Is Telemarketing Still Taboo?

In the world of integrated marketing plans and performance driven marketing is the practise of telemarketing making a comeback, but more importantly is it making a greater contribution than eMarketing or direct marketing. Telemarketing is a method of response to a marketing activity that involves a telephone call to try and solicit a request for a meeting or further information. In a Business to Consumer (B2C) environment the use of predictive dialling devices and recorded messages have given call centres and telemarketing companies a bad reputation, this has helped the growth of the telephone preference service which is a free service and the official central opt out register on which individuals can record their preference not to receive unsolicited sales or marketing calls.

While in the Business to Business (B2B) world telemarketing is making a resurgence as an essential tool in the modern marketers marketing mix. Telemarketing as one essential element in planning an integrated marketing campaign can really help drive up the return on investment (ROI)for selected activities. Targeted messaging, lead generation, appointment setting and even event registrations are all tasks that can be accomplished via a well planned and executed telemarketing campaign.

So my ‘Top 8 Tips’ for planning and running a successful telemarketing campaign are…

• Database – Ensure your data is accurate, the licence is up to date the target market is a match for the message  
• Data Protection – Be sure you know that you actually own the data or where the data was originally sourced, check local data laws to ensure you comply, or pay the price
• Briefing – Every marketing campaign should start with a brief that then creates the overall plan. As the agents are conveying your message, make sure they are fully briefed on every aspect of the campaign and the history of the business
• Training – The more information the agent has the better they will perform especially if the program relates to a product promotion or offer
• References – Provide Cheat Sheets, Emails, Case Studies or even real life examples to help the agent deal with any situation that may arise during a conversation
• Conversation – This leads nicely on to, don’t use a script, encourage your agents to have a conversation, they will be more successful and receive less resistance if it does not feel like a sales call
• Closed Loop Reporting – Success can only be judged if the leads go through this sales led process, this is where most campaigns fall over and the reputation for telemarketing not delivering is created and communicated by a weak link in the overall company chain
• Testing – Before launching the campaign, test every back-end processes and response mechanism, because once the campaign is live there is no going back and you may lose all your responses and dent your company’s reputation

Companies such as Astute or Tangible Results can help advise businesses of any size how telemarketing can help increase responses for their marketing campaigns. Remember, a successful telemarketing campaign is dependent on the quality of the target data.