Boost your email marketing results with telemarketing

Does your performance measure up?

With email marketing being used more widely and increasing in popularity, particularly as an integrated B2B platform it’s good to check your results and see if you were better than the average or below it.

Based on an analysis of 2.8 billion emails sent during 2010 (which is a big number whichever way you look at it) the results were:

• Delivery rates averaged 95%. Up from 2009.
• Open rates were 15%, down from 26% in 2009.
• Click rates remained steady at 3%.
• Bounce rates were 5%, besting 2009’s 7% bounce rate.

Apart from the open rates (and there were specific reasons given for this fall) the results are positive and demonstrate how email marketing is improving and being used more widely.

But if your email marketing isn’t measuring up, or delivering poor results, then telemarketing can boost your performance and improve your email campaigns.

Boost email delivery rates
If people don’t receive your emails they can’t act upon them. Every bounced email represents a lost opportunity to sell your products or engage with customers. Data cleansing is proven to boost email delivery rates by contacting your mailing database and establishing the correct email address for each person.

Keeping emails relevant

The report concluded that the drop in open rates between 2009 and 2010 was attributed, mostly, to a change in the emphasis of emails. Previously marketing emails tended to be customer service based delivering content that was relevant and matched the needs of the client. More recently companies have started to use email marketing as a sales tool to attract more customers using content that was focused on encouraging them to buy more products – simply put many people did not like this approach and this is show within the results of the survey.

This change in emphasis was the reason that open rates fell dramatically, as people have turned away from this type of marketing and simply ignored all the messages. Marketers now know that it’s time to take it back to basics and uncover how people want to receive your message and an easy way to find out is to call and ask them.

A telemarketing campaign to determine what email messages people prefer, and making sure their choices are adhered to, will lead to better open and click rates for emails, and more in-depth engagement with customers – it’s a simple approach but it works.

Integrating telemarketing works

Integrating telemarketing with an email campaign improves your reach and the effectiveness of those campaigns. In addition, establishing and adhering to customer’s contact preferences is an effective part of a relationship marketing strategy, improves loyalty and encourages long-term repeat business which are the key ingredients to a strong sales pipeline.

How can we help?

Our operation is made up of highly skilled telemarketers who display maturity, influencing skills and the ability to hold conversations. Using email marketing as a starting point and combining it with telemarketing to increase your customer interactions, conversations and engagement you will be providing a consistent customer experience. With most of the marketing media discussing the impact your customer has on your bottom line, now’s the time to make their experiences count.

Phonetic can make sure that your telemarketing campaigns integrate perfectly with your email initiatives and that your customers feel more satisfied with their experience than they thought they would.

Source: Harte-Hanks Email Survey Report 2010

How are you delivering customer service?

A Big Lie
The biggest lie today (put about by marketing departments) is that ‘the customer is in charge’
Another Bigger Lie…
… is that ‘customer service is better’…..and if you believe that you will believe anything. It simply isn’t true. Anybody can tell you that most customer service is bad, very bad, actually worse than bad, it’s dreadful.

So why do businesses try to put the customer in charge?
The one and only reason to put the customer in charge is simply costs. Financial costs for the business go down and…..perceived service goes up because customers are doing the work themselves. In a world of imperfect customer service, most customers prefer to help themselves (think IKEA!)

Stop and Think!
It’s amazing that as customer we feel betrayed yet an entire business philosophy is so obviously without substance. The majority of businesses are failing to deliver. The customer is not king and is still waiting to be heard.

Reality sets in
It really is dismal….how often in the past month have you been told by the call centre ‘We are experiencing higher than usual call volumes’ or ‘you are in a queue’? But guess what? These statements are always followed by the most irritating comment, ‘We value your call’.

If they truly value my call why do I always have to wait? If they are experiencing higher than usual call volumes then why can’t the customer expect higher than average staffing levels?

Smell the coffee

Some companies are actually starting to wake up to the fact that customers’ opinions are valuable and that customer ratings need to be looked at and acted upon. They are becoming aware that most customers do not feel ‘in charge’ and they realise that if they stand out from the rest and really do put their customers in charge they can be ahead of the pack.

Real relationships blow away the sizzle of institutional hype

There are now huge opportunities for the independently-minded businesses to stand out from the crowd and step away from mediocrity and instead of forgetting about the customer focus on how to understand them more.

The best-kept secret about customer service?
• Customer service tends to be bad because it really is very hard to do.
• The real (best-kept) secret is to treat the customer like you would like to be treated yourself.
• The really hard part of providing excellent customer service is not the service! The really hard part is everything but the service! The hard part is to do with how the company thinks about what they are doing and how they behave as a consequence.

Most airlines offer bad service (and bad food) because they don’t actually think of themselves as service organisations – they see themselves as machines for generating revenue per seat per mile. Banks don’t see themselves as service organisations – they see themselves as an organisation to generate profits for their investors. Insurance companies don’t see themselves as a service organisation – they see themselves as providing a way for people to protect their families, homes, cars.

So how can it change?
While many people will accept and even tolerate the mediocrity that surrounds us. An opportunity exists to beat your competition and get closer to your customers so you can give them a truly first rate service, fill niches and put them back ‘in charge’.

According to research telemarketing remains an important part of the marketing mix. A new survey conducted by B2B Marketing revealed that 70% of respondents regarding telemarketing as either ‘critical’ or ‘very important’. Just under half of respondents 45% said their use of telemarketing has increased during the last 12 months, compared with less than 10% who said their use of it has decreased.

These statistics are no surprise because it is the only medium that enables true two-way dialogue with target audiences. It is the fastest, most flexible and most information rich approach to generating demand, gathering information and building relationships with prospects, customers and partners.

Telemarketing creates huge and diverse opportunities for businesses to reach out and connect with their customers and prospects – but have also produced challenges. Getting it right is the key and treading the fine line between improving customer experience and using it primarily to benefit a business’s bottom line. While customers are now more demanding than ever…the first step in exceeding their expectations is to know those expectations.

7 Tips for Telemarketing Success

Outbound telemarketing is a key aspect in most B2B marketing plans. Done well it is a cost-effective, measurable and scalable activity; done badly it is one of the surest ways of alienating your prospects and ruining your brand.

Sadly, too many companies do it badly. They employ untrained staff, equip them with a telephone and directories, some mumbled advice and no planned training schemes, and then wonder why they have no sales leads and disgruntled telemarketing agents.

Running telemarketing campaigns takes time and effort and the first step is getting the basics right, such as saying the right thing to the right person in the right way – sounds simple but it’s amazing how many businesses get it wrong. So here’s some easy ways to make sure you get it right (and you can always call us if you need some help along the way)

1. The Right Message
It’s essential that you brief your telemarketers on the product or service you want them to sell. Just giving them a script is rarely enough. Most professionals agree that reading from a script will not return the results you will be looking for and reduces the effectiveness of any campaign.

2. The Audience
It’s possible to spend a lot of time trying to sell your product to the wrong person so before you even pick up the phone make sure you have targeted the right person or department. People frequently change job titles so bear in mind that a list that’s older than 12 months will contain a lot of redundant data. It’s also important to cross check all the data to ensure that no one is included who has asked to be removed from call lists.

3. The Medium
B2B telemarketers have very different skill sets from those who work on consumer marketing. Your team needs to be responsive to what your prospects are saying. Forcing people into appointments wastes time and ultimately damages your brand.

4. The Delivery
Everyone has an individual style, but there are some fundamental rules. Successful telemarketers work hard to get gatekeepers (receptionists and PA’s) on their side. They are prepared, confident and always polite.

5. Timing
The best time for making calls varies and can depend on what campaign you are running. Many argue that Friday afternoons are a bad time to call people, but others point out that it can be a good time to catch prospects in a receptive mood, relaxing down into the weekend. Persistence is the key to getting through to your prospect.

6. Motivating Staff
Outbound telemarketing is a tough job that requires a thick skin and an ability to persevere in the face of initially poor results, so it’s important to be able to motivate staff and this will take more than a trip to the local under the guise of ‘team building’. Motivation requires clear, realistic targets and rewards for reaching them and not forgetting support and training which is essential especially if targets are not reached.

7. Getting Help
This advice all sounds great, but the reality is often very different and so it is unsurprising that many companies prefer to bring in external specialists and if you are considering doing this we can help you get the results you need.

We specialise in B2B telemarketing with a large team of highly trained resource specifically recruited for their B2B aptitude, compliant training programmes and agents with years of B2B experience. We can provide smart account management so you get advanced marketing insight backed up by recommendations for enhancement and improvements.

We’ve a proven track record and delivery top quality results consistently with multi channel approaches built to maximise your appointment volumes and sales results over the long-term with popular ‘keep-warm strategies’ to keep your customers focused and engaged with you.

With a strong pedigree and impeccable reputation you’re in safe hands right from the word go with a start-up process that includes pilots projects to make sure your telemarketing experience will be a journey to higher profits and cost savings.

If you need help give us a call, we make telemarketing better, it’s what we do.

Removing the mystery about marketing integration

What is Marketing Integration?

Marketing integration is simple…it’s joining up your marketing processes. It’s about joining up your database, direct marketing and digital marketing with the rest of the company, and of course with the customer. The results will be:
• Faster time to market for products, offers or incentives
• Greater relevancy and engagement with your customers
• Marketing efficiency and accountability.
According to research 69% of companies are currently allocating additional resource to understanding and implementing the areas of database and analytics in order to bring them closer to their customers.

Building a Platform

To succeed you need an integrated platform that supports your entire business process including:
• all marketing disciplines
• integration and collaboration
• strategic planning
• accountability
• measurement
“83% of marketers agree that marketing needs a more comprehensive and integrated application suite in order to improve its effectiveness.” The Forrester Wave, Suresh Vittal

Using Partners

Businesses need as much help as they can get to not only reach customers who are increasingly tuning out of communications, but also to help transform brand perceptions and make your business stand out against your competition.
It makes sense to use specific expertise and partners who understand the market and can deliver cost effective and efficient solutions because it is their area of expertise; it’s what they do.

You need to know what you know

“In God we trust; all others bring data” Barry Beracha, Sara Lee
There is a huge amount of value locked up in your databases and you need to unlock it so you can use this valuable resource for marketing purposes. Those who fail to segment, mine, model, plan, optimise and test will be overtaken by their more informed competition who have had the foresight to understand the value and behaviours of their customers.

Understanding customers as people

“70% of our decision to buy is based on how we are treated as people,” John McKena, The Centre for Information Based Competition
The way a customer is treated by your organisation will affect how likely they are to recommend your product or service. Customers are your biggest salesforce for your brand yet often they are actually overlooked and their opinions never asked. You can make the move from mass marketing to mass personalisation and become more relevant, anticipate what a customer needs and be in a position to meet those needs in an informed way.

Starting point in database marketing

Customer database management, segmentation, campaign management and closing the loop through feedback are fundamental aspects of successful direct and database marketing. If you aren’t already doing this then get a makeover from someone who knows that they are doing. If you are, why not try your hand at contact optimisation, it can increase campaign success rates by you to 50%.

How can we help?

Our strength is in the B2B market. The vast majority of our experience has been built up dealing with businesses large and small. Our operation is made up of a highly skilled workforce recruited primarily due to their suitability for the B2B markets. We employ a broad mix of team members who display maturity, influencing skills and the ability to hold conversations with business owners and influencers at all levels. Our campaigns are mostly all multi-channel integrated, and we believe these technologies support our ability to have the highest quality voice interactions with your customers. We can provide intelligent data analysis designed to get to your target market in the shortest time possible whilst reducing your costs.

It’s all adding up to growth for you!

The integrated nature of our campaigns allows you to integrate data marketing into your overall marketing strategy with ease. We can start your journey or solve a specific challenge by providing an integrated, bespoke and flexible solution. You can be confident that working with us will reduce any risk associated with outsourcing the areas of database and analytics. With an increase in customer interactions, conversations and engagement you will be providing a consistent customer experience, so stop creating a noise and start creating a symphony.

To Mail or Not To Mail Before A Cold Call

When setting up a telemarketing campaign I am often asked by a client whether they should send a mail shot before we call.  My answer is that it really depends on what we will be promoting during the telephone call.  In some instances it works, but not all the time.  The trick is to know when it works and when it doesn’t.

I always see a mailer as the cherry on the cake and not the cake itself. In other words, don’t rely on it or use it as a crutch during the calls.

Many telephone calls that follow a mailshot go something like this: –

[Telemarketer] – “Did you receive the mail shot we sent you last week?”
[Recipient of call] – “No I didn’t”
[Telemarketer] – “Oh okay, well the reason for the call was to discuss our new range of ‘x’”
[Recipient of call] – “Well I would rather see the literature first, would you send it again?”

The antidote to this scenario is to not mention the mailshot at all until the recipient mentions it – that’s if he does. A good majority of unsolicited mail shots never reach the correct person.

The element of surprise is also an important one. If a prospect isn’t expecting the call then you have a better chance of having a conversation with them rather than them making up their own mind that they are not interested beforehand because they saw your mailer and know who you are when you call.

Another very common scenario is this:-

[Telemarketer] – “I am calling about the mailshot we sent last week”
[Receptionist/Gatekeeper] – “Okay, hold the line (pauses and returns) I’ve just spoken to Mr X and he says he has your letter and will come back to you if he is interested”

A mailshot does work better in conjunction with a telephone call when the service or product you have to discuss over the telephone is very technical or hard to explain without some visual documentation.  It works well if the mailer is more targeted to the audience with an offer of some kind that makes the recipient keen to talk to the telemarketing person who will be following it up.

Mass mailings of course work on a numbers game theory, relying on sheer volume to hit someone who is looking for the product or service you are promoting.  This works fine as long as you have a good, up-to-date database (screen through the Mailing Preference Service first), and the money to see it through as it can be expensive.  The down side though is that many decision makers will put ‘junk’ mail in the bin before they even open it.

So what is the best solution?  The most effective mail/telephone call balance I have found over the years is to;

1.   Cold call the decision maker to explain the services or product in enough detail to gain interest
2.   If there is enough interest send a targeted letter and brochure
3.   Agree that there will be a call back after this has landed
4.   Call back at the agreed time for further discussion

Relationship Building From Cold Calls

It would seem highly unlikely that anyone would be able to build a relationship from a cold call – but this is a fallacy. Every day businesses are finding their clients through cold calling – building profitable relationships that last for years.

Rapport building

Rapport building is the cornerstone of how to build a close and successful relationship over the telephone. By nature though you would think it impossible because you don’t know the person and you have very little time in order to establish a rapport, but with practice and know-how it can be done.

The secret of rapport building is for the recipient of a cold call to feel comfortable within the telephone conversation. For it to feel familiar enough not to notice the differences between you, like the feeling you have when you call a friend.

Think about calling a person you know – a close friend or relative. Now think about how often you use their name when in a telephone conversation. Surprisingly little. Once perhaps at the beginning of a conversation, but unlikely that it would be used again. Telephone sales people in general often regard it as good practice to generously sprinkle a persons name throughout a conversation – they feel it creates a friendly environment. What isn’t realised is that the opposite is true and it can sow mistrust and sound artificial.

What’s in a name?

Rapport can be broken very quickly by how people are addressed by name during a cold call. As well as overusing names, telemarketers often think that by using a person’s first name it will evoke a friendly environment – but how often would you greet someone who you have never been introduced to, met or spoken to before, by their first name? It would be disrespectful to do this, but some cold callers do it all the time.

First name use should strictly be by invitation only or if the person announces themselves by their first name on answering the call. Don’t assume familiarity until you have earned it.

The cold caller – first name only or both names?

Rapport is all about building trust between the caller and the recipient of the call. By using both names, a cold caller is showing transparency as to who they are. Subliminally this says ‘I have nothing to hide’ and helps to build both trust and rapport right from the first seconds of the call.

Helping to keep rapport going

To develop and stay in rapport the cold caller needs to adapt to the tempo of the other person. Speaking too quickly will result in the recipient of the call feeling that the cold caller is too aggressive or too pushy. Speaking too slowly will irritate the recipient – the trick is to match the tempo of the person you are calling.

Breaking The Myths About Cold Calling…

There’s no doubt that cold calling has not enjoyed the best of reputations over the years. A badly executed cold call, at best can be irritating to the recipient. At worst, it can end in an abusive interaction by both parties and a slamming down of the telephone.

Done correctly though, cold calling is without doubt one of the most cost effective and profitable ways to find new business – fast.

You can build excellent relationships and find companies who are looking for your products or services every day. It is perfectly possible to speak with 25 decision makers in one day and make qualified appointments with up to 10% of them. Imagine what that could do for your business?

Scripts

Scripts don’t work and that’s a fact. A robotic set of words spewed out to anyone who will listen – and then expecting to get a ‘yes’ at the end, is the practice that gave cold calling a bad name years ago. A bad script works on the principal that – ‘A stopped clock tells the right time twice a day’ and cold calling is just a ‘numbers game’.

By contrast, you know an approach that’s working when someone says “I’m really glad you called”, or “thanks for your call” at the end of a conversation.

The alternative to a script is a call guide that allows the person placing the cold call to have a logical conversation with the receiver, allowing them to participate fully. It is vital to gain rapport quickly and to ask pertinent questions that the recipient recognises may help solve problems that they have. When a call goes in this direction, very profitable relationships can begin to develop, which then turns into very profitable business for you.

Objection handling

‘Objection handling’ is a term that is used to describe how a cold caller deals with an objection raised by the recipient of a cold call.

This practice involves argumentative exchanges of views between the cold caller and recipient – usually ending in the recipient becoming annoyed and putting the phone down.

Objections happen when a cold call has been made using a rigid script or a poor approach. The recipient raises an objection because he/she cannot see that they have a use for the product of services that is being pitched on the call or they are not finding the call interesting enough to listen to.

An interesting approach with the call guide, which involves highlighting the unique selling points of your companies’ products or services plus asking the right questions to unearth needs and provide solutions will win hands down and create the right environment for the recipient of the call to say – ‘ you called at just the right time’.

The Impact of Social Media on the Telemarketing Industry

Telemarketing agencies are somewhat confused about how social media marketing will fit in with the services they currently offer.  Is this because they refuse to accept that their time-tested methodology doesn’t need to change? Or perhaps they’re not aware of the constant need to evolve and innovate in such a competitive marketplace.  Maybe social media is a black hole to them, instead of taking time to understand the potential of new tools available they are happy to sit back and wait until another company steps up to the challenge and innovates the future model of telemarketing? 

Unfortunately, there are plenty of telemarketing agencies around that are not interested in evolution. As long as there are data lists, scripts and plentiful agents, they will happily stick their head in the sand and continue throwing mud at the wall.  It wasn’t so long ago that ‘integrated marketing’ and ‘multi-channel contact strategies’ were dismissed with the same scepticism as fads and fashions soon to pass. Instead, no telemarketing expert in their right mind would be able to dismiss the weight of supporting evidence that both approaches enhance and add value to traditional calling models. 

Through the very medium of social media itself these latest digital concepts are exploding in popularity. The question is, whether the results are keeping up? It is proposed that SMM (Social Media Marketing) adds a whole new level of depth to customer interactions. Only too often however are we reading that the depth it adds is to encourage complaints, opening cans of worms for brands and provide a platfrom for collective ‘moaning’ amongst customer groups. 

There are however some very good examples of how integrating SM at the most basic levels is already adding value.  For instance, integrating individual profiles from networking sites (eg Linkedin) in to CRM systems (eg Salesforce.com) ensures that prior to calling clients a telemarketer can research their target in more depth than was ever possible before. With access to prospect’s career histories, roles and responsibilities, contacts network and even personal details like family and interests at their finger tips. All of a sudden with shared connections now visible the business world suddenly seems like a very small place. It’s a bit like the game ‘six degrees of Kevin Bacon’ where you’re never more than a couple of connections away from the movers and shakers. By integrating seamlessly using third part apps, CRM systems and SM platforms become one and the same. 

Knowledge is power, with a telemarketing campaign managed properly this knowledge will convert in to better qualified leads, increased sales and improved client relations. Of course the example I’ve talked about here primarily impacts the B2B telemarketing proposition, but bring in other social networking sites such as Facebook, social bookmarking, blogs and media sharing sites and the possibilities are mind-boggling. Maybe that’s the biggest problem, at this stage the ideas are coming faster than busy marketers can keep up with. The trick is to try new things, keep it simple and keep as close an eye on the results as you are the next big idea. So if you’re planning your ‘social mashup strategy’ don’t forget the ‘speak to an adviser’ because for now at least we haven’t come across a desktop widget that can build relationships like a real human being – but we’re keeping watch! 

What do you think about the future of telesales?

Will Social Media Marketing completely change the landscape?