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How to Avoid and Address Spam Tags?
Erica Hoelper avatar
Written by Erica Hoelper
Updated over a year ago

As robocalling, spam-calling, and nuisance telemarketing become increasingly pervasive, national telco operators and 3rd party apps and software are becoming very sensitive to labelling traffic as spam.

Call Traffic: best practices to avoid spam labels

If you are planning to do widespread call campaigns or use our power diallers, we can help advise on good “calling hygiene” and how to maintain a positive caller reputation, minimize your calls being blocked or flagged as spam, and improve answer rates.

Comply with local telco regulations:

  • If you will be using CloudTalk to place telemarketing or advertising voice calls, you will be required to obtain the consumers' prior consent, as required by applicable local laws or regulations

    • At the beginning of the call, disclose the purpose of the voice call and identify and accurately represent yourself, or your organization, as applicable;

    • Stay compliant with applicable local laws and regulations related to telemarketing, both in your country of operation and your prospects’ territory

    • Comply with all national "Do Not Call" lists (e.g. https://www.donotcall.gov/ in USA)

Keep your traffic free “spam calling indicators”

In most countries, major national operators use analytics engines to detect traffic that fits the pattern of telemarketing or robocalling, and apply tags to traffic like "likely sales" or likely spam." Certain calling patterns are more likely to trigger a spam warning, and some countries' analytics vendors are more sensitive than others.

  • Maintain a consistent outbound call volume and avoid sudden spikes in traffic that deviate from regular patterns.

    *When using a new number or starting a new campaign, gradually increase call traffic over time rather than going from zero to maximum volume quickly, as this is the clearest indicator of call center traffic

  • Regularly update your campaign contact lists, and remove numbers that don’t connect. *Continued, low answer rates on the same number can cause an analytics engine to label the traffic as "likely sales"

  • Calls for legitimate business purposes should not be too frequent, or beyond local working hours. Some industries or countries may have specific metrics in place to deem what does or does not constitute nuisance calling or harassment

Number Registrations: best practices to avoid spam labels

Despite following all calling best practices, your numbers may still accumulate spam tags over time. CloudTalk recommends these steps to optimize the outbound reachability of your numbers’ inventory and connect with as many prospects as possible.

Segment your number inventory

Separate numbers into public, permanent inbound numbers and temporary, outbound sales numbers, that can be cycled as needed. Do not use the same number for multiple purposes

  1. Inbound “clean” numbers - official, published website or advertising numbers

    1. “clean” for inbound calls only

    2. outbound calling to established contacts

      If outbound campaign calls are not made on these numbers, they should not need to be changed, and your resources will not be wasted if these numbers were used on print materials, web campaigns, or other promotions

  2. Outbound sales or campaign numbers - numbers specifically designated for outbound campaigns or activities that might generate spam tags from your specific use case or traffic patterns.

Steps that can be taken for United States outbound calling

Operators utilize a combination of in-house developed technologies, third-party analytics engines, and partnerships to address spam and flag potential unwanted calls to consumers. These exact algorithms and methods are their own internal proprietary technologies, but we can advise the following steps to take if your business is calling to the United States.


1. Register Numbers in FREE CALLER REGISTRY

Each carrier relies on different analytics engines to combat unwanted calls and provide caller identification, but these are the main engines used by each one.

  1. First Orion (used by Verizon)

  2. Hiya (used by T-Mobile)

  3. Transaction Network Services (used by AT&T)

While you could register your numbers individually with each engine, The Free Caller Registry is a unified, free portal of USA numbers with these three largest Analytics Vendors, which are used by the main USA operators.

You can register numbers in this portal which can help avoid them being labeled as scams or robocalls.

2. STIR/SHAKEN verified calling

STIR / SHAKEN is a caller verification protocol used in the USA to cut down illegal and fraudulent RoboCalling. All of our USA carriers are Stir/Shaken compliant.

While all of our calls are sent with a Stir/Shaken validation, we can further register USA phone numbers from our USA carrier directly on your business, so they are sent as a “verified call“, with the highest A-level Attestation.

  • A-level: the highest level attestation given by the operator to indicate that the caller is known and has the right to use the phone number as the caller ID

  • B-Level: the second highest level attestation given by the operator, which would apply to most non-registered CloudTalk calls, where the provider is known to the operator, CloudTalk, but the user has not verified their business and numbers.

  • C-Level: international calls to the USA and calls with a manipulated Caller ID/CLI

This can:

  • Can help avoid spam tags, but may not override existing ones

  • Must register them with company information (name, address, registration number, EIN number, etc)

Please contact our numbering support team [email protected] for more information on how to register your numbers on your business, and send them this required information

  • Legal Business Name

  • Physical Address (Street, City, State/Province/Region, Postal Code, Country)

  • Business Identity (Direct Customer or ISV/Reseller/Partner)

  • Business Type (Sole Proprietorship/Partnership/Corporation /Co-Operative/LLC/Non-Profit)

  • Company Status (Private/Public)

    • Stock Ticker & Exchange (if Public)

  • Business Registration Number & Type

    • must be the EIN for all US-based companies

    • other business identifiers for non-US companies

  • Industry

  • Website

  • Regions of Operations

  • Company Representative - our vendor may contact them to verify their connection to the company
    (For the fastest verification, this should be someone with a publicly verifiable connection to the company such as a LinkedIn, company website, state or country business register)

    • First and Last Name

    • Email

    • Title

    • Phone Number

    • Job Position (Director/VP/GM/General Counsel/CEO/CFO)


Have more questions? We have answers. Reach out to our Support team. We're always happy to help!

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