Mission Critical Reasons to Introduce Your Company via Phone 1st and Email 2nd

More Prospects will Actually Read your Email

Similar to how you begin recognizing certain models of cars on the road after you become aware of them, people are more likely to acknowledge (open, read, and understand) email from companies and people whose names they have heard before. If you email strangers, there is a greater chance they will delete that message that you crafted so carefully, and paid so much to have designed – without reading it. You have essentially accomplished nothing if folks are deleting your message, or never receiving it because it landed in their junk folder or spam tank, which is something that your email service can’t report against. Instead, you walk away with a false sense of security that more people got the message than actually did. Even worse, this can make you delay your follow-up, or not perform any at all, because “they got your email”.

| We see this phenomenon all the time in our client email campaigns. The prospects who open the email are those with whom we have had recent conversations. The more conversations we have, the higher the open rates. |

We see this phenomenon all the time in our client email campaigns. The prospects who open the email are those with whom we have had recent conversations. The more conversations we have, the higher the open rates. This is one of the best kept secrets in modern marketing. If you want your clients to “feel” each touch of your multi-touch campaign, the initial contact with a prospect should be the phone call, with an email follow-up, not the other way around.

Lead generation strategies that put e-mail and direct mail

before telemarketing may be putting the cart before the horse

and missing out on the optimal impact of each vehicle.

Clicks Do Not Qualify Prospects: People Do

If you get acquainted with your prospects via phone first, there are a number of things you can do to more meaningfully establish an ongoing relationship, perhaps the most important being to qualify the prospect. In today’s world of automated marketing, it is more likely than ever that you are actually nurturing the wrong prospects. Prospects may be opening, and clicking on all the right things, however, they may not meet any number of qualifications that can be vetted in one phone call – Budget, Authority, Need, Timeframe, in addition to the number of potential users, the current solution – all those details that matter to many B2B sales. This is why phone surveys that help companies score leads are on the upswing>>>

Taking the Wrong Approach When Following-up on an Email Can Stall Sales

If you are planning to conduct phone follow-up to that email (and this applies to direct mail investments as well), this is a challenging form of outreach that can also lead to a dead-end, rather than a new opportunity for your sales pipeline. When the phone follow-up to a marketing piece revolves around whether or not someone received the collateral, the action item is invariably to re-send the piece, versus taking the next step in the sales process.

For example, “Did you receive my email?”….”No I didn’t”…”Ok, I’ll re-send it to you!”

Or, “Did you receive my email?”….”Yes, I did”…”Did you have any questions?”...”No I didn’t”….”Ok, thank you.” 

Tips on breaking this cycle and starting a real conversation>>>

By Calling Prospects First You Can Avoid Spam Traps: Very Bad for Business

Picture this: It’s 8 pm on a Sunday night, and you are programming your email campaign for launch at noon on Monday. You have meticulously developed target-appropriate messaging, your favorite designer has done a beautiful job of balancing usability with aesthetic design elements, and you upload the list that you invested money and time into acquiring. It’s time to schedule the send, and you check off the little boxes to assure your vendor that your list is consent-based. 

A couple of hours later, you go back to make sure your list is loaded properly – and you get a message telling you to contact your email vendor for a review of your list. More than a little confused and frustrated, you make the call, and it’s all downhill from there. Your email vendor basically refuses to send to your list, because it contains “problematic” email addresses. They threaten to close your account completely, and the negotiation for how you can remain their customer begins. What does all this mean? Let’s let our friends at Wikipedia explain:

Spamtraps are usually email addresses that are created not for communication, but rather to lure spam. In order to prevent legitimate email from being invited, the e-mail address will typically only be published in a location hidden from view such that an automated e-mail address harvester (used by spammers) can find the email address, but no sender would be encouraged to send messages to the email address for any legitimate purpose. Since no e-mail is solicited by the owner of this spamtrap e-mail address, any e-mail messages sent to this address are immediately considered unsolicited.

Bottom line, some email vendors would rather lose your business than risk sending email to spam traps, potentially black-listing them from certain ISPs, impeding their deliverability. Can they get white-listed again? Sure, but that would require their time and effort. The fact is – you have to protect your email vendor from spam traps, versus the other way around. If any email vendor doesn’t see it this way, please contact me, I’d consider using them in a minute.

| If you are leveraging the email addresses of strangers (via the internet, or third-party lists), you may unknowingly be uploading spam traps to your subscribership, a practice that can get you banned from using the affordable email services that we all know and love. |

It is, and has always been, a standard business practice to purchase a list from a third-party. Different vendors have different ways of collecting contact records, and many of today’s list sources are leveraging publically-available internet content to do so. According to sources, this is where “spam traps” can be planted. Let’s not get into the details about this concept. Let’s not debate the pros and cons of “spam traps”, their impact on commerce, and whom they protect from what. If you are in sales or marketing it is your job to avoid them, whether or not you wanted this responsibility. Even if you chose to leverage your own corporate servers to send email, you can get blacklisted from certain ISPs. There is no escaping the issue.

| Many companies are confirming list data by phone, even data that they paid a considerable price to acquire, before going on to launch direct marketing campaigns. |

The best practice of having subscribers sign up via an approved interface (one that logs IP address and time of sign up) is optimal, but not always realistic in the B2B world. For most B2B sales cycles, the need to meet qualified prospects outpaces the company’s website traffic and newsletter sign ups. So how do you confirm the integrity of an email address, and/or drive prospects and clients to sign up online? Well….you can call them. Many companies are confirming list data by phone, even data that they paid a considerable price to acquire, before going on to launch direct marketing campaigns. To quote one client, “If I’m going to spend $20 to send a dimensional mailer, I’m going to make sure it reaches the right recipient”.

| The more you reach out by phone, the more you are emailing acquaintances, and not strangers. Email then becomes an anticipated resource that helps establish you as a thought leader. |

In summary, the more you reach out by phone, the more you are emailing acquaintances, and not strangers. Email then becomes an anticipated resource that helps establish you as a thought leader, familiarizes your market with your capabilities, and increases the odds of keeping your solution front-of-mind. An ongoing cycle of calling and emailing can work wonders for your sales pipeline. But the first place to start, in order to get your firm on your prospects’ radar, is more often than not, the phone.

Kathryn Tito

Director of Marketing & Business Development

Call Center Services, Inc.

For assistance with your next lead generation campaign,

Contact me directly at (978)513-1225.