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Chris Beam
Q: faster than direct mail, more responsive than an insert, and gives you more bang for your buck than ever before? A: Take a look at what's on your desk; it's probably ringing right now. Telemarketing is a powerful tool often overlooked in favor of less expensive efforts--but it just may be worth a new evaluation. Maybe you're a small magazine never before inclined to telemarket your product, or maybe you've been doing telemarketing in-house and are thinking about shipping it out. Maybe you've decided to start hitting the phone earlier in a renewal series, despite the added cost. Under what circumstances should you consider telemarketing, and what kind of system is best for you? Here are a few guidelines.
First of all, telemarketing doesn't have the same stigma that it did years ago, now that everything from garden supplies to computer equipment is sold over the phone. With vastly improved technologies, telemarketing is now faster and less expensive, and companies are emphasizing service instead of simply calling people and reading scripts like zombies. Telemarketers can serve as a customer service center; and in soliciting new business, the callers are better trained to know your magazine thoroughly so that they can answer any questions and discuss the content of what they're asking a customer to buy.
"The mental picture of telemarketing is that it's interruptive and defined as a single outbound call with no relationship built," says Larry Etienne, vice president of teleservices at Omaha, Nebraska-based Reed Telemarketing, a firm that handles telemarketing for nearly 500 trade magazines. "As the industry matures, we're seeing [expanded] services, where callers are building relationships and the scope of what they do is much broader."
A decade ago, it was primarily consumer magazines that turned to the phones. Now business titles, which telemarket both initial quals and requals, are the fastest-growing sector. For example, DialAmerica, based in Mahwah, New Jersey, had no trade title business until 1992. Now trades represent 10 percent of the company's 350 magazine customers. Says Mary Conway, vice president in charge of publisher services at DialAmerica, "Ten years ago, the phone was a last-ditch effort; you had pretty much given up on those subscribers. But now, people are telemarketing much earlier in the series."
So how do you begin to set up your new--or evaluate your old--telemarketing system? First, advises Etienne, prioritize your needs. Are renewals sagging? Do you need to clear a rate-base hurdle? Want editorial feedback from your readers? Each of these scenarios could be addressed with telemarketing, but each requires a different sense of timing and type of approach.
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When to pick up the phone
Conventional wisdom calls for telemarketing renewals only, and then just as a last resort. But if your renewals need a boost, Conway suggests replacing your third or fourth mail effort with a phone call. "Every renewal series has a curve, and there's always a place it falls off," she says. "If my first effort gets a 20 percent response, my second gets 12 percent, my third gets 8 percent and my fourth gets only 2 percent, that's where I would place a call."
Most experts advise against telemarketing a start-up (people don't respond to offers for things they've never seen), so one option for new publishers is to send the premier issue and follow up over the phone. However, experts recommend you do this only if you want to build circulation fast and can afford the expense, or if your price point is high enough to make telemarketing worth the effort. For example, pitching a two- or three-year subscription could warrant the cost of large-scale calling.
If your magazine is already well known, you could also hire telemarketers to call around for new subscribers. Gigi Panehal, subscription director at New York City's Wenner Media, publisher of Rolling Stone, Men's Journal and Us, finds leads this way. She's been most successful when telemarketers give part of the subscription price to a charitable cause, such as the Police Athletic League. "There's a hook if people feel like they're making a donation," Panehal says. DialAmerica, for example, donates to everything from local sports teams to the Leukemia Society, sending money to 70 different organizations. Few companies will reveal the percent they actually give to charity, but DialAmerica has contributed $140 million since the mid-sixties.
If you currently have no teleservices at all, you should first test out the phones on your renewals, suggests Carole Ireland, circulation consultant and president of Mamaroneck, New York-based Quality Circulation Services. This way you can see how already-established readers respond to phone solicitations. With business titles, Ireland advises you take into account the nature of the target audience. "There may be industries that are particularly sensitive to telephone calls," she says. "For instance, restaurant businesses are terribly hard to reach by mail, so they may respond better to the phone."
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Put it to the test
Once you've decided what your goals are, next is deciding who gets your business. Unless your universe is extremely small (say, only a few hundred subscribers), most experts advise that you ship your telemarketing to an outside vendor. It's simply too costly to set up an operation in-house.
"We had our own telemarketing company until about two years ago, but we closed it down because it was highly labor-intensive and the profit margins weren't good enough," says Panehal at Wenner. "For a smaller operation to get things like predictive dialing [software that automatically dials a second number if the first doesn't go through] it's very expensive. So then you have someone actually sitting there and dialing, which is very time-consuming."
Ellen Higgins, circulation manager at Gloucester, Massachusetts-based Old-House Journal, just started telemarketing to her post-expire renewals this year. She decided to ship it outside, to "go with the experts." When choosing a company, Higgins says, she asked her industry contacts for recommendations, and then called a few and asked to see copies of their reports from previous campaigns. For Higgins, it was most important to find a telemarketer that shared her values regarding customer service. "Some telemarketers will try to keep people on the phone no matter what," Higgins says. "But if [a reader] gets irate, [a telemarketer] should get off and say, 'I'm sorry; it was just a reminder.' "
Once you've lined up a handful of prospective telemarketing companies, you should test them out before signing up for a full-fledged campaign. For this, you'll have to provide each vendor with a list of names. An accurate test eliciting a few hundred responses is likely to require at least 2,000 to 3,000 phone numbers, because some of those won't be accurate and only 10 percent of those called will actually be at home.
When Susan Anson, circulation manager at Morris Plains, New Jersey-based Gordon Publications (a division of Reed Elsevier Business Publishing that puts out 18 titles in the manufacturing, medical and high-tech fields, including 31,000-circulation Pharmaceutical Processing and 200,000-circulation Industrial Product Bulletin), is looking for a new telemarketing vendor, she'll give portions of the same list to two companies to see which does a better job. "I'll give 5,000 names to each and compare the number of calls, the number of respondents and the number of yeses and nos in the same number of days," she says.
Anson prefers to write the scripts herself and let the vendor make small changes, but many publishers choose the opposite approach. Either way, remember that the more information you provide about your magazine, the more your telemarketer can adequately represent you.
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Negotiate a price
Once you have the list and script in place, it's time to talk dollars. Telemarketers can be paid either on a per-hour or per-sales basis. Either way, bank on spending around $25 per hour, says Etienne at Reed, since the per-sale calls will add up to about as much per hour as an hourly rate. You'll almost always pay an hourly rate for new-subscriber lists because the telemarketer has no way to gauge the quality of your names. When telemarketing renewals, Panehal says she generally pays around $3 for every successful renewal.
Anson suggests setting up a high and low pay scale as an incentive. "I give them a list and tell them what my cost-per-subscription was running with another company," he says. "Then I say, if they can get x number of subscriptions per hour I will give them one price, but if they only get a certain low[er] number, I'll give them another [lower] price."
Conway at DialAmerica recommends her publishing clients look for a per-sub payscale. "On an hourly basis the publisher has to control all the parameters and essentially become a telemarketer in order to make sure that the company is getting its money's worth," Conway says. "But if I do it on a per-sale basis, I share the risk with you and I'm always going to work to make more sales."
During the test period, when you're still working out which company to go with and which script works best, you should receive reports from every prospective vendor every two days. How can you determine whether the test is successful? "As long as the telemarketing doesn't cost more than the new business," says Panehal.
Long-term wins
Once you've established that telemarketing is the way to go, you'll want to make sure it continues to bring in solid business. There are some signs you should look for. A vendor should continue to send you performance reports every other day--even beyond the reporting period. If a particular campaign is sputtering, your telemarketer should let you know early on, and provide you with some fix-it tips. On the other hand, even if a campaign is wildly successful, telemarketers should never encourage you to abandon your direct mail or other efforts in favor of the phone. Telemarketing is only one piece of a very large circulation matrix and, as Conway puts it, "Mail feeds phone and phone feeds mail."
A good telemarketer, says Anson, recognizes the total picture and therefore should be sensitive to timing changes. If you want to run a campaign earlier or later than planned because of a shift in your direct mail schedule, your telemarketer should be responsive. And if not, she says, there are always other vendors.
"I get calls from telemarketers every day wanting my business," Anson says. "It's important to pay attention to them because you never know when the quality of your telemarketer will go down and you'll need to call on someone else."
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RELATED ARTICLE: tips for scripts
it comes as no surprise that most companies won't let their scripts out--they're proprietary. But a few general guidelines can go a long way toward putting together a campaign. First, the shorter the better. Scripts should be as brief as possible, and two minutes is the point at which customers stop listening and start thinking about getting off the phone. (A script's length really depends on the product, how familiar potential customers are with it, how long it takes to explain, and so on.)
Second, when it comes to calling, there's a big difference between how you handle trade and consumer titles. For the trades, calls should be quick and to the point. You're calling someone's place of business and you don't want to be chatty. With these calls, begin by asking, "Is this a convenient time for you?" For consumer magazines, you can be more conversational because you're calling people at their homes. Some consumer scripts open with a question relating to the person's environment, but nothing too personal--something like, "How's the weather there?" or "Can you hear me all right?"
Third, within the consumer market, different audiences require different approaches. Older audiences, for example, command more formal presentations. They typically want you to talk directly to them, rather than try to persuade them. They know what they like and what they don't, and they probably know in advance what they're willing to buy. Younger audiences, on the other hand, are a bit more casual, so scripts aimed at them should be more informal. Households with children tend to be very responsive to telemarketing, simply because they often don't have time to shop extensively.
Finally, if readers are telling the telemarketers they're rejecting the magazine for a particular reason (the stories aren't interesting, it never comes on time, etc.), publishers should be made aware of this so their telemarketers can address the issue with the reader directly by phone.
In all cases, a script should be direct about asking for the order, rather than skirting the issue. A good script sounds confident, and a good telemarketer always enters the conversation as if the person is going to say yes.
RELATED ARTICLE: directory assistance
While countless telemarketing companies competing for your business, some consistently rise to the top of our readers' lists. Here are a few to get you started.
Dial America Marketing 960 MacArthur Blvd. Mahwah, New Jersey 07495 800-531-3131
Mark Facey & Company 225 North Main St. Bristol, Connecticut 06010 860-589-0221
Reed Telemarketing 810 North 96th St. Omaha, Nebraska 68114 402-399-9770
Sitel Media and Entertainment 250 South 77th St. Omaha, Nebraska 68114 800-338-2600
Sturner & Klein 11900 Parklawn Dr. Rockville, Maryland 20852 301-881-2720
BGS Telemarketing Inc. 4650 East West Highway Bethesda, MD 20814 301-961-0800
COPYRIGHT 1997 Copyright by Media Central Inc., A PRIMEDIA Company. All rights reserved.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group
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