email templates

We presently don’t allow attachments to email templates.

We recommend hosting your attachment files on your website or a file hosting service and adding the link to download it in your template call to action.

This has the following advantages:

  • If need be, you can update the file at the link source.
    • This is useful if the attachments need urgent changes after the emails have been sent out.
  • It increases the reachability of your emails:
    • As it lowers the email spam score.
    • And you’ll be sending smaller-sized outbound emails.

Attachments to text templates

Adding an attachment to your text template will change the SMS text into an MMS.

In Settings > Templates > Add text template > Choose file Adding Attachments to Templates

In such cases, you want to consider counting the characters included in the text to avoid your text being counted as multiple segments and being overcharged for them.

To prevent such incidents, we recommend hosting your attachment files on your website or a file hosting service and adding the link to download it in your template call to action.

Sending a text (SMS) via aNinja

Sending a text (SMS) via aNinja is a way to communicate with your leads and nurture them with your campaigns.

What’s an SMS

SMS (Short Message Service) is a text message that can contain up to 160 alphanumeric characters for every segment.

From a business’s perspective, there are hundreds of potential use cases for text message marketing including sales reminders, discounts and special offers, emergency alerts, and more.

The most effective business text messages are timely, informative, compelling, and easy to understand.

While SMS was built to send short messages, MMS focuses on sending multimedia messages.

Sending a text (SMS) via aNinja

  • When on the lead view, click on Text from the toolbar
  • Your phone number is automatically injected next to “From”.
    • If you’re an Admin user, from the dropdown, you can choose the phone number you want to send the text through.
  • The primary phone number is also automatically injected next to “To”.
  • You can either select an available template
    • The content of the template will be injected into the body section.
  • Or you can manually type the message in the body section.
  • Before you send your text, you want to make sure that it does not exceeds 160 characters, to avoid being billed for more messages.
  • Check the counters under the SMS body. When you go over 160 characters, the characters counter turns red, and the segment counter increases by 1.
  • Click Send to send your text immediately,
  • Or click on the arrow next to send to schedule your text to send at a later date and time.

Text Segmentation / Message Length

  • Maximum Message Length with aNinja Messaging
    The aNinja Programmable Messaging platform has a limit of 160 characters in a single incoming or outgoing message request.
  • Additional Considerations for Long SMS Messages
    Although aNinja supports large message payloads for all Messaging channels including SMS; it is important to understand that some wireless carriers and devices may behave differently than others when receiving long SMS messages. In addition, the length of an SMS, and which characters are present will affect its price, because of a concept called segmentation.

    • What’s a text segment or Segmentation? SMS industries count messages before sending them through your carrier. They count the number of characters that a text contains. Each segment is of 160 characters. If your text contains more characters, you’d end up with two messages on your bill.

Need help in sending a text (SMS) via aNinja? Leave us an email at support@aninja.com. And, we will happily assist you!

MMS messages

MMS stands for ‘multimedia messaging service’. It was built using the same technology as SMS (short message service) text messages.

While SMS was built to send short messages, MMS focuses on sending multimedia messages.

Some of the rich content types which can be sent include phone contacts, audio and video files, and images.

Types of MMS messages

  • Audio files
  • Video files
  • Images

Sending MMS through aNinja

  • Search for your lead
  • When on a lead View, click on Text in the toolbar
  • Your phone number is automatically injected next to “From”.
    • If you’re an Admin user, from the dropdown, you can choose the phone number you want to send the text through.

  • The primary phone number is also automatically injected next to “To”.
  • You can either select an available template
    • Then, the content of the template is injected into the body section. And the media file saved in the template is attached to it.
  • Or, you can manually type the message in the body section.
  • Click on the attachment icon and select a file
    • Supported file formats (jpeg, png, and gif)
    • Check the “Supported media types” below.
  • Before you send your text, you want to make sure that the total message size is under the maximum size limit for the channel.
    • Check the “Attachment Limits” section below.
  • Click Send to send your text immediately,
  • Or, click on the arrow next to send to schedule to a later date and time.
  • An MMS can also be sent in bulk text sequences. Attach the media file to the template and use it in the sequences.

Note!

Make sure to include content in your template before saving it, not only attachment(s). Otherwise, when attaching it to a text sequence, it will not be launched.

Supported Media Types

Different carriers support different types of media, regardless of the media types allowed in aNinja.

When you send an MMS, the telephone carrier checks the content-type header at the provided MediaURL to validate the content type of the media file. If the content type header does not match that of the media file, the request will be rejected.

You can check the status of the MMS in the lead view, on the bottom right of the message. Hover your mouse over the error to see the message provided by the carrier. Some carriers don’t provide error messages.

The following types of content are fully supported. This content will be formatted for delivery on destination devices.

  • image/jpeg
  • image/jpg
  • image/gif
  • image/png

 

The following types of content are accepted. Requests will not be rejected, but the content will not be modified for device compatibility.

Audio
  • audio/basic
  • audio/L24
  • audio/mp4
  • audio/mpeg
  • audio/ogg
  • audio/vnd.rn-realaudio
  • audio/vnd.wave
  • audio/3gpp
  • audio/3gpp2
  • audio/ac3
  • audio/webm
  • audio/amr-nb
  • audio/amr
Video
  • video/mpeg
  • video/mp4
  • video/quicktime
  • video/webm
  • video/3gpp
  • video/3gpp2
  • video/3gpp-tt
  • video/H261
  • video/H263
  • video/H263-1998
  • video/H263-2000
  • video/H264
Image
  • image/bmp
  • image/tiff
Text
  • text/vcard
  • text/x-vcard
  • text/csv
  • text/rtf
  • text/richtext
  • text/calendar
  • text/directory
Application
  • application/pdf
  • application/vcard
  • application/vnd.apple.pkpass

Most of the phone carriers support image file attachments in one of the supported file formats (jpeg, png, and gif) and they might not support these types (PDF, BMP, MPEG, MP4, Quicktime, and 3GPP).

Attachment Limits

When sending text and pictures in the same message (MMS messaging), a message can contain up to 10 images and 1600 characters.

Through aNinja, you can send an MMS of 600KB. If your message (including body text and media) is larger than 600KB, your message request will fail to send.

We have reduced the size of the MMS to 600KB to increase the chances of deliverability. As the top US carriers have recently reduced their allows MMS sizes as follows:

Carrier Short code MMS attachment size
AT&T 600 KB <—- ideal size
Sprint 1400 KB
T-mobile 1000 KB
Verizon 1200 KB

So you want to provide a shorter video that is ideally < 600KB if you want to reach all the targeted audience.

Our carrier will automatically compress JPEG, PNG, or GIF files to reduce their size if they exceed certain thresholds, to help you fit more images on your message when needed.

Hence, there will not be any additional charges applied for the message body. It will be included in the MMS cost.

If your media is not an image file and is larger than the limit allowed by the destination carrier, your MMS message will fail.

You can always compress the size of your media file using tools online.

Lastly, we recommend hosting your media file on your website or a file hosting service and adding the link to download it in your template or text call to action.