Don’t assume you know exactly what works for you without testing. We’ve seen clients double their ROI after trying some new things in their contact strategy. There’s too much at stake to not to take a fairly scientific approach to find what works best for your business.
As we impress upon all of our clients when we get them on board, the key to testing is measurement and the key to measurement is tracking. Use a unique inbound number for each of your contact methods to be able to attribute the inbound calls you’re receiving to each method. We’ve written before about mixing the contact tools you have available. You’ll know that if they call in on 6879 then it came from DirectDrop Voicemail, if it came to 6880, they were calling in from a letter, and so on. If you can then use your DNIS reports or phone records to tie that back to an account and find the revenue generated, you’ll be able to figure out the true ROI on those calls.
Once you have established your key performance indicator (KPI) that you’ll use (we’d suggest either a simple inbound call rate, or go all the way to the holy grail – ROI), you can set up A/B tests of the variables that you’ll manipulate.
When designing a proper experiment, keep these tips in mind:
- Split groups from the same population, so in theory, all things being equal, you’d expect the same results.
- If you are only using one unique inbound phone number, you should stagger the timing of the tests by a day or more to insure that you’re attributing the calls to the right part of the test.
- Ideally, you can use different inbound numbers for each half so you can be sure of accurate attribution and can also keep variables like time and day constant.
Once you’ve made sure you have a good, scientific testing procedure, you’re ready to roll. We review the variables to test first on our kickoff call, so many of you have heard this before. The feedback we hear from most of our clients is that they see the most significant differences in results when they vary the:
- Time of the day and day of the week – Don’t assume that Tuesday morning or Wednesday afternoon is the only time to deliver messages for optimal effect. If you are measuring inbound calls with unique numbers, try some at 10am on Tuesday and another group at 3pm Wednesday, but then compare that to Friday right before lunch and Monday morning the following week. Our clients report flurries of activity at most lunchtimes and during drive time, so staff accordingly and compare the results.
- Message content, voice and tone – Just the same way that some people will respond at times that suit them, different people respond to different messages and make the light bulb go off that ‘that is the one that makes me want to call’ to handle their business.
- Frequency – Test to find whether it is better to leave four messages over a two-week period for a consumer, or if you get a better return leaving two messages a month. We hear that the flood of returns starts at the third, fourth or fifth message the group has received.
- Place in the contact strategy you position voicemail – Isolate groups and test whether it’s best to go letter-dial-voicemail-text or voicemail-dial-voicemail-text-email, or whatever contact methods you have at your disposal.
- Offer – If you’ve got the leeway (first party, lending, freedom from your client) to offer a settlement deal, test to see if you really do get a 30% better return between offering a 50% settlement and a 20% off deal.
Whatever it is, don’t just listen to hear the phones ringing; measure the results. If you can tie it all back to revenue, you’re in the catbird seat. While we love to hear, “I know it’s working because when we run campaigns, the agents are busier,” we prefer to hear, “our results show that for every dollar we spend on VoApps DirectDrop voicemails, we get a $9 return.” That is what we work to train our clients to understand, and it doesn’t take a ton of work to get there.
Think about what that can mean to the company who decides to go with VoApps:
- An easy ROI to defend to upper management or a board of directors.
- A tangible number of increased collections or loans executed to take to the next prospect to close a deal.
- At a time when other agencies are contracting, you have an opportunity to strike. Higher success can open new avenues of growth for your company when it comes time to find more clients, divvy up extra profits or decide on a company bonus plan.
As always, please let us know how we can help get you to where you want to be. Email support@voapps.com or call us at 855-737-1597.