Best Practices

Follow this flow for every new contact to maintain healthy iMessage conversations and optimal deliverability.

Messaging flow

1. Set up your contact card — configure your name and photo via the Contact Cards endpoints for your numbers. This is a one-time setup per number.
2. Receive an inbound message first — wait for the recipient to initiate or respond before sharing your card. See Sending Messages.
3. Send an outbound message — there must be at least one outbound message in the chat before sharing.
4. Share your contact card — call the share endpoint so the recipient is prompted to save your name and photo. See Sharing Contact Card. There’s no confirmation the user saved it, so call the share endpoint once per day after the first outbound activity on that chat — this keeps giving them the option if they dismissed it.
5. Elicit 3+ responses early — aim to get at least three replies from a new user as soon as possible to keep the conversation healthy.
6. Maintain a 1:2 inbound:outbound ratio — a message reciprocity ratio of 1 inbound for every 2 outbound messages leads to optimal deliverability.
7. Honor opt-out language — immediately stop messaging any user who sends stop, unsubscribe, or expresses negative sentiment.

Tips

DO

• Design for inbound-first messaging
• Space messages naturally
• Make interactions conversational
• Share contact cards early
• Round-robin new users across lines to balance load

DON'T

• Exceed 7,000 messages/day per line
• Include links or media in your first message
• Keep fallback lines dormant
• Bombard non-responders
• Segment Android users to separate lines
• Use iMessage for cold outreach