The Problem
A regional CPaaS provider was sending millions of outbound SMS messages per month on behalf of enterprise marketing clients. Their process: ingest the client list, run the campaign, report on delivery rates.
On average, 30–40% of records in raw marketing lists are undeliverable — landlines, deactivated numbers, ported numbers with wrong carrier routing, or numbers that cannot receive SMS at all. Every send attempt to these numbers was a direct cost, and repeat attempts were eroding their sender reputation with downstream carriers.
By the time a campaign completed, clients were questioning deliverability rates hovering around 71% — and the CPaaS team had no mechanism to diagnose it before the next campaign launched.
Impact before VRI
- ~71% average SMS deliverability across campaigns
- Invalid send costs billed at full rate with no recourse
- Spam complaint rate of 3.1% — approaching carrier risk thresholds
- No visibility into carrier routing or number type before send
The Solution
The team integrated VRI's Combined Enhanced LRN + Messaging Provider ID API (at $0.0014/lookup) into their pre-campaign validation workflow. Before any list was loaded into their send queue, every phone number was passed through a single VRI API call that returned:
- Line type (landline, mobile, VoIP, toll-free)
- Porting status and current carrier
- Messaging Provider ID — the specific SMS gateway/aggregator the number routes through
- Number reachability indicator
Numbers flagged as landlines, deactivated, or with carrier routing that indicated non-SMS-capable lines were removed from the send queue automatically. Numbers with unusual porting activity were flagged for human review.
The entire validation pipeline added less than 200ms of latency to list ingestion.
The Results
| Metric | Before VRI | After VRI | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| SMS deliverability rate | 71% | 94% | +32% |
| Invalid send spend | Baseline | — | -34% |
| Spam complaint rate | 3.1% | 1.4% | -55% |
| List processing time | Manual QA required | Automated | -100% manual touch |
| API cost per validated number | — | $0.0014 | — |
For a provider sending 2 million messages per month, eliminating 34% of invalid sends at $0.01/SMS = $6,800/month in recovered send spend against ~$2,800/month in VRI API costs — a 2.4x ROI in the first month.
What They Said
"We were flying blind before VRI. Now we know exactly which numbers can receive SMS before we hit send — landlines get filtered, bad routes get caught, and our deliverability jumped overnight. Our clients noticed before we even told them."
[REPLACE WITH REAL TESTIMONIAL]
Stop paying to send messages that can never be delivered.
VRI's Combined Enhanced LRN + Messaging Provider ID API validates any phone number in real time for $0.0014/lookup — less than the cost of a single wasted send.