Android RCS Campaign Essentials: A Complete Guide to Number Filtering and Data Preparation

Android RCS (Rich Communication Services) promotion has become a crucial tool for overseas marketing teams to reach international users. Compared to traditional SMS, RCS supports rich media, interactive cards, and read receipts, significantly improving open rates and conversion rates. However, many teams encounter a core pain point during actual deployment—not content design, but number quality. A large number of invalid, unused, or operator-unsupported numbers lead to delivery failures, wasting budgets and harming brand reputation. This article focuses on the number filtering and data preparation process for Android RCS campaigns, combined with practical steps and pitfalls to avoid, helping overseas teams build an efficient pipeline of “Generate → Filter → Deduplicate → Export” to truly improve Android marketing ROI.

Why Do Android RCS Campaigns Need Pre-Filtering?

RCS promotion depends on the validity of phone numbers and the operator’s RCS service coverage. If you use an uncleaned number list directly, you may encounter the following problems:

• Large numbers of invalid or disconnected numbers: Delivery fails directly, and you are charged per message for nothing.
• Operators that don’t support RCS: Some countries/regions have not fully deployed RCS, or only support specific number ranges, making many numbers unreachable.
• Inactive users: Even if the number is valid, users who have not used their phones for a long time (e.g., over 30 days) have extremely low open rates, affecting overall conversion.
• Duplicate numbers: Numbers collected from multiple batches may have duplicates. Repeated detection wastes balance, and duplicate sending may be flagged as spam by users.

Therefore, systematically filtering and cleaning numbers before launching any RCS campaign is a key step to ensure advertising budget is spent effectively. After filtering, it is common to reduce delivery failure rates from 30%–40% to under 5%, while also significantly improving user response rates through activity and gender segmentation.

Typical Data Preparation Workflow for an RCS Campaign

Efficient RCS data preparation is not simply deduplication or a one-time invalid number check; it is a complete, reusable pipeline. The following workflow is based on the capabilities of the KK-DATA platform and is suitable for most overseas scenarios.

Step 1: Generate or Import Numbers for the Target Market

• Global Number Generation: Use KK-DATA’s number generation tool to randomly generate numbers by target country (e.g., Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico), with support for precise generation by number range or prefix. This feature is free, and generated numbers can be used directly for filtering.
• Custom CSV Import: If you already have your own number library (collected via ad forms, event registrations, etc.), you can upload a CSV file directly, supporting batch import.
• Target Market Recommendations: Prioritize countries with high RCS coverage, such as the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Singapore, Brazil, etc. Check the operator support list before generation to avoid generating large numbers of invalid ones.

Step 2: Use RCS Detection to Filter Valid Numbers

After generating or importing numbers, you need to call the RCS platform detection API to determine the status of each number. KK-DATA provides a dedicated RCS Detection feature that can distinguish the following statuses:

Detection Result	Meaning	Suggested Action
Valid (RCS supported)	The number can receive RCS messages normally	Keep, proceed to next step
Invalid number	The number does not exist or has been canceled	Delete
Operator does not support RCS	The number’s operator has not deployed RCS	Consider switching to SMS or filtering out
Other invalid	Number format error, service suspended, etc.	Delete

When detecting, it is recommended to first filter out numbers that are “Valid (RCS supported)“—these have the highest delivery success rate. At the same time, you can export the detection report to understand the RCS coverage distribution in the target market, providing data support for subsequent planning.

Step 3: Combine Activity and Gender Data for Precise Segmentation

Valid numbers alone are not enough. To improve user open rates and engagement, you need to further perform activity detection and gender identification on valid numbers.

• Activity Detection: KK-DATA supports custom activity time windows (e.g., active in the last 7/15/30 days). By detecting the last time a number was online or used a phone, you can filter out “highly active” users. For example, for a gaming campaign, you can prioritize users active within 7 days; for an e-commerce promotion, you can relax the window to 30 days.
• Gender Identification: Through AI recognition of avatars or nicknames, the number’s associated gender (Male/Female/Unknown) can be marked. This is especially valuable for products requiring targeted pushes (e.g., cosmetics, men’s clothing).

After these two filtering steps, the final number list will not only be “reachable” but also “willing to open,” significantly reducing silent costs.

Practical Tips: Avoiding Common Data Pitfalls in RCS Campaigns

Here are several high-frequency pitfalls and their solutions:

1. Wasting balance on duplicate detection: Many teams submit multiple batches of numbers consecutively without cross-task deduplication, causing the same number to be detected multiple times and charged repeatedly. Solution: Use the platform’s “Data Deduplication Warehouse” feature to automatically remove historically detected numbers before each filtering session, charging only for new numbers.
2. Ignoring activity cycle selection: Among “valid” numbers by default, there may be “zombie numbers” that haven’t been active for months, resulting in no response after sending. Solution: Set an activity window based on campaign timeliness. For short-cycle campaigns (within 3 days), choose 7-day active users; for longer cycles (one month), choose 30-day active users.
3. Only performing RCS detection without invalid/operator detection: Some teams mistakenly believe that RCS detection covers all invalid judgments. In reality, RCS detection itself returns statuses like operator not supported, but the coverage varies by platform API. It is recommended to also combine invalid number detection (e.g., for numbers detected as “valid” in RCS detection, run an additional invalid number check) for double verification.

How to Build an Integrated “Generate → Filter → Deduplicate → Export” Pipeline?

Ideal data preparation should avoid moving data between multiple tools. KK-DATA integrates global number generation, RCS detection, activity/gender filtering, data deduplication warehouse, and multi-format export in a single console. The operational flow is as follows:

1. Log in to the console → Go to the “Number Generation” module, select the target country and number range, and click Generate. Generated numbers are automatically saved to the task list.
2. Create a filtering task → Select detection type as “RCS Detection,” and check additional items such as “Activity Detection” and “Gender Detection” as needed. Upload numbers (you can directly select the generated number group).
3. Submit the task → The system estimates the cost and checks if the balance is sufficient. After confirmation, the task starts and runs asynchronously in the background.
4. Automatic deduplication → The platform’s built-in data warehouse automatically compares with historical numbers to avoid duplicate detection charges for the same number.
5. Notification upon completion → After the task is completed, a notification is pushed via Telegram (requires prior binding). Export the CSV or TXT result from the console, which includes all detection fields.

With this approach, from number generation to final deliverable data, only one platform is needed—no manual data format conversion or manual deduplication required.

Case Study: Data Comparison Before and After an RCS Campaign by a Southeast Asian E-commerce Team

A Southeast Asian e-commerce team planned an RCS promotional campaign for the Indonesian market. They prepared 100,000 numbers (collected from past three months of campaigns and some purchased sources). They directly used the raw numbers to send the first batch of RCS messages and found:

• Delivery failure rate: 38% (12% invalid numbers, 18% operator not supported, 8% other invalid)
• Message open rate: Only 6% (many valid numbers belonged to users who hadn’t used their phones for a long time)
• ROI: Negative, with per-order acquisition cost far exceeding expectations.

Afterwards, the team switched to using KK-DATA for number cleaning:

1. Imported 100,000 numbers → Ran RCS detection, removed invalid numbers and operator unsupported ones, retaining 72,000 valid numbers.
2. Performed activity detection on valid numbers (selected active within 15 days), filtered out 21,000 inactive numbers, leaving 51,000 highly active numbers.
3. After gender identification, pushed beauty promotions to female users and digital product promotions to male users.

Second push results:

• Delivery failure rate: 4.5% (only a few numbers failed due to temporary disconnections, etc.)
• Message open rate: 22% (active users showed higher interest in RCS rich media)
• ROI: Increased more than threefold, acquisition cost dropped to 30% of the original.

Although this is an anonymized case, it reflects the huge difference in data quality before and after filtering. Many teams report that even just doing the first step of RCS detection and activity filtering can improve ROI by over 50%.

Common Questions and Best Practices for RCS Number Filtering

• Q: How many numbers can be processed in one RCS detection task?
  A: The maximum for a single task is about 1 million records. If you exceed that, we recommend splitting into multiple tasks. Batch processing does not affect result aggregation.
• Q: How long does detection take?
  A: Depends on the number of records and platform load, typically from a few minutes to tens of minutes. For example, 100,000 numbers usually complete within 20 minutes. Telegram notification can be set upon task completion.
• Q: Which fields can I export?
  A: The export includes number, detection status (valid/invalid/nonexistent/operator unsupported), last active time, gender (if identifiable), etc. Specific fields are based on the real-time display in the console.
• Q: How is data security ensured?
  A: All transmissions are encrypted. The platform commits not to store users’ raw numbers; only the result records are retained after detection. See the official privacy policy for details.
• Q: Can I get a refund after recharge?
  A: Once recharged, the balance is non-refundable. We recommend starting with a small recharge to test the effect, then adding more after confirming the filtering quality.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What’s the difference between RCS promotion and traditional SMS promotion?
A: RCS supports rich media, interactive cards, and read receipts, but requires the number to be registered for RCS service. Filtering requires a dedicated RCS detection type, not just a standard invalid number check.

Q: What is the maximum number of numbers that can be processed in one filtering task?
A: Currently, the maximum for a single task is about 1 million records. You can submit in batches if needed. If exceeding, it is recommended to split into multiple tasks.

Q: Can the balance be refunded after recharge?
A: Once recharged, the balance is non-refundable. Please plan your recharge amount wisely. It is recommended to start with a small recharge to test the filtering effect, then top up as needed.

Q: Can the filtered data be reused?
A: The platform provides a data deduplication warehouse that can deduplicate across tasks, avoiding extra charges for detecting the same number again.

Q: What fields are included in the RCS detection result?
A: Detection fields include number status (valid/invalid/nonexistent/operator unsupported), last active time, gender (if identified successfully), etc. Please refer to the console display for specifics.

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If you are preparing an Android RCS campaign, why not start with a small batch test to experience the complete filtering process. Log in to the Application Console to create a free account and view real-time pricing, or add our official customer service Telegram @kkdata_robot for dedicated assistance. For more documentation and best practices, visit Usage Documentation.