Maximize Campaign Response Rate with Voice Communications

By Irv Shapiro, CEO & CTO, Ifbyphone

Many businesses believe they have achieved integrated marketing by incorporating e-mail,
social media and mobile into their marketing mix. In reality, companies often fail to incorporate a
key ingredient into their integrated campaigns: voice communications. Compelling research
demonstrates the significance of voice communications, with more than 43% of all Internet
search sales conversions happening over the phone today according to AdInsight research.
Leads360 also cites that a sale is 22-times more likely to happen when you make contact within
the first five minutes.
To provide some context, following is information from DMA's 2010 Response Rate Trend
Report, which calculated the average direct marketing response rates in 2010 for telemarketing,
e-mail, direct mail, catalogs and paid search:
Response rates for Direct Mail have held steady over the years. Letter-sized envelopes, for
instance, had a response rate of 3.42 percent for a house list and 1.38 percent for a prospect
list.
Paid search had an average cost per click of $3.79, with a 3.81 percent conversion rate.
E-mail to a house list averaged a 19.47 percent open rate, a 6.64 percent click-through rate,
and a 1.73 percent conversion rate.
Catalogs had the lowest revenue per lead/order of $47.61.
Outbound telemarketing had the highest response rate from prospects at 6.16 percent, as well
as the highest revenue per lead of $309.25.
These stats reaffirm the value of implementing voice communications, as telephone outreach
holds the highest response rate from prospects AND revenue per lead.
Maximize ROI with Call Tracking: Strategies Moving Forward
It is important for direct marketers to be able to maximize return on investment, effectively A/B
test creative, and accurately measure response rates using call tracking solutions. While direct
marketers are familiar with QR Codes, pURLS, coupons, and promo codes to measure
response rates to campaigns, what happens if the call-to-action is a phone call? If you run direct
response TV and radio ads, deliver postcards to niche markets, or run print ads across the
country, how do you demonstrate marketing ROI? Here are four ways to get started:
1. Optimize ad spend by identifying the source of the lead
Many ads encourage customers to "call now." By implementing easy-to-remember unique
numbers, you can track - in real-time - how many potential customers directly respond to each

TV and radio ad, for instance. Based on results, it allows you to optimize ad spend moving
forward.
2. Easily test creative
Many businesses send the same direct mail piece to their entire market, when they should be
testing different messages and offers to understand which one resonates best. You can place a
unique phone number on each marketing piece for easy A/B testing to determine which
advertisement generated the best results.
3. Localize your message
You can know exactly what marketing piece prompted a phone call when you use call tracking
numbers. It is valuable to create customized greetings like: "Thanks for viewing our ad in USA
Today and calling to learn more about our XYZ product." It makes the interaction unique and
personal.
4. Leverage the most qualified sales representatives
Call tracking works for online and traditional offline advertising. By placing a unique call tracking
number on a print ad, billboard, or radio commercial, you can ensure those leads are then
routed to the most appropriate sales representative based on qualifying questions.
If you're focusing on online campaigns, you can place distinct tracking numbers on banner ads
for search engines, social media ads, e-mail marketing and classifieds pages. One company
might obtain more value from advertising on Twitter versus LinkedIn, so measuring the
performance of each campaign can help you make more valuable marketing decisions and
maximize ROI.
Ultimately, if you don't use call tracking numbers, you don't know what ads are generating the
highest quality and quantity of leads.
Get Higher Quality Leads Through Marketing Automation
Marketing automation is formally described as "the use of technology to generate, nurture,
score, and qualify leads and drive sales using customized multi-touch marketing
communications tailored for each lead in the buying process." Traditional marketing automation
activities, however, often fail to include the phone -- when it is actually a crucial part of
business.
It is important for marketers to understand that phone calls are often the highest quality form of
lead. People who are ready to buy now pick up the phone and call; people in research mode
typically go to a website to learn more. Leveraging call tracking data enables marketers to
qualify these leads that come in (was it through a Google search, the website, or a direct mail
piece?), which can then quickly be routed to the right person depending on location and/or
needs.

For instance, inbound interactive voice response (IVR) technology can be used to provide
callers with information automatically, or to ask them initial questions to better direct their call.
Automating appointment reminders, for example, can help reduce time so employees can
concentrate on other efforts. If someone fills out your contact form online, you can also
automatically call that person to verify their phone number, ask a few qualifying questions, or
play an informational message.
Businesses should assess their current integrated marketing strategy to ensure it includes the
key elements of voice communications. Tracking phone calls and engaging in marketing
automation through voice communication empowers companies to effectively route leads,
optimize ad spend, provide more personalized marketing and ensure they are truly facilitating
integrated campaigns

IVR & Voice Marketing?

Reaching your customers or subscribers with a recorded voice message, rather than a simple SMS or
email, can be a very powerful marketing tool. Ping's highly customizable Interactive Voice Response
(IVR) and voice broadcast system includes the following features:
SMS to Voice - have your customer send an SMS or enter their number online, and our system will call
them right back with a pre-recorded message.
Voice Broadcasts - Our system calls your subscribers, or selected
groups of them, and delivers a pre-recorded voice message.
Scheduling - Pre-schedule voice broadcasts to go to whoever you want,
whenever you want.
Recording Options - Send us a pre-recorded file, or call a toll-free
number and record directly from your phone.
Customizable IVR - Create a complete IVR system and route your
incoming calls to wherever you need them to go.
Contact us today to learn more about our range of IVR and voice broadcast
options.

What is Voice Broadcasting and Outbound IVR?

Outbound IVR technology is a vehicle for delivering automated, telephony based communications.
Similarly, Voice Broadcasting broadcasts telephone messages from anywhere to a handful to hundreds of
thousands of call recipients at once. Voice broadcasting and Outbound IVR technology can be applied to
both commercial, and community applications; reaching multiple end users, such as members,
subscribers, constituents, employees, or customers almost immediately. In simple terms, Outbound IVR
technology and Voice Broadcasting allow you to get your message out to your entire audience in a matter
of minutes.
With Outbound IVR and Voice Broadcasting, your message is personalized to meet your exact needs,
can be event triggered and can quickly be modified, so when an event occurs, you can react quickly to
your consumers needs. The following are just a few examples of how Outbound IVR and Voice
Broadcasting can deliver important information to your existing customers:

Emergency Notification Services

Emergency notifications involving informing citizens of potential road construction, weather alerts, crime
tip hotlines, missing child alerts, University emergency notifications, school closings, or general messages
from community leaders allows facilities and municipal service departments to alert everyone in a simple
Voice Broadcast, reaching hundreds of citizens in minutes. This application use of Outbound IVR and
Voice Broadcasting could potentially save lives and limit harm to affected areas.

Reminders
Utility companies, the hospitality industry, financial institutions, and healthcare industries alike can all
benefit from Outbound IVR and Voice Broadcasting. From past-due reminders, to appointment reminders,
or even wake-up calls, these organizations can cost-effectively deliver their message to their consumers.

Subscriber Based Marketing

Retailers and other organizations looking to maximize customer retention and loyalty can provide
customer opt-in services informing consumers of loyalty discounts, promotions, sales, product updates,
and more.

Advantages of Voice Broadcasting and Outbound IVR

For many organizations, the need for Outbound IVR and Voice Broadcasting is driven by an important
event, and the word needs to be spread quickly. Studies show that telephone calls are more effective than
email or standard "snail" mail to gain customer attention. However, making live calls to a large customer
base requires a substantial investment in both technology and personnel. Cloud-based Outbound IVR
and Voice Broadcasting is an affordable customer communication channel that offers significant cost
savings, and provides a service that is not economically feasible for live agents to achieve.
Outbound IVR and Voice Broadcasting also provide greater flexibility in getting your message out to your
customers. Most Outbound IVR and Voice Broadcasting services allow for pre-scheduling of your
announcements, enabling your organization to contact your customers during out of office hours when
live agents are typically unavailable. Customers can therefore be contacted at home after work hours
when they are available to answer calls. Outbound IVR and Voice Broadcasting also offers the flexibility of
providing separate messages for live answered calls versus answering machine or voice mail calls, with
built in Answering Machine Detection (AMD), the solution with recognize the difference between the two,
and play the appropriate message, ensuring your customer will receive your announcement whether the
call is answered or not.
The ability to deliver your message to a large number of consumers in a matter of minutes is also another
benefit of Outbound IVR and Voice Broadcasting. What typically takes traditional live agents weeks or
older predictive dialers hours to achieve, an Outbound IVR and Voice Broadcasting solution can
accomplish in a matter of minutes. The simplicity of Outbound IVR and Voice Broadcasting provides an
ideal solution for both ongoing campaign messages, as well as one time messages that need to be
delivered in a timely manner.

ast by edsIVR

Blast by edsIVR provides an easy-to-use, cost effective cloud-based Outbound IVR and Voice
Broadcasting solution. The solution provides the ability to send your message to your audience in bulk, to
one or many lists, at the touch of a button. From political campaigns, to emergency notifications, to
subscriber based marketing, the application possibilities are endless. With Blast, any business or
enterprise can quickly set up successful outbound calling campaigns using the web-based interface. No
coding or IVR experience is required. Setting up an outbound dialing campaign is as simple as:

Uploading your phone numbers in (CSV)

Uploading your prompt files
Clicking 'run' to start the campaign
Viewing your campaign results

If not properly implemented, Outbound IVR and Voice Broadcasting solutions can be a source of
frustration to customers. Because of this, edsIVR has designed Blast with the following features and
differentiators that separate it from other Outbound IVR and Voice Broadcasting solutions on the market:
User Friendly Interface
Our web-based interface provides administrator access via a user ID and password. With an intuitive
step-by-step approach, our interface guides you through the campaign creation process so you can
create voice messaging campaigns in minutes. With the ability to create on-demand, or pre-scheduled
campaigns, you can begin sending out your message immediately, or set your campaigns to run at a later
date.
Performance and Reliability
Blast's standard support begins at 10,000 calls per hour; however, more calls per hour are available upon
request. Developed in a scalable, reliable environment, Blast ensures your message will get out when it
needs to.
Personalization
Easily upload your own personal audio files, our use our integrated Text to Speech (TTS) functionality to
create your unique message for your consumers. You can also customize your messages based on the

status of the connected call. Whether it's a live answered call, or an answering machine, Blast will
recognize the difference between the two with our Answering Machine Detection (AMD) service, and play
the appropriate message, giving you the ability to deliver alternate messages for each call answer type.
Call Throttling
Set criteria for your campaign to stop once you reach your desired number of successful calls. Blast
allows you to send out all your calls at once, or configure your campaign for the desired number of calls
and ports you want dedicated for each campaign.
Reporting
When using Outbound IVR and Voice Broadcasting, it is important to leverage business intelligence to
make your campaign relevant. With Blast, you will receive a full report of your campaign, including
statistics on:

How many calls were made

How many calls were answered
How many calls were unanswered
How many messages were left on an answering machine
Call hang-ups
Call completion percentage
Call data
Customer Opt-In / Opt-Out
It's important that Outbound IVR and Voice Broadcasting be used to provide important information to
existing customers. Because of this, Blast provides an easy opt-out feature to keep your customers
happy. Organizations looking to implement subscriber marketing campaigns can also provide an opt-in
service for their existing customers to notify them of customer loyalty programs, incentives, new product
information, and more.
A Simple Solution to Get Your Message Heard
Outbound IVR and Voice Broadcasting provides a strong solution to offer greater flexibility in providing

high quality customer service, as well as provide a vehicle for alternative marketing campaigns to gain
customer retention, along with lower than expected costs to immediately impact a company's business.
The more a business or organization's customer base grows,
the more difficult it is to maintain a direct line of communication with those customers. The
Outbound IVR and Voice Broadcasting solution from Blast gives organization's the ability to deliver
important information to their consumers in a cost effective, timely manner.

What you get

Get daily reports.

Free script advice.

Fast service, with low cost.

Start your campaign in minutes.

Get free advice on success methods.

Free voice talent to record your message.

Online dashboard with hands-free campaign monitoring

Voicecasting Described
What is Voicecasting ?
Voicecasting is a business-to-consumer message delivery system. Voicecasting
Voicemail Broadcast will deposit your marketing sales message, into the voice mail box of
cell phones or land lines. Voicecasting Voicemail Broadcast will deliver a recorded
business message straight to someones voice mail without ringing the phone.
Voicecasting Voicemail Broadcast is an automatic ringless Voicemail Broadcast system.
Voicecasting Voicemail Broadcast is a marketing and lead generation tool, created,
pioneered, and trademarked in 1997, by Voicelogic.

Why use Voicecasting ?

Dont waste your time manually dialing potential customers. Almost 85% of your sales calls
or customer retention calls never reach a live person, .....they end up in voice mail. Most
sales or customer service staff can only make 50 to 70 sales calls per day.
Voicecasting Voicemail Broadcast liberates you from repetitive out-bound calling, and
repeating the same message, or sales pitch into a customer's voice mail box. Maximize
your time wisely and negotiate in-bound customer inquiries, from your automated outbound
efforts.
With Voicecasting you can focus on what you do best and eliminate mundane activities
such as;

Dialing phone numbers

Ringing the phone

Waiting for an answer

Negotiating with reception

Being put on hold

Waiting for the right party to attend the phone

Getting thrown into voicemail

Verbally repeating another message into voice mail

All these activities cost valuable time and delay your selling cycle. Pay your sales staff to
negotiate and close the sale on an inbound call. Spend less time on repetitious tasks, and
accelerate your outbound campaigns with unprecedented speed. With Voicecasting
Voicemail Broadcast you can make thousands of cold calls per day.

What is Voicecasting used for?

Voicecasting Voicemail Broadcast can be used for:

Follow-up to a direct mail campaign

Cold calling potential customers

Client retention and appreciation calls

Mass delivery using a specific voice such as that of a CEO, or President

Mass dissemination of timely or critical information on short notice.

Voicemail Marketing

Donor retention

Best of all, the client will never know you used Voicecasting Voicemail Broadcast, because
the message delivered is as clear as if you called and left the message yourself.

How Voicecasting came to be

Voicecasting Voicemail Broadcast was developed to take advantage of the increasing
phone voice mailbox infrastructure. Built to avoid bothersome telemarketing calls during the
dinner hour, Voicecasting Voicemail Broadcast is a new alternative that will not disturb
anyone during delivery of a voice message.
Made with mass communication in mind, Voicecasting Voicemail Broadcast is an
inexpensive means of mass communication.

Who can use Voicecasting ?

Any company wishing to maximize their outbound phone calls and deliver a marketing or
retention message to a consumer cell phone or landline, can use Voicecasting Voicemail
Broadcast. Any company using an existing outbound call center to call consumers can
reduce their costs by using Voicecasting Voicemail Broadcast.
Companies that require a sales pitch to be consistent, precisely worded, and mass
delivered will advance with Voicecasting Voicemail Broadcast.

What is the success rate with Voicecasting?

Your success rate will depend entirely on the craftiness of your message to the customer,
and the quality of your product or service. Voicecasting expedites and multiplies your
existing success rate. Our clients have been experiencing great success with Voicecasting
since 1997, and continue to support the service today

Voicecasting vs. Auto-Dialer

It is illegal for an auto-dialer system to ring the phone and solicit your product or service to a
new customer. The only legal method to solicit new clients with voicemail marketing is with
the use of Voicecasting Voicemail Broadcast. This service is provided exclusively by
VoiceLogic.

Why use Voice Mail as a medium?

People will always listen to their voice mail before deleting. You will have a
guaranteed listenership for your message.

Voice mail does not consume fax paper or fax toner, and is not intrusive.

Your own voice adds a human touch, is as persuasive as you want it to be, and very
personal. Your clients will appreciate a personal call. A personal call carries more
value than email or direct mail campaigns.

Your clients will never know, you used Voicecasting Voicemail Broadcast to clone
your voice, and multiply your phone calling efforts.

Voicecasting Voicemail Broadcast costs less than your employees base pay.

Voicecasting Voicemail Broadcast is a faster campaign due to the fact that there is
no training required and costs much less than your traditional call center.

Email lists are very transient. Telephone numbers are more reliable and dont change
as often, therefore your campaign will be more successful with a phone list, instead
of an email list.

How Voicecasting works

Interacting with the Voicecasting Voicemail Broadcast system is as easy as leaving a
voicemail message by phone. You get a secure voicemail box in order to record your
message in our central recording system. You can create and record your own script,
however we have professionals in-house to help with both the script, and the recording
process.
The script can be recorded as many times as necessary to ensure satisfaction. Once the
message has been recorded, it is ready to be delivered. You can stipulate when the
broadcast will start.

Voicecasting benefits

Fuses the power of direct mail and telemarketing for a fraction of the cost

Get immediate results

Guaranteed delivery

Reaches thousands of people in a matter of minutes

No production cost

Access and deliver your message from any touch-tone telephone

Can target specific geographic areas

Boasts guaranteed listenership

Extremely non-intrusive as message goes directly to voicemail without ever ringing

the telephone

One-to-one medium

Much more cost-effective than conventional telemarketing

Millions of phone numbers across North America (estimated growth of 30% per year)

Infinite market applications

Frequently asked questions

What is Voicecasting?
Voicecasting is ringless automatic voice message delivery system. We take a message
recorded by you, and drop it inside everyones voice mail box. This is a ringless voicemail
delivery service.
How do you deliver a recorded message?
We access the local phone company computer system and deliver a recorded voice
message directly into a residents voice mail box.
How do I get started?
First, book your campaign
Pre-pay for the service
Then, record your message
How fast can my campaign start?
Within minutes of creating your account.

How many messages can you deliver?

We can deliver thousands of messages per day.
When do you make the calls?
All within sanctioned government calling regulations
How do I pay for the service?
This service can be paid online
Who records the message?
You can record the message, but we have in-house staff that will help you.
What is the maximum length of the message?
It can be any length, but we recommend 30 seconds
What does the message sound like after its delivered?
Message quality is identical to your initial recording.

Industries that use Voicecasting

1. Political campaigns
2. Insurance
3. Radio station(ratings week, contests)
4. Health club, sports club, fitness membership
5. Lotteries,
6. Non profit (Red cross, Heart & stroke)
7. Water bottle, water purification
8. Long distance phone services
9. Dating service
10. Lawn Care
11. Skin clinic
12. Maid service
13. Baby sitting
14. Children's funds (university), education fund
15. News paper subscription and retention
16. Auto tuneup, care, winterizing.

17. Carpet cleaning, home services

18. Credit card signup (mbna, amex)
19. Real Estate agents
20. Time Share vacations
21. Auto sales, openings,
22. Auctions(art, auto, rugs)
23. Energy (Hydro, gas)
24. Duct cleaning,
25. Continuing education (the learning annex)
26. Special events (home show, Molson Indy, circus, etc)
27. Marketing Firms (client marketing campaigns)
28. Tax preparation
29. RRSP contributions(banks ,etc,)
30. Call centers
31. Junk removal services
32. Direct marketing service companies
33. Trade show companies
34. Auto emergency (CAA)
35. Firewood delivery services
36. Mortgage services
37. Non profit
38. Home alarm systems
39. Unions
40. Auto rental
41. Web marketing awareness
42. Branding
43. Event notices.
44. Financial planning

In India, there has been tremendous increase in number of businesses using missed call services and toll free
numbers. In the first three months of Year-2015, there has been increment of 21% in the number of people using
them.

The main reason backing the overwhelming success of missed call service is its effective nature in making quick
reach to the clients and that too at surprisingly low cost. While other methods, like online promotion and E-Mail
marketing have not been able to interact with the targeted audience promisingly.

Several research reports have quoted that missed call campaigns generate 5 times
more leads as compared to any SMS, call or Email campaign. It is the simplest way
to capture customer information without incurring any cost on either sides and
generate genuine leads.

Missed Call is much preferred and accepted response System as compared to SMS?
Missed Call is Free and your Customers would love it!
being a hosted solution, working seamlessly, the support system runs 24 X 365, available at
any moment.

Any potential Lead on IndianYellowPages.com shall now have an option to connect to the Merchant for FREE over
Phone within seconds. It doesnt only help in improving conversion ratio but also works as a great tool for Lead
capturing. Potential Lead clicks on the Call us Now button displayed on Merchants Listing and put his Name &
Phone Number. As soon as Call button is hit, NTS Click to Call Solution dials out the calls and connect them. There
is an IVR element involved which controls the Call process, Call progress, Cutomised Voice Greetings, Option of a
Voicemail in case Merchant is unable to take up call etc.
Solution is enhanced by SMS Interactivity, after a successful call or a Voice mail Merchant and Lead are notified
immediately with an SMS about contact numbers.
NTS has delivered the solution based on API integration and it comes completely as a White Label Solution.