Sunday, May 11, 2008
By TJ Thinakaran

We get a lot of calls from our clients asking for secrets of a successful campaign. This, as it turns out, is a loaded question as 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 CallFire 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.   You may not be eligible to use CallFire if you do not adhere to these dialing laws.  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.

For a more thorough evaluation, check out a previous post titled "Top Five Methods to Make Successful Political Voice Broadcasting"