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After 2.5 years of running FranFunnel, we’re starting to see what more developed enterprises would term a “customer journey.” In other words, we have a critical mass of users that are beginning to follow a more predictable experience with our software.
One of the steps in this journey that comes after a few months of using FranFunnel is sending an email to our team asking, “Do I have a good contact rate?” or “What can I do to raise my contact rate?”
Contact rate or what percentage of leads added to FranFunnel communicate back with our customers is one of our KPIs. Across all our customers (and therefore for each customer as well), we want to maximize the number of conversations you’re having. As part of this, we provide a lovely little chart on the upper right of the desktop experience to show you just how you’re doing:
Since these questions are becoming so ubiquitous, I thought I’d put together a brief guide to the main factors that are going to affect your contact rate.
This one may be too obvious, but the more fields you require (especially phone and e-mail address), the higher your contact rate. Now, you may find registration rate go down if you start requiring previously optional fields, so don’t immediately jump at this one. But yes, mandating the ability to communicate with leads via multiple channels will certainly increase your contact rate.
We all know that feeling. You try to put in a bum phone or e-mail address and the form lets you know that it’s aware that you are lying. Well, if your company is doing that type of validation prior to lead submission, then you’re going to significantly cut down on fake information and therefore increase your contact rate.
This is perhaps the most common culprit. Some lead sources simply have a higher innate contact rate than others. Sources like your company website, broker networks, and reputable portals are likely to be the best. As more leads come from these places, you’ll see your contact rate increase. We often see the addition of a low-quality third-party generator or a drop in your website leads as a common reason for low contact rates.
When we look across all our FranFunnel users, there are two characteristics of text message copy that lead to higher contact rates. 1) It’s imperative that you end texts with an easily answerable question. By asking people questions they know the answer to, you get them invested in the process. 2) Keep the messages sweet. We recommend no more than 160 characters but anything under 250 should be ok. After that, you’re really drowning out the purpose of the message.
Depending on which contact method you’re using, we recommend somewhere between 1-3 additional contact attempts after the first. For texts, one additional message should be plenty to determine whether that’s a viable method of communication. For phone calls and e-mails, that number increases to three. By adding a contact attempt or two, you can increase that rate.
Since FranFunnel provides best-in-class texting solutions, it’s often the other forms of communication that are either A) not being executed properly or B) not having the data recorded properly. Take a look at your e-mail and phone strategy and data plan. I’m sure you’ll find some opportunities to increase that contact rate.
Eli Robinson is the General Manager of FranFunnel and the COO of Metric Collective. He could really use a lot of help with his text message copy.
