Messaging customers
Sender numbers
Every text and call your customers receive comes from a real phone number. Which one affects how much it costs, whether it arrives at all, and whether the customer recognises it enough to read it.
How the number is chosen
Two rules, in order:
- If you have pinned one, it is used.Somebody who has said “always text my customers from the UK number” means it, and nothing second-guesses that.
- Otherwise it is chosen by where the customer is, from their dialling code, falling back to a default.
Note that this routes on the destination, not on where your shop is. It is the receiving network that decides whether a message looks legitimate, and a customer in one country receiving a number from another is both dearer to send and much more likely to be filtered out before it ever reaches the handset.
Set yours under Account settingsSender numbers.
Should you pin a number?
Leave it automatic if
Your customers are spread across countries, or you are not sure. Automatic routing gets each one a local-looking number, which is the best default for delivery.
Pin one if
All your customers are in one country and you want every message from the same recognisable number — worth real money in read rates for a shop whose regulars save the number.
STOP, and what happens next
A customer can reply STOP to any text. That is not a request you get to weigh up: it is recorded against them and messages stop.
What STOP does and does not do
- Stops messages to that person, marketing and transactional alike.
- Applies to the person, not to one visit.
- Is recorded on their customer record, so your team can see why nothing is reaching them.
- Is separate from withdrawing marketing consent, which stops campaigns and leaves their own visit updates alone.
Somebody who has opted out cannot be called by text
If a regular has replied STOP and then joins the queue, they will not get told when it is their turn. Your team needs to call them the old way. There is no override, and asking them to opt back in is the only fix.
Getting your messages delivered
Networks — American ones in particular — filter business messaging heavily, and getting through depends on being registered and on your sign-up page showing certain things. Those disclosures are already built into your join and booking forms and published on a public evidence page, which is what a network reviewer looks at.
- The phone number field on the form itself.
- A consent tick box that is never pre-ticked.
- A description of what you will send, and how often.
- The standard message-and-data-rates note.
- HELP and STOP instructions.
- Links to terms and the privacy policy.
There are two ways a customer opts in, and a registration form will ask you to tick both: on the web form, reached by QR code or a link, where they type their own number under the disclosure; and verbally, at a busy counter, where they give a member of staff the number and are told what will be sent before it is entered. Both are described on the public evidence page at /sms-opt-in, which is the URL to give a reviewer.
Do not reword the opt-in disclosures
The wording is shared between your forms, your printed materials and the public evidence page precisely so they cannot drift apart — a screenshot that disagrees with the live page even slightly is how registrations get rejected. Your own marketing consent wording is separate and yours to write.
If you have customers in the United States
American business messaging requires a registered campaign before delivery becomes reliable, and registration is reviewed by the carriers rather than granted automatically. Until it is approved, delivery to American numbers is patchy in a way that is not a fault in your setup.
Elsewhere — the UK, Ireland, most of Europe — no equivalent registration is needed and messages deliver normally.
Rich messages and WhatsApp
Where the handset and network support it, a text is delivered as a rich message — your name and branding instead of an unknown number. Where they do not, the same message arrives as an ordinary text. You do not choose per customer; the network does, and you are charged for whichever actually carried it.
WhatsApp as a channel requires a registered sender and business verification with Meta. Until that is in place, WhatsApp campaigns are refused up front rather than failing quietly per recipient.