How Use Cases and their approval affect your sending rate


At GetThru, we know how important it is for an organization to maintain the trust of the people they contact. To ensure that your messages are delivered to your contacts in a timely manner, it's essential to consider your 10DLC throughput limits. 


Throughput refers to the capacity of providers to deliver messages (SMS and MMS) at any given time. If the message load exceeds the available throughput, messages will be queued and delivered as throughput becomes available.


A message's segment count directly affects a campaign's throughput. Shorter messages can move through the queue more quickly than longer messages. If possible, sending messages earlier in the day is helpful because some of your messages may not be delivered immediately. To manage this potential delay, it's also recommended to have designated sweepers who can respond to replies that may come in later. However, if a message is queued for too long and encounters the close time for a campaign, the messages will not be sent. ThruText prevents campaigns from sending messages to a contact late at night or after the text is useful (e.g., voter registration deadlines) by blocking outgoing messages after a campaign is closed. See this guide for more info on campaign close times. You can see which messages errored by running a message export on your campaign. 

Use Cases

Choosing the appropriate Use Case is vital to achieving the highest throughput for your messages. Special Use Cases, such as Political and Charity Use Cases, have higher sending rates than other Use Cases. 


For this example, we will measure sending rates in throughput per minute (TPM), where a throughput equals a segment. 

  • Use Case: Political can send 4500 TPM for SMS messaging. This is applied to all campaigns sent on this use case. 
    • If a campaign has a 4-segment initial message and 5,000 contacts = 20,000 texts, it would take 5 minutes to send. 
    • If a campaign has a 3-segment initial message and 60,000 contacts = 180,000 texts, it would take 40 minutes to send.
  • Use Case: Political can send 2400 TPM for MMS messaging. This is applied to all campaigns sent on this use case.
    • If a campaign has an MMS initial message and 20,000 contacts/texts, it would take 5 minutes to send. 
  • Use Case: Charity can send 2400 TPM for SMS messaging.
    • If a campaign has a 2-segment initial message and 25,000 contacts = 50,000 texts, it would take 21 minutes to send.
    • If a campaign has a 5-segment initial message and 25,000 contacts = 125,000 texts, it would take 52 minutes to send.
  • Use Case: Charity can send 1200 TPM for MMS messaging.
    • If a campaign has an MMS initial message and 25,000 contacts/texts, it would take 11 minutes to send.
  • Other use cases do not have a set number because they are based on a vetting score applied per Brand that ranges from 1-100. 
    • For SMS, a vetting score of 75-100 is considered top and receives 4500 TPM, a vetting score of 50-74 is considered mid and receives 2400 TPM, and a vetting score of 1-50 is considered low and receives 240 TPM. If a brand has a low vetting score, limiting segments to 2-3 is strongly encouraged.
    • For MMS, a vetting score of 75-100 is considered top and receives 2400 TPM, a vetting score of 50-74 is considered mid and receives 1200 TPM, and a vetting score of 1-50 is considered low and receives 150 TPM. 


NOTE - Some carriers have an MMS throughput cap that can significantly increase the time needed to complete the sending. For example, MMS throughput to AT&T is capped at 50 messages per minute per originating phone number. A campaign of 50,000 contacts where 50% of them are AT&T subscribers (AT&T has roughly 50% of the market share) may take up to 8 hours for all messages to be delivered to the AT&T recipients.


Understanding the impact of Use Cases and their approval on your sending rate is crucial for ensuring that your messages are delivered in a timely manner. By considering your campaign size, segment count, and time of sending, you can manage potential delays and successfully deliver your messages to your contacts.


NOTE - GetThru has different pricing plans for SMS messaging that can be per message or segment; depending on your specific plan, pricing may be affected by the number of segments in a text as well, which adds to the importance of reviewing message length. Please be aware MMS messaging has its own per-media sending rate that would be listed in your contract as well.