Marketing Profs

Since its inception, the Do Not Call Registry has had a profound impact on the telemarketing industry, just as it has on individual organizations relying on outbound telemarketing in their marketing strategy. The challenge now facing these businesses is to find creative ways to still make telemarketing work.

Consumers wanting protection from unwanted intrusions warmly welcomed the registry in July 2003. However, with the registry's inception came the argument from businesses that not all calls were unwanted and that many consumers were willing to spend a few minutes on the phone listening to a pitch.

Despite objections from organizations relying on telemarketing, the Do-Not-Call Registry moved forward. The list, maintained by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), now contains more than 60 million registered telephone numbers. Businesses involved with any form of telemarketing now face serious obstacles that will only grow larger as more telephone numbers are registered and the FTC cracks down on violators.

Marketers are forced to abide by the FTC's rules and are challenged to find innovative ways to get their messages out to interested consumers.

As clever marketers are discovering, there are ways to generate large lists of telephone numbers for their telemarketing teams to call on. Rather than having lists of random and unqualified targets, there's something better: a narrowly targeted and legitimately pre-qualified prospect base.

The secret lies in online marketing

Through the Internet, marketers are able to identify "hand-raisers." These are people who have identified themselves as interested in hearing about specific products and services offered by your company. These people become qualified "leads" or "prospects."

Outbound telemarketing used to be the primary method for identifying hand-raisers. Now the Internet can help with this process—and might even be a more effective at it.

A survey released in May 2005 by marketing research and management consulting firm The Artemis Group in conjunction with KnowledgeStorm discovered that 80% of leads generated through the Internet expressed positive attitudes when contacted via phone by the vendor. About 20% of those leads were neutral in their feelings about being called, and almost none were unhappy about being contacted.

Timing appears to be an issue as well. The number of people who reported being happy when called the same day jumped to 88%.