Frequently Asked Questions >

How do you decide who to call?

This is often viewed as the most important decision facing a marketer as part of planning a phone-based program.

A basic rule for deciding which people or businesses to contact:
Identify your best customers and find more like them.

In order to do this, the marketer must have a way to measure the value of customers. The ideal way to do this is to be able to compute each customer's "Lifetime Value." This is the present value of all future net income from the customer. It also accounts for the impact each customer has on other customers through, for example, referrals.

The other necessary ingredient is to have enough characteristics in the database to make it possible to distinguish any unique characteristics of the top-value customers. It's often possible to add some characteristics from external sources. For example, marketers can purchase demographic and leisure-interest data from outside services. After you identify the winning characteristics, lists can be purchased whose members have those same characteristics. Often, but certainly not always, the best candidates for a call are the ones who have purchased Recently, Frequently and for a high Monetary amount.

One of the big advantages of phone programs compared to other contact tactics is the ability to monitor results in real time and react. This acts as the marketer's safety valve. If a list is performing poorly compared to expectations, the calling can be suspended and a new list can be acquired.

We can work with databases provided by our clients or obtain lists on behalf of our clients, based on their criteria. Getting the calling list right is usually the least expensive, yet the most crucial part of a successful phone-based program.