A forwarded or referred message must say why the recipient received it
The requirementstatement
A message sent because another consumer referred or forwarded it must identify the person who sent it and state why the recipient is receiving it.
- Severityseverity
- BlockingBLOCKINGBreaking this rule gets the submission rejected. There is no partial credit.
- When it bitesphase
- Gates approvalapprovalGet this wrong and the brand or campaign is refused at registration.
- What is checkedobject
- viral message body
- Where it liveslayer
- Message contentMESSAGE_CONTENT
- How Ekas settles itdetectability
- AI · formAI_FORM
- A semantic question about what you wrote: whether a description matches a use case, whether a name looks like a filed entity. Judged by a model against written criteria.
- What the fix involvesfailureClass
- Fix the fieldRETRY_FIELD
- A better value in the form fixes it. Ekas can rewrite it and re-check.
- Who requires itauthorities
- CTIA
- When it appliesapplicabilityText
- Applies to every 10DLC registration.
Why this rule existsrationale
A referral message reaches somebody who never opted in to anything — the consent, such as it is, belongs to their friend — so the only thing standing between it and an unsolicited commercial text is the recipient being able to see immediately that a person they know is behind it. Without the name and the reason it is indistinguishable from spam and is reported as such, which damages the sending number for every other recipient. Businesses omit the name because their referral tooling does not have it, or because the message reads better without it, and neither is a reason the carrier recognises.
How to fix itremediation
Put the referring person's name and the reason into the first sentence of the referral template, before the offer — a [referrer name] token and a clause saying they sent it. Done when a recipient who has never heard of your business can tell, from the first line, who thought of them and why.
A compliant exampleexample
Acme Coffee: [referrer first name] sent you a free bag of our Ethiopia Guji because they thought you would like it. Claim it at https://acmecoffee.com/r/4471 Reply STOP to opt out.
Common mistakespitfalls
- Naming only the business does not satisfy this — the required identification is of the consumer who sent it, and that is the part referral tooling most often cannot supply.
Notesnotes
Universal rather than tagged: no fact on the registration declares a referral or refer-a-friend programme, so the criteria carry the condition and open with a PASS boundary for campaigns that have none. Note the interaction with the consent rules — a referral message reaches somebody who did not opt in, and satisfying this rule does not settle whether the programme may send it at all.
Rules you will hit next
Other message content rules at the same severity. A registration is judged as a whole, not rule by rule.
MSG-008Opt-in confirmation must be 20–255 charactersBlockingBLOCKINGMSG-009HELP reply must be 20–255 charactersBlockingBLOCKINGMSG-011Opt-out confirmation must be 20–255 charactersBlockingBLOCKINGMSG-018An MMS campaign must attach at least one sample media fileBlockingBLOCKINGMSG-019Each MMS sample file must sit under its per-type size ceilingBlockingBLOCKINGMSG-031Sample messages must be in EnglishBlockingBLOCKING
MSG-266 is one of 122 message content rules in the 915-rule 10DLC registry. Free to cite under CC BY 4.0.