Are Telemarketing Services Still Effective?

You’ve  probably experienced unsolicited telemarketing calls or “cold calling.” Many Canadian organizations have long used telemarketing services to sell their products or services to potential customers. However, with all the robocalls, scams, and unwanted phone calls from unregulated call centers, the effectiveness of telemarketing services has dropped dramatically.

However, as we’ll demonstrate in this blog, there are still effective uses for telemarketing. Our telemarketing services have proven highly beneficial when integrated into marketing campaigns alongside other strategies.  Indeed, we’ve evolved from traditional cold calling to a more efficient and effective targeted approach.

Unlike outdated tactics that contact random prospects without prior research or consent, targeted telemarketing focuses on engaging with carefully selected, high-potential leads based on specific intent data and customer demographics. This shift allows for more personalized and relevant communication, improving conversion rates and customer satisfaction.

Additionally, this ensures full compliance with the CRTC regulations on unsolicited telecommunications in Canada, respecting national do-not-call lists (the National DNCL) and adhering to stringent rules that protect privacy rights, making our services both ethical and efficient.

When used strategically alongside other marketing efforts, targeted telemarketing services can be highly effective for many purposes, including:

1. Market Research

Speaking with real people to understand their concerns, pain points, views, and current status helps to better plan how to convert them into paying clients down the line. 

2. Lead Qualification

Getting immediate and straight answers from prospective clients to determine whether they have the Budget secured, the Authority to make a decision, the specific Need for your solution, and a Timeline for a decision (BANT).

3. Lead Nurturing

Building relationships with prospective customers and helping them remove any obstacle that prevents them from selecting a particular solution, and thus becoming paying clients.

4. Follow-Up

Re-engaging prospective clients after they expressed initial interest, when other channels were not yielding any reactions. This is important to understand in which direction you should invest further resources to gain them as paying clients.

5. Appointment Setting

Promoting an event or scheduling appointments is an effective way, as long as the recipients of the calls have some brand awareness of the organization reaching out to them.

6. Telesales

Delegating some of the sales team’s responsibilities by having sales representatives start the dialogue, send an electronic order form, or even convert some ready prospective customers.

7. Customer Experience Feedback

Getting real and timely customer feedback on customer experience after specific touchpoints throughout the client journey using a Net Promoter Score survey, but through telemarketing services.

Many parameters influence telemarketing services’ results, but four crucial factors determine the outcome:

List of recipients

Every telemarketing campaign starts and ends with the quality of the list. It is critical to ensure that the list matches your ICP (Ideal Client Profile), but it is recommended to select the list based on buying intent and known behavior.

Integration with other marketing campaigns

Telemarketing campaigns must be part of a general marketing strategy. Integrating them with other marketing campaigns improves their results. Instead of conducting pure “cold calling”, other marketing campaigns are responsible for a certain level of brand awareness and the creation of demand for the solution.

Script creation

A telemarketing script is like a key to a lock. You might have a great list of recipients, but if your script approach is incorrect, the likelihood of success is slim. Scripts must be tested and practiced to gain engagement and valuable information that will help you gauge the likelihood of converting the recipient into a future paying customer. 

Call Timing

The timing of each call is vital to its success. That is why we suggest incorporating telemarketing services triggered smoothly within the client journey, or once buying intent is demonstrated. This way, calls arrive when recipients are ready, and they will welcome the call.

Now that we know how Canadian companies can leverage the power of outbound telemarketing, let’s take a closer look at some real-world results we’ve achieved, both in the English and French markets:

Registration Rate

We increased a professional association’s seminar registration rate for its professional development programs by 27% year-over-year.

Benchmarking

We helped a SaaS company develop an industry benchmark by interviewing 35% of its target market. Thanks to this, they published their report on their social media channels and attracted new prospective clients.

Market Research

We conducted a phone survey for a manufacturer to measure market needs and assess entry viability in a new region. In addition to validating certain client assumptions, we identified sales opportunities that led to immediate contracts totaling $650,000 in revenue.

Offloading Responsibilities

We took over all BDR (business development representatives) activities for a small tech service firm, allowing their sales team to focus solely on closing deals. This resulted in a 42% sales closure rate, as the salespersons had access to high-quality intelligence data that facilitated deal closure.

Donor Retention

Our telemarketing agents assisted a not-for-profit organization by calling donors and verifying their satisfaction with the organization’s use of their funds. This was done because of insufficient feedback received from their online NPS survey. This campaign resulted in a 19% increase in donor retention.

Professional telemarketing companies or service providers usually follow this procedure:

• • Defining how to approach phone recipients
  • Building quality lists based on ICP and prospective behavior
  • Developing an interactive script to support agents
  • Training the agents allocated to the campaign
  • Setting up databases and automating the telemarketing system
  • Running a prototype campaign to validate the strategy, script, and agent readiness
  • Executing the telephone calls to deliver results
  • Optimizing and controlling the quality of calls and making improvements
  • Generating monthly activities reports

• • Our team is professionally trained.
  • We care about your ROI and continually invest in improving results.
  • It is important for us to deliver. Your success is our success.
  • You can start small and scale up. Our team is designed to grow with you.
  • We act as an extension of your organization and update you on the campaign in real time as needed.

Overall, telemarketing services is an effective way to achieve customer prospecting, as long as the campaign is:

• • Designed for proper telemarketing use.
  • Compliments other marketing campaigns.
  • Planned thoroughly to address the four success factors of telemarketing.

Direct Objective has extensive experience in planning and executing telephone-based campaigns.