Telemarketing: What to Expect in the Next 12 Months

Trends from 2009, such as turning away from offshore vendors and focusing on requal efforts, could continue well into 2010.

By Chandra Johnson-Greene
Monday, January 4, 2010

When we last covered the topic of telemarketing, we noticed that there was increased dependency on the source, particularly since direct mail response was on the decline, but that’s not to say that telemarketing hasn’t taken a hit either. Response was down in 2009, especially when it came to new business, and a lot of publishers started taking their orders offshore. Will that trend continue in 2010? And what have vendors and publishers learned from 2009?

“In a broad sense, what has happened in 2009 is similar to what happened in 2002,” John Mabie, president of telemarketing services provider California Marketing, told AD. “After 9/11, the economy was hit, and a lot of work moved offshore because those companies offered a cheaper cost per order. This happened again in 2009 because of the economic recession. That hurt a lot of companies, particularly those that only offer domestic calling.”

But similar to what occurred in 2004 and 2005, a lot of publishers moved their business back to the U.S. last year, according to Mabie, and he thinks the trend will continue in 2010. “Publishers have realized that sometimes you get what you pay for,” he says. “The rates they were paying were not producing the quality results they were looking for.”

Debbie Bouley, audience development manager of PennWell-published Bio Optics, LEDs, Laser Focus World and Vision Systems Design, has also had some problems with offshore telemarketing, but for a different reason. “It’s hard to do offshore calling when you’re targeting military or government companies,” she said. “If the subscribers hear [that the caller] has an accent, they wonder about the credibility of the call.”

Another trend in telemarketing that started in 2009 and may continue into 2010 pertains to which side holds the negotiating powers. Vendors had gotten used to negotiating prices with clients, but now the publishers have the upper hand.

“In July of last year, we were doing a new business campaign for Laser Focus, and we were able to get such a great rate because the vendor just wanted to keep their people employed,” Bouley said. “They ended up doing the campaign as a filler project where if business was slow, they would work on it. The order doesn’t need to be completed until May, so that was fine with us.”

Vendors are also coming up with different ways to keep their clients satisfied. Mabie said his company’s begun offering email upon termination, or EUT, where upon completing an offer, the service rep captures the subscriber’s email address. An email is then sent to the subscriber prompting them to go the Web site or to subscribe to a related title. “The cost to the publisher is very little and it’s a value-add that makes things more cost efficient overall,” he said.

On the publisher side, companies may continue to focus their telemarketing efforts on requals as opposed to new business. Bouley says that, in 2009, she started doing new business campaigns during the summer in order to take advantage of cheaper rates. “Even though new business for us is on the decline I’m going to continue doing campaigns for it in the summertime,” she said. “As long as it makes sense in the budget, we’ll continue doing it.”

A few tactics that she is going pass on this year, however, are following up calls with faxes or having callers direct subscribers to the Web site. “Because BPA rules have changed and you don’t have to break telemarketing out anymore in the audits, it’s really not necessary.”