Northern Trail Outfitters is using a Salesforce entry event in a Journey to send SMS...

To resolve the issue of new contacts not receiving SMS messages due to missing country codes in the mobile number field, the best solution is toselect 'Normalize Phone Number' in Journey settings.

Normalize Phone Number: In Journey Builder’s SMS activity settings, enabling the "Normalize Phone Number" option automatically formats phone numbers to the E.164 standard (e.g., +1 for US numbers) by appending the appropriate country code based on a specified default country (in this case, the United States). This ensures that phone numbers missing a country code are correctly formatted for SMS delivery.

Why it works:

SMS providers require phone numbers in E.164 format (e.g., +12025550123 for a US number).

If the mobile number in the Salesforce Entry Data Extension lacks the country code (e.g., 2025550123), the SMS will fail to send.

Normalizing phone numbers at the journey level corrects this issue without requiring manual updates to Salesforce records.

Why the other options are incorrect:

A. Select 'US' as the sending country in SMS activity: The sending country setting in MobileConnect determines the short code or long code used for sending, not the formatting of recipient phone numbers. It does not address missing country codes in the data.

B. Format the phone field in Salesforce as +1[phonenumber]: While manually formatting phone numbers in Salesforce to include the +1 country code would work, it requires updating all existing records and implementing validation rules for new records, which is inefficient and prone to errors compared to normalization.

D. Configure the phone field in Salesforce as US locale: Setting the phone field’s locale in Salesforce affects display formatting (e.g., (202) 555-0123) but does not automatically add the +1 country code in the E.164 format required for SMS.

Exact Extract from Salesforce Documentation:

Normalize Phone Number: "When you enable Normalize Phone Number in an SMS activity, Marketing Cloud automatically formats phone numbers to include the country code based on the selected country, ensuring compliance with E.164 standards for SMS delivery."(Source:Salesforce Help - MobileConnect SMS Activity Configuration)

E.164 Format: "SMS messages require phone numbers in E.164 format, which includes the country code (e.g., +1 for the United States). Use normalization to correct improperly formatted numbers."(Source:Salesforce Help - MobileConnect Best Practices)