The “Secret” of Voice Broadcasting Uncovered
September 28, 2008
Voice Broadcasting (dialing a huge number of automated phone calls and playing a pre-recorded message to them) is a really powerful and low-cost way to get your message to large numbers of customers.
Despite its powerfulness, before you spend one thin dime on a voice broadcast, it’s essential that you study this secret. Because without it, you might just blow your resources. So, what could this awful secret be? It’s really easy - Almost all people don’t like being bothered by telesales calls.
OK, OK, I know that’s not exactly a secret. If you’re debating using a phone broadcasting system and you neglect to look into this “secret” carefully, it can devastate your campaign. Here’s why…
The biggest by far majority (90% or more) of prospects who get a broadcast call simply hang up. The next largest portion (a few percent) of people press “2″ (to be deleted from the dialing list). The smallest group, around 1-2%, press “1″ (to be transferred to a live salesperson, or to listen to more recorded information, or to leave a message).
You’re probably thinking…”I understand, but I’m only being charged for the “press 1’s”, so what’s the problem?” Here’s the problem.
Just because someone presses “1″, it does’t guarantee that they’re interested in your offer. Some of them only want to request removal from the call list. Those responses are worth nothing to you. But you still pay for them. So you should carefully consider how to maximize the positively interested, qualified responses.
Now, whether you’re selling merchant accounts to business prospects, or even soliciting donations for your charity event, you’ll hear some folks say “remove me from your list and don’t call again” (or worse)…That’s not a shock, is it? And I promise, even if you’re soliciting donations for sick children, even if you’re calling a list of past donors, you will STILL receive some negative calls!
The unavoidable reality is this - out of 1000 people, there are possibly 2 or 3 who get so irritated when they receive a telemarketing call, they will press “1″ to sound off. To illustrate the consequences of response rate on the quantity of worthless transfers received, consider two speculative broadcast campaigns.
Campaign #1 - advertising merchant accounts to businesses - response rate is below average, at 0.6%. Campaign #2 - soliciting donations for sick children - using a donor list - response rate is above average, at 1.5%.
Now, assume that 3 out of 1000 (0.3%) of the prospects called are the kind who will “press 1 for no good reason”… If you work through the numbers, the business campaign gets 50% negative calls, but even the charity campaign gets 20%!
The truth is, if you are delivering your calls to live answered phones, and taking live transfers, you {will never,simply cannot} escape negative calls, no matter what your message is about. And the primary way to reduce them is to construct a message with a higher response rate.
We’ve described how receiving bogus live transfers is a fact of life in this business, and how increasing the response rate will reduce the quantity of negative calls.