The Agitator

5 Responses to “Good Telemarketing Advice”

1. Adrian Salmon says:

   July 16, 2010 at 9:26 am

   I’m a big believer in the phone. And you can use it for acquisition, but you have to be smart about it, and realise that the true power of the phone is promoting regular (monthly) giving. Many charities in the UK use sponsored questions in consumer surveys to generate cold phone acquisition lists, and I believe that works well for them.

   But for an even more ambitious example, take Save the Children in the UK a couple of years ago.

   They printed full-page colour advertisements in newspapers asking readers to text in the word ‘ceasefire’ to show their support for Gaza, and mailed their existing supporters with an ask to text. They got 183,000 people replying to the text petition – that’s a ton of mobile phone numbers they didn’t have before.

   Then they tested calling back 4,000 of the responders to convert them to regular givers. They found that an unrestricted regular gift ask far outperformed a cash ask. That’s a great and brave use of testing – conventional wisdom would have said the cash ask would have been by far the safer bet with these ‘untried’ prospects.

   So by doing this they raised enough money to call all of the 183,000 mobile numbers and made 104,000 contacts.

   They ended up with 8,500 more regular donors – 10% response straight to monthly giving – and 12-month direct debit income of £704,000 where they’d expected £280,000.

   Save The Children structured cold telephone acquisition in exactly the right way – to get people to make an initial ‘easy’ gesture of support, that they could then follow up with a well judged ask for a gift.

   The beauty is that you could also use social media to replicate this on a smaller scale, using the power of Facebook and SMS to get people to make similar simple gestures, that would provide data capture for the phone, and a qualified ‘luke-warm’ list to approach.
2. Dave Raley says:

   July 16, 2010 at 3:08 pm

   “A lot of money” is an understatement. I cringe at the idea of telemarketing as much as anyone, and at Masterworks we’ve looked at it with a fine-toothed comb more than most (i.e. does it work well in the short term but hurt long term value, etc). The fact remains that it works, and it works exceptionally well.
3. Alison Keys says:

   July 19, 2010 at 6:59 pm

   Yes, tele-fundraising works very well because tele-fundraisers have the most intimate form of contact with donors, but they are sometimes the least trusted as confirmed in Jose’s article! The word Telemarketing is usually defined as a Business to Business or Business to Consumer call to sell or introduce a product or service and is the practice that has and usually deserves it’s bad rep. (do not call list)

   Telefundraising or telephone solicitation is when a charity calls its past and or its present donors for a specific reason. Usually the goal is two-fold: one to touch base with their supporters in a more personal way giving them real time updates and a chance to ask questions concerning their charity. Two is usually to ask for the donor to change the way they support from one or two donations a year to a monthly and I can assure you this does involve two way conversations. Just explaining the benefits both to the donor and the charity takes training and personality, things that cannot be put into a direct mail piece.
   But if we accept the first “no” our results would tank and clients would not be happy. But this (we call them rebuttals) is another thing that has to be done correctly and respectfully.The word NO..In the years that I have been calling donors for a charity I can count on two hands how many times a donor has just said NO. There is always a reason or excuse. A caller will empathize, understand even agree with the donor and find the best way to solve the donors reluctance… example “no money now” ” “That’s one of the reasons we have monthly giving, a small amount a month will be affordable”. Then explain the benefits to both the charity and the donor. The caller has seconds to determine what is the best response to the reason for not giving now. For direct mail if it doesn’t work there are weeks and months to fine tune a different approach to try to have the donor respond. I am curious that if a Direct Mail Agency took the non responders from their first mailings and classified them as a “no” would it be harassment if they mailed them again and again? People indicate very often they do not want to receive as much mail. As for recommending that organizations shouldn’t work with companies that don’t allow “live call monitoring”, this is another mistake. Live call monitoring opens up our network to unneccessary security risks and we can’t have that. We provide our clients with recorded calls – they can have access to all of them.
   I understand and agree with many of the points Jose mentioned in her article but please do not lump us all in one basket. Telemarketing and raising funds for charities has never been the same thing — And I know I have done both! Phone prospecting also works as long is it is done correctly. We take the two step approach to acquiring monthly donors and it works!
4. Amy Gossage says:

   March 18, 2011 at 12:12 pm

   WE are seeking a company to handle our telemarking services for the animal shelter…We need a new shelter building…funds needed …$200.000.00. WE are a 5013c corp. in good standing with the NC Dept Solicitation.
5. Alison Keys says:

   June 16, 2011 at 9:56 am

   Hi Amy Gossage, I am maybe a bit late in responding to your query about needing a company to handle your tm services, but please call me if you are still looking! Alison