Verify by CallAction Setup for DNC Scrubbing and Email Verification

Verify by CallAction is a third-party add-on that checks your Sierra Interactive contact list against the National Do Not Call registry, flags deactivated or reassigned phone numbers, and verifies email addresses for deliverability. This article walks through creating a free Verify account, exporting your Sierra leads, running a scrub, and optionally syncing results back into Sierra.

Table of Contents 

1. Why This Feature Matters
2. Before You Begin
3. Step-by-Step Instructions
4. Best Practices
5. Troubleshooting Common Issues
6. FAQs

Why This Feature Matters

Reaching out to a lead on the Do Not Call registry, or texting a number that's been reassigned to someone new, creates real TCPA compliance risk and wastes agent time on dead-end contacts. Verify by CallAction gives you a way to check your contact list against the national DNC registry, catch numbers that have been deactivated or reassigned, and confirm which email addresses will actually deliver, all before your team spends time following up. Cleaning your contact data this way protects your team from compliance exposure and keeps your lead engagement efforts focused on contacts who can actually be reached.

For background on the regulatory landscape this protects against, see Understanding TCPA Regulatory Updates and Their Impact on Your Business and Sierra Dialer Compliance: Calling and Texting Regulations Overview.

Before You Begin

• You'll need a Sierra Interactive account with permission to export leads.
• You'll need an email address to create your free Verify account (use a different email than any existing CallAction account, if you have one).
• If you want scrub results tagged back into your Sierra leads automatically, you'll need a paid Zapier subscription. If you haven't connected Zapier to Sierra before, start with Getting Started with Zapier for Sierra: What It Is and How to Use It.
• Have a sense of which leads you want scrubbed. You can export your entire contact list or filter to a specific subset (for example, excluding Archived, Junk, Do Not Contact, or Blocked leads) before exporting.

Step-by-Step Instructions

Part 1: Export your Sierra leads

1. Log in to your Sierra Interactive account.
2. Click the gear icon in the upper toolbar to access settings.
3. Select Lead Export from the dropdown menu.
4. Choose a reason for export (for example, "DNC check with Verify by CallAction").
5. Select which lead statuses to include. You can include all leads or exclude specific statuses like Archived, Junk, Do Not Contact, or Blocked.
6. Complete the export to download your leads as a CSV file.

Part 2: Create your free Verify account

1. Go to CallAction's Verify page.
2. Sign up for a free account.
3. Confirm your email address to activate the account.
4. Upload the CSV file you exported from Sierra.
5. Select a scan type (phone-only, or phone plus email).
6. Submit the file to run your free Contact Data Audit.

Scrub time varies by list size, from a few minutes for smaller lists to a few hours for lists of 50,000 or more contacts. Verify emails you when the audit is complete.

Part 3: Review your results

Your results will include, at minimum:

• Phone DNC Registered: whether a number is listed on the national Do Not Call registry
• Phone Deactivated: whether a number has been reported deactivated or reassigned in the last 6 months
• Email Score: a numeric deliverability score for each email address

If a lead comes back flagged on the DNC registry or without documented consent, route it through your compliance process before any further outreach; see How to Access Comms Consent for New and Existing Leads and Opt-In Consent and Opt-Out Messages for Compliant Texting.

Part 4: Sync results back into Sierra (optional, requires paid Zapier)

If you have a paid Zapier subscription, you can automate tagging your Sierra leads based on Verify's results rather than updating them by hand:

1. Log in to your Zapier account.
2. Create a new Zap using Verify by CallAction as the trigger.
3. Set the action to update or tag the matching lead in Sierra Interactive.
4. Map the DNC, deactivated-number, and email-score fields to the Sierra fields or tags you want to use for filtering.
5. Test and turn on the Zap.

Once tagged, you can filter your Sierra leads dashboard by these tags to route follow-up appropriately or exclude flagged contacts from calling and texting campaigns.

Best Practices

• Run a fresh scrub periodically, not just once. Phone numbers get reassigned and DNC status changes over time.
• Exclude leads already marked Do Not Contact or Blocked from your export to avoid wasting scrub capacity on contacts you won't reach out to anyway.
• Treat a high DNC or deactivated-number rate as a signal to review how leads are being sourced, not just a one-time cleanup task. Pairing this with the regulatory context in Sierra Dialer Compliance: Calling and Texting Regulations Overview can help your team decide how to handle flagged leads.
• Pair Verify's email score with your Sierra email deliverability practices. A low score is a strong signal to suppress that address from future sends rather than continuing to send and risk your domain reputation.

Troubleshooting Common Issues

• My CSV upload is failing or timing out.
  Very large exports can fail to upload. If your file is larger than 150 MB, try removing the Notes column before uploading to reduce file size.
• I don't see my scrub results yet.
  Larger lists (50,000+ contacts) can take several hours to process. Verify sends an email notification when your audit finishes; check your spam folder if it hasn't arrived.

• My Zap isn't updating leads in Sierra.
  Confirm the Zap trigger is correctly mapped to Verify by CallAction's output fields and that the action step is targeting the correct Sierra lead identifier (typically email or phone number) so records match correctly. If you're new to Zapier and Sierra generally, Getting Started with Zapier for Sierra: What It Is and How to Use It covers common setup issues.

FAQs

• Do I need a paid CallAction subscription to use Verify?
  No. Verify is a standalone tool and doesn't require an existing CallAction account.

• Do I need Zapier to use Verify?
  No. Zapier is only needed if you want scrub results automatically synced back into Sierra as tags. You can run a scrub and review results directly in Verify without it. 

• What should I do with leads that come back flagged on the DNC registry?
  Don't call or text them without documented consent. See How to Access Comms Consent for New and Existing Leads for how to check and document consent in Sierra.