Subscriber Opt In
Learn about subscriber opt in and how do this with MTA's deeplinks
As with SMS, capturing the proper consent and opt-ins from your recipients is critical to successful usage of iMessage capabilities. Capturing opt-ins ensures that your recipients are expecting the iMessage and gives you the opportunity to identify yourself to the recipient. This ensures that your messages are safely delivered and not marked as spam by the recipient.
iMessage Opt In
You must receive an inbound opt-in message before you send outbound iMessages. An explicit iMessage opt-in is required regardless of whether an opt-in was collected for communications via SMS or email. This can be as simple as sending in "Sign me up" to your Sender Identity.
To help facilitate this, Mobile Text Alerts provides a deeplink feature that automatically tracks iMessage opt-ins.
Deeplinks
A deeplink looks and works like a standard website link but behaves differently depending on the user's browser, device, or operating system. Mobile Text Alerts provides a powerful deeplinking technology that can both identify if a recipient is capable of sending iMessages and link to a prompt to send their first inbound opt-in message to your Sender Identity.
Generate a Deeplink with the API
Deeplinks used for iMessages can be generated by calling the /deeplinks/imessage endpoint with the following fields:
senderName: The sender name used to pre-populate the "To:" field for iMessageIf no
senderNameis provided, thelongcodeIdis required for a valid request.
optInMessage: The opt-in message used to populate the deeplink urls.longcodeId: The id of the associated fallback longcode for yoursenderName
Example request
curl --location 'https://api.mobile-text-alerts.com/v3/deeplinks/imessage' \
--data '{
"longcodeId": 12345,
"optInMessage": "Example"
}'Example successful response
{
"deeplinkUrl": "https://platform.mobile-text-alerts.com/deeplinks/abc"
}This feature is currently in closed beta. Please contact your MTA account rep or MTA support for more information.
Request Body
-
longcodeId: The id of the longcode. -
optInMessage: The opt-in message used to populate the deeplink urls. -
senderName: The sender name used to pre-populate the "To:" field for iMessage- If this field is empty, the sender name associated with the longcode will be used as the default.
Response
Upon successful creation, the response will include the deeplinkUrl
Example
Request:
{
"longcodeId": 1337,
"optInMessage": "Example",
"senderName": "[email protected]"
}
Response:
{
"deeplinkUrl": "https://platform.mobile-text-alerts.com/deeplinks/abc"
}
undefined
POST /v3/deeplinks/imessage HTTP/1.1
Host: api.mobile-text-alerts.com
Authorization: Bearer apiKey
Content-Type: application/json
Accept: */*
Content-Length: 58
{
"longcodeId": 1,
"optInMessage": "text",
"senderName": "text"
}{
"statusCode": "MTANoLinkedAccountError",
"success": true,
"error": "text",
"message": "text",
"data": {
"deeplinkUrl": "text"
}
}How to use a Mobile Text Alerts deeplink:
Generate your iMessage opt-in link
See steps above. Example: https://mobile-text-alerts.com/deeplink/abcd1234
Recipient clicks the link, iMessage on the device is verified
Once clicked, Mobile Text Alerts with automatically detect whether the recipient can send/receive iMessages.
iMessage detected: If the recipient can send/receive iMessages, Mobile Text Alerts will redirect them to a special iMessage specific link which launches iMessage and prefills their opt-in message. All they have to do is hit send.
Example:
imessage://[email protected]&body=Signup)
Cannot send/receive iMessages: If the link was opened on an Android phone, the web, or other non iMessage supported device, the deeplink will gracefully redirect them to a context-sensible location.
Example: Launch the SMS app instead, show a web opt-in form, etc
Send Outbound Messages First
Mobile Text Alerts currently does not allow outbound messages to be sent to recipients before receiving an inbound opt-in message. As a result, messages can only be sent via iMessage to recipients that have explicitly completed the opt-in flow. This provides the best protection for your Sender Identities. Recipients are naturally wary of receiving unsolicited messages through iMessage because it is primarily a peer-to-peer messaging system. Apple may prompt users with a "Report Junk" warning for outbound messages received without an explicit inbound message from the recipient. These reports can result in your Sender Identity being blocked or disabled, which will directly impact your ability to deliver messages via iMessage. MTA opt-in requirement provides the best possible protection for your Sender Identities.
Are there ways to send outbound messages first via iMessage?
In certain uncommon cases, the restriction on requiring an inbound opt-in can be relaxed for individual Sender Identities, after careful review by our team. As described above, this significantly increases the risk of impact on delivery rates for that Sender Identity, and in requesting to lift this restriction, you are accepting that increased risk. Our team will only consider these requests for pre-existing Sender Identities that have already been in use. Our evaluation will look at the age of the Sender Identity (min 3 months old), number of active conversations, and overall inbound message reply rates. It is not guaranteed that a Sender Identity will be approved for outbound-first messaging.
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