Telemarketing Lead Generation Blog

Direct Mail & Telemarketing: How to Reinforce Your Message & Generate Leads

Posted on Jul 14, 2008 by Kathy Rizzo, Vice President Marketing

Several months ago, we released the results of our telemarketing best in class survey of high-tech marketers. One of the most interesting discoveries was that a majority (63.4 percent) of our “best in class” marketers integrate email and direct mail into their telemarketing strategy. While nearly everyone surveyed indicated they are integrating email, the “best in class” marketers are integrating both email and direct mail into their telemarketing approach 25 percent more often.

While there are some very good ways to integrate personalized direct mail using print-on-demand technology after your telemarketing call (topic of a future blog post!), I’d like to spend a little time discussing traditional direct mail telemarketing follow-up.

My industry colleague, David Longval from Concept Communications, recently wrote: “the two most important elements for any direct marketing program is your target audience and offer. It’s essential to acquire dependable data and analytics of your audience. Once you have the necessary insight into your target audience, it’s crucial to have a compelling offer. Remember, your audience isn’t just sitting back waiting for your solicitation. Your offer needs to motivate a response that will navigate them into your sales funnel.”

In many cases the motivation that David references is put into action when a well-timed telemarketing call is placed to reinforce the message and further articulate the benefits of the offer. When preparing a telemarketing follow-up program, there are a few things to keep in mind:

1. Timing is everything. Often times marketers make the mistake of sending a direct mail piece and then sitting back to wait for responses. Then, after several weeks or even months, they will begin telemarketing to those who did not respond. However, waiting diminishes the value of your telemarketing calls, as the prospect will no longer recall the message of the mailer. So instead of reinforcing the message, you are starting from scratch. Plan your telemarketing calls to start within a week of your mailer reaching your audience.
2. Avoid asking “did you get our mailer?” in your opening statement. When you start off a call by asking your prospect if they received your mailer, you’ve just given them an excellent opportunity to immediately end the call (No, I didn’t, please resend it. Click.). In over 50% of the cases, your prospect will say no and ask for it to be re-sent EVEN if they did get it. And you’ve just closed your call prematurely. It’s challenging enough to get prospects on the phone, so you don’t want to waste your opportunity to have a discussion. Instead, focus your opening statement on reinforcing the message (benefits!) from the mailer. You should mention the mailer and discuss its contents (the offer), but stop short of asking if they received it – at least until you’re further into your call. If you’d like to capture stats on the reach of your mailer, ask the question towards the end of the call: “by the way, do you recall receiving the mailer that I initially mentioned?”. Of course, you should always be prepared to send another copy.
3. Don’t have tunnel vision. Although the purpose of your telemarketing call is to reinforce the message and offer included in your mailer, make sure you are not too narrowly focused on your call approach. While your offer may be concerning a particular element of a company’s storage environment, it’s a good idea to also ask “big picture” questions regarding overall challenges regarding their storage solution. This allows additional pains to emerge and helps to generate more qualified leads.
4. Offer a “leave behind”. Your telemarketing call should not be the end of your engagement with your prospect. Whether they are a lead or not, you should have a relevant piece of content that can be offered and emailed to the prospect upon the close of the call. This further reinforces your message and helps to build awareness and interest with your prospects.

Following these tips will strengthen your direct mail and telemarketing campaigns and ultimately drive more qualified leads into your pipeline.

Tagged: lead generation, targeted lead generation, telemarketing leads, telemarketing saels leads, direct mail integration telemarketing, telemarketing direct mail

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