# Registering your SMS sender ID Some countries won't carry a branded sender name until it's been registered with the local carriers or the regulator — and where that applies, an unregistered sender gets rejected or rewritten on the way to the handset. That used to mean asking Bird support to file it for you. Now you do it yourself in the dashboard, and in this video we do the whole thing: claim a sender ID, find out which countries actually need a registration, file one, and see what still sends while it's under review. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XFbAlyW8lQ (4:39) ## What we cover - Choosing an alphanumeric sender ID - Which countries require pre-registration - Submitting a sender ID for approval ## Transcript _Auto-generated from the video._ Hey, and welcome back to another video. Today we're going to be looking at sender ID registration, basically enabling you to register your sender ID within the Bird platform. Now, if you don't know what a sender ID is, we've got a separate video explaining all of the different types of senders that you can use, but today we're going to be focusing on an alphanumeric sender ID, basically allowing you to send on behalf of your business name to your customers. Now, in order to do this, there are some prerequisites. First and foremost, we need to have verified your identity. This is a requirement on the networks, so please follow these steps accordingly. You can find the verification tool within the app, and if you haven't done so already, follow the steps of the different video which explain on a step-by-step basis how to get verified. If you've completed the verification process already, we can continue into SMS and navigate to senders. All right, when we land in the sender overview page, you can see that I've already got two senders registered that still need attention. If you don't have any, you can add senders here and then add a new sender ID, and you can type out the sender that you want to use. Make sure of the requirements, it needs to be between 1 to 11 characters. You can have digits, spaces, dashes, or underscore, but it needs to be at least one letter within it. Now, once you've added the sender, you'll land on the sender registration page. Now, when you go into your specific sender ID, there's a few countries that you might see here. These are the countries that you've enabled within your account. You can navigate back to the destinations page to activate countries, but we've got a separate video explaining everything on there already. Now, for some of these destinations, you'll see that the registration process is fairly easy. The Netherlands doesn't have any specific registrations. We just need to know that you're going to be sending on this behalf. So, for this one, we're going to use all categories, and we're going to register the Netherlands, and it's approved. From now on, I can use Aviary Shop to send to the Netherlands. However, in the event that we want to send to a specific country that does require registration, we need to follow a few additional steps. For this, I'm going to register a new country, and we're going to go to France. As you can see, I've registered France as a country, but the destination is actually pending, not approved. So, we're going to go into completing the individual steps. Now, you've already verified your identity, but in order for us to register this sender ID with the local networks on your behalf, we require some additional information. This varies on country per country basis. If we have the information available, we will reuse that information accordingly. However, seeing that this is our first registration, we need to complete all of the information that's provided here. Now, let me go and fill all of this out, and I'll be back in a second. Now, after you fill out the contact details and the business address details, you need to fill in uh specific information for your sender. This again depends on the country that you're sending to. Make sure to be as explicit as possible when filling out the registration process. This registration process lives outside of Bird, meaning that we have no control over the approval status of your sender ID. So, the more information you provide and the clearer you are, that's the better your chances are of getting your sender ID registered within the specific destination. Now, the moment that you've completed all of your business information, you have a final stage to actually review all of the information that you filled in. Make sure to double-check everything that you filled in. The moment that you start the registration process, we will start working on it, and if you've made a mistake, that will just slow you down. Now, once everything is okay, we're going to submit the registration. At this stage, the registration is submitted, and we're going to submit everything to the local network. Now, the registration process depends on a country-by-country basis. For some countries, it might take up to several weeks. Uh we have more information on that in our guides, and we'll try to be as transparent as possible within the pages themselves. When you click on complete, you'll also again see that the compliance is still under review. Now, once everything has been completed, we'll be sure to inform you. And that's it. The sender ID registration process in a nutshell. Make sure to be as compliant as possible, provide as much information as possible for your chances of sender ID registration to succeed in the most efficient manner. And as always, if you've got any questions about the registration process, you can always reach out to our support. We're more than happy to assist. As always, happy sending, and thanks for watching. ## More SMS guides - [Sending your first SMS](/learn/sms/sms-first-send) — 2:17 - [Sending an SMS with a template](/learn/sms/sms-templates) — 3:20 - [Control where your account can send](/learn/sms/sms-destinations) — 2:31 - [SMS segments: why one emoji doubles the cost](/learn/sms/sms-segments) — 4:33 - [SMS pumping explained](/learn/sms/sms-pumping) — 2:11 ## Resources - [Documentation](/docs) - [Learn more about SMS](/products/sms)