Conventional wisdom has it that outbound telemarketing’s role in traditional marketing has been in decline – the victim of the rise of the Internet, coupled with Federal Trade Commission (FTC) restrictions on upselling and the arrival of “Do Not Call.”
But an increasing number of Internet advertisers are turning to call centers to verify and generate leads, drive inbound calls and increase incremental revenues from existing programs. Those looking to promote themselves on a CPA basis are finding new ways to leverage telemarketing, by using it to support and extend what they’re doing on the web and in traditional media. Call centers, meanwhile, have shifted tactics, from selling third party programs to other forms of monetization.
The rise of the Internet has provided a huge pool of real time opt-in names that do not have to be scrubbed against the National Do Not Call Registry. Feeding this data into call centers can provide an efficient way to quickly engage consumers and generate more valuable leads through further qualifications and warm transfers of ready customers.
The “high touch” value that the phone can provide is one of the main reasons why call centers are still important. It is all about monetization and making the maximum use of a brief window of opportunity, whether it’s a customer service call, a customer who has said “no” to a primary program or one who has completed a transaction and has agreed to be transferred to an additional opportunity.
As more and more call centers have started to dip their toes into the lead generation pool, a healthy new marketplace of lead gen “matchmakers” has sprung up to put lead buyers and lead sellers in contact with each other. While it’s important to make use of the post-transaction phase of each call, it’s equally important to find the program to fit the particular campaign and/or potential response. Declining an offer, proactively calling customer service, completing a sale or action—each of these actions can be placed into a different “bucket” and paired with a specific lead generation or call transfer program. By acting as intermediaries between call centers and interested marketers, these matchmakers play a vital role in completing the circle.
For years Internet advertisers have been focused primarily on online affiliate marketing. While that’s not going away any time soon, the call center has emerged from a period of uncertainty become a lucrative new avenue. Piggybacking on inbound telemarketing not only allows advertisers to increase their transaction volume, but in most cases gives them a far more qualified lead and a better sales prospect, which is what really matters in the end.
Adam Weil is CMO DMi Partners.
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