5 Reasons to Verify Phone Numbers Before the Holidays
Verify phone numbers before the holidays to protect yourself and your business. You can verify individual numbers or upload an entire list to be checked. Why?
A phone validator can tell you if a phone number is active and reachable before you use it. It also tells you the line type of the number. You can also conduct a Do Not Call (DNC) list check. All of this information is important for maintaining good, complete data.
We recommend that you verify phone numbers at least twice a year, but it’s especially important around the holidays. There is a lot to get done at the end of the year. You want to finish the year strong and start the new year strong. Verifying phone numbers is one task you don’t want to ignore.
5 Reasons to Verify Phone Numbers Before the Holidays
Here are 5 reasons why it’s particularly important to verify phone numbers before the holidays.
1. Avoid Scams
Scams increase during the holidays. You might experience a surge of calls from unknown numbers in November and December. More shopping means that more contact data is exchanged. Holiday spirit might cause you to lower your guard. And scammers take particular advantage of people’s charity around the holidays.
However, if you use a bulk phone validator to verify phone numbers in your contact list, you can be one step ahead. By verifying your list, you hold on to numbers that you know, trust, and recognize, and you get rid of the rest. Once you do this, you know to treat unknown numbers with a little more caution.
2. Verify Vendor Information
You will want to verify phone numbers for vendors you’ve worked with or which you might want to work with. Just like your own business, vendors’ contact information can change with any number of events. They could move, go out of business, change hands, or even scale up. Any of these factors could result in a change of phone number.
To work with vendors you trust, you will need to make sure you have up-to-date contact information for them. And don’t forget to purge any information that is no longer active or accurate—you don’t want to waste time on incorrect information. This will save you time next year.
3. Verify Client Contact Lists
Once you verify phone numbers for vendors, verify your client list. We recommend checking your list at least every six months. So, that might approximately be mid-year and end-of-the-year. If you haven’t done it yet, definitely do it before the holidays.
First, you want to make sure you go into the new year with good, clean, accurate data. Customer data changes often. Avoid wasting time and money reaching out to inactive, outdated numbers.
Second, consumers are catching on to the fact that phone numbers are used for customer identification and therefore should be treated as sensitive information. So, you might see an increase in fake phone numbers entering your database around the holidays as consumers attempt to protect their privacy and avoid telemarketing calls, spam, and scams.
To combat this, consider automating your system with a phone validator API. This way, you can verify phone numbers at the point of entry. Let good data in and keep bad data out.
Third, a phone validator indicates the line type of a phone number. This is useful if you use or plan to use SMS messaging. You might want to send out holiday or new year specials, deals, updates, etc. via text message. To do so efficiently, you will need to know which numbers in your list are cell phone numbers that can receive the messages.
4. DNC List Check
A phone validator also checks phone numbers against the DNC list. This lets you know which numbers are safe to call and which have been registered as uninterested in telemarketing calls. Failure to comply could result in hefty fines per call. Double check your contacts at the end of the year before the holidays to set yourself up for success in the new year.
5. Plan Ahead
If you verify phone numbers before the holidays, you give yourself a start on the new year. But we know that you are swamped with end-of-the-year tasks. Plan ahead, prioritize, and delegate. Fortunately, it only takes a few minutes to verify phone numbers, and a phone validator API can verify records at the point of entry.
Just keep in mind that the sooner you verify your data, the sooner you can use it, and the better it will work for you.
How to Verify Phone Numbers
You can verify phone numbers individually or in bulk. Use a phone validator to distinguish cell phone numbers from landline and VoIP numbers. The phone validator also tells you whether a number is active before you call and whether it’s on the DNC list. Just enter the phone number in question, select the information you need, and verify!
If you would like to verify multiple phone numbers, use our bulk phone validator. This allows you to upload an entire list of numbers. There is no minimum or maximum number of records allowed. Upload your list, identify the information you would like returned, and process. Cumulative pricing allows for volume discounts. This means that the more records you verify, the less you pay per record!
Conclusion
When you verify phone numbers with Searchbug, there are no set-up fees, no annual fees, and no contracts. You only pay for the information you need. Furthermore, volume-based pricing means that you pay less per record the more you upload. Now, we even offer monthly cumulative volume-based pricing. That means that your volume is counted each time you upload within a given month!
We recommend you verify your data right before you use it. That way you know the data is as up-to-date as possible. So depending on your needs, you might want to verify phone numbers in more than one batch. Now, all of those records count toward your volume-based pricing!
It’s important to verify phone numbers before you conduct any outreach or roll out marketing campaigns. But the end of the year, around the holidays, might be one of the best times to do so. You can prevent a lot of costly mistakes around one of the busiest times of the year, and you can set yourself up for a smooth and successful new year!
