outreach
How to Build a Telegram List of Customs Brokers in the CIS
A step-by-step workflow for building a targeted Telegram contact list of customs brokers across Russia and the CIS, using registry data, contact lookup, and phone-to-username conversion.
You need to reach 200 customs brokers across Russia and Kazakhstan before a shipping deadline. LinkedIn has maybe a dozen of them, half with stale profiles. Google gives you directory listings from 2019. Meanwhile your competitor already has a Telegram group full of brokers you can't find.
This is the real problem in CIS B2B outreach: there's no single professional network to search. Decision-makers — including customs brokers — live on Telegram, but they're scattered across private channels, regional associations, and business registries that don't talk to each other. You need a repeatable way to pull them into one list.
How many customs broker contacts can you realistically build in a week?
With a structured workflow, teams typically compile lists of 150-400 verified Telegram contacts in a week, depending on how narrow the region and industry code (OKVED) filter is. The bottleneck isn't finding companies — registries have thousands — it's converting a company name into a working Telegram username you can actually message.
That conversion step is where most manual approaches fall apart. A spreadsheet of company names is not a contact list. You need phone numbers, and then you need those phone numbers turned into Telegram handles.
What's the fastest way to find customs broker decision-makers in the CIS?
The most reliable method is registry-first, not group-first. Start from verified business data, then work down to a phone number and Telegram username — rather than starting with a Telegram group and hoping the right people are in it.
This is the same approach used for finding decision-makers at Russian manufacturing plants without LinkedIn, adapted for the customs brokerage niche. Customs brokers are registered under specific OKVED codes (customs clearance and freight forwarding services), which makes them easy to filter for at the registry level — much easier than trying to identify them from a Telegram bio.
The six-step workflow
Pull companies by OKVED code. Use a business-registry provider like DataNewton to filter companies under customs brokerage and freight forwarding codes, narrowed by region (Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Uzbekistan, etc.) and revenue band.
Get a DataNewton API key. Connect it to an AI assistant (Claude or ChatGPT) so it can query the registry programmatically instead of you clicking through pages one by one.
Connect your CRMChat API key. Found in Settings → API Keys, this lets the same AI assistant drive CRMChat's contact-lookup tools to find each company's founder or director.
Run the lookup sequence. The assistant matches each company from step 1 to a named decision-maker and retrieves a phone number.
Convert phone numbers to Telegram usernames. Feed the phone list into CRMChat's Phone Number to Telegram Username Converter.
Export to CSV and load into your outreach sequence. Now you have a real, workable list — name, company, phone, Telegram handle.
CRMChat automates the phone-to-Telegram conversion step that turns a raw contact list into something you can actually message on Telegram, with a reported enrichment rate of around 50% for CIS numbers — meaning roughly half the phone numbers you pull will resolve to a usable Telegram username. That's double the rate typically seen for EU, UK, or Americas numbers, which makes this approach especially effective for CIS-focused prospecting.
Should you use Telegram group parsing instead?
Group parsing is a good secondary tactic, not your primary one, for a niche as specific as customs brokers. Registry-based lookup targets named decision-makers directly; group parsing gives you broader reach but noisier data.
If you want to supplement your registry list, CRMChat's Telegram Group Finder lets you search for logistics and customs-focused Telegram groups by keyword, then parse the member list for additional leads. Use keywords like "таможенный брокер," "ВЭД," or "таможенное оформление" to surface regional customs and foreign trade groups.
Search by industry keywords in Russian and English to catch both terminology sets.
Filter results by group size and activity — a 200-member active group beats a 5,000-member dead one.
Parse the member list for Telegram handles, bios, and last-seen data.
Cross-check parsed names against your registry list to avoid duplicate outreach.
Keep in mind that if a group's member list is private, you'll typically only recover the 20-30% of members who've posted or commented within the last six months — the rest stay hidden. That's another reason registry lookup should be your primary channel, with group parsing as a supplement.
What should you do before messaging a customs broker cold?
Before you send a single message, verify the contact and warm up your sending account. Customs brokers are professionals who deal with compliance for a living — a sloppy, unverifiable cold message gets reported fast.
Verify the company is active in the registry, not dissolved or dormant.
Confirm the phone-to-Telegram match resolved to a real, recently active account.
Warm up your outreach account before sending volume — a cold account sending 50 messages on day one gets flagged. See why Telegram restricts accounts used for cold outreach for the mechanics of how bans get triggered.
Segment by region — a broker working Russia-China border crossings has different needs than one working Kazakhstan-EU corridors.
Personalize the opener using the company name and a specific reason you're reaching out, not a generic template.
CRMChat's Telegram Account Warmup tool handles the gradual activity ramp-up that keeps a new outreach account looking natural, which matters a lot when you're about to message a few hundred contacts in a short window.
How do you keep the list organized once you have it?
A CSV of 300 contacts is useless if it's not segmented and tracked. Once your list is built:
Tag contacts by region, OKVED sub-code, and company size.
Load them into your CRM pipeline with source attribution (registry vs. group parse).
Set reminders for follow-up sequences instead of one-and-done blasts.
Track response rates by segment to see which region or company size converts best.
If your team is building outreach infrastructure around this kind of data pull, the CRMChat API lets you wire the registry lookup, contact conversion, and CRM sync into one automated pipeline instead of running each step manually. For a broader look at running compliant B2B outreach in this region, check out how to set up a Telegram Business account for B2B outreach in CIS.
