SMS Quiet Hours Compliance

When sending SMS marketing messages, it’s essential to understand that different countries and regions have rules and regulations about acceptable times for messaging. These regulations are designed to protect consumers from unwanted disturbances during specific hours. To comply with these rules, it’s important to avoid sending non-critical, non-transactional marketing messages at restricted times. Vero refers to these restricted periods as “quiet hours.”

To ensure compliance with these guidelines, Vero will make every effort to prevent messages from being sent during these quiet hours.

Quiet Hours Schedule

The following times, relative to recipient times zone, will not be allowed for sending marketing messages:

Default (Global rule): 8 PM - 8 AM

Country-Specific Quiet Hours:

• United States, Canada, Mexico: 8 PM - 8 AM
• Brazil: 9 PM - 8 AM
• Kazakhstan: 10 PM - 9 AM

Note: Currently, these quiet hours are fixed and cannot be customized.

🚧 Transactional messages will not be affected by quiet hours and will be delivered regardless of time of day.

Quiet Hours Compliance in Vero

The following explains when SMS messages will or won’t be sent using our marketing platform. This includes details on how recipient location and timezone are determined, as well as the reasons some messages may not be delivered.

How Recipient Location and Timezone Are Determined

1. Using region_code (recommended)

• Vero can use a region_code property stored on the profile to find the recipients location and timezone.
• You can add this property to your user data using the column name region_code with a value of a timezone name like Australia/Sydney or America/New_York.

2. Using Phone Number Area Codes

If the region_code is not provided, we will use the phone_number property to determine an area code which will determine their location. This is done using a tool that works best for phone numbers from the United States.

Reasons Why Messages May Not Be Sent

When a campaign begins the sending process, each recipient is evaluated and sent individually, an individual recipient’s message will not be sent an SMS if any of the following occur:

1. Invalid Phone Number

   If the phone number is not in a valid format and cannot be processed, the message will not be sent. In Vero the phone_number values for each user are validated at the time of audience creation, so sending to users with an invalid phone number will not be attempted.

2. Unknown Country

   If Vero cannot determine the country from the phone number, the message will not be sent. The platform relies on the country code present in the phone_number (e.g., +1 for the US or +61 for Australia) to identify the country.

3. Unable to Determine region_code

   If the recipient’s user profile does not include a region_code and the platform cannot estimate one from the phone number, the message will not be sent.

4. Unresolved Timezone

   If Vero cannot identify a timezone based on the available data supplied by the region_code or from the phone_number, the message will not be sent.

5. Messages Sent During Quiet Hours

   If the message is scheduled to be sent during quiet hours (restricted times), it will not be sent.

Error Messages Explained

If a message is not sent, the Vero provides the following error messages in the logs, corresponding to the reasons above:

• Invalid phone number: “Unable to parse phone number: ”
• Unknown country: “Unable to determine country from phone number: ”
• Unknown region: “Unable to locate region!”
• Unknown timezone: “Timezone could not be identified”
• Quiet hours restriction: “Local time: is during quiet hours”

Important Note:

The issues mentioned above are less likely to occur if your audience’s phone numbers are properly formatted. Please review your phone numbers and location data to ensure that your messages can be successfully sent. Read about creating an SMS message to learn more about phone number formatting.