What Is Secondary Campaign Vetting?

Written by: Aaron Alter

Over the last few weeks, many software providers have been experiencing extended vetting delays and increased rejections on their A2P 10-digit long code (10DLC) Campaigns. SMS API providers with impacted customers have begun notifying them that this is being caused by a newly required “secondary DCA (Direct Connect Aggregator) vetting”.

Software providers registered as Campaign Service Providers (CSPs) with The Campaign Registry (TCR) may have also seen firsthand “DCA2” next to Campaign rejections in the portal, which also refers to this “second DCA vetting”.

How Does 10DLC Campaign Vetting Work?

When a 10DLC Campaign is submitted to TCR, your API provider, AKA Connectivity Partner (CNP), pushes that Campaign upstream for DCA review. There are three major DCAs managing 10DLC messaging in North America. The DCA that your CNP is partnered with is the one that will vet your Campaigns.

Once received, the DCA will manually review each Campaign to ensure they are compliant with Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA) and mobile carrier guidelines. Some of the compliance requirements may vary depending on the DCA, so it’s important that your CNP/API provider keeps you informed and provides guidance around any changes.

If you are a CSP, you’re able to closely monitor the status of your submitted Campaigns. In your CSP portal, you simply navigate to ‘My Campaigns’ in the menu on the left-hand side and click on the Campaign. When the Campaign is first submitted, the ‘Elected DCA’ column in the ‘Carrier Status’ section will show “No” next to each Carrier. If approved, the column will change to “Yes”.

If a Campaign is rejected, it’s considered an ‘event’. Navigate to the ‘Event Type’ section at the bottom of the page – if you see “CAMPAIGN_SHARE_DELETE”, this means your Campaign was rejected. The ‘description’ column will show the DCA’s exact reason for the rejection and how to fix it for re-submission.

Where Does “Secondary Vetting” Come Into Play?

In the Campaign vetting process described above, only one DCA is vetting Campaigns. However, in recent weeks, one of the DCAs has partnered with a second DCA for Campaign vetting. This means that any CNP/API provider partnered with this particular DCA now has to send your customers’ Campaigns through two DCAs for approval, which is ultimately taking longer and is resulting in a rise of rejections as the compliance requirements can vary from DCA to DCA.

We do want to note that if the term “secondary vetting” sounds familiar to you outside of this specific use case, that’s because “secondary vetting” or “added vetting” are both used to describe the process of requesting higher throughputs based on your messaging use case and throughput needs. In this article, “secondary vetting” only refers to the new scenario of having Campaigns reviewed by more than one DCA.

What About the Dec. 1st Registration Deadline?

Despite this new registration hurdle, there have been no changes to the December 1, 2024 deadline for getting all Brands and Campaigns fully registered, which is cause for concern for software providers with many customers to register. If you are being impacted by new secondary vetting requirements, it’s incredibly important that you team up with your CNP/API provider and complete registration before the deadline as remaining unregistered traffic (including pending Brands and Campaigns) will be cut off after Dec. 1.

Telgorithm Can Help.

Telgorithm is not affected by the “secondary vetting” requirement and is still achieving DCA approvals in 72 hours or less on average. We have a unique, streamlined 10DLC setup process, we offer individualized compliance guidance, and we have strong relationships with multiple DCAs to enable us to expedite Campaign approvals.

If your team is struggling to get customers registered, particularly ahead of the Dec. 1 cut-off deadline, get in touch with a 10DLC expert at Telgorithm. There is no other SMS API provider that’s 100% dedicated to 10DLC messaging and that can guide you through the continuous industry changes and challenges.