Important Update: TRAI Mandates New SMS Header Format

Important Update: TRAI Mandates New SMS Header Format

Hello everyone,
We have an announcement regarding a new regulation by the Telephone Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) that affects all application-to-person (A2P) SMS services. Starting on May 6, 2025, TRAI has mandated that telecom service providers in India append a suffix to the SMS sender header based on the type of message being delivered. Aimed at improving transparency, this change will impact how your SMS is displayed in the recipient's inbox.

What is the change?

According to TRAI's latest regulation, the sender header section of all A2P SMS messages must include a suffix that will convey the type of message being delivered. Below are the suffixes and their respective categories:
  • P: Promotional messages
  • S: Service messages
  • T: Transactional messages
  • G: Government-authorized messages
For example, if your SMS header read JD-ZYLKER previously, after the change it will read XY–ZYLKER–P, where XY is the operator and circle code, and P stands for promotional message.

Who does the regulation affect?

This change affects A2P SMS services. This means that if you're using bulk SMS to send promotional, transactional, or customer service alerts, this will affect the way your message header is displayed to your recipients.

What is the purpose of this regulation?

Through this regulation, TRAI aims to:
  • Improve transparency and user experience by displaying the SMS type.
  • Reduce spam and fraudulent messages.
  • Standardize SMS headers to monitor messages more effectively. 

How will it affect businesses?

This change will only affect the way message headers are displayed to your recipients. Businesses are not expected to add the suffix manually or change their existing SMS marketing practices. The suffix will be automatically included in the SMS header by the telecom service provider during the DLT scrubbing based on the type of SMS you're sending.
 
Best regards,
Team Zoho Campaigns
    • Sticky Posts

    • Marketer's Space: Proven tips to improve open rates – Part II

      Hello Marketers! Welcome back to another post in Marketer's Space! We're continuing from where we left off a fortnight ago. We ended the previous post discussing the subject line, and we'll continue from there. Let's dive right in. Pre-header Pre-header
    • Tip of the week 03 - Sending emails in batches

      Today's marketers not only want their email marketing to be efficient, but also smart. For an email campaign, you may think you have all the essential elements for lead conversion—a big mailing list, an attractive template design, and the most-engaging message content, but after hitting the ‘send’ button, you may not get the expected conversions. Wondering why? Here’s one of the major reasons. Many marketers miss out on sending the email campaign the right way. Did you know that you should not be
    • Tip of the week 04 - Know about your recipients' 'prime open time.'

      In today's market, the importance of customer behavior is astounding, with a vast amount of research and resources going into finding how customers make decisions. The process of persuading your customers to open your email and click on your call-to-action becomes easy when you understand the psychology behind their behavioral traits. Time to turn into a psychologist! Let's get to the basics—you want your emails to resonate well with your recipients. So, what's the primary thing involved here? It's
    • Zoho Campaigns Expert Diaries on SoundCloud, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube

      Hi email champs,  As email marketers, we find great lessons in each other's works—be it the subject lines that worked good, the design that was received well, or the CTA that had the maximum clicks. Email marketing encompasses a wide variety of topics spanning everything from creation and design to development and deliverability.  Here's when we from the Zoho Campaigns team found the need to build an email marketing community comprising of seasoned marketers and email geeks who can help each other
    • Email Deliverability Tip #3: Seal the deal with the preheader

      In the last post, we learned about the subject line. Today we'll be learning about the preheader. A preheader is the short text that follows the subject line in an email. The preheader is designed to hint at what your email message is all about. A good preheader should act as a second subject line and convince your contacts to open the email. Now, let's learn the best way to craft a preheader. Your subject line and preheader should work together and accurately convey the gist of your email. Keep
      • Recent Topics

      • Zoho Sign Not Delivering

        I have sent several contracts out via Zoho Sign.   They do not seem to be getting delivered.  I had one person receive it, but the others have not.   I had one person tell me they sent it back to me and never got it and doesn't show as signed.  I've sent
      • Bank Feeds Breaking Constantly

        Hey Everyone, I have already reached out to support about this issue but I am wondering if anyone else is having the same issue. My bank feeds keep breaking within days of me fixing them by updating the credentials. Its been happening for a while and
      • Automatic Matching from Bank Statements / Feeds

        Is it possible to have transactions from a feed or bank statement automatically match when certain criteria are met? My use case, which is pretty broadly applicable, is e-commerce transactions for merchant services accounts (clearing accounts). In these
      • Zoho Payroll's USA and KSA editions are available in Zoho One!

        Greetings! We’re excited to share that Zoho Payroll, currently available only in India and the UAE, is now introducing the KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) edition and the USA (United States of America) edition, and these editions are now available in Zoho
      • Tip #63- Exploring Technician Console: Elevate to Admin Mode (Windows & Mac)- 'Insider Insights'

        Hello Zoho Assist Community! Ever been in a remote support session where you couldn’t complete a task because you didn’t have admin privileges? Maybe installing software, accessing secure system areas, or rebooting into Safe Mode just didn’t work because
      • Prevent accidental duplicate entry of Customer Ordersome

        Zoho Support has confirmed that Zoho currently does not have any method (using Deluge, flow or any other method) to alert a user when a sales order has been entered twice using the same customer reference number (i.e. a duplicate). Most ERP platforms
      • Zoho Mail - Email Reminder template (default)

        Zoho Mail Users, Does anybody here use the email reminder template? I'm asking Zoho to allow and add us to select which one of our many templates will be our default. It allows us to operate more efficiently. It's a Checkbox. If you feel this can benefit
      • Windows Desktop App - request to add minimization/startup options

        Support Team, Can you submit the following request to your development team? Here is what would be optimal in my opinion from UX perspective: 1) In the "Application Menu", add a menu item to Exit the app, as well as an alt-key shortcut for these menus
      • Canva Integration

        Hello! As many marketing departments are streamlining their teams, many have begun utilizing Canva for all design mockups and approvals prior to its integration into Marketing automation software. While Zoho Social has this integration already accomplished,
      • Announcement integration between Zoho People and Zoho Connect

        As we're using these 2 products, there're areas of overlapping especially in the Announcement. When there's a new announcement in Zoho People, can it push to the company wall in Zoho Connect?
      • Does Zoho Mail Have Popout windows?

        I recently switched my work email over to Zoho and everything I read said that you can popout the draft email as you're writing, however, all the pictures or info I've seen show the typical popout arrow in the top right, which I can not for the life of
      • Can I reorder how the staff are displayed on the booking page?

        As the title suggests, can I change this? Either reorder manually reoreded to my preference, or automatically (a-z, z-a etc.)
      • Bulk upload image option in Zoho Commerce

        I dont know if I am not looking into it properly but is there no option to bulk upload images along with the products? Like after you upload the products, I will have to upload images one by one again? Can someone help me out here? And what should I enter
      • Subheaders for Sections in forms

        Currently, every form section has a field name, which one can choose to show/hide to the end user. It would be great if there was an option to show a SUB-HEADER in addition to a header. It would be useful for explaining to the end user what the section
      • Custom view inconsistencies

        Why is "is not" missing from criteria, along with other comparison operators ??? It makes it almost impossible to build required custom views, I don't want "void" invoices listed & why on earth would "Void" invoices be showing when the criteria includes
      • Promote a layout to standard so I can delete one layout

        Similar to this and many other topics: https://help.zoho.com/portal/en/community/topic/set-layout-as-standard The problem, every model has a standard layout, which is what we use most of the time... But as the business grows and evolves we may have to
      • Can Zia summarize fields?

        A great use case of AI for me would be summarizing company descriptions. We often get long winded descriptions from databases or scraping websites, then reduce them to a couple of sentences stating what a company actually does. Is there any way within
      • Zoho Recruit Community Meet-up - India (Venues Finalised)

        Zoho Recruit Community Meet-up - India (Venues Finalised) Namaste, India. 🙏🏼 The Zoho Recruit team is hitting the road—and we're absolutely excited behind the scenes. Join us for the Zoho Recruit India Meet-up 2026, a morning designed to make your recruiting
      • [Webinar] Solving business challenges: Secure, real-time, and external collaboration

        Hi Zoho Writer users, We are excited to announce Zoho Writer's webinar for March 2026: Solving business challenges: Secure, real-time, and external collaboration. Zoho Writer supports real-time collaboration by allowing teams to work together in documents.
      • Table dimensions

        I try changing the dimensions of the table on my computer but it doesn't change. Do I have to be a premium member or does it only work on the app?
      • Zoho CRM Community Digest - January 2026 | Part 2

        Hello Everyone! Here’s the second part of January’s Zoho CRM Community Digest, rounding up the remaining highlights from the month. From newly rolled out updates to thoughtful implementation questions and practical solutions, the community once again
      • Find and Merge Duplicates to trigger webhook

        My sales team uses the Find and Merge Duplicates feature often to cleanup records in the CRM. We use webhooks to signal to our internal tools database when new Contacts are created, updated, or deleted, in order to keep our DB in sync with Zoho CRM. However,
      • Introducing WhatsApp integration and quick editing capabilities in Zoho Sign

        Hi there, Zoho Sign already helps users collect signatures via email and SMS, and we're happy to announce that you can now send documents and authenticate recipients right through WhatsApp. Some of the key benefits include: Communication with recipients
      • Dynamic Field Folders in OneDrive

        Hi, With the 2 options today we have either a Dynamic Parent Folder and lots of attachments all in that one folder with only the ability to set the file name (Which is also not incremented so if I upload 5 photos to one field they are all named the same
      • Logging Out of FSM

        I have tried to log out of FSM app of the last person and it will not let me do so. I need to log in to my account.
      • Enhancement in Zoho CRM: Control who gets to participate in a forecast by customizing the user hierarchy

        Include only users from the sales function; exclude the rest Dear Customers, We hope you're well! We started this year with a series of exciting enhancements to Zoho CRM and to this list, we are thrilled to add an enhancement to forecasting. Let's talk
      • Multiple Zoho One accounts

        Hello. I'm searching for a solution to run multiple organizations under 1 Zoho One account or have a different Zoho One account for each organization and still be able to easily login to each. Currently Zoho One doesn't allow the same email address to
      • Tips and tricks #63: Hold and Drag to select elements in the Show app for iOS

        Hello everyone! Welcome to another tips and tricks article. In today's article, we will learn about the Hold and Drag function in the Show app for iOS. The Hold and Drag option lets you select multiple elements on a slide quickly. Once they are selected,
      • Organize and manage PDFs with Zoho PDF Editor's dashboard

        Hello users, Zoho PDF Editor's dashboard is a one-stop place to upload, sort, share PDF files, and more. This article will explore the various capabilities that Zoho PDF Editor's dashboard offers. A few highlights of Zoho PDF Editor's dashboard: Upload
      • Possible to generate/download Quote PDF using REST API?

        See title. Is there any way after a quote has been created to export to a PDF using a specified template and then download it? Seems like something that should be doable. Is this not supported in the API v2.0?
      • Free Webinar - AI for email: Helpful or Hype?

        Hello, Zoho Mail community! 👋 We're kicking things off with a webinar you won't want to miss—and yes, we're going there: Is AI in email actually useful, or is it all hype? In this session, two of our experts will have an open, no-fluff conversation about
      • Balancing access, security, and productivity with Email Policy

        An organization typically includes multiple user groups, such as leadership, sales, and support, each with different email usage patterns and security needs. Administrators must balance flexibility and control, thereby ensuring email usage aligns with
      • Is it possible to update multiple work items at once?

        Hi, Is it possible to update the statuses/release tags of multiple work items at once? I came across this thread that says it's not possible at the moment, but it was related to the Sprints mobile app. Does this feature not exist in the website as well?
      • See Every IM Conversation as It Happens

        Instant messaging moves fast. Customers expect quick replies and smooth conversations across WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, and live chat. But without real-time visibility, small issues become big problems. A session stays open longer than expected. A
      • Release Notes | January 2026

        We have rolled out a set of powerful new enhancements across Zoho Vertical Studio that bring several long-awaited capabilities to your applications. These updates focus on deeper customization, smarter automation, better reporting, and improved usability
      • Product Request: Send email to Secondary email

        Guys, we should be able to send the campaign to the secondary email too.  Is this on the plans for Zoho Campaign? It looks like I can map the secondary email from the CRM to the Campaigs, but can not send the message.  
      • Franchise

        Is there a solution of how to organize global franchise organisations?
      • Holidays

        Hi; For defining Holidays, you need to add logic to handle the year as well as the month & day. We need to be able to enter Holidays for the next year. I need to add a holiday for January 2, 2017, but I can't until January 1st, which is a Sunday and we
      • Composite Product (kit) - Dynamic Pricing

        I am setting up Composite Products for item kits that I sell. I also sell the items from the kit individually. Problem is when pricing changes on an individual part, the Composite Product price does not change meaning when the cost of item # 2 in the
      • Urgent: Slow Loading Issue on Zoho Commerce Website

        Dear Zoho Support Team, I am experiencing slow loading times on my Zoho Commerce website, which is affecting its performance and user experience. The issue persists across different devices and networks. Could you please investigate this matter and provide
      • Next Page