Subscriber Opt In

Learn about subscriber opt-in and how to do this with Mobile Text Alerts deeplinks

As with SMS, capturing proper consent and opt-ins from your recipients is critical to successfully using iMessage capabilities. Capturing opt-ins ensures your recipients are expecting iMessages and gives you an opportunity to identify yourself. This helps ensure your messages are delivered and not marked as spam.

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 deeplinking technology that can identify whether a recipient can send iMessages and prompt them 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 iMessage

  • If no senderName is provided, the longcodeId is 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 your senderName.

Example request

curl --location 'https://api.mobile-text-alerts.com/v3/deeplinks/imessage' \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer <APIKey>' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{
    "longcodeId": 12345,
    "optInMessage": "Example"
}'

Example successful response

{
  "deeplinkUrl": "https://platform.mobile-text-alerts.com/deeplinks/abc"
}

Create IMessage Deeplink

post

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": "[e-mail]"
}

Response:

{
  "deeplinkUrl": "https://platform.mobile-text-alerts.com/deeplinks/abc"
}

Authorizations

AuthorizationstringRequired

Bearer authentication header of the form Bearer <token>.

Body

longcodeIdnumberOptional

optInMessagestringRequired

senderNamestringOptional

Responses

200

Success

application/json

400

BadRequestError

application/json

401

UnauthorizedError

application/json

403

ForbiddenError

application/json

500

InternalServerError

application/json

post/deeplinks/imessage

POST /v3/deeplinks/imessage HTTP/1.1
Host: api.mobile-text-alerts.com
Authorization: Bearer YOUR_SECRET_TOKEN
Content-Type: application/json
Accept: */*
Content-Length: 58

{
  "longcodeId": 1,
  "optInMessage": "text",
  "senderName": "text"
}

{
  "success": true,
  "error": "text",
  "message": "text",
  "data": {
    "deeplinkUrl": "text"
  }
}

How to use a Mobile Text Alerts deeplink

1

Generate your iMessage opt-in link

See steps above. Example: https://mobile-text-alerts.com/deeplink/abcd1234

2

Direct your subscribers to this deeplink

Through your method of choice, get this link to your subscribers. For example, you could send an SMS campaign from Mobile Text Alerts that announces your customers can now receive iMessages from you by clicking the link.

3

Recipient clicks the link and iMessage capability is verified

When clicked, Mobile Text Alerts will automatically detect whether the recipient can send and receive iMessages.

• iMessage detected: If the recipient can send and receive iMessages, Mobile Text Alerts will redirect them to an iMessage-specific link that launches iMessage and prefills their opt-in message. All they have to do is hit send.

  • Example: imessage://[e-mail]&body=Signup

• Cannot send/receive iMessages: If the link was opened on an Android phone, the web, or another 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.

If you choose another method to prompt recipients to opt in to iMessages, you can still use the special imessage:// style URL to launch the iMessage app and prefill the message.

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 who 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 directly impacts your ability to deliver messages via iMessage. Mobile Text Alerts' 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.