We get a lot of our clients asking for secrets of a successful campaign. This, as it turns out, is a loaded question a so much depends on the purpose of the campaign as well as the end audience. However for discussion purposes we’ll narrow it down to traditional lead generation campaigns.

Note: As you read these, please keep in mind that this is not professional marketing advice, merely experience based suggestions. People go to school for this stuff, i.e., to deep-dive into marketing, we didn’t.

1. Keep it LEGAL:  Most customers use us to contact their own customers, businesses, or resell value-add voice services.  All of which is perfectly legal.  However, if you purchase opt-in leads and use them to generate sales - be sure to research and adhere to your local, state, federal, and international dialing laws & regulations.  Anyone can check out www.DoNotCall.gov for information on using telephony broadcast within the United States.
2. Keep the Message Short: Keep the message between 20-30 seconds. Most customers have little patience for automated audio and will hang up pretty quickly if they don’t hear something they like.
3. Clear Call to Action: This is especially true for press-1 style campaigns. There should be a call to action early in the message, this can be in the form of a question, or a directive. It also helps if relevant, recent news items are referenced for it brings a certain degree of freshness to the message.
4. Be Emotional: By this we don’t mean theatrics, but at the same time don’t come across sounding like Stephen Hawking (no offence intended). You have a very short window to grab the customer’s ear, do it with emotion, do it with style. If you’re not confident of your voice, you could always try a professional voice talent. Keep in mind however, if reaching out to existing customers with whom you already have a relationship, your voice might get more transfers than even a CNN anchor.

 

1) Have a clear message and keep it short.

Within the first 7 seconds of any call, a prospects is well aware that they are hearing a recording. You want them to know your stance on the issue at hand without alienating them, so use a familiar voice for the recorded call. People will tend to listen more to a famous voice or the candidate himself/herself. So get the right talent to record the message.

Don’t squeeze too much information into a 30-45 second call. There are plenty of opportunities for a prospects to find additional information about you, so use a caller-id and give them a web site, but don’t speed-talk through 9 topics in 45 seconds.

An example of a successful broadcast includes a campaign in which Hilary Clinton asked prospects to oppose "a proposal to require minors seeking abortions to notify their parents or get waivers from a judge." (The Raw Story, article)  It was successful because it was one clear topic, and a familiar voice spoke to them directly.

2) Don’t annoy your audience.

Don’t call after 9pm and don’t send the same message repeatedly. It’s simple to touch upon new issues for each robocall campaign that is sent out. Change the voice, use multiple topics and space out your campaigns so your prospects aren’t bothered by your voice broadcast. This technology gives you a great opportunity to reach all of your prospects, but it’s also easy to abuse it and annoy them, rendering your campaign ineffective.

 

3) Use the right technology.

Make sure that your technology can handle the capacity, time sensitivity and the statistical needs of your campaign. Make sure your system or service provides the following necessary features for your robocall campaigns:

1. Scheduling of your campaign
2. Live statistics as your campaign occurs
3. Huge capacity to target millions
4. Fully web based and complete control of campaigns through any browser
5. Managed campaigns - If needed,  takes care of all logistics
6. Message Recording
7. For the advanced: Full programming interface to work with your systems

There is a second part to the right technology: not all messages are best handled by robocalls. Sometimes, you need to leverage a phone bank effort and talk to prospects directly. Using a system like the distributed  agent technology, you or your employees can connect to prospects from anywhere. The system is designed to allow calls to automatically be connected to prospects and to collect full statistics of each call, including a web based form for questions and notes.

4) Contact the right audience.

This is simple. Get the right list for your campaign. There are many technologies available that will filter your audience to the exact demographic you need. Things to look for in your list:

1. Geographically filtered to include areas that you want to target ( zip codes, city, longitude and latitude )
2. Filter by demographic - find lists with single family homes or children - find the right audience
3. Data that is new - old data has high amounts of disconnected and bad numbers

5) Follow the regulations.

Many states have added new regulations for political calls, often including a stipulation that each message immediately inform the listener of who is paying for the robocall.

Be careful not to abuse the technology. There can be great rewards in using robocalls effectively for a campaign.