5 methods businesses are using to get the most out of their data and maximise the performance of outbound campaigns.
Outbound calling forms the foundations of revenue generation in a huge number of industries including telecoms, utilities, insurance and debt recovery. Over recent years changing regulations and customer habits have meant it has never been harder or more expensive to reach out to prospects and customers over the phone.
Toughening rules on Abandoned Calls coupled with tighter laws on data have meant that businesses have had to completely change the methods and metrics used to manage campaigns. Gone are the days when a company could buy a bulk list of consumer data, upload it into a cheap open source dialler and ‘crank it up to 11’, focusing on quantity rather than quality to speak to as many prospects as possible. With the ICO increasing enforcement activity against businesses (a Glasgow based Lead Generator was recently fined £150,000 for making nuisance calls), it has simply become too costly for businesses to risk the financial and reputational damage caused by non-compliant dialling - which means it has never been more important to look at new ways to maximise campaign performance.
If we can’t make hundreds of thousands of calls to anybody we like, it makes sense to maximise conversions on the data we do have access to. Below are 5 methods businesses are using in 2021 to get the most out of their precious data and maximise the performance of outbound campaigns.
- Dial the right records first time using propensity modelling
A good sales leader or campaign manager will have a pretty firm understanding of their conversion rates. If your data is converting at 5%, your agents will need to speak to 20 prospects in order to make a sale or collect a debt, but that means that 95% of the calls your agents make are going to go nowhere. Propensity modelling is the concept of organising your data by both the probability of a call being successful and the potential revenue each call can make. By focusing on the records which are most likely to bring in the most revenue, more of your agents time can be spent speaking with the best prospects and lower quality data only needs to be called when you are out of the good stuff.
Sounds complicated, right? It is! If the mere thought of using calculus to predict which of your data to dial first is enough to give you the shivers there is no need to worry, there are a number of solutions on the market to take the pain away and do this for you.
- Use Best Time To Call (BTTC) to reach your contacts in fewer attempts
Everybody works to a different schedule; so whilst the evening might be the best time to catch one prospect, others may be more likely to answer in the morning. Using AI to predict Best Time to Call (BTTC) means that you are less likely to call a prospect when they aren’t able to answer and more likely to contact and close a record in less attempts than taking a scattergun approach. Similarly to Propensity Modelling, calculating BTTC is difficult and manually implementing this can be even harder - however a number of solutions exist to do this for you and take the hard work out of increasing data penetration.
- Use blended dialling modes to make the most out of your different data types
Whilst in an ideal world you would only be calling hot leads who have just enquired on your website, we know that for most businesses this is just a fantasy. Whilst it’s important to have a good mix of fresh leads, purchased lists and older data to dial through, it is even more important to treat them differently. Using blended dialling modes is a fantastic way to do this without affecting the performance of your campaigns. Running your older and lower quality data through a predictive algorithm, dialling in the background and filtering out unproductive calls before they reach an agent will boost performance - however for your fresh leads this runs the unnecessary risk of dropping calls or putting it through to an unprepared agent.
Having a separate preview list within your campaign which prioritises fresh leads will not only improve your speed to dial by bypassing a potentially huge buffer of calls but will ensure your agents know that the prospect they are calling is a hot (and expensive) lead and should be dealt with differently than an old enquiry from earlier in the year.
- Conduct a review of your CLI’s
Whilst GDPR has put a stop to some of the more persistent offenders, it’s safe to say most of us will likely get a cold call from time to time. How often do you see a call coming through from a non-geo number you don’t recognise and ignore the call?
You’re not alone: according to Zipwhip, 87% of people often ignore phone calls from unknown numbers.
Choosing the right CLI is very important to ensure as many calls as possible are answered. There are a number of things you can do to improve this; present local numbers (where permitted) and regularly check your numbers do not appear on the ‘Suspected Spam Caller’ register.
- Use SMS as part of your contact strategy
As well as presenting appropriate CLI’s, SMS can be used as part of your contact strategy to inform customers who you are and why you are calling. If you have made 2 unsuccessful attempts to contact a record, why not send an SMS message explaining who you are, the reason for your calls, when you will be trying again and offering a call to action for the prospect to reach out to you?
According to this article by RedEye, SMS has an average open rate of 99% with 97% of messages being read within 15 minutes, so if you are struggling to connect over the phone it is a fantastic way of connecting with those hard-to-reach customers and prospects.
SMS can also be used as the first step within a contact strategy and coupled with blended and preview dialling mentioned earlier is a great method of converting more of your web leads faster.
If you would like to discuss ways of implementing any of the above within your own campaigns or talk about other ways to drive more revenue from your outbound campaigns, Route 101 would be delighted to help.
Our team have decades of experience in optimising outbound campaigns within Global BPOs, Big 6 Energy companies, and some of Europe’s largest telco providers and would be delighted to talk with you about the challenges you currently face. Contact us today.
