More detail on undelivered text messages

This article discusses how we calculate and show delivery metrics for the messages that you send to your audiences.

While we discuss all of the channels, the focus is mainly on SMS.

App: If your subscribers still have our app installed on their phone, this metric should be close to 100% when you view the metrics.
How Real-Time Are App Delivery Metrics? App delivery metrics are nearly instant. As soon as the message arrives on the phone with the MessageSpring app installed, that delivery will be counted.

SMS: This is the topic of this article. Keep reading for more details.
How Real-Time Are SMS Delivery Metrics? SMS delivery metrics inside MessageSpring are incremented once the recipient clicks on the link embedded in the message.

Email: Email will always show a very high delivery rate if the email addresses exist.
How Real-Time Are Email Delivery Metrics? Email delivery metrics can be measured in minutes. We collect email delivery metrics from all of the email systems in your audience list. We are reliant on those systems. However, our testing shows that 100% of the email delivery metrics will be counted within 8 - 10 minutes.

As can be seen in the image below, our customers can get a breakdown of delivery metrics for all of their sent messages. Metric data is near real time.

Use this view to see how your messages are delivered across all of your channels for this particular message's audience.



This chart shows the portion of subscribers who've clicked on the link in the SMS. In the SMS metrics, we only show an SMS as delivered if the subscriber actually clicks on the link. This is because the carrier delivery metrics are neither standard nor reliable. The ONLY way that we can tell you that a subscriber received your message via SMS / text is if they actually click on the link. The metric that you view will always show a lower delivery rate than the actual delivery rate. Again, this is because we are waiting for them to click on the link in the text message. When they do that, we know with 100% certainty that they received the SMS and clicked on the link.




These are the actual delivery metrics reported from the telco systems. We don't show these to our customers at the moment because the delay in getting them is exceedingly high. The reason for the delay is that someone's phone may be off for an extended period of time or the phone could be out of a service area. We are looking for ways to improve this.

Updated on: 09/02/2023