A significant proportion of B2B marketers remain ignorant of the issues and implications of the Corporate Telephone Preference Service (CTPS) two years after its implementation, according to new research by B2B Marketing and The Telemarketing Company. The results will be seen by many observers as a damning indictment of the CTPS, together with its aims and objectives.
Forty per cent of respondents stated they were not confident their telemarketing activity was conducted within the requirements of the CTPS, a figure that rises to 47 per cent when only considering active telemarketers.
Over 20 per cent of B2B telemarketers described their understanding of the actions required for CTPS compliance as ‘poor’, whilst an overwhelming 82 per cent believe the campaign designed to drive awareness of the CTPS and its implications has not been effective.
This figure is unchanged from the previous survey that B2B Marketing conducted on the CTPS, back in October 2004 (B2BM Nov/Dec 04, p22), as is the percentage of respondents who believe the £5000 penalty for non-compliance is appropriate (54 per cent agree that it is). Meanwhile, just under 70 per cent of respondents believe that more should be done to raise awareness of the CTPS.
Despite these negative observations regarding the CTPS, its actual repercussions on B2B marketers have to date been relatively limited. Only seven per cent describe its impact as ‘significant’ and 22 per cent as ‘moderate’.
Meanwhile, over 70 per cent report at worst a minor impact. It would appear that although there are significant potential negative repercussions as a result of the CTPS, only a minority of telemarketers have experienced these to date. As the list of opted-out numbers grows over time, the level of threat may change.
In terms of overall attitudes to CTPS, over a quarter of respondents regard it as ‘bad for marketing’, a slight rise from the previous study. This has been at the expense of those who supported it in principal, which suggests a gradual erosion of support may be taking place. However, despite this, the largest group (42 per cent) still believe the ‘jury is out’ on the CTPS, and are prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt for the time being.
Although the CTPS remains a contentious issue, attitudes to telemarketing are generally very positive. Almost 80 per cent of B2B marketers use telemarketing on a regular basis, and of those a similar figure describe it as ‘effective’ or ‘extremely effective’.
Almost half of B2B telemarketers (48 per cent) have increased their spend on the medium in the last year, whilst 44 per cent have retained previous levels of expenditure.
Spend and return: Fifty five per cent of respondents allocate under 10 per cent of their budget to telemarketing, with just over 50 per cent typically seeing a response rate of over five per cent. Twelve per cent say average response rates are over 20 per cent.
Inhouse versus outsourcing: Internal telemarketing is significantly more popular than using agencies (51 per cent versus 18 per cent respectively), although 32 per cent of respondents do both.
Objectives: Lead generation is overwhelmingly the most popular aim for telemarketing, nominated by 74 per cent.
Perhaps one of the reasons for outbound B2B’s continued growth is the fact that a well designed and managed campaign can deliver both demand generation and market insight. True market research and the generation of sales leads or appointments cannot easily be combined. However, one of the unique advantages of B2B telemarketing is that there’s scope to actually engage in a dialogue, which is potentially much more powerful than just sending a message to your market and waiting for the response. Although only a minority of respondents claim to use telemarketing with market research as an explicit aim, if market intelligence is not gathered through calling, then they are not realising the full potential of the channel. Finding the reasons why prospects won’t buy is often more useful than finding the reasons that they will. As you would expect, the majority of outbound telemarketing is still conducted by inhouse teams, with a sizeable minority outsourcing the activity to specialist agencies. This is no great surprise: almost every company in the world uses the phone as a sales channel but only a minority use a specialist outside agency.
