Every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, CallFire holds webinars to introduce new customers to our products, and to familiarize them with their accounts. It’s a live demonstration with audio and video, that allows participants to ask questions and to see the CallFire interface in action.
But now, if those dates and times don’t work for you, you can view an archived webinar at any time. Many thanks to Ryan Koven and Bill Hughes who continually lend their expertise to educate our clients.
First, there’s the Mayans. Then, there’s the billboards. And if none of that bothers you, there’s climate change. Whatever is going on, there seems to be a lot of talk about the end of the world in 2012. So, *just in case*, here’s a couple ways CallFire can help you maximize the (limited?) days you have left.
Send a Goodbye Voice Broadcast
You know a lot of people, but you don’t have a lot of time. At least not enough to call them each individually. So get on the phone and record a message just once, and send it out to your whole contact list. This video will show you how. Don’t worry, it’s only 5 minutes. We realize time is ticking.
When you record your voice broadcast, feel free to use this script, or alter it as necessary.
Hello. This is [ your name ].
As a precaution to the world’s end [ on Saturday / in December / when the zombies attack ],
I just wanted to let you know that… [ I love you / I hate you / I'm sorry for... / I haven't forgotten that one time when you... ].
As this may be the last time you hear from me, I hope the one thing you’ll remember is that [ I loved you in this world, and I'll love you in the next / I hope we're not going to the same place / I told you so / I've sent the pictures to everyone ].
I’ll always think of you as [ my one true love / my friend / my partner / my mortal enemy ] even though [ you don't feel the same way / your family would never approve / I've only ever talked to you in internet forums ]
With this message, I bid you a final [ adieu / fond farewell / extended middle finger / goodbye ]
Your message will be sent at a rate of 50 calls per minute, which should be fast enough to reach everyone you know in time.
But what about the people to whom you want to bid farewell personally?
Aha! CallFire has a solution for that too. Because with only a few days left, do you really want to spend them dialing numbers, and trying to remember what you need to say? Of course not. This is a serious matter.
For this, CallFire has an end-of-the-world remedy: the Cloud Call Center. But in case there’s any confusion, we’re not talking about *those* clouds—this isn’t a direct line to the heavens. It’s calling through the clouds, and dialing auto-magically. Watch here:
Now, let’s think about this script a little more carefully. The beauty of the Cloud Call Center is you can customize your scripts with multiple-choice questions and open-answer text fields. So perhaps you’ll want to set something up like this:
Now as you make your calls, you’ll have a guide. And you can take notes should you need to take any follow-up actions, such as offline retribution, or sending a nice bouquet.
But what happens if the world doesn’t end?
Wouldn’t you know, CallFire has a solution for that as well. It’s called an SMS Broadcast, or the “Oops, my bad” text message. Watch how:
Best of all, you can pre-schedule your text, so if you’re locked in a bunker and can’t get to your CallFire account, everything is all set to go… just in case.
* This blog post is meant to be satirical. If you intend to use CallFire, you may only message opt-in clients. Please consult an attorney to familiarize yourself with local, state and federal telecommunications guidelines. More information on Telecom Compliance can be found on our website. Please dial responsibly. Thank you. *
A number of customers have asked how they can use their CallFire phone numbers together with their Google AdWords campaigns. In the video below, I explain two ways to incorporate your call tracking phone numbers. The first is Phone Extensions, which you can read more about here. The second is simply adding the phone number to the Google ad text. Keep in mind if you choose to use a Phone Extension and you enable the “call-only” format, clicking on your ad will not bring the user to your mobile landing page; it will only give them the option to call your business.
If you add the phone number to your ad text, you probably also want to include a phone number on your landing page. This way, if someone clicks on your ad and then wants to call your business, they can.
** This is the first in an occasional series about optimizing your Google AdWords account. Since most of CallFire’s clientele is made up of small business owners, I hope to share my marketing expertise to help them become better marketers for their businesses. To keep up on future AdWords lessons, be sure to follow me on Twitter @CallFireMktg, like CallFire on Facebook, or subscribe to our blog’s RSS feed. **
I’ve consulted with a number of businesses about their Google AdWords accounts. Usually their first questions include, “Why aren’t my ads working?”, “What am I doing wrong?”, and, “I’m completely overwhelmed, help me!” Okay, that last one’s not a question, but I do hear it a lot. The fact of the matter is, Google can greatly increase your business’s revenue, but if you’re not using it correctly, it can quickly become a money pit.
I put together this video lesson to help you through what I consider the universal Step One. CHECK YOUR CAMPAIGN SETTINGS. These alone can help you better target your ads and save you from a lot of worthless clicks. I’ve also provided some additional resources below once you finish watching the video. Even if you ultimately contract someone to manage your AdWords account for you, it’s a good idea to know what to look for, so I truly hope these videos help. Feel free to leave questions in the comments and I’ll try to address them all in future episodes.
Here’s the official explanation: “Ads are targeted based on a user’s search terms. For example, if you search for “Italian coffee” on a search engine powered by Google, such as AOL.com, you’ll see related coffee ads next to the search results.” The AdWords interface adds this:
“On the Search Network, ads are shown both on Google search results pages and the search results pages of other properties (Google’s search partners) within the Search Network. On our search partners, your ads may appear alongside or above search results, as part of a results page as a user navigates through a site’s directory, or on other relevant search pages.”
If you want to see what traffic the search network is giving you, go to your “Networks” tab on the AdWords interface and you’ll see it separated out between Google search (meaning Google proper) and the Search partners.
Bidding (another episode dedicated on bidding strategies to come)
You can check the performance of your extensions by navigating to the “Ad extensions” tab in the AdWords interface. In the sub-nav menu on the left, it will default to “Location Extensions,” but you can click any of the extension types and see its status, clicks, impressions, CTR, Avg CPC, Cost, and Avg Pos.
Product extensions require a Google Merchant Center account. Location extensions can work with a manually entered address, but are easier to manage if you have a Google Places account. It takes about 2 weeks to activate your account via postcard verification.
The protests in the Wisconsin state Capitol are now in their second week, and the political dialogue has gone beyond collective bargaining and the state budget. Now, there are calls for the recall of certain Wisconsin lawmakers.
Aimee Auer, a New London, WI schoolteacher, recorded the message, and it was uploaded into the CallFire interface. The voter interest poll was then programmed using CallFire’s drag-and-drop IVR Designer. Each keypad input is recorded for reporting, and listeners can be connected directly to their state senators office using a call transfer command. Listen to the result below:
Adam Green, co-founder of PCCC, sums up the strategy in three words: “Offense, offense, offense.” Green revealed to MSNBC that initial results of the calls show 59.7% of Republican voters would support recall efforts if the targeted state senators ultimately support Gov. Scott Walker’s bill, S.B.11. Green was able to see these survey results in real-time through CallFire’s campaign dashboard.
Michael Snook, Director of Targeting and Analytics for PCCC, noted, “CallFire made it possible for us to produce and deploy this effective advocacy campaign—quickly, and on budget. With CallFire’s simple, flexible XML environment, we were able to design a campaign that would connect with thousands of Wisconsin voters to voice their support for working families against Republican class warfare, and offer them the opportunity to connect directly with their elected officials.”
For a recall to be successful, petitioners must gather a number of signatures equal to 25% of the general electorate. If enough signatures are gathered, an election is held, and the official must run for his/her job again.
A conservative group, the American Patriot Recall Coalition, is also testing the waters for recall—except they are hoping to recall seven of the 14 Democratic state senators who fled the capitol in protest of Walker’s bill.
There are currently labor disputes in Ohio, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and even the NFL. Any of these political groups could use CallFire’s intuitive platform for voter outreach and education, volunteer phone banking, and text messaging campaigns. Watch CallFire’s CEO, Dinesh Ravishanker, explain how political campaigns have benefitted from using CallFire.
In my capacity as CallFire’s Director of Marketing, I am trying not only to market CallFire as a brand, but to help our clients, most of whom are small business owners, market themselves.
First, I shared some best practices for opt-in text marketing. This week, I’m sharing tips on how to create an effective voice broadcast campaign. And we should know. Last month alone, CallFire helped businesses send over 10 million voice broadcasts.
This video covers how to script your message, how to time your message, whether you should consider using a professional voice, and most importantly, what to do after your campaign has run. If you are interested in running a subset campaign, watch this video with my colleague Ryan.
I hope you find this video helpful, and I encourage you to share any of the tips and tricks you’ve learned in using Voice Broadcast in the comments below.
Due to all the interest in my earlier post about transferring campaigns from Google AdWords into Microsoft AdCenter (Bing), I decided to add on some additional information I’ve learned since then, and to put it all in video form.
A condensed text version for those unable to watch the (subtitled) video:
Share of US Online Search
Google – 67.6%
Microsoft – 14.1%
Yahoo! – 13.9%
Ask.com – 3.8%
AOL – 0.7%
Conclusion from this: you can be paying a lot less for Bing, so make sure to change your maximum bids when you transfer campaigns (we use about a quarter of our Google bids, and see a quarter of the CPC).
Similarities & Differences
Same bidding system: pay $0.01 more than the next-highest bidder, all other factors equal.
AdCenter is PRE-PAY only. AdWords will send you invoices.
AdWords lets you rotate or optimize ads. AdCenter will automatically optimize by CTR.
AdCenter does not currently support image or video ads.
Match Types
Note: AdCenter does NOT have modified broad match, which you will have to compensate for. AdCenter also only has negative PHRASE match (no negative exact match).
AdCenter also has keyword normalization, so it will automatically ignore common conjunctions and prepositions (a, about, an, at, by, for, how, in, is, of, on, or, the, to, what, with). That means that if you have a phrase like “what is,” both of those words are going to be thrown out because they are noise words.
Ad Structure
AdWords: Line 1 is a maximum of 35 characters; Line 2 is a maximum of 35 characters.
AdCenter: Ad text is a maximum of 70 characters.
Looks the same, but isn’t. AdCenter inserts a line break in the most appropriate place automatically; you choose where the line break is in AdWords.
How to Transfer Your Campaigns
Watch the video.
Important Factors to Keep Track Of
Make sure your campaign settings transfer correctly (usually the “devices” is what never transfers right).
Keep track of your negatives! (AdCenter sometimes calls this “exclusions.”)
“Account negatives,” which are new to AdWords, will not transfer because AdCenter only has campaign negatives and lower, so you will need to transfer these manually.
Since AdCenter doesn’t have exact negatives, make sure you find everything that used to be an exact negative and review whether it will work as a phrase negative. Example: you might have an exact negative like -[phone] in AdWords because it’s too nonspecific for you to want to capture people searching for just “phone.” Once it transfers as the phrase negative “phone,” though, it means anyone searching for a phrase with the word “phone” in it will not see your ad.
Look through all your negative keywords searching for noise words and get rid of them (or the entire phrases). For example, if you had [what is call tracking] as an exact negative phrase, it becomes “what is call tracking.” Both “what” and “is” are ignored as noise words, meaning you essentially have the negative keyword “call tracking” for the keyword “call tracking.” Don’t let it happen to you!
Keep track of your modified broach match keywords. They will transfer with the “+,” but AdCenter will not recognize what that means. You’ll need to manually replace those with either broach match or phrase match.
Scroll through all your ads and make sure they look the same visually. Sometimes you will also have to fix length, because the strange break will put you over the length limit.
Also…
DON’T use a mac!
DO download AdCenter Desktop — the AdCenter equivalent of AdWords Editor.
From the video: “CallFire is in the virtual call center business. This puts our software at the forefront conversation for Political Phone Banks in the United States. During each election season we experience double, sometimes triple the virtual call center usage we see at any other point in the year. Moreover, our solutions team consults with political marketers to design powerful telephone surveys and notification campaigns critical to campaign managers interested in voter preference and geography relevant analytics. These campaigns also provide less educated voters with digestible information required to make a next-day voting decision.
Over the course of 6 years in cloud telephony consulting, my team and I have participated in countless confidential conversations with technologists and campaign managers. Often we discuss the marketing and advertising strategy used to garner support for their candidates. Time and time again, we find political advertising strategies are not terribly different from a good brand advertising strategy. Here are a few political advertising strategies that I have seen used over the last few years.”
Political advertising strategies
Creativity – differentiate your candidate by developing a persona
Use fresh voter registration data lists and don’t annoy voters
Market your candidate in search results on Google and Bing
Place site-targeted ads for your candidate on Political Websites
Use Voice Broadcast target geographies with tailored messages
Accept campaign contributions online, via phone & snail mail
Enable volunteers to make voter-outreach calls from home
Use data from phone or social media surveys for targeting
Tailor communication by age, location & political affiliation
Use a “Google surge” or “Network blast” in the days before an election
Partner with an experienced Political Technology company (references below)
CTA (or Call-To-Action) & KISS (or Keep-It-Simple-Stupid) are probably the most overused acronyms board rooms and marketing meetings around the world. But lets face it – most politicians have a lot to say, so it is extremely important to distill your candidate’s values in a clear and concise manner. In the case of telephone marketing, a 30-40 seconds message works best, with the option to learn more if the listener desires. In the case of social media advertising, some Twitter studies indicate that clickthrough rates are largely affected by CTA. Advertisers who push products or services often use CTAs like “click here for a Free Trial”, or “Learn more.” In the dozens of political sound files I have personally listened to, almost all of them had a similar CTA. Namely, “Vote for me, [candidate name] on election day” or “Press-1 to Donate Now”. If you’re interested in optimizing a voice campaign, read the top 5 methods to making a successful Political Voice Blast.
Study historical data
There exists a plethora of political data on the web in the form of case studies, blogs and raw data. So, why make the Political Advertising mistakes someone has already made for you? Although this advice seems elementary, remember to DO YOUR RESEARCH. We assume that’s why you’re reading this blog now. Here are a few links to get you started:
Case studies MoveOn.org uses Cloud IVR to collect voter data (LINK) Equality California uses Cloud Call Center to harness the power of volunteers at home (LINK) Thomas Kennedy wins Citrus County using Voice Broadcast (LINK)
Professional references Patrick Michael Kane – Technology driven political advocacy expert, CTO & founder. Former lead technology consultant for MoveOn.org, One.org, OFA and ActionKit.com clients. Website: http://www.actionkit.com Brian Donahue – Political Consultant & Founder of Craftdc.com Mr. Donahue has managed 4 Federal election campaigns and served on 2 presidential campaign staffs and Headed national 72-hour Task Force for RNC. Mr. Donahue also served as the Executive Director for Bush-Cheney ‘04. Website: http://www.CraftDC.com
Media Dan Siroker Video – “How We Used Data to Win the Presidential Election” Stanford University & Dan Siroker – the former Data Analytics Manager for the Obama campaign.
Video: Brian Donahue – Political Strategist: http://www.gspm.org/brian-donahue-video - Election Assistance Commission – Data from the 2008 election. Download the full report as zip.
Text messaging has transformed the way people communicate. If you need any proof, check out the way it’s transformed fashion. One of this year’s Bloomingdale’s “Nifty Gifty” suggestions is a pair of gloves with the tips of the thumb and pointer finger cut off, so that these digits are unencumbered while texting.
But if you’re using SMS to market with customers, you want to be sure to be doing it effectively. In the video below, I discuss strategies, best practices, and compliance rules, and how CallFire helps manage the tough stuff for you. In the future, I’ll discuss creative ideas surrounding mobile marketing, and how you can leverage the power of CallFire to market your business effectively.
How has text marketing worked for you? Let us know.
Our company mascots, Lucky & Ronak, are learning how to share… but sometimes it doesn’t go so well! Ronak is a 4 month old English Chocolate Lab pup and Lucky is a 3 year old Jack Russell Terrier.
Meeting notes:
Patience sometimes pays greater dividends than opportunism.
Lack of communication can lead to inadequate goal alignment between business partners.
A show of force (followed by tail-wagging) is sometimes more effective than an actual bite.
Text messaging has transformed the way people communicate. If you need any proof, check out the way it’s transformed fashion. One of this year’s Bloomingdale’s “Nifty Gifty” suggestions is a pair of gloves with the tips of the thumb and pointer finger cut off, so that these digits are unencumbered while texting.
