Telemarketing 101

When we set strategies for our marketing group one of the things that is always asked is what is the expected ROI. But we have to be careful about letting this be the deciding factor in our decisions. The reason is explained by answering a simple question; would we prefer a 20:1 ROI that achieved half our sales goal or a 5:1 ROI that achieved all of our sales goal?

In a recent review of a lead-gen campaign the contact list was split in two. One half was started on an e-mailing campaign while the other was exposed only to telemarketing. Results were tallied for the two months the campaign was run. From the original list the e-mailing resulted in 58 leads; the telemarketing generated 31 leads. E-mailing almost doubled the number of leads that telemarketing did. But follow-up showed that only 4 e-mail leads resulted in a closed sale. The leads provided through telemarketing closed 14 sales. Because of its low operating cost the e-mail campaign had a 23:1 ROI. On the other side, the telemarketing campaign had a 16:1 ROI but more than triple the sales.

This is a classic example of why we must be careful not let our measurements get in the way of our goals. If this company had decided they should only market through the channel with the highest ROI they would not have had as much sales growth as they did. With a little more investment they more than tripled their sales and were able to hit their sales goal.