The Direct Marketing Association (DMA)'s 2005 report on lead generation is out. Based on 573 campaigns from 21 industries and 19 different media, the telephone was tops in lead generation and direct order response rates. Industries covered include: financial products and services, health services, manufacturing, packaged goods, catalog/retail, and travel.
This validates other research we've seen where telemarketing campaigns lead with a response rate of around 5.28% in B2B. The benefits of using telemarketing include immediate feedback, allows tactic modification if response rate is low. The downsides are a limited audience and difficulty in getting decision makers on the phone.
From our own experience, telemarketing has definitely proven effective. In the course of running our own campaigns, we did learn some common sense things to do in using this channel:
1. Get the best you can pay for
Many of us have interacted with the human drones who call on the pretext of selling something to you. They either talk too fast, read the script verbatim and / or talk in a monotone like someone died. Hire the best! They might be the first voice your potential client hears, you don't want them to be the last.
2. Keep it short, sweet and have something to sell
Write up the script and run it by as many different people as possible. By the time your telemarketer uses it, they should be able to run through the base message with the customer in 2 min or less easily. It's the same thing as a slow loading web page - you have to catch your customer quickly.
3. Round it up
Sometimes you get to the sale, sometimes you don't. But there is always something you can take away from the call. Prepare a short survey (1-3 questions) that you can ask quickly and use the questions to better understand your target segments.
You can view the DMA release here.
Jo (Marketing)