CallFire

Well, it’s not really a new feature as it’s been around for a couple of weeks now, but here’s the informal announcement:

CallFire is happy to announce CallFire Bonus dollars for our long standing customers. Select customers will see bonus dollars appear against specific amounts in their “Add Funds” page.

For example, in this picture, choosing the $300 level means you get 10% additional minutes free! One of the many ways we at CallFire would like to thank you for your patronage.

Our customers must have noticed for a while now the quick add feature.

Think of it as an early detection system for low funds so that your campaign keeps running for as long as you intend. Anytime, you are running low in funds, you will see low funds notification. Clicking on the “Add Funds” link will allow you to add the same amount you deposited last time to your CallFire account. Of course, you will be given options to change the amount, the credit card, as well as completely ignore this notification all together.

Another way we’re trying to make your CallFire experience a little bit simpler. As always, we’d love to hear from you!

In order to use CallFire legally, some customers (specifically, opt-in telemarketers) may need to obtain a SAN (Subscription Account Number) from the Federal Trade Commission. Here’s how.

TO REGISTER FOR A SUBSCRIPTION ACCOUNT NUMBER (SAN):

1. Click here:  https://telemarketing.donotcall.gov/profile/create.aspx
2. Complete all information with RED asterisks *.
3. Click – Organization Function- must check TM/SP (TM/telemarketer) with Independent Access
4. Click on “Submit” box at bottom of page.
5. Click on “Create Profile” box at bottom of page.
6. Click on “Certify” box at bottom of page.
7. PRINT THIS PAGE OF I.D.’s AND PASSWORDS FOR YOUR RECORDS.
8. Click on “Subscribe and Pay” box (you only need to pay if you select more than 5 area codes to prospect in)
9. Enter your 5 free selected area codes in which you will be prospecting
10. PRINT THIS PAGE OF SAN AND AREA CODES!

For help selecting appropriate area codes to dial, please refer to: http://www.nanpa.com.
Happy dialing!  ~DR

Most CallFire.com users are not required to access the National Do Not Call Registry, and thus may access CallFire.com as an Exempt Organization, if one or more of the following is true:

1. Your organization is not subject to either the FTC’s or the FCC’s jurisdiction. For example, a non-profit charitable organization may be an Exempt Organization, assuming, of course, that it is truly a non-profit. Entities that have been granted tax exempt status under the Internal Revenue Code are not necessarily Exempt Organizations for purposes of the National Do Not Call Registry. See, e.g., FTC v. National Consumer Council, Inc., and FTC v. Debt Management Foundation Services, Inc. There, the FTC successfully challenged the status of a purported nonprofit organization whose role in fact was simply to generate leads for other firms which then charged consumers thousands of dollars in fees for their services.
2. Your organization does not engage in any “telemarketing” or “telephone solicitation” activities, as defined by the FTC and FCC, respectively. For example, survey calls and political polling calls are not covered by the definition of “telemarketing” or “telephone solicitations.” An organization that places ONLY these types of calls may be an Exempt Organization.
3. Your organization qualifies for one or more of the specific exemptions contained in the FTC’s and FCC’s rules, such as:
   a. you only call to solicit charitable contributions; or
   b. you only call consumers with whom you have an established business relationship; or
   c. you only call consumers from whom you have received written permission to call; or
   d. you only make business-to-business calls.

If you are a for-profit telemarketer, you are NOT an Exempt Organization.

Whether your organization is exempt is a decision that requires an understanding of the FTC’s and FCC’s requirements, as well as your specific business practices. Therefore, whether you should subscribe as an Exempt Organization is a decision you must make. In making this decision, you may wish to consult with an attorney.

You may wish to consider the following materials when deciding whether to subscribe to the National Do Not Call Registry as an Exempt Organization:

• The FTC Act at 15 U.S.C. §§ 41-58 and related case law.
• The Communications Act at 47 U.S.C. §§ 151-757 and related case law.
• The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) at 47 USC §227 and related case law.
• The Telemarketing and Consumer Fraud Abuse Prevention Act at 15 U.S.C. §§ 6101-6108.
• The Do Not Call Implementation Act at P.L.108-10, 117 Stat. 557, and related case law.
• The Telemarketing Sales Rule at 16 C.F.R. § 310 and related Agency statements and case law.
• The FCC’s rules implementing the TCPA at 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200 and related Agency statements.

CallFire.com has released a new feature that allows you to limit the amount of simultaneous call transfers that your agents receive.  You asked for it, and now it’s here.  Once your agents are busy, CallFire will stop sending out new broadcasts until one or more of your agents are off the phone.

The request:
“My office has 5 agents and we’re sending our a broadcast to our business associates… but when a lot of people transfer at the same time, my agents get overloaded!   How can I make sure that my agents don’t get too many transfers at once?”

The solution:
Step 1: Create your campaign. After doing so, check the checkbox to the left of the Campaign that you’d like to modify. Select “Edit Campaign Settings” from the My Campaign’s page. Click Go!

Step 2: Move the slider until you have your agent count.
(This numeric represents the total number of simultaneous transfers allowed for that campaign.)

Enjoy, DR

This is a great addition to our Terms of Service.  I urge all CallFire.com users to read it.  Our legal team recently updated the CallFire Responsible Use policy and here’s what our faithful users need to know.  ~DR

RESPONSIBLE USE POLICY:

Customer agrees to familiarize him or herself with the legalities of any campaigns run through the CallFire system, by visiting the following websites:
a)  Federal Trade Commission, LINK: http://www.ftc.gov
b)  Federal Communications Commission, LINK: http://www.fcc.gov
c)  DoNotCall Registry Info, LINK: http://www.donotcall.gov
Customer agrees to familiarize themselves with any additional International, Federal, State, or local laws governing your dialing.
Customer agrees to place *ANY* individual requesting DNC status, on Customer’s accounts DNC list, immediately.
Customer agrees to provide legal contact information in any outbound campaign within the initial greeting message.
Customer agrees to provide own sound files for all outbound campaigns.
Customer agrees to provide all data and agrees to responsibly dial each campaign with courtesy to it’s recipients.
Customer agrees to schedule campaigns responsibly and with courtesy to it’s recipients.
Customer agrees not to send any calls to life-line services, such as hospitals, fire, police, 911, or utility related telephone numbers.
Customer agrees to not send any sales outbound broadcasts to recipients that have not consented to receiving such a broadcast.
Customer agrees to use all DNC / opt-out features made available to you via CallFire.
Customer agrees to consult with an attorney before dialing any data for which customer is unfamiliar, or if the legalities of dialing such data is unclear to Customer.

 Those who have called into our support line would have heard the familiar recommendation of switching browsers from Internet Explorer (IE) to Firefox.

First, let me state that Callfire.com works effortlessly and seamlessly across all browsers. We constantly test our existing and new feature set against all available browsers, desktop and mobiles, to ensure that all our clients have a consistently excellent user experience. For the record, IE is a great browser in of itself, however, in our experience we’ve found that no two installations are the same. In many cases the browser installation is so tightly integrated with the desktop that it can induce behavior that may be hard to replicate. Firefox, on the other hand, due to its modular design assures a much more consistent, faster user experience. Don’t take our word for it, read about it at The New York Times.

In the mean time, if you would still want to use IE, that’s quite all right as well, as long as all URLs lead to www.callfire.com, the browser itself is of little consequence (or is it?).

We get a lot of calls from our clients asking for secrets of a successful campaign. This, as it turns out, is a loaded question as so much depends on the purpose of the campaign as well as the end audience. However for discussion purposes we’ll narrow it down to traditional lead generation campaigns.

Note: As you read these, please keep in mind that this is not professional marketing advice, merely experience based suggestions. People go to school for this stuff, i.e., to deep-dive into marketing, we didn’t.

1. Keep it LEGAL:  Most CallFire customers use us to contact their own customers, businesses, or resell value-add voice services.  All of which is perfectly legal.  However, if you purchase opt-in leads and use them to generate sales - be sure to research and adhere to your local, state, federal, and international dialing laws & regulations.   You may not be eligible to use CallFire if you do not adhere to these dialing laws.  Anyone can check out www.DoNotCall.gov for information on using telephony broadcast within the United States.
2. Keep the Message Short: Keep the message between 20-30 seconds. Most customers have little patience for automated audio and will hang up pretty quickly if they don’t hear something they like.
3. Clear Call to Action: This is especially true for press-1 style campaigns. There should be a call to action early in the message, this can be in the form of a question, or a directive. It also helps if relevant, recent news items are referenced for it brings a certain degree of freshness to the message.
4. Be Emotional: By this we don’t mean theatrics, but at the same time don’t come across sounding like Stephen Hawking (no offence intended). You have a very short window to grab the customer’s ear, do it with emotion, do it with style. If you’re not confident of your voice, you could always try a professional voice talent. Keep in mind however, if reaching out to existing customers with whom you already have a relationship, your voice might get more transfers than even a CNN anchor.

For a more thorough evaluation, check out a previous post titled “Top Five Methods to Make Successful Political Voice Broadcasting“

We’re pleased to announce that users can now upload files to their phonebooks. Simply click on the add numbers link:

It will pop up the standard text box that allows you to enter numbers manually as well as the famous file prompt that you’re used to seeing in your add numbers page.

Just one of the ways, we’re trying to simplify your Callfire experience,and help in navigating your work day a bit easier. As always please do drop us a line to let us know what you think of this or other features.

Quote of the Day

Our life is frittered away by detail…. Simplify, simplify

                                                –Henry David Thoreau

We would also like to announce the inaugural of our account alerts feature. Account alerts will inform you about specific events that need your immediate attention. This can include events like campaign start and stop, low funds, or bad file uploads.

Currently, the Callfire system will inform you if any numbers you upload to your campaigns have processing errors.

You will get a bold alert as shown above, clicking on messages will take you to your inbox:

Clicking on the unread messages will let you know the message details and will also remove the alert notification from the top of the page. This way, truly urgent events are automatically escalated for your review.

Quote of the day:

Alert: A message or other indication that identifies a problem or an impending problem.

                                                                                                    —IBM’s DB2 Manual