Clean up your number list — stop paying for dead numbers
Every contact list that has grown over the years contains numbers that no longer exist or were mistyped at some point. Every message sent to them costs credits and returns nothing. With a bulk HLR lookup you check up front which numbers really exist, are active and which operator they belong to.
What is an HLR lookup?
The Home Location Register is the central database in which a mobile operator keeps track of which numbers belong to it and where a device is located. With an HLR lookup we query that database directly: does this number exist, is it active, and which operator does it belong to right now?
That last point matters more than it seems. Since number portability, a number range no longer says anything about the operator: someone with an old Proximus number may have been with a different operator for years. An HLR lookup returns the operator the number actually belongs to.
Clean up your list in 4 steps
Prepare the list
Put the mobile numbers in an Excel file. The number column is looked up; if it is not found, the first column is used.
Upload the file
Upload the file in your account. You see how many numbers were found and receive a batch ID.
Wait for processing
The check runs in the background, so you can close the window. The result is sent to the e-mail address of your account.
Update the list
Remove the numbers that no longer exist from your file and from now on only send to what remains.
When is cleaning up worth it?
| Situation | Why check first |
|---|---|
| List several years old | Numbers expire, people switch operator or cancel. Without a check you pay for every dead number. |
| List taken over from another system | Migrations introduce formatting errors — missing country codes, landlines mixed in with mobile numbers. |
| Large one-off campaign | With thousands of recipients the cost of checking is easily outweighed by the wasted messages avoided. |
| Many Undelivered entries in your reports | A clear signal that your list is polluted — see the delivery statuses. |
| Numbers from a web form | Customers often mistype. Checking at the moment of entry prevents the problem right away. |
Also per number or through the API
Check a single number. For a one-off check you simply type in the number and get the result on screen straight away, together with the history of earlier lookups.
Through the REST API. The most interesting variant: check a number at the moment a customer enters it in your form, instead of cleaning up your entire file afterwards. That way a wrong number never ends up in your database.
Every lookup costs credits, just like a sent message. On a large list that is usually easily outweighed by the credits you would otherwise waste on numbers that receive nothing anyway.
