Master TRAI’s CTA Whitelisting with Tinycc for Effortless Compliance
Everything You Need to Know About TRAI’s CTA Whitelisting Mandate
In a digital-first world, reaching customers through SMS remains a powerful strategy. However, ensuring that these communications meet regulatory standards is increasingly complex. In India, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has introduced a new mandate requiring Call-To-Action (CTA) whitelisting for URLs sent via SMS. For organizations that rely on SMS marketing, understanding the TRAI CTA whitelisting requirements and adapting URL structures is essential.
This article provides an overview of the TRAI mandate, changes to short URL formatting, and how Tinycc’s Domain Path Prefix can simplify SMS marketing compliance.
Understanding TRAI’s New CTA Whitelisting Mandate
In recent years, regulators globally have prioritized customer protection against phishing, spam, and fraud via SMS. TRAI’s latest mandate focuses on Call-To-Action URLs, which prompt recipients to take action, such as clicking a link to visit a website or make a purchase. Under the new rule, URLs embedded in SMS messages must be “whitelisted,” meaning they are reviewed, approved, and registered with the regulatory body to ensure legitimacy and prevent fraudulent activities.
For a business, TRAI’s mandate means that a whitelist URL must be recognizable and registered to meet SMS carrier requirements. This involves adding specific keywords to short URLs, allowing recipients to quickly verify link origins. Without adherence to these guidelines, SMS messages containing unregistered URLs may be blocked by carriers, preventing the message from reaching its intended audience.
Changes to Short URL Format and Whitelisting Requirements
One significant change brought by TRAI’s CTA Whitelisting URL Mandate is the requirement for a domain path prefix in short URLs. The path prefix serves as a custom identifier between the domain and the unique hash of the link, allowing for more transparent tracking and whitelisting of URLs. In this case, companies must create URLs that visibly include a specific keyword in the URL path, ensuring compliance and facilitating regulatory review.
For example, let’s say you need to create a CTA URL like https://yourdomain.com/offer/abc123.
Here, “offer” is the required prefix for whitelisting purposes, clearly indicating the purpose and source of
the message, which provides both TRAI and recipients with a sense of security.
This additional step may seem minor, but it has a significant impact on how businesses handle SMS campaigns. Companies now need a way to customize and automate SMS URL generation with the required path prefix without disrupting existing links or causing message delays.
This leads to the question of how to find a URL shortener that can best generate CTA compliant URLs?
The Ultimate Solution to Seamless Compliance
Tinycc’s Domain Path Prefix feature offers a simple yet powerful solution to achieve TRAI’s CTA whitelisting compliance. This tool enables users to automatically add custom keywords to short links, creating a compliant structure for SMS communication.
With an easy setup in Tinycc’s interface, users can define a Path Prefix, ensuring that each URL follows TRAI’s format requirements. Flexible customization options allow businesses to adjust prefixes over time while maintaining legacy links, making it easy to stay compliant without disrupting past campaigns.
Additionally, Subdirectory Forwarding and Smart Links integration work in tandem with our whitelisting tool, allowing further control over link redirection and targeted URL functionality. Tinycc provides all the necessary tools to quickly adapt to TRAI regulations and with zero development time or disruptions to your current SMS workflow.
Ready to make your SMS campaigns compliant and secure? Try Tinycc today and take the guesswork out of TRAI compliance with our innovative URL whitelisting solution.
