A2P 10DLC for funeral homes: what it is and how to register

If you tried to send a text from a funeral home's business line in 2022 and it landed, you were lucky. If you try it in 2026 without the right paperwork, the text will be filtered before it ever reaches a phone. That paperwork has a name: A2P 10DLC.

A2P stands for application-to-person. 10DLC stands for 10-digit long code — the regular-looking phone number your messaging platform sends from. Put together, the phrase means "text messages sent from a business number, through software, to a real person's cell." Every US carrier — AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile — requires that traffic to be registered. Unregistered messages get throttled, filtered, or blocked entirely.

This guide is for funeral directors who have been told "you need to register for 10DLC" and would like to understand what that actually means before clicking through another portal.

What 10DLC is, in one paragraph

US wireless carriers got tired of spam. In 2021 and 2022 they rolled out a registration system through an industry body called The Campaign Registry (TCR). Any business that wants to send text messages at scale from a regular ten-digit phone number now has to tell TCR two things: who they are (the Brand) and what kinds of messages they plan to send (the Campaign). Those two records get reviewed by carriers, and if they're approved, messages from that number start flowing through with priority. If they're not, your 4 pm text about tomorrow's visitation gets stuck in a spam queue the family never checks.

Why funeral homes have to register like everyone else

It would be reasonable to think a funeral home — with a tiny contact list, mostly informational messages, and no marketing department — would be exempt. It isn't. The carriers don't look at your volume or your intent. They look at whether a ten-digit number is sending application-to-person traffic at all. A funeral home texting 40 families a month about aftercare check-ins is, from the carrier's point of view, indistinguishable from any other small business sending 40 messages a month.

The practical consequence: if you skip registration, the first time your platform tries to push a Mother's Day remembrance text to 200 aftercare contacts, the carrier will rate-limit or filter the whole batch. Some will land. Some won't. You'll have no visibility into which is which.

Brand vs. Campaign — the two things you register

Registration has two layers, and it helps to keep them straight.

The Brand is you, the business. You register the funeral home once. You provide the legal business name, address, contact person, and an indicator of business type. The Brand record is verified by TCR against public records and sometimes via a quick email or phone check. Once it's approved, it's reusable forever — you don't register a new Brand for every campaign.

The Campaign is the use case — the category of messages you want to send. You tell TCR things like "we send aftercare check-ins and service reminders to consented contacts." You supply 3–5 sample messages, an explanation of how people opt in, and the opt-out keyword (STOP is standard). Campaigns are reviewed by the carriers themselves, which is why they can take 1–10 business days depending on the carrier and the use case.

For a funeral home, one Brand and one "Mixed" Campaign is almost always the right shape. You don't need a separate campaign for aftercare, pre-need, and anniversaries — those are all variations of the same use case.

Sole Proprietor vs. Standard Brand — the decision most funeral homes face

This is where the paperwork gets interesting. TCR offers two Brand tiers for small US businesses:

• Sole Proprietor Brand — no EIN required. You register under your own name as the authorized representative. Verification is lighter. Fee is about $4 one-time. Throughput is capped (roughly 3,000 SMS segments per day on T-Mobile; other carriers similar). Campaigns have a $2/month carrier fee.

• Standard Brand (Unverified or Verified) — requires an EIN. Your business is vetted more thoroughly. Fee is about $4 one-time for Unverified and $40 one-time for Verified. Throughput is higher — often 10x — and your Campaign has carrier fees in the $10–$15/month range, depending on use case.

For the overwhelming majority of independent funeral homes — which might text 200 families on a busy month and 50 on a slow one — a Sole Proprietor Brand is the right call. You stay well under the throughput cap, the registration is faster, you don't need an EIN, and the total carrier cost is a few dollars a month instead of $15+. If you grow past ~2,000 outbound messages a month, the economics flip and Standard starts making sense.

What you'll actually fill out

Whether you register through your messaging platform's portal (Twilio, Telnyx, Bandwidth, and others all offer Brand/Campaign wizards) or directly through TCR, the fields are the same.

For the Brand:

• Legal business name — exactly as it appears with the state or on your DBA
• Business type — LLC, Corporation, Partnership, Sole Proprietor, etc.
• EIN if applicable — skip for Sole Proprietor
• Business address — your operating address; for small firms, your funeral home street address
• Vertical/industry — "Professional Services" or "Funeral Services" if offered
• Authorized representative — first name, last name, business email, business phone
• Website — your .com or .io

For the Campaign:

• Use case — usually Mixed (a catch-all that allows a few message types together)
• Description — one paragraph on what you send and to whom. See sample below.
• Sample messages — 3 to 5, each representative of what you'll actually send
• Opt-in flow — how do people end up on your list? Web form after intake? Paper consent during arrangements? Verbal consent at the service?
• Opt-in keyword (if applicable) and opt-out keyword (almost always STOP)
• Help keyword (HELP) and the response your platform auto-sends

Here is a Campaign description that has worked for a small firm:

Campaign descriptionFor a Sole Prop Mixed use case

0 chars · 0 seg

Sample messages that get approved

Carriers look at sample messages for two signals: is the brand identified, and is there an opt-out path? A funeral home sample that hits both lands cleanly. Here are three that have cleared.

Sample 1Aftercare check-in

0 chars · 0 seg

Sample 2Anniversary remembrance

0 chars · 0 seg

Sample 3Service reminder

0 chars · 0 seg

Notice what they all share: the family member is named, the deceased is named with care, the firm is identified by name, and the opt-out is present and unambiguous.

The timeline, realistically

Here is what to expect after you submit:

• Brand approval — usually same day to 48 hours for Sole Proprietor. Sometimes instant.
• Campaign submission — you do this after the Brand is approved.
• Carrier review — T-Mobile is often fastest (1–3 business days). AT&T and Verizon can take 5–10 business days. All three review independently.
• Messaging Profile assignment — once carriers approve, your platform will attach the Campaign to a Messaging Profile (or the Twilio equivalent, a Messaging Service). This is the object your outbound messages go through. You'll attach your phone number to that profile.

Total realistic time from "I start registration" to "I can send a compliant message to a real family": 2–3 weeks. Occasionally faster. Rarely faster than 5 business days.

Common rejection reasons (and how to fix them)

When a Campaign gets kicked back, the reason is almost always one of three things:

1. Vague or generic sample messages. "Hi, thanks for being a customer" gets rejected. Use real-looking samples that name the recipient and identify your brand. See the three above.
2. Opt-in flow is unclear. "Users subscribe on our website" is not enough. Describe the actual step: "During arrangement intake, family members sign a consent form that includes an SMS opt-in checkbox." Or: "Website visitors enter their phone number into a form labeled 'Subscribe for aftercare updates' with a checkbox confirming SMS consent."
3. Use case doesn't match samples. If you select "Marketing" but your samples are informational service reminders, the carrier will reject. Funeral homes almost always want Mixed, which covers informational + occasional marketing.

Fix the rejection reason and resubmit — you don't lose the Brand, only the Campaign.

Frequently asked

Do I need 10DLC if I'm only texting from my personal phone?+

No. Person-to-person (P2P) texts from your own handset aren't subject to 10DLC. But the moment you use any software to send from a business number — even if it's 40 messages a month — it's application-to-person traffic, and registration is required.

What happens if I just don't register?+

Messages get filtered. Not all of them — carrier filtering is probabilistic, not binary — but enough that you can't trust the channel. You also risk higher per-message fees (unregistered traffic is penalized) and eventual account shutdown by your platform.

Is there a separate thing called 'toll-free verification'?+

Yes. If you use a toll-free number (starting with 800, 888, 877, etc.) instead of a local 10-digit number, you follow a similar but separate process called toll-free verification. The carrier requirements and fee structures differ. For a single-location funeral home, a local 10DLC number is usually simpler and cheaper.

Can I register the same Brand across two messaging providers?+

Yes. The Brand record lives with TCR, not with a specific provider. If you move from one platform to another, your Brand comes with you. Campaigns, however, are provider-specific and have to be re-created on the new platform.

Does 10DLC replace TCPA compliance?+

No. 10DLC is carrier policy — it governs whether your texts land. TCPA is federal law — it governs whether you're allowed to send them in the first place. You need both.

The short version

If you take one thing away: register your Brand today, even if you're not planning to send messages for a month. The two-to-three-week carrier review timeline is the real bottleneck, and it runs on its own clock. Brand and Campaign paperwork is cheap and reusable. Not registering is the expensive choice, not the thrifty one.

When you're ready to think about the messages themselves — what to send, when, in what voice — start with our guide to grief-aware SMS templates or the broader SMS marketing playbook. And if you haven't read about the legal layer underneath all of this, TCPA for funeral homes is the next piece of the puzzle.