Phone Validation

People change phone numbers regularly, causing headaches for customer service representatives and data managers across organizations. Maintaining a database of active phone numbers constantly challenges data-driven organizations. However, businesses with proper phone verification processes deliver a positive customer experience. Finding the best method for checking a mobile number’s active status allows your organization to save time and maintain better customer relationships simultaneously. Why is checking my phone number important? Accurate contact data is one of a business’s most valuable resources. After all, the best businesses are transparent, communicative, and responsive to their customers. However, inaccurate phone numbers are a significant obstacle in that relationship. Knowing how to check if a phone number is active goes a long way toward maintaining strong relationships with customers and keeping an open line of communication. Checking that you have an active phone number for your customer is a necessity for organizations as accurate data can be used for various purposes, such as: Contacting a customer about a transaction Verifying a customer's identity Updating customers about their order status via text message Reaching customers through marketing campaigns Receiving customer feedback through phone surveys Connecting customers to a loyalty program Improper phone number data hinders these processes and negatively affects customer relationships. Despite the importance of knowing a mobile number’s active status and having accurate data, maintaining accuracy can be easier said than done. Phone data can grow outdated as people change numbers, making it harder to keep up with active, usable data. If you don’t have a system to check if a phone number is active, you and your team may waste valuable time and resources contacting inactive phone numbers. How to tell if a phone number is active or not Businesses wanting to stay ahead must know how to check if a number is still in service quickly and efficiently. An efficient process supports consistent customer communication without straining employee workloads. There are three ways to check whether or not a phone number is active. Contact the recipient The first and most obvious way to verify a mobile number’s active status is to call it directly. Prepare a script explaining why you are reaching out to the customer and touch on the information you want to share or gain from them. However, if the phone number isn’t working, that doesn’t necessarily mean it is not an active phone number, as the information may have been inputted incorrectly. To double-check, you can contact the customer through other channels to verify their information. For example, you can email your customers to confirm their phone numbers, although this is a time-consuming method that prevents your team from accomplishing other tasks. How to know if a number is active without calling If you wonder how to know if a number is active without calling, the simplest method is to use verification tools. All you need to do is type the number into the tool, and you will receive feedback on whether it is an accurate and active phone number. Phone number validation tools send a non-disruptive ping to the phone number in question through the network. If the tool receives a response, the number is active; if not, it is no longer in service. This instant process gives quick feedback allowing you to take action based on the result. Phone number verification tools are great because they can verify the accuracy of a single number or cleanse entire lists of inactive numbers. Using these tools periodically lets you maintain a database of accurate data. Real-time phone verification The best way to maintain a database of active phone numbers is to prevent inaccurate or invalid numbers from entering it. Real-time verification immediately tells you whether the customer added an accurate and active phone number so you can vet and correctly format numbers at the point of entry. This tool can be integrated directly into a customer relationship management (CRM) tool or a customer-facing website. Real-time phone verification performs the same as standard verification tools but works directly within a system for immediate feedback. For example, when a customer service representative enters a new customer’s data, the CRM tool verifies in real time the mobile number’s active status or whether it needs to be corrected. The system is also useful when a customer creates a profile on your website and can prompt the customer to make changes if necessary. Integrating a real-time verification tool into your current systems helps you avoid guessing whether or not you have active numbers. Although you should perform list cleansing periodically, real-time verification also saves time in the future by reducing the number of phone numbers that need to be corrected. The benefits of phone verification tools Knowing how to check if a phone number is active without calling is highly valuable for a business. Using phone verification tools improves customer reach and enhances the customer experience by reducing inaccuracy. Altogether, using phone verification tools offers multiple benefits: Providing organizations with confidence in reaching customers Saving time and money by eliminating the need to check numbers manually Ensuring better customer experience through improved contact Allowing bulk phone number verification You can use phone verification tools at the point that data enters the database or at various points in time to check for outdated phone numbers. By integrating verification tools into your current systems, you can streamline your process for maintaining accurate phone numbers and allow your team time to focus on strengthening customer relationships. How to check if a phone number is active with Experian Active phone numbers are crucial for maintaining positive customer relationships and maintaining reliable contact. With Experian’s phone verification tools, you can enjoy convenience and peace of mind by simplifying your processes for checking whether phone numbers are active. Our tools will save you time and energy by providing you with immediate and reliable feedback. Contact Experian to learn more about how to check if a phone number is active without calling and how to use our phone number verification services to improve your customer relationships. Connect with an expert to learn more

High-quality leads are crucial for sales success. These leads are not just names and phone numbers on a list; they represent potential customers who have shown genuine interest in a company's products or services and are more likely to convert. By focusing on lead quality, sales teams can allocate resources more effectively, prioritizing leads that are more likely to result in successful sales, increasing the conversion rate, and enhancing overall productivity. Enter phone validation, the process of verifying that a phone number is accurate, active, and capable of receiving calls or messages. Ensuring it is correctly formatted and belongs to a legitimate carrier, and an essential tool in enhancing lead quality. This reduces time on invalid leads and improves the chances of successful communication and engagement with potential customers. Furthermore, phone validation can help identify fraudulent or duplicate entries, maintaining the integrity of the lead database. Benefits of implementing phone validation Implementing phone validation helps maintain a clean database, streamline operations, and maximize the return on investment in marketing and sales efforts. Here are some of the key benefits our clients have reported. Improved accuracy: By verifying the accuracy of phone numbers, including format, country code, and activity status, you can enhance your overall communication strategy, ensuring messages reach the intended recipients seamlessly. Enhanced efficiency: Phone validation allows you to quickly identify and eliminate invalid phone numbers from their contact lists, allowing sales and marketing teams to focus on leads with higher conversion potential. Efficient lead management translates to a more productive workforce and quicker response times to potential customers. Cost-effectiveness: Removing invalid or inactive phone numbers helps avoid costs associated with unsuccessful outreach attempts, allowing investment in quality leads with a higher conversion potential. Better targeting: Validated phone data enhances audience segmentation, enabling more effective targeting to specific customer profiles. With validated phone numbers, tailor marketing campaigns to specific demographics or customer profiles, ensuring messages are relevant and engaging. This enhances customer relationships, increases conversion rates, and drives higher revenue. Steps to implement phone validation Ready to onboard a phone validation solution into your existing tech stack? Keep these steps in mind when choosing the right solution for your business. Choose the right phone validation service provider: Consider deployment options, accuracy, reliability, user-friendliness, data freshness and advanced software. Integrate phone validation into your existing sales process: Prepare your CRM or sales software to incorporate the validation service, ensuring real-time verification without disrupting workflow. Train your sales team on the new process: Conduct comprehensive training to familiarize them with the technology and explain how it enhances lead quality and customer interactions. Experian Phone Validation offers simple and actionable validation responses, flexible deployment methods to suit any environment, and a user-friendly portal. Our phone validation solution covers 1500+ telecommunication providers in 240 countries and territories that standardize the format, add international dialing codes, and process data checks with telecommunication providers. In addition, we offer Phone Append that return the phone number associated with the user's name and address and Reverse Phone Append that helps tie your existing phone data to other important customer data. In today's competitive market, ensuring the quality of leads is crucial for any successful sales strategy. Phone validation stands out as a powerful tool in enhancing lead quality, improved data accuracy, cost efficiency, increased conversion rates, and improved customer engagement. By integrating phone validation, you can enhance lead generation processes, boost efficiency, improve client communication, and ultimately achieve higher success rates. Implementing this technology can help sales solidify a foundation for sustained growth and competitive advantage. Start today with a free trial of Experian’s Phone Validation solution. Reach out to one of our data quality experts to learn more about our comprehensive product suite. Fill out the form to learn more:

SMS marketing is a growing channel that businesses are just beginning to understand the power of. However, it is a balancing act as you step into the personal realm of a consumer’s cell phone to know what the correct balance for appropriate engagement is. “With global smartphone penetration at more than 70 percent and corporate website traffic accessed by mobile devices averaging nearly 50 percent, organizations must consider mobile tactics a standard part of their program design.”1 With these growing statistics, it goes to show us that this is an expanding field that we should keep a close eye on. Before we get into how to get started and best practices, let’s level set on what SMS (text message) marketing is. As one can guess, it’s messaging through your mobile device. Furthermore, “it’s a form of opt-in marketing that requires contacts to subscribe. This differentiates it from social marketing, where the marketer posts public content that people can choose to like or follow.”2 Now, we will discuss how you can start to create your campaigns, along with considerations to keep in mind while building out your marketing program. How to get started Your first step is to make sure you have the right phone numbers to reach your customers. Otherwise, you may be targeting the wrong people. Or worse, you may not see any return on investment on your marketing campaign. You can do this with phone verification software.Phone validation is the process of checking if a phone number is accurate. It lets you find out if the phone number you have for a prospect or customer is active and able to receive calls or texts—perfect for text message marketing.Basically, the validation process works by running the phone number through a database, finds the phone number, and checks if it’s active. It does this by sending an invisible message to the owner’s phone, which the owner cannot see. A phone verification software can also collect information like phone type (cell phone or landline) and network provider. Going beyond text message marketing, this can also help your customer service reps and sales reps ensure they have the right phone numbers to help reach prospects and clients. Our latest research shows us that 94 percent of business leaders say the quality of contact data has become more important over the last 12 months. More specifically, 57 percent of those same business leaders say phone data has become more important over the last year. In a digital world, you have to go beyond traditional advertising and capture consumers' attention while they are on the go. That’s why text message marketing is so important. Best practices for text message marketing Gain your prospect’s trust first As we indicated earlier, SMS should be an opt-in service. It is essential to obtain opt-in from your prospects and customers. To do this, consider using your email channel to offer discounts if your prospect signs up for SMS. If you do not follow the opt-in protocol, you risk creating the view that you are spamming them--potentially losing the customers' trust in your brand.  Ensure that you are sending out quality, personalized messages Put yourself in your customers' shoes: The best texts are the ones that capture your attention and are personalized to you based on your past buyer behavior. “The weakest messages contain no personalization, while the best personalized messages offer relevance without violating a consumer’s privacy.”3 Start exploring personalization by mentioning the customer’s first name in the message. If there are areas of voluntary information within a customer’s profile, these fields could be leveraged as well. For example, if I were a dog toy company, an eye-catching text message could state, ‘Hello Phylicia, your dog Conway might want a Halloween treat this month. Click here for 10% off!’. Simple personalization tactics such as this can make the customer rethink that they do want to treat their dog to a special toy. Be clear and concise Requiring that visitors conform to specific formats may ensure that data is structured correctly for your database but could confuse customers whose data doesn’t conform, causing friction and chancing abandonment. Do your research on message character count limits to craft the most concise message possible. Your message should clearly identify an action that you are trying to have your customer engage with. Think of it from your POV: If someone is sending you a promotional text, you probably want it to be short and sweet so that you can read it quickly and identify whether you will act on the text. A message that is too long or accidentally cut off is a fast way to lose someone’s attention—or worse, have them opt-out of your promotional texts entirely. We have explored what SMS messaging is, along with tips to get started and best practices to keep going. We hope that you have received some helpful insight into how to start to get your prospects' trust when you begin your campaigns, how to ensure the messaging is tailored to that customer and the importance of being clear and concise with message delivery. Contact us to learn more 1Foundational Mobile Considerations for Demand Marketing. (2020). Foundational Mobile Considerations for Demand Marketing. Published.2Christina Newberry, C. N. (2021). The Beginner’s Guide to SMS Marketing: Everything You Need to Know. The Beginner’s Guide to SMS Marketing: Everything You Need to Know. Published.3Mobile Messaging Best Practices Illustrated: Marketing report by By Julie Ask with Fiona Swerdlow, Cole Walsh, Peggy Dostie (Forrester)