Are your texts getting lost? Contact cards can fix that.

If your customers are on iPhones, there's a good chance some of your SMS messages aren't landing where you think they are, and it's not a sending issue. It's a recognition issue.

Since iOS 16, Apple has routed texts from unknown numbers into a separate Unknown Senders folder, effectively hiding them from the main inbox. For shoppers who haven't saved your brand as a contact, your carefully crafted campaigns may never get seen at all.

The good news: AIQ has a built-in fix, and it takes just a few minutes to set up.

What is a contact card?

A contact card (also called a vCard) is a digital business card AIQ sends on your behalf so customers can save your brand directly to their contacts. Once saved, your number is recognized, and your messages go straight to the main inbox instead of getting buried in unknown senders.

It's one of the simplest things you can do to protect your SMS deliverability, and it costs no additional credits beyond the standard send.

How it works

AIQ handles contact card delivery in two ways:

Automatic sends — Whenever a new contact opts in (or re-opts in after unsubscribing), AIQ automatically sends your vCard along with the message: "Add us to your contacts to keep messages out of 'Unknown Senders.'" This happens once per contact within any 90-day window, so you're not spamming anyone.

Campaign sends — You can also push your contact card to existing opted-in subscribers through a dedicated campaign. This is especially useful for:

• Reaching long-time subscribers who opted in before you had a contact card set up
• Re-introducing your brand after a logo or website update
• Making sure your whole active audience has your number saved

Setting it up (5 minutes or less)

Navigate to Settings > Texting > Add to Contacts Card inside your AIQ dashboard. You'll fill in a few fields, most of them auto-populate from your existing account settings:

• Brand name: defaults to your brand name from Texting Settings. Cannabis-specific names are allowed here, so no need to use a "safe texting" alias.
• Contact picture: defaults to your small logo on file.
• Website: use your main company URL (not a location page, since one card covers your whole org).

Hit save, and you're live. From that point forward, AIQ will automatically send your vCard to new opt-ins and you can deploy campaign sends whenever it makes sense.

Please note the phone number will be auto-filled based on your 10DLC registered number. 

Who should prioritize this right now?

If any of the following apply to you, enabling your contact card should be at the top of your list:

• You're seeing or low open rates on SMS
• You have a large audience of long-term subscribers who opted in months or years ago
• You recently rebranded or changed your logo
• You've never sent a contact card campaign before

Even if you're not experiencing obvious issues, enabling contact cards is a proactive deliverability measure, especially as iOS filtering continues to evolve.

A few things to know

• Contact cards must be sent as a standalone campaign, they can't be bundled with a traditional landing-page text campaign.
• If your contact card isn't configured in settings, no automatic sends will go out, even if the toggle is on.
• Android users can receive vCards too, this isn't iOS-only, even though that's the primary use case.
• The 90-day lookback window is adjustable in campaign settings if you want to target contacts who received a card within that period.

Get started

Setting up your contact card is one of the fastest, highest-impact things you can do to enhance your texting open rates. If you haven't enabled it yet, now's the time.

Head to Settings > Texting > Add to Contacts Card in your dashboard, or reach out to your AIQ CSM or AIQ Support via the chat widget if you have any questions along the way.

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