It's no secret we're fans of the (1300 and 1800) patterned Smartnumbers made available by the Australian Communications and Media Authority via the TheNumberingSystem
website. As one of Australia's leading marketing groups we optimise the entire sales experience in order to maximise conversions, and Smartnumbers are just one of many tools we use to achieve our customers' extraordinary conversions.
The Smartnumber differs from your everyday 'pedestrian' numbers because it spells a relevant word on your alphanumeric telephone keypad. Our own name - 1300 BELIEF (or 1300 235 433) - is a good example of how the number becomes a memorable touch-point.
Because there's a latent mistrust of anything digital-media/online service related, using a Smartnumber as the point of contact for digital marketing campaigns are said to improve upon conversions by at least two times - although we’ve seen much higher (and it's up to six times more effective when used on other mediums). Additionally, the integrated analytics across split numbers makes assessing the success of offline campaigns an easy task.
From our last article on Smartnumbers:
In every business there are multiple points of failure, or areas in a weakened state that potentially provides some sort of barrier against lead-generation. While not a mainstream consideration, your phone number may be one of these areas – not because it's ineffective necessarily, but because there is a means of improving upon its effectiveness.
Australian Smart Numbers (or those starting with 1300, 1800, and 13) are said to convert TV conversions by 5.5 times, radio 14 times, and print media by 6 times. A good Smart Number is said to be 5 times more memorable than standard phone numbers, and may attract 5 times more leads. The statistics go on and on depending upon where you source them; Roy Morgan research, however, have determined that overall the use of a Smart Number will decrease the cost per lead by 66%. The simple truth is almost indisputable: Smart Numbers work.
The Smartnumbers are an integral component of any serious marketing program, and vital for any business concerned about how their brand is represented.
Introduction
For those that sensibly opt for a branded or relevant Smartnumber (despite the small additional fee), actually finding a relevant number via TheNumberingSystem website can be a challenge. It's not uncommon for a consumer to sit in front of their computer for hours trying multiple number combinations until they find one that they like... not necessarily the one that's best suited. A commitment to your Smartnumber is a marriage; settling doesn't work.
With the expectation that BeliefMedia will be introducing some seriously exciting client opportunities into our business next year, we decided that we absolutely needed to build a few tools to make the 1300 purchase experience an easy one. So, with our own needs in mind, and those of our clients, we built an API that returns the following data:
- Smartnumber data for individual number lookups
- A tool to browse all available and allocated Smartnumbers (in addition to all other numbers administered by the AMCA).
- A search feature to find numbers matching certain criteria
- Daily Smartnumber statistics
- Phone Number Word "Exploration"
- Return all dictionary Smartnumbers with pricing via JSON
Additionally, and probably more importantly, we wanted to produce a downloadable PDF document (updated daily) listing all available Smartnumbers that might match dictionary or combination words.
This article details, in brief, some of the features of the API.
AMCA Data Source
The entire numbering system database may be downloaded from the AMCA website . Because the download is a static snapshot of daily data it's essentially invalid as soon as it's made available... but it's more than adequate for our purpose.
The Result
Requests for basic phone number information should be made to https://api.beliefmedia.com/platform/sources/numbering-system/ns.json
. An API Key is required.
Single Result
Using the URL parameter of ?id=1300235433&apikey=xxx
(with a full phone number as the id
) returns relevant details.
Note the following:
- The
status
field determines if the number isallocated
or aspare
. - If no date is provided for any date field, no date information is returned.
- Each number is registered in the AMCA numbering database with a
From
(number_from) andTo
(number_to) field. If a single phone number is returned ournumber_from
andnumber_to
field are identical. Any results that includes a range of phone numbers will include the full range array in therange
array. - All word combinations can be returned via an alternative endpoint (as detailed later). However, for reference we include the appropriate letters associated with each numeric character.
Browsing Numbers
To browse all results, use the parameter of ?type=browse
. Pagination is determined via pg
and number
. An example result (snipped to just two results) is as follows:
Searching Numbers
Searching data may be performed with the following URL parameters:
prefix
1300
, 1800
, or 13
. there are several hundred prefixes available (all available via the stats
result detailed below).number_length
number_from & number_to
number_from
& number_to
are used to search numbers in a certain range. If only number_from
is provided we set the number_to
as the upper limit.status
status
of the number.allocatee
allocatee
is the upline organisation providing the service.allocation_date
allocation_date
is the date the number was allocated. If no date is available nothing is returned. Dates should be formatted as a 6-figure group (0180405). A UNIX timestamp, or a date/time string is also acceptable (formatted exactly as follows: 23-december-2018).latest_holder
latest_holder
is the latest Telco holder of the number.latest_transfer_date
latest_transfer_date
is the date the number was last transferred. If no date is available nothing is returned. Date formatting is as per allocation_date.current_erou_holder
current_erou_holder
is the current Enhanced Rights of User (EROU). This is essentially the entity that holds the 'licence' to the number.erou_assignment_date
erou_assignment_date
is the date the EROU was assigned to the user. Date formatting is as per allocation_date.numbering_area
numbering_area'
is the geographic region associated with a number allocation.A request to type=search&prefix=1300&status=Spare&number=5&pg=350&apikey=xxxx
returns the following (snipped to just two results):
A large number of additional search attributes will be added over time.
Statistics
Using the URL parameter of ?type=stats
returns a large array with as many statistics we could think of pulling from the data. It includes arrays such as all prefix types, the top 100 EROU holders, and a count of all registered 1300 and 1800 numbers. We save this data locally for data comparisons over a defined date interval (the historical features will be discussed another time).
Phone Keypad Word Combinations
It's not uncommon to have a phone number and not realise that it has name recognition value. The Words API returns all possible 6-letter word combinations for a given phone number. If any word matches a dictionary word we'll return it in a separate array.
The API Endpoint for the Words API is https://api.beliefmedia.com/platform/sources/numbering-system/ns.json
. Use ?type=words&num=1300235433&apikey=xxx
in each request.
When calculating word options it's important to remember that each numeric digit represents either three or four letters on a phone keypad so standard word permutation obviously don't apply. Also, remember that the range of numbers that have associated letters are those between 2 and 9; the numbers 1 and 0 are excluded.
Where a standard 4-letter word will have 24 combinations (4 x 3 x 2 x 1), the phone keypad returns around 143 combinations. Since the number of results exponentially grows with the addition of each character, and considering we use the API primarily for 1300 and 1800 numbers, we limit the results to just 6 characters. If you provide 10 characters we assume that you've provided one of the typical numbers and we'll only evaluate the last 6 digits.
The result is shown below.
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Most of the words created by the reconstruction of letters are just garbage. For this reason we compare each word against a dictionary and return those dictionary words in a dictionary array. It's using this API that we discovered the less than flattering belied
as an additional dictionary word for 'Belief'.
Note that you can provide the API with a phone number or phone word.
Return All Dictionary Smart Numbers
We process every available number individually for 6, 7, 8 9, and 10 letter word matches. We then match up pricing, syllable data, availability, and anything else provided in the initial AMCA dump of data; it's this data that we use to build a daily Smart Number booklet. If you'd like to make use our daily dump of data use the parameters of ?type=complete&apikey=xxx
with your request.
The returned JSON data is extremely large and contains thousands of results. If you're going to use the service, make a daily request and then cache the result for 24 hours.
Sample data is as follows:
The key for each returned array is the numeric character length of the dictionary words.
Again, number results are only included if they match our dictionary terms. As our dictionary grows to include more 'urban' language the number of of results and choice of Smart Number will also increase.
API Access
Clients receive full access to the API (via their lifetime Key) even though it's one service they're unlikely to actually use. Others that would like access to the API or the daily Smartnumber booklet should make contact with us. Details of the Smart Number booklet will be published after we've checked a few days worth of results for accuracy.
Overdialing
All 1300 and 1800 numbers come with the standard 4-digit prefix and a 6-digit suffix making a total of 10-digits. Phone carriers will ignore every number after the first 10 numbers making longer phone word combinations available. For example, Harvey Norman promotes the number of 1300 GO HARVEY (1300 464 278), meaning that the E and Y (translating to a 3 and 9 respectively) are ignored. Both the 1300 and 1800 numbers provide for an additional 4 characters (so 10 numbers) after the prefix, while 13 numbers provide for an additional 4 numbers. This is why we return words up to 10-characters in length.
While overdialing is available, it's always better to have a shorter phone number where possible.
Daily Smart Number Booklet
As mentioned a few times, one of the reasons we build the data is to produce a several-thousand page long PDF document of all dictionary Smart Numbers with available results highlighted in green or orange for 1300 and 1800 numbers respectively. When ready for release we'll make information available here.