Is Telemarketing Really Dead?

[Rockinruss]

When the "Do Not Call" legislation was inacted last year, I had many dealer clients who got really nervous. What did this mean to dealers who had Business Development Centers and aggressive salespeople who used the telephone aggressively to call customers and prospects?

Luckily, the law provides for an "18-month" rule that says business owners can call any person who has done business with them in the past 18 months.
Older customers must be checked against the National Do Not Call Registry before calling.

That's when I saw a need, and DealerCalling.Com was formed. (www.dealercalling.com). We've got the technology to call over 100 people a minute with a recorded message. Calls go out in the early afternoon (when most people are not at home) and the message gets left on the customer's answering machine about 80% of the time. We can take a dealer's customer list of any size and call it in less than two hours. We "wash" the list to make sure customers older than 18 months are not on the Do Not Call list.

The per-call-cost is less than a postage stamp and you only pay if the call connects.

This works greats for incentive alerts or changes, service specials, recall notices, or invitations to weekend sales events. Feel free to email me and I can send you actual messages that our dealers have sent out to their customers. Over 50 dealers from across the country have used this successfully this year.

For more info, go to - www.dealercalling.com
Russ Randolph
rrandolph@dealercalling.com

[mchastek]

Russ -

Welcome to the forum. I know the telemarketing subject is a tricky one - out of curiosity, would you be upset/annoyed if you came home to a pre-recorded message from a dealership trying to sell you something?

Also - have you had much experience or luck with electronic marketing, such as email campaigns? For example, instead of "call blasting" all of these people, if you had email addresses you could literally send THOUSANDS of emails per minute and at a very low cost.

Just curious - best of luck, and welcome again!

-Mark

[Rockinruss]

We find that if the message is done right - ie - it is friendly, informative and contains information that you would appreciate knowing about - the customer does not mind getting it. In fact, our dealers getting very little negative "blowback." But we had to learn that you can't make the message sound like a radio commercial. The message can be done by the dealer personally, or we have a professional voice talent than can do it. I had 47 General Motors dealers use our system in July when the the GM Employee discount was extended. Their messages said something to the effect that "we don't mean to bother you....we're just trying to make sure all our valued customers know that General Motors has extended the GM Employee Discount until August first. That means you can buy a new Chevy car, truck, van, or suv at the same price a GM Executive or factory worker pays and you get to keep any available rebates." We encourage dealers to tell the customer that their business is appreciated and that we do our best to keep them informed of special offers and discounts (incentives) that will save them money. I've had many dealers use this for factory recalls and service specials too. Again, as with many things, it's all in how you say it, and, in this case....when you say it. 80% of all our calls are left on an answering machine.....which means we didn't disturb the customer at dinner or in the early morning hours. :)