Campaign Service Providers

Before digging too deep into acronyms and terms about The Campaign Registry, please reference the Campaign Registry - Everything You Need to Know guide for more background on the policies put into place for 10 Digit Long Code Messaging.

As an ISV (Independent Software Vendor), you have a customer base that each needs their own unique Brand and Campaign registration. As organizing your campaigns becomes increasingly complex, it may be time to look into managing your own campaigns by communicating with The Campaign Registry directly. A Campaign Service Provider has the ability to register or modify their own Brands and Campaigns without needing to involve SignalWire until it is time to associate the newly registered Brands and Campaigns.

How to become a CSP and Getting Started

The first step in becoming a Campaign Service Provider will be to register with The Campaign Registry.

Next, you will need to Create a Brand within the Campaign Registry CSP Portal. The initial step for Campaign Registration will be to create a Brand. The information entered will be submitted for Brand Identity Verification so it is important that each field is correctly filled out. This will save time and also save you from pulling your hair out later.

After creating a Brand, you will need to Create a Campaign. A Campaign is a specific use case of your Brand that gives more information on the content that is being sent. A Campaign can only be created once the Brand has passed identity verification.

Although the creation of a Brand and Campaign can be done through the CSP Campaign Registry Portal, you are also able to automate this process through the usage of the Campaign Registry APIs. These REST APIs can be easily incorporated into whatever environment your system is based in.

Brand Identity Verification

When a Brand is submitted, The Campaign Registry automatically validates the EIN, Brand Legal Name, and EIN Issuing Country against independent third-party identity data sources. The result is the Brand’s Identity Status:

A Brand whose submission is still processing shows as pending. That is an interim label, not a verification result.

Why a Brand comes back unverified

The most common cause is a mismatch between the Brand Legal Name and the EIN as filed with the federal government — a DBA or marketing name entered in the legal name field, a typo in the EIN, or the wrong EIN Issuing Country.

A Brand can also come back unverified when every field is correct:

• A recently issued EIN. New EINs take time to propagate into the third-party datasets TCR checks. Until they do, a correct EIN will not match.
• Non-US entities. TCR’s initial verification is frequently insufficient for entities outside the US, and international Brands return unverified at a high rate.
• Non-profits. A 501(c) organization may verify while its Tax Exempt Status — 501(c)(3), (4), (5), or (6) — fails to resolve.

Resolving an unverified Brand

There are three paths. Correct any inaccurate Brand details before resubmitting or appealing.

1. Correct the details and resubmit. Use this when something was genuinely wrong. Every resubmission is billed as a new Brand registration, so appeal instead if the details are already correct — resubmitting unchanged or still-inaccurate details will fail again.
2. File an identity status appeal with supporting documentation. Use this when the details are already correct — for example a recently issued EIN that has not yet propagated. Attach the IRS CP 575 EIN confirmation letter or equivalent formation documentation. An appeal is also the expected path for international Brands and for a 501(c) Tax Exempt Status that will not resolve.
3. Request or import external vetting. A standard vet by an approved vetting provider establishes identity independently, and may also unlock additional MNO classes and throughput tiers. Third-party vetting fees apply.

None of these are instant. Allow several business days for an appeal or a vet to come back.

As a CSP, you initiate any of these remedies from the Brand Details page in the Campaign Registry CSP Portal, or through the Campaign Registry APIs. SignalWire is not involved in this step — identity verification happens entirely between you and TCR, before the Brand is ever associated with your SignalWire Space.

Associating your Brand and Campaigns with SignalWire

Once you have created your Brands and Campaigns via The Campaign Registry Dashboard or API, first you must select SignalWire as your upstream Connectivity Partner (CNP), and then you must send Brand and Campaign information directly to SignalWire so your phone numbers can be connected to the newly registered Campaigns. In summary, you provide specific information about the new Brand and Campaign either via Dashboard or API, we review and accept the connection request, and then our upstream Direct Connect Aggregator (DCA) vets and accepts the connection request. Once the DCA election is completed, you may begin assigning your SignalWire phone numbers to your new Campaign!

Associating your Brand and Campaigns with SignalWire via Dashboard

If you choose to do this through the Dashboard, you can navigate to Messaging Campaigns and then Create a partner brand. After entering in your name and CSP brand reference via API or Dashboard, you will see your Partner Brand appear in the Dashboard.

After associating your Brands, you must Create Self-Registered Campaigns underneath the Brands that you have created. Again, this can be done via API through the usage of REST APIs, or, can be done through the SignalWire Dashboard underneath the Messaging Campaigns tab.

For the final step, you must Create a Phone Number Assignment to associate your Self-Registered Campaign to your SignalWire Phone number. Navigate to the Campaign Phone Numbers section of the Messaging Campaigns tab in your Dashboard to manually complete this process, or use our REST API.

Please note that if the Brand and Campaign are not loaded into your SignalWire Space, phone numbers will not be able to associate with the Campaign and you will not be able to send messages.

Associating your Brand and Campaigns with SignalWire via API

If you prefer to use the REST API to link your Brands and Campaigns with SignalWire, follow these steps:

DCA Election: The Final Step

DCA election is the last step of connecting a Campaign, not the last step of registration overall. It only applies once the Brand is verified and the Campaign has been loaded into your SignalWire Space.

You, like many others, may think that you should be able to start sending messages immediately upon Campaign registration. However, something commonly overlooked is the fact that The Campaign Registry is simply a registration database that contains information for entities (such as mobile operators, DCA’s, CNP’s, and CSP’s) to reference.

What this means is that the information your customers provide in their Campaign registration will need to be validated and vetted. Since you can realistically input anything in a Campaign registration, it’s not only our duty (and the DCA’s duty) to ensure that each and every registration follows CTIA guidelines, but it is the duty of you as the ISV (Independent Software Vendor) to vet your own customers and the information they provide for the registrations.

You should know that our DCA is pretty strict with what they will and won’t allow on their platform. Their vetting practices are thorough, and we recommend that you take a look at our guide for Upstream Campaign Vetting. We also suggest reviewing our list of Explicitly Prohibited Content to ensure your customers’ use cases will be able to send messages through our platform.

DCA election can take an additional 24 hours or more after you initially connect your Campaign to your SignalWire Space. The sooner you load your Campaign into your Space, the better. SignalWire will not request DCA election until after we have been alerted that a new Campaign needs to be connected, and the Campaign has been loaded into the SignalWire Space.

During DCA election vetting, the DCA will be checking to ensure there is a valid website that showcases who exactly is sending messages, the quality of the registration itself, and if the registration follows CTIA guidelines. Rejections can occur if insufficient information has been provided, and the DCA’s vetting fee is applied again upon resubmission.

The Campaign Registry Fees

The movement to prevent unwanted messaging content involves a lot of engineering power and is quite costly. This pushes some of the cost down to the individual CSPs — see TCR’s fee schedule for the current breakdown. Luckily, SignalWire understands that these fees are enough of a burden for you, and we do not add on any other costs to associate with us. All of these fees will be handled between you and The Campaign Registry.

In addition to TCR’s fees, our DCA (Direct Connect Aggregator, aka companies that provide direct connectivity to mobile carrier gateways for the purpose of delivering messages) charges a vetting fee to cover their costs of vetting each new Campaign when they receive a new Campaign connection request. Vetting is a manual review, so expect it to add several business days to the registration turnaround. Providing insufficient information in the Campaign registration can cause significant delays. If our upstream partner requires additional information, the re-vetting fee will be charged with each resubmission. You will be notified if re-vetting applies to your Campaign(s).

Brand fees are separate from the Campaign and DCA fees above. Every Brand submission is billed by TCR, including each resubmission of a Brand that came back unverified, and external vetting carries its own third-party fee. If a Brand’s details are already correct, appeal the identity status rather than resubmitting — repeated resubmission of correct details will fail and be billed each time.

Unique Use Cases

Not all Messaging use cases are as cookie-cutter as The Campaign Registry would like them to be. That is alright; there are avenues created to address this.

If your campaign cannot be accurately placed in any specific use case, there are two solutions to allow unique use cases through either a Mixed use case or a Low Volume Mixed use case. The low volume mixed use case carries the lowest monthly Campaign fee — see TCR’s fee schedule for current rates. It works great if you do not exceed 15,000 messages/ month and do not exceed 75 transactions per minute.