Send Message Feedback to Twilio

Understand and Optimize Message Deliverability

Message Feedback is one of the best tools at our disposal to understand your message deliverability and enable us to optimize it on your behalf automatically.

Sending text messages around the world is not a one-size-fits-all operation. Deliverability varies by geography, mobile operator, use case, and even for individual companies. There are many different knobs that Twilio can tune, such as various routing paths and carrier configurations.

Twilio’s backend uses a mix of automated algorithms and manual adjustments to ensure the best possible deliverability for our customers. We tweak these parameters regularly to keep up with the ever-changing telecom ecosystem. We use several sources of data to make sure that the configuration changes we make are improving deliverability, but we trust what you tell us the most.

The Message Feedback API enables customers to report back to Twilio in real-time when a user successfully receives a text message. Using this feedback information, Twilio can then detect and quickly react to changes in the global messaging networks, both in aggregate and specific to your account, thereby improving the delivery of your messages.

You can view your reported feedback information in your Console to help you monitor and understand your message deliverability. You can start sending feedback using the provideFeedback parameter, and Twilio's systems will begin processing insights immediately.

The Messaging Insights OTP Conversion report displays the feedback funnel information in real time. (Read more in our guide to Exploring Messaging Insights.)

When to Send Message Feedback to Twilio

The Twilio Message Feedback API resource enables you to programmatically report back to Twilio critical deliverability information when your application has some trackable user action that results from a message being sent.

Examples of trackable user actions include:

• A user receives a passcode via SMS and enters it into a website or app
• A user enters a temporary password
• A user replies to a message with a call or SMS
• A user clicks on a unique link contained in the message

How to Submit Message Feedback

Submitting Message Feedback to Twilio is a three-step process:

1. When you send a message, let Twilio know that you are expecting a trackable user action by including the ProvideFeedback=true parameter in the initial HTTP POST.
2. Save the Message SID from the POST response. You'll need this later.
3. When the user takes the expected action, let Twilio know by sending a POST request to the Message Feedback instance subresource, specifying Outcome=confirmed. If the user does not take an action, do not POST anything.

Let's look at some code. First, here's some code that sends a message with a unique URL in the body, setting the ProvideFeedback parameter to true and saving the Message SID for later recall:

Once your user clicks on the URL in the SMS they receive, you be sure that they got the message.

Next, here's an example of the code we might run when the user clicks the unique URL:

Once this information is submitted, Twilio takes care of the rest.