What Is 10DLC?

The registered ten digit number behind business texting, why carriers ask for it, and what it means for a store that texts customers all day.

Ten digit long code. The long code part just means a standard phone number with an area code, as opposed to a five or six digit short code, and the ten digit part is there because the industry needed a name that distinguished a normal business line from those short codes. A 10DLC looks exactly like the number on the store's business card, because it is one.

What makes it 10DLC rather than an ordinary line is registration. Business texting is application to person traffic, often shortened to A2P: software sends it, not a thumb. Person to person texting between two phones has never needed paperwork. A2P does, and it comes in two layers. The brand registration identifies the business itself, its legal name, its address, its tax identification, its website. The campaign registration describes what the business texts about, with sample messages, the opt in language it uses and the way a consumer opts out. Once both are on record, the numbers attached to that campaign are approved to send.

Registration also sets throughput, meaning how many messages a number is allowed to send in a given minute and a given day. A small store texting a few hundred customers and a group texting tens of thousands are not the same traffic, and the registered profile is what tells the carriers which one is knocking. Other messaging terms are defined in the automotive sales glossary.

Because consumers complained, and the wireless carriers had no way to tell a dealership from a scammer when both were sending from a ten digit number. Registration puts a name behind every business number. A consumer who reports a message can be traced to a registered brand, and a brand that sends things nobody asked for can be handled at the source. The upside for a legitimate business is delivery: a registered sender with a clean profile gets its messages through, while unregistered A2P traffic from a long code gets blocked before it reaches anyone.

That last part is what stings a sales floor, because a blocked text does not come back and say so. The rep sees a message they believe was sent, the customer never gets it, and the store concludes that texting does not work. Registration and delivery status are the two things that turn texting from a hope into a channel you can read.

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Say a store runs four numbers: a main texting line, one on its website lead form, one on a used car listing site and one printed on service reminders, and the four together send about 800 messages on a busy Saturday, illustrative figures only. All four belong to the same registered brand, the dealership, and to a campaign that describes what the store texts about: replies to shoppers who submitted a request, appointment confirmations, vehicle photos and follow up on an active deal. The sample messages on the registration look like the real ones, because the real ones are what get reviewed if anyone ever asks.

The consumer never sees any of this. What the consumer sees is a text from a local number that answers stop and help the way a business text should, that comes from the same number every time, and that keeps the whole conversation in one thread on their phone. What the store gets is a delivery status on each message it sent and a reason when one fails. The rest is paperwork that happens once and then supports every message afterwards. That is also why a store should not run its texting through a rep's personal cell phone: a personal number is unregistered A2P the moment software sends from it, and the store loses both the record and the delivery.

The texting numbers a store uses inside LeadLocate CRM are provisioned in the platform, registered for business messaging as part of getting the store's lines live, and assigned where the store wants them, one per source if that is how the store measures marketing. Nobody at the dealership goes looking for registration forms. Reps open the two way texting inbox and send; every bubble carries its own status, sent, delivered or failed, so a manager can tell the difference between a customer who is ignoring the store and a message that never arrived.

The consent side is built in for the same reason. A stop keyword opts the customer out and puts the number on the two way blacklist, a help keyword gets a reply that identifies the store, and the Do Not Call Blacklist hides an opted out contact from every recipient list the store can build. Tracking numbers per source are described on tracking numbers per lead source. Where a store wants its own dedicated sending profile or a separate campaign for a distinct brand, that is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership.

A short code is the five or six digit number national brands use for high volume alerts. It sends enormous quantities quickly, it costs a great deal every month, it takes a long lead time to approve, and it cannot receive a phone call, which makes it wrong for a car store where half the value of a text is that the customer calls the number back. A toll free number can also be registered for business texting and is a reasonable fit for a call center, but it reads as a corporate line rather than as the dealership up the road.

A 10DLC is a local number that both texts and rings. The customer sees an area code they recognize, can call it back, and gets a person. For a dealership that is the whole argument, and it is why local long codes carry almost all of a store's messaging. The trade is throughput: a long code is metered, so a blast to twenty thousand people is paced rather than instant, which matters for a campaign schedule and almost never for a sales conversation.

Is 10DLC the same thing as A2P?

They are related, not identical. A2P means application to person, any message software sends to a consumer. 10DLC is the ten digit long code such messages are sent from once the business and its campaign are registered. Most dealership texting is A2P traffic on a 10DLC number.

Does a dealership have to register to text customers?

Any business sending texts from software through a ten digit number needs the brand and campaign on record with the carriers. Inside LeadLocate the store texts from numbers provisioned and registered in the platform, so the setup is handled rather than handed to the dealership.

What happens to a text sent from an unregistered number?

Carriers block unregistered application to person traffic, and the sender usually gets no explanation. That is why delivery status on each message matters: a store can see that a message failed instead of assuming a customer ignored it.

Can we text from the store's existing main line?

Often yes. An existing business number can be registered and used for texting, and stores commonly keep the main line for calls and add tracking numbers for individual marketing sources so they can tell which one produced the conversation.

See a text leave the inbox, land with a delivery status and come back as a reply on the same thread, on a live account, then price it month to month.

Prefer to talk right now? Call or text 844-376-2274.