CallFire

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

Lately we’ve been churning out features so fast that we’ve not gotten enough time to write about them. However, this one feature is too hard not to sing praises for: Removing duplicates. Now, every time you add numbers to a new or existing campaign, you’ll have the option to remove duplicates from that list. To do so, just choose yes to the question below and you’re done!

If there are any duplicates in your list, they will be marked as such and not dialed. You can still see them by clicking on the campaign details page.

The short answer is no.

Our Website runs independent of our dialing infrastructure which is spread across two data centers in the continental United states and is hosted on dozens of servers. Our UI, though our only public face, is but one small piece of it.

For voice broadcast campaigns, campaign thresholds determine how fast or slow your campaigns run. Each campaign starts with a default threshold of 50 CPM (Calls Per Minute). This is the default account threshold as well. This means that the system will dial fifty numbers every minute that the campaign is running. However, if you have multiple campaigns running, only one will run at 50 CPM, and all other campaigns will run at 1 CPM. If the 50 CPM campaign finishes before the others, the system will intelligently redistribute the threshold, but not until the 50 CPM campaign is over. So, if you need to have all campaigns running in parallel, then you’re better off distributing the threshold manually over your running campaigns. For example, you could have them run in a 10-10-30 or similar combination. The beauty of the CallFire system is that it gives you full control over your campaigns, so you can update the threshold while the campaign is running, and it takes effect immediately!

Note, for those with higher account thresholds, the same logic applies to your account limit. For those who would like a higher threshold, please do drop us a line.

Many of our customers are aware of our Phonebook feature. This feature allows you to have one list of phone numbers that can then be reused for future campaigns. There is a default phonebook created for you that houses your DNC numbers, i.e., numbers that should not be called again. As stated earlier, this list is live. In other words, for any of your voice broadcast campaigns if a user presses the DNC option, or for your Call Center Connect (Virtual Call Center) campaigns you create a ‘DNC’ (case sensitive) disposition, and if your agents choose that option, that number gets added to your DNC phonebook. Now the question arises:

When and how does DNC scrubbing occur?

The answer is only by request. As pointed out by our help page, every time you create a campaign or add numbers to a campaign, you will be given the option to scrub against the the DNC phonebook. Keep in mind that the DNC is a phonebook is a snapshot at any given time. This means a scrub against the DNC at 9:00 AM will not yield the same results as a scrub at 12:00 PM the same day. This may lead you to another question:

I am running multiple campaigns, how can I keep my DNC scrubbing up-to-date?

The answer is again: only by request. Simply select the campaign you want to scrub as shown below:

From the drop down menu on top select “Scrub Campaign” and click go:

The campaign will be scrubbed against all the numbers dialed up until that point.

As the message suggests, please verify the phone numbers before proceeding. One way to do this is to go your call details for that campaign and check for any with the status ’scrubbed’.

I must hasten to point out that this list is your own and in no way or form cross referenced with the Federal DNC. Our clients are responsible for their conformance with federal and local dialing laws. You can read more about dialing laws here.

We just released the hosted call center api! For everyone who wants to use the call center connect with agent popup with your own backend, we provide everything you need to integrate straight into Callpeer platform.

You can login your agents and the system will start dialing and connecting calls to the agent. Every time a connection occurs, you get information about it and you can display a popup and peripheral information from your own backend. Collect the data and just let the Callpeer platform know that the agent is ready for the next call and we will handle the rest!

Features

• Run multiple campaigns simultaneously
• Add hundreds of agents per campaign - enormous scalability (Already tested with over 400 agents per campaign)
• Full connection details - so you can display popups and collect information on your own system
• Easy call center api and full documentation.
• Full campaign and agent statistics

CallFire now supports internal list management. You can create and maintain a list of phone numbers easily within your dashboard. This feature also provides an internal do-not-call list support for your campaigns.To use the feature, click on the phonebook link.

Create a new list and start adding numbers to it. The internal do-not-call list will be created automatically for you when you make your first campaign. You can add and remove numbers from all of your lists.

The MasterDNC list can be scrubbed against when you create a new campaign. Once the campaign is created, the system will dial all the numbers that were not scrubbed. Updates to your Master DNC list do not update old campaigns.

The BETA version of our Referral & Rebranding programs is now available. Here’s how it works:

**** RESELLER / REFERRAL PROGRAM ****
This is the easiest way to make money with CallFire.com referrals. Starting Monday, this is how you can sign up:
1. First login to CallFire.com as you normally would.
2. Browse to the front page and click on “Partner Programs“.
3. Click the “Signup” link in the Referral Program section.
4. Fill out all the appropriate information & read the Referral FAQ.

Referral Program Description:
After you have signed up as a Reseller you will be able to add referral email addresses to your referral account. If a user with that email address has not already signed up and has not been referred by another user, then that referral is yours and becomes an ‘active referral’ after that users signs up on CallFire.com. For a referral to be eligible, You must refer their email address before they have signed up with CallFire.com. Existing CallFire customers are not eligible to be “referrals”, and IP Addresses will be tracked to prevent this type of abuse. If the monthly sum of system usage of your referrals surpasses 50,000 minutes, a check will be sent to the Address you used when you signed up as a Referral. You can receive up to half-a-cent per minute for the call volume you helped generate! Please read the FAQ for further details.

**** REBRANDING PROGRAM ****
This program is for businesses or entrepreneurs who would like to resell our services with a branded website of your own. Rebranding partners will provide their own customer support and will charge their clients whatever per-minute rate they wish!
1. First YOU MUST LOGIN to CallFire.com as you normally would.
2. Browse to the front page and click on “Partner Programs“.
3. Click the “Signup” link in the Rebranding Program section.
4. Fill out all the appropriate information & read the Rebranding FAQ.

Rebranding Program Description:
After signing up and payment is received we ask you allow 1-2 weeks for your site to be provisioned. Rebranding customers will have their own site just like CallFire - except with your company’s logo and name on the site! The Rebranding program allows your organization to capitalize on a secondary revenue stream from your customers and charge them the prices you wish to charge! Your clients will never see the CallFire name associated with your new website. The rebranding program requires you to purchase minutes in bulk from CallFire.com. You may purchase minutes in bulk of 10,000 or more.

For $499.99 you get 1 year of the following:
Virtual hosting on our servers.
2nd level technical support for your customers.
A SSL Security Certificate for your site.
A single domain name for your site.