“What kind of contact rate is normal?”

“How many more leads will I be able to talk to with FranFunnel?”

We hear these kinds of questions from users daily. And we still believe what we learned in our first 100 days about contacting leads:

Each and every situation is unique. Your franchise’s ability to contact leads will be based on your brand’s reputation, your lead sources, the copy in your communications, your sender reputation, as well as a whole lot of random variation.

But now that we’ve crossed the 1000 day mark, what can we tell you about the leads we’ve seen come through FranFunnel?

Let's dig into the data, focusing on the last six months of user activity. We’ll also share four use cases, or samples, to see where the texting rubber meets the road.

- - -

Over the last few months, we've had well over a hundred thousand leads active leads pass through our system. Of those, nearly 50,000 have responded to the salesperson for a ~35% contact rate.

Here's how that breaks down across the time of day the lead is actually generated:

In our recent post, How Salespeople Can Successfully Text Leads At Night, our data demonstrated that it's a smart idea to send texts overnight, in an automated fashion. We shared best practices for doing so effectively. All we can say is that your leads are up at all hours, even if they’re a bit slower to respond at four o’clock in the morning.

Next we have several instructive samples from our active users:

Sample #1

Our user sends a version of this text to each lead moments after the lead indicates interest in her brand:

Identifying information obscured with CAPS.

Over the past 14 days, 73% of the leads have texted her back! She has had 41 leads in 14 days, 30 of which have texted back, all during the coronavirus pandemic. In the past six months, she has received 502 leads. 305 of those leads responded. That's more than 60%:

Sample #2

FranFunnel doesn't do as much emailing as we do texting anymore, but we still do it, and love to look at the comparison between the two methods.

One of our users sends an email and a text to every single lead. Over the past six months he has worked a whopping 1,777 leads. Of those nearly 2,000 leads, 38% have opened his email. 35% have replied to his texts. 616 of his leads replied with at least one text, and 672 opened his initial email.

Here is what his texts look like:

Here’s what the email looks like on mobile:

Sample #3

One user has worked 2,318 unique leads in the past 6 months. They text and email each one. Of those leads, 917 replied by text, and only 678 opened an email. Their text reply rate is 40%, while their email open rate is only 29%!

Here is the email:

And the text:

Sample #4

What you say in your text matters. This next user’s leads are all organic. By usual counts, they should be high quality leads, truly interested in his brand.

In the past six months, he has worked 657 leads. Of those leads, 371 opened an email from him, while only 152 responded to a text. Email open rate: 56%. Text back rate: 23%

While texting at all is (almost) always better than not texting, it’s worth investing some time into making sure that you’re saying the right thing. Here is what he texts each of his leads:

There are quite a few texting faux pas in the messages he’s sending. He is using the sort of style that succeeds via email, which has been more successful for him historically. If you’re trying to engage your leads directly, and have real conversations with them, this text is not one we’d recommend copying. (We've written oodles about what you should send, here, and here, for example.)

Ultimately, these use cases, as they relate to contacting leads, make a strong argument for the importance of right timing, right messaging. There will always be a lot of random variation when it comes to this sales process, but the data clearly demonstrates that Franfunnel is helping our clients achieve an unprecedented contact rate.

If you’re ready to take text messaging to another level. Let us do a demo and show you how easy and efficient text messaging should be.

- - -

This article is part of our series commemorating FranFunnel’s 1000th day. Make sure you also check out the other posts:

FranFunnel’s First 1000 Days, Part 1: The Leads
FranFunnel’s First 1000 Days, Part 2: Contacting Leads
FranFunnel’s First 1000 Days, Part 3: Revisiting Our Original Learnings
FranFunnel’s First 1000 Days, Part 4: The Road Ahead

Still not texting leads? You're losing sales every day. FranFunnel takes text messaging to another level. Sign up for a demo today!

‍