Using Phone Number as Identifier

During the onboarding process, Insider assists you in configuring the Identity Resolution Management settings based on your existing data source and specific use cases. If you need to make changes to these configured settings after the onboarding phase, Insider provides corresponding assistance to ensure seamless adjustments according to your evolving needs.

Insider supports multiple identifiers, which can be Email, Phone number, or UUID as default ones and/or any custom identifiers that you want to use.

Depending on your existing database and how you identify your data on your end will have effects on Insider’s SMS product. Here are the effects of not using a Phone Number as an identifier for an SMS Product:

Effects of Not Using Phone Number for SMS Events

If you do not prefer to use the phone number as an identifier, you may encounter scenarios where users possess the same phone number attribute but different userIDs in the Unified Customer Database (UCD). Since the UCD assigns distinct userIDs for each phone number, the unification process does not consolidate phone numbers into a single unique userID. Consequently, there's a possibility of receiving duplicate messages due to this unification approach.

In addition, when an SMS message is delivered to any phone number, the SMS delivered and SMS Click events will be assigned only to one of the users, which means these events below will not be attributed to one & only identified phone numbers. These events below can be affected due to this identification & unification process:

• SMS Delivered
• SMS Undelivered
• SMS Dropped 
• SMS Click
• SMS Unsubscribe
• SMS Subscribe
• SMS Reply

Example Case 1

Suppose you launched a campaign on Monday and sent it out. On Tuesday, you plan to send another campaign exclusively to users who did not receive the previous message. 

In cases where phone numbers have duplicates in the Unified Customer Database (UCD) and have already received a message from the prior campaign, the second campaign's message will be delivered to those users. This is because delivered events are assigned to one user among the duplicates.On the other hand, users sharing the same phone number but without an SMS delivered event from the Monday campaign will receive the message in the second campaign.

Example Case 2

Imagine you launched a campaign on Monday and sent it out. Now, on Tuesday, you aim to send another campaign specifically to users who did not click on the link in the previous message. For phone numbers with duplicates in the Unified Customer Database (UCD) and those who clicked the link in the earlier message, the second message will be delivered. This is because click events are assigned to one user among the duplicates in the UCD. Conversely, users sharing the same phone number but without an SMS click event from the Monday campaign will receive the message in the second campaign.

Effects of Not Using Phone Number for SMS Analytics 

As there will be no Identification based on a phone number, unsubscriptions will not be attributed to specific campaigns. However, Insider will still process the unsubscriptions, but they won't be reflected in the campaign analytics for the specific campaign. 

Effects of Not Using Phone Number for SMS Features

As there will be no Identification based on a phone number, SMS Resubscribe feature which allows users to reply START, YES, to opt-In back with a keyword will not work properly.