What a Growing Do-Not-Call Registry Means to your Marketing Universe

It’s a fact – businesses today depend on outbound marketing to grow revenue. Yet, as more and more Do-Not-Call regulations are passed each year and more and more individuals add their names to the National Do-Not-Call registry, marketing to consumers is only getting harder.

The National Do-Not-Call Registry Data Book for 2014 was just released, which reported that at the end of this fiscal year (Oct. 1, 2013 –Sept 30, 2014) there were nearly 218 million active registrations. This was an increase from last year’s total of 213 million registrations. Since the registry began in 2003, marketers have asked the same question – How is it possible to grow a business when your marketing universe continues to shrink?

Well, the answer is that it’s impossible without a smart system in place. Today, most businesses address Do-Not-Call Compliance by list scrubbing. Although this process ensures safe marketing, you’re also scrubbing away viable prospects that may actually be receptive to your offer and services.

To overcome list over-suppression, modern day marketers should take these 4 often overlooked techniques into account to ensure that they reach the maximum amount of qualified leads.

1. Business Leads: Although the Federal Do-Not-Call Registry is intended to be solely a consumer list, over the years many office numbers have been added, which in return has taken away thousands of legal opportunities from marketers. Keep this in mind when your list scrubbing and perhaps, consider adopting a Do-Not-Call compliance system that is smart enough to identify office numbers as safe to contact despite being on the DNC list.

2. Internal Do-Not-Call Expirations: Every company that markets must maintain an Internal DNC list. Although each request must be honored for 5 years, most businesses are overly conservative and end up keeping these numbers on the list forever. Your marketing lists are getting smaller and smaller to begin with, so why hurt your business even more by further reducing your prospect pool? If you implement a Do-Not-Call solution that automatically expires numbers after 5 years, you’ll be reaching thousands of more consumers than your competition because you no longer are using a black and white approach to marketing.

3. Disconnected & Reassigned Numbers: Roughly 37 million phone numbers get recycled each year, which means there is a good chance that the numbers you otherwise wouldn’t be able to contact have actually been reassigned to someone else. If you can determine the numbers on your list that have been recycled, you will continue to grow your marketing list more and more each year by adding numbers back on, that otherwise would be off limits.

4. Preference Management: Solicit your customer’s opinions to understand what your clients want and how they want to receive it. According to the Do-Not-Call Registry Data Book, in 2014, there were upwards of 3 million consumer complaints regarding telemarketing calls. To prevent this, determine what marketing channel (phone, email, text, fax, mail), product line, and contact day/time frequency your prospects’ prefer. Doing so, you will start to build rapport, as well as position your business at a place where you can more effectively market down the road.

Although marketing to consumers is becoming more and more difficult, it is now up to your business to develop an intelligent approach to overcome many of these regulatory constraints. No need to get discouraged because there are professionals like Gryphon Networks that are here to assist you in becoming a smarter and savvier modern day marketer.