How to Choose a Local Caller ID Strategy

Truth: Using a local phone number for outbound Caller ID does increase your outbound telemarketing answer rates. In fact, just this week, a major telecom carrier just told us that when one of their vendors began using a local Caller ID strategy with phone numbers from Quality Voice & Data, their sales per hour (SPH) increased by 30%! They attribute that increase to a major increase in the number of customers that answer the phone when called.

Telemarketing management refresher:

• Sales per Hour( SPH) = Contacts per Hour (CPH) x Sales Conversion Rate
• Contacts Per Hour are typically increased by two tactics:
  a) Increasing dials per hour. However there is a point of crazy. I’ve seen dialers that dial 500+ dials per hour and still get a low number of answered calls delivered to the telemarketing agents. And you go through the list so quickly and wonder why you don’t have any sales.
  b) Getting an increased answer rate by dialing at a different time of day and/or using a Local Caller ID number that encourages the called party to answer a higher percentage of the time.
• If Sales Conversion Rate remains steady and you are able to increase the contacts per hour, even by a small amount, then the Sales Per Hour (SPH) will increase by a proportionate number.

We’ve been using the 30% increase in your “answer rate” statement for many years and it is great to know that the statement has been re-validated in today’s telemarketing landscape! These percentages are also impacted by the vertical your targeting. For example, Lead Form call backs programs, calling folks expecting a call may not see as much as an incremental lift from a good Local Caller ID strategy, as for example, a pure outbound campaign.

Caller ID Management is key to any outbound program’s success. The question is what strategy should you use if you’re considering using Local Caller ID numbers for your outbound call campaign?

If you answer a few key questions, it will help you narrow your focus.

Is your customer or prospect list bigger than 25,000? If no, then maybe just use one phone number per state that you’re calling into. Then at most you’ll only need 50 phone numbers.

Is your prospect list between 25,001 and 100,000? If yes, then identifying the area codes that have the larger population in your call list (highest frequency) and matching with a local area code for the top 50% should give
you a great lift in response rate. The other lesser populated area codes in your lists, use a state-specific area code, but don’t bother with matching up with every area code in the state.

If your prospect list larger than 100,000? If yes, then buying a local caller id area code for 80% of your list will most likely generate a positive answer rate at a reasonable cost for the local phone numbers. For the other 20%, use a state-specific area code, but don’t bother with matching up with every area code in the state

At Quality Voice & Data, our Caller ID Management specialists can help you create a strategy that is cost-effective and help you gain that 30% increase in answer rate. Our Caller ID numbers cost $2.00 per number per month including usage. We recommend that you run a report of the number of records you have by area code. Sort by the number of records and it becomes easy to see which and how many unique area codes you should focus on.

Most outbound telemarketing companies and clients find that using about 150 local phone numbers covers their market well and for prospects that fall outside one of those 150 specific area codes, we can match an adjacent area code so the prospect is more likely to answer than if the phone number comes up as an 800 number or a number from another part of the country. If you’re not 100% sure, let our experts help you. Give us a call today at 888-656-5111.

Two more tips:

1. Caller name display, known as CNAM also helps with answer rates and conversion. By displaying a name, that matches who you say you are calling on behalf of, will give your telemarketing agent the benefit of what we call “5 seconds of trust”. Instead of “who are you and what do you want?” It will be just “what do you want”? This is effective when calling landlines telephone numbers that support Caller Name Display.
2. Be sure you acquire Local Caller ID numbers from a provider that checks the quality of the numbers before assigning them to you. You don’t want your calls blocked by these new labeling and blocking crowd-sourced applications! We’ll share more about this in our next article.

Angela Garfinkel is one of the principals of Quality Voice & Data, a specialized telecom solutions provider for the outbound marketing, call center, collections and market research industries. In addition, Angela is the President and Founder of Quality Contact Solutions, a leading outsourced telemarketing services organization with a telemanagement model. Angela has the pleasure of leading a talented and highly engaged team that runs thousands of outbound telemarketing program hours on a daily basis. Angela can be reached at angela.garfinkel@qualitycontactsolutions.com or 516.656.5118.