By the time a campaign hits the call centre, most of the decisions that decide its success are already locked in. Skip a check at this stage and you'll wear the result for the next eight weeks. Here are the five set-up questions every marketer should ask the call centre before handing over, small interventions, outsized impact.
Direct marketers know their ROI metrics cold, except for the one that's often quietly distorting the numbers. Average Handle Time flies under the radar and routinely shows up as the difference between a campaign that pays back and one that doesn't. Here's what AHT is, why it matters for both inbound and outbound, and how to get a feel for what "reasonable" looks like.
The campaign is built, the lists are loaded, and the calls are going out, so the marketing job is done, right? Not quite. Call centre execution is where good campaigns quietly under-deliver, or over-perform. Here are seven execution areas, scripting, consultant matching, timing, staffing, where small fixes routinely move conversions by 1% or more.
When the marketing team is the only source of campaign ideas, you're leaving the best ones on the table. Contact centre staff, customers, Q&A and your support teams all see things marketing can't — and most of them are willing to contribute if asked. Here's how to plug them into campaign design without bogging the process down.
![[Guest Post] 6 Ways to Improve Your Customer Testimonials Today](/_astro/6-Ways-to-Improve-Your-Testimonials-Today-Image-3.CMiT_3KC.jpg)
Customer testimonials are one of the highest-ROI marketing assets on your website, and most teams use them wrong. Sam Johnson, founder of Feedback Loop, shares six fixes you can make today: testimonial placement near CTAs, social-channel tracking, going beyond email asks, photos and video, no faking, and remembering to ask in the first place.
Right offer or right time — which one matters more? A retail client asked, and the answer surprised both of us. Khan, Lewis and Singh's Marketing Science paper runs the numbers properly and the result is gold for one-to-one marketers. Here's what they found, and what it implies about how much effort to put into timing versus content.