Telemarketing: Is Anyone Picking Up Anymore?

 [By Sarah Faglio]

Telemarketing is a means of direct marketing where salespeople call people in an effort to persuade them into buying their products or services.  This type of cold calling occurs when these sales people call people who were not expecting to be called.  Robocalls, or "automatic telemarketing," use voice broadcasting of recorded messages with an autodialer and a computer to deliver prerecorded messages to people's phones.  These calls are either placed from a company office, a call center or from home.  They also send messages through other forms of electronic marketing such as e-mail or fax,which is also considered spam mail.  Telemarketers call consumers to access their needs and motivate them to make a purchase from their company.

Call recipients are identified in a multitude of ways, such as past purchase history, previous requests for information, credit limit, competition entry forms and application forms.  Phone numbers are also purchased from a company's consumer database, association members, telephone directory or public list.  Telemarketers acquire these lists with the intent of finding people who are likely to purchase their product or service.  Techniques include surveying, or polling, the company's prospective or past customers to access consumer satisfaction with their product or service.

In the past few years, people started to get so annoyed with these calls that they purposely tried to avoid them.  Caller-ids on phones have let people view who is calling them before they pick it up.  This allows people the opportunity to ignore any calls from numbers they do not recognize as an effort to avoid speaking with a telemarketer.  In 1991, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA),established by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), restricted the use of automatic dialing systems, artificial or prerecorded voice messages, SMS text messages to cell phones, and the use of fax machines to send unsolicited messages.  In 2004, the National Do Not Call Registry, managed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), gave U.S. consumers the opportunity to limit the telemarketing calls they receive.  Those who register are not allowed to receive calls from telemarketers (except from certain  non-profit organizations) from both interstate and intrastate callers.  This prevents commercial telemarketers from calling those who are on the registry, reducing the number of unwanted phone calls to consumers' homes.  In addition, many U.S. states have created "Do Not Call Lists" that allow people to add their numbers to a list that telemarketers are not permitted to contact.

Telemarketing has always been a nuisance to consumers, by calling them unexpectedly and interrupting their daily lives with products or services they may not be interested in.  As a marketer, you want to target your audience with more efficiency as a way to not waste valuable resources on non-customers and reach out to those who are potential customers.  In a society with caller-ids and Do Not Call registries, telemarketing has become a less valuable marketing strategy for companies.