The Shortcode Basics

Bottle owns a shortcode (86788) that's available for you to send marketing and reminder messages to your customers.

The shortcode supports 2-way texting, images, gifs, and videos. When a customer responds to the shortcode, their message gets routed back to your messaging dashboard as if they were responding to your long local number.

What do messages from the shortcode look like?

When a message is sent by you over shortcode, it comes from the shortcode 86788 and your name is placed at the very beginning of the message.

For instance, if Southfork sent a reminder text over their long local number, it would look like the screenshot on the left, whereas from the shortcode, it would look like the screenshot on the right:

Why send over shortcode?

Shortcodes deliver texts way faster and with much higher deliverability.

Wireless carriers don't like you sending marketing or high-volume/duplicated messages to lots of people over longcode. They typically stop delivering texts if you send to too many people (usually >200 people) too quickly. Bottle automatically tries to keep your deliverability high by provisioning your customers over multiple long codes and automatically placing 8 second gaps between each send attempt. But those measures only go so far.

With a shortcode, all of your texts can be sent within seconds. Carriers support a throughput of over 1,000 texts/second over shortcode.

And, if you include links or marketing-y feeling material, the carriers will still deliver the text.

Can customers respond to a message from a shortcode?

Yes. When customers respond to a shortcode, their message gets routed back to your dashboard and shows up just like any other message. When you respond, your reply comes from your local long number.

How can I send marketing messages over shortcode?

Get in touch with us, and we'll enable this feature for you! Then when you go to schedule a Scheduled message, you'll see a checkbox to "send over shortcode."

How can I send order reminders over shortcode?

Get in touch with us, and we'll enable this feature for you! Then whenever your automated store order reminders go out, they'll automatically be delivered over shortcode.