Why your SMS marketing is filtered as spam in Morocco (and how to avoid it)

Moroccan operators (IAM, Orange, inwi) have significantly tightened their anti-spam filters over the past two years to protect subscribers from fraud (banking phishing, fake package scams, etc.).

If your message looks close to or far from these threats, it will be blocked before it even reaches the phone, without prior notification.

In Morocco, filtering is done via SS7 firewalls (network equipment that processes SMS traffic). These firewalls analyze the raw text of your message in real time.

• Repeat specific keywords related to finance or emergency.
• There are generic short URLs that are not associated with your domain name.
• A combination of a specific Sender ID with a specific lexical field.

When a message exceeds a certain “spam score,” the operator either closes the connection for that query or returns a failure status to protect the network.

Based on campaign rejection rates (/fr/blog/sms-marketing-maroc-strategies), here are the most common triggers:

The use of 'bit.ly', 'cutt.ly' or 'tinyurl.com' is heavily associated with phishing campaigns. If you put a 'bit.ly' link in a SMS talking about payment or delivery, there is a high chance that it will be blocked. Solution: Use a subdomain of your own brand (e.g. 'go.your-brand.ma/xyz') or display the full link if it is short.

Financial or Emergency Vocabulary If you are not a bank, the use of words such as “Blocked”, “Urgent”, “Bank Card”, “Suspended”, or “Win Millions” triggers alerts.

A message formatted as: EXCEPTIONAL PROMO !!! CLICK FAST: $$$ is the perfect stereotype of spam. Operators penalize the density of special characters (repeated exclamation points, currency symbols).

The Moroccan regulation on SMS (CNDP) requires providing a method of unsubscribing. If you send 50,000 SMS without including the standard mention "STOP to XXXX", your campaign may be by the users themselves. Too many reports result in a manual blocking of your Sender ID.

Never send a shot of 100,000 SMS without testing the deliverability of the exact message.

The ideal test protocol: 1.Send the exact message (with the real link and the real Sender ID) to 3 test numbers: an IAM number, an Orange number, and an inwi number.2.Check whether the 3 messages arrive.3.If a message does not arrive, change the text (remove the link, change certain words) and try again to identify the blocking item.

Example of actual reworking: - Blocked: WARNING: Your package is blocked! Pay the customs fee here bit.ly/12345 (Emergency Vocabulary + generic link = Phishing for operators). - Delivered: Hello. Your order tracking is available. Please refer to: delivery.your-brand.ma/tracking (Tone information, branded domain).

If the blocking occurs during sending:

1. Stop the campaign immediately via your dashboard.No need to burn your credits and degrade the reputation of your Sender ID (Trust Score) for failed shipments.
2. Isolate the error. Does the DLR status in your logs indicate ‘Rejected’?
3. Reformulate the message. Remove aggressive majuscules, replace general short links with your own domain, and soften the tone.
4. Run a test on a sample of 10 numbers before resuming mass sending.