Clean Up Your Real Estate Database with Phone Validator
Using a phone validator to clean your real estate database is the best way to save time and money both for small-scale and large-scale outreach. If you work in the real estate industry, you likely handle long lists of phone numbers for leads and existing clients.
But what happens if you call a number for the first time that isn’t active? Or if you call a number that is registered on the Do-Not-Call (DNC) registry? And what if clients change phone numbers and fail to update you?
Knowing that you are only working with active, reachable numbers saves time, money, and your reputation. With a phone validator, you can be confident about reaching out to each number in your database.
Why Phone Numbers are Important to the Real Estate Industry
There are many ways realtors can generate and keep track of leads. Whether it’s through social media, door to door conversations, referrals, or cold calling, realtors must be able to rely on the data they generate. This includes names, addresses, and phone numbers. How else can you communicate with existing and prospective clients?
Active, reachable phone numbers are integral to consistent, reliable communication. Real estate investors, wholesalers, brokers, and agents need to communicate with property owners in order to acquire properties. They also need to communicate with clients who are looking to purchase properties. But how do realtors find their leads in the first place?
Just like any industry, real estate leads come from a variety of sources. Agents can get active on social media, scour databases, go door to door, rely on referrals, create lead generation web forms, or even make cold calls. According to Kyle Handy, real estate cold calling is still a staple strategy in the industry.
In addition to generating leads, you also need reliable phone numbers in the real estate industry to track your leads through the buying cycle. You will want to check in regularly, make follow-up calls, communicate important updates, and retain your leads as lifelong clients.
In short, phone numbers are necessary for finding new inventory, generating leads, and retaining clients. The more valid phone numbers you can acquire, the more sellers you can contact. How do you know if numbers are valid? Use a phone validator.
What is a Phone Validator?
A phone validator serves many purposes. Essentially, a phone validator provides you with information about a phone number. Just by entering the number, you receive the line type, active status, and DNC list check. How?
When you enter a phone number (US or Canadian) using the tool, you can indicate what information you’d like returned on the number. Results typically include line type, active status, carrier name, location, and DNC list check.
What this means is that you can tell whether a number is even active or reachable before bothering to call it or store it for future reference. You can tell whether a number is landline, cell, or VoIP which lets you know if a number can receive SMS text message communication before wasting time and money sending messages that can’t and won’t be received.
A phone validator can also provide you with the associated location, time zone, area code information, and map. This can help you organize your database geographically which is especially important in the real estate industry as location matters!
Finally, a phone validator can indicate which numbers are safe to call and which are protected by the DNC registry. Registrants on the DNC list have indicated that they do not wish to be contacted by telemarketers. Failure to honor this request could result in over a thousand dollars in fines per call! So you definitely want to know which numbers are on this list before conducting any sort of cold calling or other marketing outreach.
Searchbug’s phone validator relies on the North American Numbering Plan Administration (NANPA), Canadian Number Administrator, specialized phone company databases, and other near-real time sources to guarantee reliable, up-to-date information. While not all information is available for every number, you can at least be sure that the data you receive is reliable and current.
How to Use Phone Validator to Clean Your Real Estate Database
Regardless of where the numbers come from (referrals, databases, web forms, social media, etc.), you must use caution when calling a number for the first time. Here are a few ways to use a phone validator to protect yourself from bad contact data.
Avoid Unreachable Numbers
First of all, cold calling can be time-consuming. So in order to be the most efficient, you don’t want to waste time calling numbers that aren’t even valid or active.
Incorrect and invalid phone numbers can enter your database through unintentional data entry mistakes. Fake numbers can enter your database by leads that don’t actually wish to be contacted via phone. Most of the time, you won’t be able to tell if a number is valid just by looking at it. And you wouldn’t want to. That could cost unnecessary time when a phone validator can do the work for you.
If you do rely on web forms to collect contact information, you might want to implement validation error messages to prevent costly typos. You can even integrate a real-time API into your website or software to check data at the point of entry. This lets good data in and keeps bad data out to protect you in between periods of checking, or cleaning, your database.
Protect Your Real Estate Database from Data Decay
Secondly, you might keep phone numbers for a long time if you want to maintain long-term relationships with your leads and clients. So numbers that were active when you first received them could change over time. How will you know if someone changes phone numbers, switches phone carriers, or registers the number on the DNC list?
To ensure that you are always working with up-to-date contact data, you will want to clean your list at least twice a year. Fortunately, you can do so quickly and easily. All you have to do is upload your entire list to a bulk phone validator. This helps you catch information that has decayed, or become outdated over time.
Optimize SMS Marketing
Third, a phone validator lets you know which numbers are cell and which are landline. If you utilize SMS marketing methods, you will want to save yourself time and money by only sending campaigns to numbers that will actually receive them.
This protects your metrics as well. You want to know that your response rate is based on the number of people who received the messages rather than wondering if they even received the campaign at all.
Remain TCPA Compliant
The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) does just what its name suggests: it protects consumers from unwanted telephone calls. Therefore, realtors and other types of telemarketers are prohibited from calling numbers registered on the DNC list. Failure to comply can result in thousands of dollars in fines.
Fortunately, a phone validator checks numbers against this list. That way, you know which numbers are safe for you to contact! Just don’t forget to double check a couple of times a year, just in case a number’s status changes.
Always Call at the Right Time
Another helpful feature of a phone validator is the location information. If you know the time zone a number is associated with, you can call at the most opportune times. And if you aren’t interested in the area the number is tied to, you might decide to move on altogether!
Why Use a Phone Validator to Clean Your Real Estate Database?
- makes sure phone numbers in your contact list are still valid
- indicates whether numbers are cell, landline, or VoIP
- verifies that phone numbers are reachable before you use them
Verifying phone numbers prevents you from wasting time and money on outdated and incorrect information. Instead, spend that time talking to more sellers. Generate valuable leads with verified property owner information, and build a database that you can count on to maximize your sales volume.
To verify numbers at the point of entry, consider adding an API to your website or hardware. And to conduct regular cleaning of your database, upload your entire list for bulk validation. Have contacts with missing fields? Check out Searchbug’s batch append tool to find property owner name and phone number from an address or to add phone numbers to your list of addresses.
Stop wasting time on invalid data, and use a phone validator to clean your real estate database today!
