Can I use your API for promotion/marketing messaging?
It’s possible if you purchase a dedicated sender name and receive consent from your contacts. By consent that will means they should initiate a conversation with your dedicated sender name. But you need to take into account that there are some risks when sending such messages.
Our service is designed to send only high-quality texts to recipients who expect to hear from you. If you try to distribute through the API spam, phishing, scam, fakes, inappropriate texts, or any other content that recipients can report as junk, then your access may be restricted or blocked. Also, your texts from a dedicated sender name may have a "Not delivered" status if iMessage marks your texts as junk. In such cases, according to our terms of use, refund requests will never be reviewed.
In short: Any messages with almost the same text that you will try to send in a short period of time.
Keep in mind that if you try to send 100 almost the same messages in one minute, it will most likely be flagged as a marketing blast, and your sender name will be marked as suspicious. If this happens, all your further messages with to any contacts may have the "Not delivered" status.
The same rule applies if you start sending almost the same text from a different sender name. Since iMessage will already know that such text was once marked as "Junk", then on all other sender names you can also get the status as "suspicious".
You need to take into account that all messages are encrypted, and it's impossible to detect if the content of your messages is a marketing blast or just a critical reminder or follow-up text. You just must keep the intervals that are described below.
In short: Apple doesn't like when their services are used for spam.
Apple doesn't like it when new senders send the same message in a short period of time to a large number of recipients (more than 10). Otherwise, if you try to send 100 identical texts in one second, Apple will immediately consider you a spammer/robot, since a person can't send so many identical texts in a short period of time.
One good example is our iOS/macOS app (you can find it on our website or in the AppStore) which helps to send bulk personalized messages via your personal phone number. When a user tries to select more than 10-20 contacts there and does not personalize the texts, we immediately show him a warning that there is a high risk that Apple will mark them as a spammer (even when sending texts to close contacts). As result, we recommend for app users increase the interval between messages and add personalized tags for successful messaging. The same things are relevant to our iMessage API.
We recommend sending repetitive texts at intervals of 60 to 120 seconds (the more volume messages, the more interval). In this way, it will look like natural messaging. However, there is no guarantee for the safe sending of such messages. If your sender name is less than 2-6 months old and has few active conversations, then there is still a high chance that you can be marked as a spammer at the Apple layer.
By default, our system already has a limitation that if you try to send marketing blasts through single API requests, you will get a failed response that describes you need to keep to the interval between your sendings. It should help to prevent cases when your sender accidentally will be flagged.
In cases of sending marketing replies as a chatbot (reply to just-received inbound messages), it will always work well. And the advice described in this article doesn't apply to this use case.
Our service is designed to send only high-quality texts to recipients who expect to hear from you. If you try to distribute through the API spam, phishing, scam, fakes, inappropriate texts, or any other content that recipients can report as junk, then your access may be restricted or blocked. Also, your texts from a dedicated sender name may have a "Not delivered" status if iMessage marks your texts as junk. In such cases, according to our terms of use, refund requests will never be reviewed.
What messages can be marked as promotion/marketing?
In short: Any messages with almost the same text that you will try to send in a short period of time.
Keep in mind that if you try to send 100 almost the same messages in one minute, it will most likely be flagged as a marketing blast, and your sender name will be marked as suspicious. If this happens, all your further messages with to any contacts may have the "Not delivered" status.
The same rule applies if you start sending almost the same text from a different sender name. Since iMessage will already know that such text was once marked as "Junk", then on all other sender names you can also get the status as "suspicious".
You need to take into account that all messages are encrypted, and it's impossible to detect if the content of your messages is a marketing blast or just a critical reminder or follow-up text. You just must keep the intervals that are described below.
Why there are such restrictions?
In short: Apple doesn't like when their services are used for spam.
Apple doesn't like it when new senders send the same message in a short period of time to a large number of recipients (more than 10). Otherwise, if you try to send 100 identical texts in one second, Apple will immediately consider you a spammer/robot, since a person can't send so many identical texts in a short period of time.
One good example is our iOS/macOS app (you can find it on our website or in the AppStore) which helps to send bulk personalized messages via your personal phone number. When a user tries to select more than 10-20 contacts there and does not personalize the texts, we immediately show him a warning that there is a high risk that Apple will mark them as a spammer (even when sending texts to close contacts). As result, we recommend for app users increase the interval between messages and add personalized tags for successful messaging. The same things are relevant to our iMessage API.
Is there some way to safely send repetitive messages?
We recommend sending repetitive texts at intervals of 60 to 120 seconds (the more volume messages, the more interval). In this way, it will look like natural messaging. However, there is no guarantee for the safe sending of such messages. If your sender name is less than 2-6 months old and has few active conversations, then there is still a high chance that you can be marked as a spammer at the Apple layer.
By default, our system already has a limitation that if you try to send marketing blasts through single API requests, you will get a failed response that describes you need to keep to the interval between your sendings. It should help to prevent cases when your sender accidentally will be flagged.
In cases of sending marketing replies as a chatbot (reply to just-received inbound messages), it will always work well. And the advice described in this article doesn't apply to this use case.
Updated on: 31/12/2024
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