Complete Guide to Base Screening: What is Number Base? Why do we need to screen before investing when acquiring customers overseas?

In the overseas customer acquisition scenario, whether you are doing private message promotion through Telegram, WhatsApp or Line, the first batch of phone numbers you get are usually called the base material. These bases may come from purchased, generated or own data, but their common feature is that they are without any verification - you do not know which numbers have been registered on the target platform, which are active users, and which are male or female. Directly putting such bottom materials in is tantamount to casting a net to catch fish without knowing whether there are fish in the water. Basic material screening is the core link to solve this problem: by batch testing the platform status, activity, gender and other dimensions of the numbers, the truly available numbers are screened out, and then put into promotion. This article will start from the definition of base material, break down why it is necessary to screen before investing, and provide a complete workflow from generation to duplication to help you improve customer acquisition ROI.

What is base material? What does “number base material” mean when acquiring customers overseas?

Base material, in the field of overseas marketing and social promotion, specifically refers to the original phone number list that has not been verified by any platform. These numbers may come from a variety of sources, but none have been checked for status by any platform. The opposite is “clean data” - that is, a list of numbers that has been verified by the number screening platform, confirmed to be registered on the target platform (such as Telegram, WhatsApp, Zalo, etc.), has an activity level that meets the standards, and even comes with portrait fields such as gender, age group, etc.

Common sources of base ingredients

• Number Purchase: A list of phone numbers purchased in bulk from third-party data vendors or forums, usually packaged and sold by country/region, with low prices but uncontrollable quality.
• Overseas number generation tool: Generate numbers through random algorithms or number segment rules, such as using a global number generator to generate numbers for more than 240 countries without any activation verification.
• Export of own customer data: Although the user mobile phone numbers exported by the company from CRM, order systems, and customer service records are authentic and reliable, some users may have changed their numbers or not registered on the target platform.
• Crawler acquisition: Contact numbers captured from public web pages and social media user profiles. This type of data is often mixed with a large number of invalid numbers and fake numbers.

Regardless of the source, the raw nature of the base material means that it contains a lot of “impurities”: invalid numbers, unregistered numbers, canceled numbers, inactive numbers, and even wrong numbers. Use these numbers directly for promotion, and the results can be imagined.

Potential quality hazards of base materials

• A large number of invalid numbers: According to industry experience, among the base materials purchased from ordinary channels, the registration rate for Telegram or WhatsApp may be only 30%–50%, and the remaining numbers do not exist on the corresponding platforms at all. If you submit this type of number, the platform will not respond but still deduct fees.
• Low active number: Even if the user is registered, if the user has not logged in for several months, the private message opening rate will be extremely low and the conversion effect will be close to zero.
• Gender/Platform Mismatch: For example, pushing beauty products to male numbers, or sending WhatsApp links to users who only use Zalo, the conversion will inevitably be poor. Wrong targeting not only wastes budget, but may also lead to account complaints and bans.

Why must the base material be screened before throwing in? Three major risks of direct investment

In order to pursue speed, many teams upload the basic materials directly to Telegram or WhatsApp group messaging software, hoping to win through quantity. This approach has huge risks in terms of cost, conversion rate and account health.

Risk 1: Invalid numbers waste high budget

Suppose you purchase 100,000 U.S. number base materials at a unit price of 0.01/piece and a cost of1,000. If the mass sending system is directly imported and the cost of sending each message (platform API fee, channel fee, server fee) is assumed to be US0.02, then it will cost an additional US2,000 to send all 100,000 messages. However, the actual registration rate may only be 40%, that is, 60,000 numbers are invalid, and these 60,000 sendings are completely wasted - not only does it pay for the sending of invalid numbers, but the sending of these numbers itself is meaningless. To make matters worse, mass sending software usually charges per item or task, and invalid sending also consumes credit.

Risk 2: Low activity leads to conversion rate approaching zero

Even if the number is registered with Telegram or WhatsApp, if the user has never logged in in the last 30 days, the chance of the private message being opened is extremely low. For industries such as e-commerce and finance that require immediate response, a user who has not logged in for 60 days will hardly generate any conversions. If 70% of the registered users in the base material are “zombie accounts”, then only about 12% of the actual effective users remain (assuming a registration rate of 40% × an activity rate of 30%). Select Activity Detection when filtering numbers and set a 7-day or 30-day active window, which can help you filter out low-quality numbers and focus your limited budget on users who really have a chance of opening the message.

Risk 3: Gender/platform mismatch affects targeting accuracy

User profiles on different platforms vary greatly. Telegram users tend to be in technical communities and cryptocurrency groups, WhatsApp is popular globally but mainly in family groups, Line is dominant in Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand, and Zalo is Vietnam’s national social application. If the base material you get is a pure phone number without any platform identification, you may put the ads that should be promoted on Telegram into Line mass mailings, or send product information for women to a large number of male numbers. Through the gender identification and platform identification export (such as tgid, wsid, uid) of the screening tool, you can accurately filter out the numbers that are “female + registered on Telegram + active in the past 7 days”, improving the targeting accuracy several times.

What are the core detection dimensions of base material screening?

A complete base material screening process should at least cover the following detection dimensions. The more dimensions, the cleaner the screened data will be.

Detection Dimensions	Description	Typical Applications
Activation detection	Verify whether the number is registered on the target platform (such as whether Telegram is activated, whether WhatsApp is valid)	Filter out invalid numbers
Activity Detection	Detect whether the user’s last login is within a specified time window (such as 7 days, 30 days, 90 days)	Filter recent active users
Gender Identification	Determine the user’s gender through platform-related information (some platforms can return fields such as age, race, etc.)	Gender-targeted marketing
Platform ID Export	Export the number’s unique ID within the platform (such as Telegram’s tgid, WhatsApp’s wsid, Line’s uid)	Secondary precise contact, deduplication
Country/Region	Inherent attributes of the number, used for geographical targeting	Regional promotion

Note: Gender detection is not 100% accurate. For example, Telegram’s gender data comes from public information filled in by users, and the age field can be used as a reference. It is not recommended to make up “age-specific products” or claim to have ID card-level accuracy, just use it reasonably.

Four-step workflow for efficient base material screening: generate → filter → remove duplicates → export

With the concept of base material and detection dimensions, let’s take a look at an efficient workflow from scratch. Taking screening platforms such as KK-DATA as an example, the complete process is usually divided into four steps.

Step 1: Prepare the underlying number pool

You need an original list of numbers. If you don’t have ready-made base materials on hand, you can use the Global Number Generator, which supports random number generation in more than 240 countries/regions, or you can import CSV through custom number segments. Generating is completely free and does not consume your balance. The purpose of this step is to establish a large enough number pool as the basis for subsequent screening.

Step 2: Configure multi-platform screening tasks

Create a new task in the console and select the target platform (supports simultaneous detection of multiple platforms, such as verifying Telegram and WhatsApp at the same time). Check the required detection type: activated, active, gender, etc. Before submission, the system will automatically calculate the estimated fee (billing by item, see the real-time price on the console for details), and execute it after confirmation. A maximum of approximately 1 million numbers can be uploaded in a single task.

Step 3: Use deduplication warehouse to avoid repeated detection

If multiple number screening tasks are performed frequently, the same number is likely to be repeatedly submitted for detection, resulting in a waste of balance. Use Data Deduplication Warehouse to automatically compare with historical task results before submitting new tasks, and eliminate detected numbers. The deduplication warehouse takes effect across tasks, which can save a lot of costs in the long run.

Step 4: Export filter results

Once the task is completed, select the desired format (CSV, TXT, etc.) to export the results. Exported fields include: number, platform, activation status, activity, gender (if any), platform ID, etc. This data can be directly imported into mass messaging tools for precise promotion.

What are the differences in base material screening on different platforms? (Telegram, WhatsApp, Line, Zalo)

Each social platform has different priorities for screening base materials, and one size cannot fit all.

• Telegram: Prioritize active windows. Telegram users have diverse habits, some are active every day, and some only log in occasionally. It is recommended to choose 7-day or 30-day activity detection; if you need to obtain user portraits, you can choose gender recognition.
• WhatsApp: The core is activated status. WhatsApp has a large user base, but many numbers may not be registered or have been changed. Do the activation test first, and then decide whether to check the activity based on business needs (WhatsApp activity detection depends on the user’s last online status, and some numbers may not be available).
• Line: In addition to openness and activity, gender orientation is an important dimension. Among Line users in Japan, Thailand, and Taiwan, the behavioral patterns of men and women are obviously different (for example, women prefer beauty, maternal and infant information). Checking the gender field when filtering can improve conversions.
• Zalo: For Vietnam/Southeast Asia market. Zalo’s user group is young and highly active, but region and gender are also key. It is recommended to give priority to the opening test, and then filter according to the regional activity data of each province in Vietnam.

Common misunderstandings and best practices in base material screening

Misunderstanding 1: Sifting the base material once is enough

Fact: Number status changes. A user who is active on Telegram today may be banned or logged out in a month. It is recommended that teams that serve cyclical marketing (such as pushing discount information every week) re-screen their base materials every 30 days.

Misunderstanding 2: The bigger the number pool, the better

Fact: Too big to be fine. Out of a million profiles, maybe only 200,000 are valid and active, with poor gender matching. It is better to screen out 100,000 high-quality numbers first and concentrate resources on conversion. Quality far outweighs quantity.

Misunderstanding 3: Not paying attention to duplication removal

Fact: If multiple tasks contain the same number, duplicate detection will cause a waste of balance. Enabling a deduplication warehouse can avoid unnecessary expenses.

Best Practices

• Batch screening: For very large base materials, it is recommended to submit in batches of 50,000-100,000 items to facilitate budget control and observe the quality of the results.
• Prioritize recent active numbers: In Telegram promotion, the private message opening rate of 7-day active users is more than 3 times that of 30-day active users.
• Pair with gender targeting: If the product is aimed at women, be sure to use gender filtering; if the product has a wide audience of men, also check the gender field to ensure that the correct group of people is covered.

How to evaluate whether a base material screening tool is reliable?

When choosing a screening platform, you can examine it from the following five dimensions:

1. Detection dimension coverage: Does it support the export of activation, activity, gender, and platform ID of multiple platforms (Telegram, WhatsApp, Line, Zalo, iMessage, RCS, Binance, LinkedIn, etc.)? The wider the coverage, the more dimensional data can be produced at one time, and the higher the efficiency.
2. Task efficiency and scale: Does it support a single task with millions of numbers? Does the task processing speed meet the business pace? Don’t choose a gadget that can only handle a few thousand entries.
3. Cost structure: It is best to choose a platform with per-item billing and no subscription packages. A subscription system may allow you to pay for unused capacity, while a pay-as-you-go basis is more flexible. Pay attention to confirm the deposit threshold (such as USDT minimum 50 USDT) and balance usage rules.
4. Data export flexibility: Supports multiple formats such as CSV, TXT, etc., and the export fields can be customized (for example, choose to export only women + active users).
5. Customer Service Support: Overseas business often suffers from time differences. Is there a Telegram customer service robot for two-way contact? Can you respond quickly to technical issues?

Taking KK-DATA as an example, it meets most of the above conditions: it supports multi-platform detection such as Telegram, WhatsApp, Line, Zalo, etc.; the upper limit of a single task is about 1 million; it is billed on a per-item basis and USDT is anonymously recharged; it provides Telegram two-way customer service (@kkdata_robot) and detailed documentation (docs.kkdata.cc). You can evaluate based on your own needs.

FAQ

**Q: Do we need to distinguish between countries when selecting base materials? ** Answer: Yes. Users in different countries have different platform preferences. For example, Japanese users prefer Line, and Vietnamese users prefer Zalo. When filtering numbers, it is recommended to create separate tasks by country/region, or use number prefixes to filter.

**Q: How many numbers can be processed at a time in one screening task? ** Answer: Taking KK-DATA as an example, the maximum number of single tasks is about 1 million. If this number is exceeded, it is recommended to process it in batches to avoid task timeouts or system limitations. Please consult the platform documentation for specific restrictions.

**Q: How accurate is gender detection? ** A: Gender data comes from information actively filled in by users on each platform or third-party inference. The accuracy is about 60%–80%, depending on the platform and region. It cannot be used as a 100% accurate basis for targeting, but it can significantly narrow the target range.

**Q: How long does it take for the screened numbers to be retested? ** Answer: It is recommended to recheck activity every 30 days because user status will change. For one-time marketing activities, screening once is enough; for long-term operating communities, periodic screening is essential.

**Q: Why is it recommended to use a number generator to generate numbers first and then filter? ** Answer: The base material purchased directly may have been used many times and the quality varies. By using the global number generator (free) and screening numbers, you can control the freshness and quantity of the number pool yourself and avoid purchasing second-hand data.

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Screening of base materials is a link that cannot be omitted when acquiring customers overseas. By screening before investing, you can significantly reduce ineffective budgets, increase conversion rates, and protect account health. Whether you are new to the concept of primers or a veteran looking for a more efficient screening method, it is worth taking the time to establish a standardized screening workflow. If you want to quickly experience the complete screening process, you can 👉 Log in to the console to start screening, or contact customer service in both directions on Telegram https://t.me/kkdata_robot for help. For detailed platform operation guide, please refer to Usage Documentation.