How To Set up & Manage A DRTV or Advertising Campaign using Telecoms

7 Steps to a Successful Campaign from Creative Telecoms

So you have decided to use telecoms as a vital element of your DRTV or advertising campaign.

This is an excellent choice as telecoms can be an extremely efficient, measurable and cost effective tool for handling the data capture element of your campaign.

An efficient telecoms service provider should always work very closely with the client (or agency) and the call centre to monitor activity on a daily basis throughout the campaign. This will ensure that any problems or unusual activity (such as dips or peaks in call numbers) can be identified and acted upon as soon as possible.

Creative Telecoms has been handling this type of campaign for more than 15 years and this campaign monitoring is a fundamental part of our service.

Following a few simple steps can help to guarantee the overall success of your campaign – so if you are looking to get the best results, with comprehensive reporting and excellent value for money than you must read on.

Here are the 7 Steps you need to gain DRTV Advertising Success. 

Step 1: Make sure your telecoms supplier understands and has experience in delivering DRTV/Advertising services.

There are many telecoms companies in the UK today all offering similar services on the surface, but it is essential to look for a supplier who has experience in providing telecoms solutions for advertising and DRTV campaigns. These services can be complex and are always time-critical so it is vital your telecoms supplier understands exactly what’sinvolved.

With more than 15 years experience of supplying telecoms services to the advertising and marketing industries,Creative Telecoms is regarded as a leading player in the UK market.

Step 2: Don’t get your call centre to handle the telephone numbers and services.

To avoid a potential conflict of interest we would ALWAYS recommend that anybody undertaking campaign-driven or DRTV activity should arrange the telecoms element using a source other than the call centre you have employed. This is because there are two fundamental sets of data which need to be measured to determine the effectiveness of the telecoms element of your campaign:

1. The telecoms network statistics/reports which show every call attempted.
2. The call centre daily reports which show the number of calls successfully answered by the call centre on your behalf.

Even on a daily basis, the difference between the two reports can be, and frequently is, quite large. Keeping these two reports separate is essential in monitoring the performance of any campaign and is invaluable in identifying where any problems may exist.

Step 3: Decide which type of non-geographic number you should we use ensuring that you use the right type of numbers is crucial and will depend on the nature and purpose of your campaign.

Creative-Telecoms will be happy to advise you on the right type of numbers for any specific campaign. For example, if you are selling a product it is advisable to use a Free Phone 0800 number as this makes the customer to feel “special” as this reduces the cost to them and makes the purchasing process that bit easier. In this scenario the cost of the calls are billed to the advertiser.

On the other hand you may be giving away free samples and for a campaign of this nature an 0844 local rate number may be more appropriate. The customer knows they are getting something for free so will not mind being charged their normal call cost. This type of number will therefore reduce the overall cost of the campaign as the caller is paying a local rate per minute for the call.

 

Other possible number types include:

• 0845 – Local rate 5 ppm (Pence per minute)
• 0871 – National Rate 10ppm
• 0207, 0208, 0161, etc. Local presence number Looks like a standard telephone number (PSTN) but acts like a free
• phone number and benefits from all of the intelligent network services
• 0300 for charities, and government organizations calls charged at local rate
• 0330 as above but for SME’s & corporations.

Step 4: Decide whether your campaign would benefit from any intelligent network services. 

There are a wide range of additional intelligent network services available which can help to make your campaign a success. Intelligent network services are the additional technological tools you can add to your telecoms package to deliver a smoother customer experience and make the campaign as efficient as possible.

Examples of intelligent network services include:

• Call queuing
• Busy diverts
• Time of day routing
• Call recording
• Voice to email and much more.

At Creative Telecoms we look at each campaign individually when deciding which intelligent network services might be useful and never use a one size fits all approach. If after consultation we believe that the campaign would benefit from additional services we will recommend these to you and explain the potential benefits before the campaign begins.We will only ever recommend intelligent network services that will have a concrete impact on your campaign’s telecoms performance and your bottom line. 

Step 5: Make sure you have access to up-to-the minute reporting 

Ok, so your campaign is about to go live. How will you keep track of how well every element of the campaign is working to ensure maximum possible ROI?

Reports Reports Reports!

With Creative Telecoms it couldn’t be easier to keep a watchful eye on how well your campaign is performing. Each day you will receive an email with details of the previous day’s telecoms activity, either delivered to your desktop, via the web or direct to your mobile with our exclusive new iPhone app. These reports should always be directly compared with the call centre reports for the same period to make sure you are not losing potential sales calls. Look for discrepancies between the number of calls reported on the network and the number of calls successfully handled by your call centre.

Step 6: Ensure your call centre has sufficient capacity Creative Telecoms works closely with clients and their call centres to ensure that as many of your calls are answered as possible.

Often call centres are accused of “not answering all of our calls”. Our experience is that this can be for a number of reasons, the most common of which is simply underestimation of the call volumes that a particular campaign will generate.

If you are conducting DRTV campaigns where there tends to be a spike in activity within 5-7 minutes of an ad being aired, it’s important that the call centre has arranged for the right level of capacity or number of agents to answer those calls and our up-to-the-minute reporting will help to identify any potential problems and we will always work quickly with you and the call centre to resolve these issues, so that when 100 people call to buy your products, 100 calls will be answered.

Our extensive experience means that we have a very good knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of individual call centres and we will be more than happy to assist in your selection of an appropriate call centre for your
campaign.

Step 7: Sit back and monitor your campaign via our reporting – giving your campaign the greatest chance of succeeding.

We take the reporting element of our campaign services extremely seriously as it is the only way to understand how a campaign is performing.

All of our clients have full access to all of their campaign reports in real-time. This dedication to accurate reporting is probably also the reason why we are the first telecoms company to offer an iPhone app which allows you to access reports live in real time from your phone, as well as the ability to change routing plans, add voice messages and much, much more.