Do You Know Which Hotline Is Right For You?
Hi, it’s Mike Kowalski from AMS. Welcome to this week’s Marketing Minute Tip. This week we are going to review all the different Toll Free Recorded Message Hotlines available so you can better decide which ones you absolutely need in your business. So let’s get started.
There are 5 different types of Toll-free Recorded Message Hotlines and here is how you can quickly determine which one best suits your needs.
1. The Information Hotline - This hotline is used with an unbranded ad (which is an ad that doesn’t readily identify you as the advertiser running the ad they’re reading) and has multiple ID numbers.
Here’s an example: I’m a Real Estate Agent and I advertise “6 Costly Home Seller Mistakes and How To Avoid Them.” I include an 800 number, the prospect calls the number and the caller hears, “Hello its Jack Lambert from Re/Max Realty and thanks for calling. To get your free report leave your name and address after the tone, thanks.”
Is the caller going to leave their contact information? No way. It was an unbranded ad and there was no mention that this was from a Real Estate Agent. The caller suspects the information is probably going to be biased and that it was an ad. So follow our earlier advice and keep the Recorded Message neutral not sharing any company information until they get your Free Report. You see, once they get the Free Special Report we always recommend you send after they leave their contact information, it doesn’t matter that it came from a Real Estate Agent because the information and the context now make logical sense. It’s giving the prospect information that they need and has positioned the agent as an expert who just wants to help.
Done this way your conversion rate should be somewhere between 60 and 80%.
This type of Hotline can have up to 1,000 mailboxes or ID numbers and allows you to attach different 4 digit ID numbers to the same script if you want to test the same ad in different mediums.
You can also have multiple scripts for different ads stored here. In the Real Estate niche some marketers have over 50 different scripts because they have over 50 different types of ads and they duplicate each script 3 or 4 times for tracking purposes. Another important factor is that this type of Hotline dead-ends at that particular mailbox to which the caller entered the 4 digit ID number. They can only listen to one specific message and that’s it, because that’s all you want them to do.
Later on, the reports this system automatically generates will show you the telephone number of the caller, their address, how long they listened to your message, and if that number is on the National Do Not Call List.
Sometimes, depending on what your philosophy is, you might want to call back the hang-ups. There are two thoughts on this. One is why would I want to call back a hang-up? They weren’t motivated to leave a message, so it’s basically like a cold call. The second way to look at it is, they were motivated enough to call they must have had some interest, so I’ll call them back.
If you choose to call them back your script should say something like, “Hello, it’s Jack Lambert from Re/Max Realty calling, I’m sorry to be bothering you, but you called our 800 number regarding the 6 Costly Home Seller Mistakes, and we’ve been having a bit of a problem with some of the messages. I’m just doing a follow up call to make sure we send you the Free Report if you wanted it.”
From there you can engage them in further dialogue. AMS knows of agents who make tens of thousands of dollars just doing that alone.
2. The Information Hotline WITHOUT ID Numbers – This is generally used with a Warning or Consumer awareness ad, but it can also be used with unbranded ads as well. Some marketers prefer to use separate 800 numbers for each ad they place…and they believe response will be higher because they didn’t ask the caller to take an additional step, i.e. enter an ID number.
But after performing several large scale tests in different niches, our results showed there was no difference in response rate. In fact one large test showed a higher response with a 4 digit ID number than without. This test was done to a target market group that had a high percentage of people over 50 years of age.
Unfortunately, I don’t know why that was. My only logical guess was because there was a 4 digit ID number, it reinforced their perception that a live person would not be answering the call.
Now these are the first 2 of 5 different hotlines you can use. At the beginning of this message I said this was a 2-part series. So to keep you from being totally overwhelmed with all this great information, I’m going to keep my word and save the rest of these juicy tidbits until next week.
To learn more about how hotlines can help you turn your prospects into profits, go to www.AutomatedMarketingSolutions.com
Or, to see more information about our complete membership system, go to www.ProspectsToProfits.net or give one or our reps a call at 1-800-858-8889.
To your marketing success,
Mike Kowalski
President
Automated Marketing Solutions
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June 16th, 2010 at 12:45 am
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