Receive texts from leads on your Lead Hero numbers, and what has to be true before you can send one.

You will ned 10DLC campaign & brand registration in order to send outbound SMS. Inbound do not require it, as well as some outbound messages (depending on country & area code). Replying to inbound SMS might also work.

The rest of this article covers receiving SMS now, and what will need to be in place when sending returns.

Two things have to be true for a lead's text to reach you:

Until both hold, the Messages page tells you which one is missing and links you to the page that fixes it.

The gate names the missing piece. It appears above the conversation list, so you see it before wondering why an expected message never arrived.

To enable SMS on a number, open Phone Numbers, find the number, and turn on inbound SMS. There is a small monthly charge per number for it, shown next to the option.

Inbound messages appear in Messages, grouped by lead, with one tab per number the lead has been contacted on.

An SMS conversation as it looks today.

Receiving is gated on the two things above. Sending will add a third: 10DLC registration, the carrier scheme that vets who sends commercial text messages in the US. It has three stages, and all three have to complete:

Start all of this from Compliance > Messaging. Approval is handled by the carriers rather than by Lead Hero, so the timing is not ours to promise.

Worth doing now if you expect to send later, because the wait happens whether or not you are ready to use it.

Getting registered is not the same as being allowed to message someone. You still need a lawful basis to text each recipient, and Lead Hero will ask you to confirm it: if you try to message a lead who has never contacted you, a dialog asks you to confirm the lead has expressed interest and that this is not cold outreach.

That prompt exists because unsolicited SMS risks carrier filtering and account suspension for your whole organization, not just the one message.

Get in touch if inbound messages are not arriving on a number that has SMS enabled, or if your 10DLC brand or campaign has been stuck in the same state for longer than the carriers quote. Include the number, the organization, and what the composer says.