Why are my review request texts not being delivered?

The first filter belongs to the phone carriers, and it runs before delivery. Carriers decide whether they trust the sender of every business text, and messages from numbers they cannot tie to a verified business get dropped — silently. There is no bounce notice and no red flag in whatever tool sent the message; the sends look fine and the texts simply never land. Nearly every "my texts stopped arriving" mystery lives here, and it is the fixable one: carrier trust comes from registering the sending business and verifying its number.

The second filter lives on the customer’s own phone, after delivery. Modern phones can quietly sort texts from unknown numbers into a separate list, and third-party spam apps go further. No sending service can reach into a customer’s handset and turn that off — a claim to the contrary is a claim to control someone else’s phone. What a business can do is give the phone and its owner reasons to trust the sender: a consistent number, a first line that names the business, and a message the customer actually agreed to receive.

Carrier filtering keys on the sending number and the business behind it. A number shared by many businesses, a temporary number spun up last week, or a rotating pool of senders carries traffic no carrier can tie to one verified identity — and when any of that mixed traffic draws complaints, everyone on the number gets filtered together. It is also why unverified texting can seem to work at first and then degrade: the number never had a standing of its own, so it inherits whatever reputation the traffic around it earns.

ReviewNudger treats the sender as the foundation. Every account texts from its own dedicated toll-free number, verified with the carriers for that specific business — never a shared number, never a temporary one, never traffic riding under someone else’s name. ReviewNudger files the carrier verification on your behalf and hosts the policy pages and consent evidence reviewers require, since most small businesses have none of that lying around; review typically takes about three business days. And because carriers block texts from a toll-free number whose verification is still pending, ReviewNudger simply does not send until the number is approved — then texting starts on its own.

With a verified sender, the message decides the rest. Put your business name in the first few words — a customer who recognizes the sender has no reason to report it, and carriers count reports. Keep it short, plain, and honest: a review request is a thank-you note with a link. The tells that read as spam to machines and strangers alike — all-caps, manufactured urgency, stacked exclamation points, promotional bluster — have no place in it.

Two quieter habits matter just as much. Text only customers who said your business could: consent is a carrier requirement for business texting, not just good manners, and it is the difference between a welcome message and a spam complaint. Let volume follow the work — requests going out one at a time as jobs finish look like a business talking to its customers, while a blast at an old list looks like exactly what it is. And know that a picture turns a text into a multimedia message, a class of traffic that costs more and draws extra scrutiny; plain text with one link is the sturdy default.

Texting has a short verification wait; email does not. ReviewNudger sends review requests by email as well as text, so the ask keeps going out while your number is in carrier review — and email stays the channel for any customer who has no mobile number on file. Campaign steps can mix channels; a text first with a polite email follow-up a few days later is the classic sequence for customers who did not act.

Email has filters of its own, and the fixes rhyme with everything above: a real business identity as the sender, plain copy, your business postal address in the footer, and unsubscribes honored on every later request. The built-in email requests carry all of that, because a request that reaches the junk folder was not worth sending.