Making a personal connection can be an effective way to increase sales, but the cost of personally reaching out to each customer is prohibitive.
In addition to it being costly, phone calls are also time-consuming. Most sales reps handle a high volume of calls, many of which don’t even reach a human on the other end of the line. Cold calling can also lead to burnout within your sales teams as they face repeated rejections or unanswered calls.
You need a better solution.
Ringless voicemails help boost outbound marketing efforts by delivering pre-recorded messages directly to voicemail boxes—without you or your customer having to pick up the phone.
Ringless voicemails can speed up your sales process, scale your outreach, and give your sales team more time to invest in qualified leads.
What Are Ringless Voicemails?
Ringless voicemails are audio messages sent directly to voicemail inboxes—without the telephone ringing first. You pre-record the messages and use software to directly drop those voicemails into users’ voicemail boxes.
You may have also heard these called ringless voicemail drops, voice broadcasting, or direct-to-voicemail messages.
Ringless voicemails are a direct marketing strategy that can increase the volume of customers you reach while keeping the outreach cost low. Instead of manually dialing each customer, you send a pre-recorded message to thousands of contacts all at once.
In most cases, messages can be sent at once or in batches at scheduled times.
5 Ways to Use Ringless Voicemail in Your Business
Nobody wants irrelevant sales blasts, but many people do welcome reminders, follow-ups, and other actions to support their experience with a company. In these cases, reaching a large volume of people makes sense.
Here are a few times that ringless voicemails might make sense:
- Thank new subscribers who have signed up for your newsletter
- Welcome new members to your subscription service or private group
- Update virtual conference attendees of schedule changes
- Connect with your best customers by sending a holiday greeting
- Reward your top clients with a promotional offer or coupon code
Remember to focus on relevance. Customers who find your messages helpful are unlikely to block ringless voicemails from reaching their inbox.
Are Ringless Voicemails Legal?
Ringless voicemails are legal in most areas but can be a bit controversial, as can any high volume sales outreach. Make sure you stay compliant with local and federal regulations. You’ll also need to be mindful of do-not-call lists and timezone restrictions.
These are essential questions to ask when selecting a service provider for ringless voicemails. A company representative should walk you through how to stay in compliance with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), state and federal regulations, and local laws in other countries if you are activating global campaigns.
How to Use Ringless Voicemails to Promote Your Brand
People don’t rely on salespeople the way they used to. In fact, 57 percent of salespeople agree buyers are less dependent on sales during the decision-making process compared to a few years ago.
Once you consider all the ways you’d like to reach out to engage your customers, you’ll likely find plenty of outreach opportunities where ringless technology could make a difference in your business.
Benefits of Ringless Voicemails
When you keep your customer’s experience in mind and offer them additional service, support, or welcoming, you’re likely to see positive results such as:
- Most people don’t answer unknown numbers, but they do check voicemails.
- Your customers can listen to your message at a convenient time for them.
- Customers can listen to a message more than once or refer back to it later.
- You can engage customers without them feeling pressured or on the spot.
- Save time by scaling your outreach to reach more people.
- Add these to your email and direct sales marketing to boost conversion rates.
- Cut the costs of your marketing outreach dramatically.
- Help reduce sales rep burnout from rejection and negative interactions.
- Give your sales team more time to devote to interested leads who call back.
What types of industries can benefit from this technology? Try ringless voicemail for real estate updates, automotive maintenance reminders, nonprofit outreach, and appointment reminders for personal services such as fitness centers, massage therapy, or hair salons.
Now that you understand the benefits, here are a few ways to use ringless voicemail to grow your business.
Ringless Voicemail Software
Ringless voicemail software allows you to leave or “drop” voicemail messages with server-to-server communication. Different platforms offer varied pricing plans, usually based on the volume of messages you send. Each company has its own platform to record messages, upload contact lists, monitor campaigns, access data, and reach out for support.
So, which company offers the best ringless voicemail software?
It depends on how many messages you want to send per month, where your target audience is located, and what features you need. The software platforms below all send messages to both mobile devices and landlines, though geographical coverage varies.
Slybroadcast
Slybroadcast calls itself a productivity tool and is used by over 3 million people, reaching customers in the US and Canada. You can send messages immediately via its platform, either at once, in batches, or at scheduled times.
The company app lets you record messages, send new campaigns, monitor status all from your cell phone. Other features include customizing Caller ID and integrations to increase automation.
Pay as you go plans range from $10 for 100 message deliveries to $400 for 10,000 message deliveries. Monthly delivery plans lower costs, ranging from $8 for 100 deliveries to $500/mo for 13,000 deliveries.
Call Loop
Call Loop offers analytics, reporting, and integrations to improve automation. You can send personalized or bulk SMS, ringless voicemail drops, text to join or win promotions, and other alerts.
Call Loop assures customers its service is TCPA compliant, noting the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) defines ringless voicemail as an “Enhanced Information Service.”
Call Loop offers a 14-day free trial to new customers. Monthly plans range from $29/mo for 250 message credits to $99/mo for 2250 message credits to start. Bronze, silver, gold levels offer more volume at $199-499 per month for 4500-11,000 messages. An enterprise-level plan provides custom solutions for larger clients, and additional messages can be added to any plan.
Drop Cowboy
Drop Cowboy calls itself the ultimate contact engagement tool and says it achieves some of the industry’s highest conversion rates. The report response rates between 5 to 20 percent range for both ringless voicemail and online texting.
Additional features include missed call alerts, tiny links to shorten links in your text messages, and IVR or interactive voice response to field incoming calls and directing them to the appropriate contacts on your team. Drop Cowboy also offers international message delivery to more than 80 countries outside the US, including the UK, Canada, and Australia, for your global campaigns.
Drop Cowboy also offers a free service to explore the software before committing to a paid plan. Prices range from 9.9 cents per message with no monthly commitment, to plans ranging from $20 to $4000 per month for between 500 to 333,333 messages per month. If you send more than 1 million messages per month, the company provides custom plans.
CDYNE
CDYNE calls itself the world’s most cost-effective voicemail drop software. Additional features include customer support via live chat, phone, or email, and a free professional voice over actor to ensure smooth and confident delivery of your brand message.
It claims to have a 92 percent open rate and a 96 percent listen-to rate. It also offers to check your contact list against the National Do-Not-Call (DNC) Registry, keeping you compliant with policies and laws. Pricing is available by email.
Stratics Networks
Stratics Networks offers ringless voicemail and text messages in Canada and the US. It also provides full reporting, including a recording of every voicemail left for recipients for accountability and compliance purposes. The company will work with you to ensure TCPA compliance and offers local timezone dialing protection.
Stratics Networks offers a flat monthly rate determined by message delivery speed. It does not bill per message or delivered voice drop, instead offering you unlimited messages per month.
Pricing is available when you set up an account, including standard and PRO plans. It provides a ten-day trial, and if you are not satisfied within the trial period, it will refund the remainder of the month upon request.
Texts vs. Ringless Voicemail
Ringless voicemail and texts or short messaging services (SMS) are designed to engage your customers by contacting them at times that are convenient for them. However, they serve different purposes.
When you are still building relationships and want marketing outreach to feel personal, use voicemail to show the warm welcome your customer could experience in person. If you want to send out information to an existing client base, and especially if you’re sharing a link or coupon code, explore text and SMS options.
The good news is, you don’t always have to choose. You can send a voicemail and later a text with links or information your customer would appreciate in writing. Many platforms make it easy to build workflows so you can combine features in the most effective way for your business.
What You Should Say in Your Ringless Voicemails
To make the most of ringless voicemails, script out your message in advance, making sure it’s crisp, clear, and aligns with your brand messaging. If the platform you select doesn’t offer a voice-over service, you may want to practice a few times to make sure you’re happy with the final recording.
Ensure the message’s content is general enough to be helpful but personal enough to feel like it was just for them. Check with your chosen platform on length, but most customers are unlikely to listen to a voicemail longer than a minute. Short and direct is best.
Ensure your messages abide by rules and regulations in your area, then get started!
While most sales teams have used telephone marketing over the years, many haven’t spent time updating their sales process. In many cases, they may have still struggled to tap the power of the phone call in sales. It’s likely time for a refresh of these skills anyway!
Conclusion
Ringless voicemail marketing is a powerful tool if you’re looking for high volume outreach with a personal touch. There are definite benefits to scaling up your customer engagement with low-cost options like ringless voicemail. Just think how often you could engage your customers if it cost a fraction of your current outreach strategy.
Getting creative with your marketing can help keep your business competitive and thriving. With the right digital marketing support, you can stay ahead of changing trends and stay focused on running your business.
How would you use ringless voicemails to connect with your customers?
The post 5 Ways to Use Ringless Voicemail appeared first on Neil Patel.
