The "Secret" of Automated Telemarketing Unveiled

Voice Broadcasting (dialing thousands of automated phone calls and delivering a recorded message to them) is a really strong and cheap way to get your message to large numbers of customers.

In spite of its powerfulness, before you spend any money at all on a voice broadcast, you need to study this secret.  Because without it, you might just squander your money. So, what could this awful secret be? It's really simple - The majority of folks despise being bothered by phone sales calls.

Alright, alright I know its not exactly a secret.  If you're looking at using a phone broadcasting system and you fail to look into this "secret" carefully, it can really hurt your campaign.  Here's why...

The biggest by far majority (90% or more) of individuals who get a broadcast call simply hang up.  The next biggest portion (a few percent) of people press "2" (to be deleted from the prospect list).  The smallest group, around 1-2%, press "1" (to speak to a live representative, or to listen to more recorded information, or to leave a voicemail).

You're probably saying..."Sure but I'm only paying for the live transferred calls, so what's the problem?"  Here's the problem.

Just because someone presses "1", it does't mean they're interested in your message.  Some of them only want to request removal from the call list.  Those responses are worthless 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 advertising credit card processing accounts to business prospects, or even selling raffle tickets for your charity event, you'll hear some folks say "take my number off and don't call again" (or worse)...That's not a shock, is it?  And I promise, even if you're asking for contributions for sick children, even if you're calling a list of past donors, you will STILL receive some negative calls!

The unavoidable fact is this - out of 1000 people, there are perhaps 2 or 3 who get so riled up when they receive a recorded phone call, they will press "1" to ask to be removed.  To depict the effect of response rate on the number of negative calls received, consider two speculative broadcast campaigns.

Campaign #1 - selling merchant accounts to businesses - response rate is below average, at 0.6%.  Campaign #2 - asking for contributions 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 numbers called are the sort 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 reality is, if you are delivering your calls to live answered phones, and taking live transfers, you {will never,simply cannot} escape negative calls, regardless of what your message is about.  And the main method to reduce them is to construct a message with a higher response rate.

We've described how receiving negative live transfers is a fact of life in this business, and how increasing the response rate will decrease the number of negative calls.