It’s that time of month – here are just some of the latest features we’ve released across the Phonexa suite in recent weeks.

Ping Post Calls Integration Builder Support

Everyone who uses Phonexa loves the Integration Builder. So we made sure to spread the Integration Builder Support love to ping post calls as well.

Our Integration Builder now supports ping post calls flows through LMS Sync, providing clients with a powerful new tool to quickly and easily build integrations and make updates as needed.

The best part? The user-friendly interface is designed so that you don’t need developer support.

LEARN MORE: Integration Builder

Filter Leads Based on DNC Parameters & Stay Compliant

We’ve launched a new feature within iClear that cheques in real-time the “Do Not Call” status for the lead phone number, a cost-effective alternative to our more comprehensive service of Phone Number Analysis.

The new service aims at filtering the leads based only on DNC parameters. This is especially important because it helps you stay compliant with the FTC and state guidelines by scrubbing against daily updates of DNC lists.

By the way, did you know that the latest FTC report showed that consumer complaints about robocalls and unwanted live telemarketing calls have decreased to a five-year low?

LEARN MORE: iClear: Do Not Call cheque

New Report Identifies Lead Rejections Based on Rules

Phonexa clients increasingly use iClear’s advanced rules because it offers incredible flexibility in creating and managing a variety of rules for processing, filtering, and routing leads based on the complex logic of conditions and actions.

Now we have a useful report that tracks the performance of the configured advanced rules and quickly identifies the lead rejections based on those rules. The report contains information on the number of processed advanced rules and the number of rejects based on those rules.

LEARN MORE: iClear: Advanced Rule Reject Report

Streamline & Enhance Workflows Through Disposition Summary Report

The Disposition Summary Report is a powerful new feature in our system designed to streamline and enhance workflows by providing valuable insights into the dispositions pinged back into the system.

Key features include a detailed overview of the disposition pingbacks in a consolidated report, real-time updates on disposition changes, and enhanced decision-making based on the feedback from the buyers on the quality of the leads to optimise the processes.

Every time a new disposition is pinged back into the system it will be immediately updated in the report and can be viewed and analysed from various perspectives such as:

• Disposition Summary by Buyer
• Disposition Summary by Publisher
• Buyer Monthly Summary
• Global Publisher Review
• Publisher by Month
• Publisher by Campaign
• Publisher by Day

LEARN MORE: Disposition Summary 

Optimise Email Configuration For Deliverability

According to the latest industry reports, the average email deliverability rate across various email marketing platforms is 84.2%.

In our continued efforts to improve email deliverability, we’ve introduced a new E-Delivery feature that allows clients to test the configuration and deliverability of the template to the inbox.

The Email Tester feature provides detailed information on variables like Spam, Authentication, Headers, DNS, Links, and more.

Get ready to identify and fix configuration problems in advance for better inboxing.

LEARN MORE: Email Templates 

Improved UX for Instance Interface

We’re always burning the midnight oil looking for new ways to improve the user experience. Our toiling and tinkering have led to a new feature that enables users to hide or show less frequently used filters in the most popular reports. It just takes a click to hide or unhide the filters for a cleaner and more focused experience.

Are you looking for a particular feature or product functionality in Phonexa? Let us know by emailing team@phonexa.uk.

It’s essential for enterprise affiliate marketing team leaders to collaborate with other leadership and product marketing functions in order to educate, evangelise, and inform around the medium.

But how do you demonstrate value from the affiliate channel overall, and what tactics can you implement to ensure that the buy-in occurs, and that you continue to demonstrate value?

The answers to these questions were at the forefront of the latest instalment of Phonexa’s Amplify webinar series, as Phonexa CMO Talar Malakian and Jessica Robinson, Founder of Affiliate Marketing Partners, made the case for investing in affiliate marketing when building a programme from scratch.

VIDEO LINK

The informative session thoroughly explored strategies for evaluating opportunities and managing a pay-per-performance budget with a diversified pool of partners based on what makes sense for a buyer’s journey and respective business models.

The Case for Investing in Affiliate Marketing

One of the initial hurdles often faced when establishing an affiliate marketing programme from the ground up is securing the necessary investment and buy-in from leadership or new clients. 

Convincing decision-makers to allocate resources to this marketing channel requires a compelling argument highlighting its potential value and returns.

Since affiliate marketing is, at its core, a pay-per-performance channel, Robinson believes that is a compelling opening argument to present to a marketing leader.

“You’re not paying on impression or a click … you’re paying when the action you want happens, so I look at what competitors are paying out in the space to show [marketing leaders] how they’re building their affiliate programmes around these payouts,” said Robinson. “I like to Google their top keywords … about 80% of the organic and paid listings on a SERP page are affiliate sites … if they’re not talking about your [products], they’re talking about your competitors.”

Robinsons said another key factor to consider is the diversity of the affiliate set. With regard to publishers, this can range from content influencers to technology partners to email or native ad experts. 

“In terms of partner types, the most undervalued partners that aren’t talked about enough are brand-to-brand partnerships,” said Robinson. “It’s definitely one of the more challenging ones to stand out in the affiliate space, but they can be extremely valuable.”

Cheque out a recent episode of Amplify: Essential Insights for Achieving Affiliate Success & Building Lasting Partnerships.

Managing Budgets for Diverse Partners

When heading an affiliate programme, marketing leaders have to assess which partner types make the most sense to sponsor with an upfront fee. Robinson shared that this decision ultimately comes down to what your goal is and what your preferred partnership set looks like.

“For instance, if you’re a finance brand and you want to show up where your competitors are showing up, oftentimes you need to have a sponsored placement there,” said Robinson. “I wouldn’t go out and do a $50,000 ad buy for a coupon deal or loyalty site. There’s value in that for certain promotions but if you’re trying to gain share of voice on sites that are comparing your competitors, that’s a good example where [an upfront fee] is worth it – especially when it results in an evergreen placement.”

Robinson has encountered brands that manage affiliate channels differently from other paid channels.

“[The affiliate channel] is a relationship-based channel and relationships take time to cultivate,” said Robinson. “[My colleague] phrased it really well, ‘Proof of life at three months; proof of growth at six months.’ Just because you launch an affiliate programme doesn’t mean you’re going to start seeing as many convergents as you see through your paid search campaigns right off the bat – having time for launch is a [critical] piece of it.”

Looking to acquire high-intent leads? Our comprehensive guide –“How to Scale ROI Across Publishers & Partners: An Affiliate Network’s Guide” – uncovers the secrets to boosting ROI.

Evaluating Opportunity Size

Controlling outcomes and making them scalable is mission-critical in affiliate marketing. 

Malakian shared that cost stabilisation is a big part of that conversation, as cookie deprecation and other factors make it more difficult for marketers to do the type of targeting they might want to conduct.

Robinson provided an example from her tenure at PayPal.

“One of the slides in my pitch internally at PayPal was comparing our costs to other paid channels to showcase the difference in our CPLs depending on the programme we were talking about,” said Robinson. “Normally, our return on ad spend was second only to branded paid search.”

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Mistakes can erode confidence among leadership and work against the trust factor in running a channel. Robinson gave an example of a client that committed the cardinal mistake of having their programme on auto-approve before migrating to her platform.

“There are many publishers operating in this space, so when we’re talking about building out a programme, we’re still evaluating these partners and not everyone can get your affiliate link,” said Robinson. “[Auto-approve] can open you up to all sorts of issues like FCC disclosure violations, fraud, and being on sites you don’t want to be associated with.”

Robinson said a common mistake brands make is not being open to testing their way into a B2B partnership.

“There needs to be an upfront investment either to get on these platforms or get sponsored content to stand out and jumpstart a relationship,” said Robinson. “As soon as you pitch someone on a pay-per-performance channel and you bring up [additional expenses], trying to go back on that can be challenging.”

The balance of employing an optimal tech stack and testing in this phase becomes crucial.

“There are definitely times that it makes sense to have the right tech stack for affiliate marketing, but certainly having four affiliate networks that all had different agency management built-in into it, they were just paying four times the cost,” said Robinson. “Make sure that you’re consolidating your tech stack and that it makes sense for your business.”

Click here to join the Amplify Community and learn more about upcoming webinars.

It’s that time of month! Here are just some of the newest features we’ve released in recent weeks across the Phonexa platform.

Updates in Opt-Intel

Get Compliant with New One-Click Unsubscribe Feature

Google and Yahoo recently announced new requirements and email sender guidelines for bulk email senders. 

Not only have we followed along, but we’ve been working on an easy solution for those of you who’d like to efficiently manage suppression lists and opt-outs.

To get you compliant right now with Google and Yahoo’s new rules, we created a new one-click unsubscribe feature in Opt-Intel, our suppression list management tool.

Here’s how the new opt-out feature works: When the unsubscribe link is clicked, it redirects the user to a new page that indicates a successful unsubscribe. There won’t be any additional requests to re-enter email addresses or to provide any additional information, making it easier for everyone to manage unsubscribed.

Learn More

Updates in Lynx

Create & Track New Offers For Mobile 

Did you know that 31% of consumers prefer to shop via mobile – crazy, right?

But that also means more affiliate traffic to mobile apps!

With our latest offer type, you can create and manage mobile offers inside of Lynx, our click tracking platform. 

The Mobile Offer is used to track offers that send users to the Google or Apple Mobile App Stores instead of website domains or web properties. You can track conversion events from those same applications and align them with your offer goal in Phonexa.

Learn More

Are you looking for a particular feature or product functionality in Phonexa? Let us know by emailing info@phonexa.com.

The pay-per-call industry is growing exponentially as businesses embrace PPC due to its higher conversion rates, customer spending, and retention.

With PPC continuing to grow in popularity, the industry is projected to reach a $12 billion valuation by 2025, with an annual growth rate of approximately 16%.

A recent episode of Phonexa’s Amplify webinar series hosted by Evan Weber (Founder of Publisher Finders) featured David Pickard (CEO of Phonexa UK) and Nareg Arakelian (Director of Operations at Profitise) as the three industry veterans analysed the latest trends in pay-per-call space.

The webinar provided a thorough exploration of PPC marketing as the trio delved deep into the strategies, trends, and technological advancements currently propelling the sector forward.

Here’s a summary of the pivotal insights discussed during the informative conversation.

Ideal Modality for Generating Traffic

Businesses thrive on inbound calls. Gone are the days of companies getting a bunch of lead forms and having to call people back to try to reach them. By driving inbound calls, businesses can connect consumers with call centres and achieve their objectives much faster.

To illustrate this point, Pickard cited a Forrester study which found that calls convert 30% faster than web leads, and they spend 28% more with a 28% higher retention rate. While these numbers indicate that spending money on generating calls instead of web leads is more beneficial, Pickard noted a trend of businesses pivoting toward generating both.

“We’re seeing the most success where clients are building hybrids, allowing the consumer to buy their product in the way that they want to buy it,” said Pickard. “Essentially, that is what Phonexa is trying to promote … take those warm consumers out of the marketplace as quickly as you can and track them as granularly as you can so you can go and reinvest in the things that are encouraging those positive conversion metrics.”

Pickard gave an example of working with clients who make substantial investments in web leads rather than focusing on calls.

“Sometimes it’s mind-blowing to tell them, ‘You just spent $50,000 on web leads last week – why don’t you just buy the calls instead?’” said Pickard. “If what you’re trying to do is actually speak to the customer, why don’t you allow them to call you? It’s surprising how many people don’t actually do that in the first place.”

In addition to neglecting to invest in calls, Pickard also explained that marketers often fail to track calls as effectively as they track web leads.

“A lot of people will track a web lead exponentially,” said Pickard. “They’ll track every little last detail to make sure that they’re optimising their advertising spend, but they don’t do it for calls; therefore, calls are getting treated unfairly in the marketplace when they’re not being tracked to the same level.”

3 Ways Calls Are Processed & Sold: Ping Post, Ping Tree & Host-and-Post 

Pickard shared insight into how calls are processed and sold to lead buyers through ping post, ping tree, or host-and-post by breaking down each method.

Ping Post

“The lead is sent into the marketplace in the form of a ping, so you’re using some level of customer data to ping that data into your marketplace in one go to give all of your advertisers a chance to review that customer and give them an opportunity in real-time to decide whether they want to acquire that customer,” said Pickard.

The ping post method allows advertisers to dynamically bid against each other by asynchronously pinging all the data to everyone at once. 

“The advanced routing is essentially quick matchmaking based on the campaign’s location and availability,” said Arakelian. “Now, when you go into that ping tree or when you go into the host-and-post, Phonexa has made it so easy for Profitise to take our business to the next level and continue scaling.”

Ping Tree

A ping tree is a distribution logic that offers more control and deliberation than a ping post.

“A ping tree is more of a one-by-one routing logic where you’re applying some kind of filtration initially and ranking your list of advertisers or buyers by a specific priority,” said Pickard. “It may be ranked by the price they’re prepared to pay, an advertiser of choice that you prefer 80% of your traffic goes to … or you may want to split test advertisers against each other to equally distribute calls between the two.”

Host-and-Post

Affiliates who aren’t technologically advanced in their lead management and call-tracking software typically go down the host-and-post route. 

Host-and-post is determined by people owning their offers by building their own pages, sales funnels, and traffic funnels and distributing those customers to an end user. This process often entails using a hybrid between a ping tree and a ping post to route the customer to the end destination.

Arakelian shared a real-world example of a key disadvantage of using a ping-tree model, particularly in the call space.

“As an account manager, if you aren’t keeping an eye on your overall system and the schedule is wrong and you send a call to the buyer or the advertiser and their call centre is down, you’re just sending them free calls at that point,” said Arakelian. “For a ping post model, if you don’t get a response back with a bid, that call isn’t going anywhere – especially if you have them in the bid price.”

Since implementing Call Logic, Phonexa’s call intelligence platform equipped with ping post capabilities, Profitise has significantly improved its reporting and grown its business model.

Are you looking to bolster the ROI from your pay-per-call efforts? Choose your subscription plan or book a demo to learn more about Phonexa’s inbound call management platform.

Enhancing Lead Conversion With AI Chatbots

Regarding the emergence of AI in performance marketing, Pickard detailed a hybrid approach to facilitating lead conversion that involves buying web leads to take customers out of the marketplace and then converting them into calls through an AI chatbot. Leads then engage with the chatbot based on API data it received from the form filled out by the customer.

“They’re taking the customer out of the marketplace and warming them up to keep pushing them down that sales funnel,” said Pickard. “And then the AI is essentially analysing when the customer – based on what they’re saying – is at the best moment to give that call to action using that API data they’ve received from the web lead to nurture that conversation.”

Cheque out Amplify’s latest webinar: How to Scale Lead Generation Across Calls by Automating & Enhancing Outreach with Conversational AI.

Ensuring Quality of Incoming Calls

With a high volume of inbound calls, it’s important to ensure that each call meets an advertiser’s criteria. Pickard outlined how Phonexa optimises the process based on numbers. The key is tracking everything – call outcomes, the source of the call, the route that call went through, which publisher did it come from, which IVR model did it go through, which buyer bought the lead, etc. – in real time.

“That’s one thing many forget to do because their system doesn’t track things in real time or it’s difficult to actually pull the stats quickly enough for whatever reason – multiple dashboards may be required to pull data from various places,” said Pickard. “First things first, try and put everything in one place so that you can actually follow everything in one easy process.”

Pickard stressed how crucial it is to give your decision makers and media buying teams the right data so they can differentiate what works best from what doesn’t.

“Give them the right data to say ‘This is what’s happening, go do more of the stuff that’s working and less of the stuff that’s not working.’ That’s the performance marketing logic, but it’s surprising how many systems don’t allow you to do all of that quickly,” said Pickard.

Spotting issues on the fly as they occur in real time allows marketers to focus more on optimising their processes. 

Robust fraud detection capabilities are also key to ensuring quality.

“We’ve got fraud detection set up to ensure that users aren’t living in a false economy,” said Pickard. “The numbers that they’re looking at are real numbers, the customers that they’re monitoring are real customers, doing the things they should be doing, coming from the places they should be coming from, and they’re not leaving themselves exposed to fraud.”

Click here to join the Amplify Community and learn more about upcoming webinars.

Finding your footing in affiliate marketing can be both exhilarating and daunting, especially when cultivating a dedicated audience from scratch. Fortunately, there are tried and true strategies that lay the foundation for scalable growth for affiliates exploring new niches. 

Jeannine Crooks, Partner Acquisition and Development Manager of global affiliate marketing platform Awin, joined Phonexa CMO Talar Malakian for an instalment of Phonexa’s Amplify webinar series to deliver a step-by-step breakdown of the key strategies necessary to establish a presence, engage a new audience, and to ultimately carve out a niche affiliate venture poised for success.

Let’s say you’re just starting out in a new niche, don’t have any traffic, and struggle to find an effective approach to building an audience. What do you do?

The insights shared during this enlightening conversation serve as a roadmap for newcomers and seasoned affiliates alike to navigate the intricacies of affiliate marketing in uncharted territory. 

Let’s unpack some of the key takeaways.

Determining Which Niche Is Right for Affiliates 

For affiliates looking to enter a new market, it’s imperative to thoroughly evaluate the niche’s revenue potential.

According to Crooks, there is a set of criteria to consider when analysing a market from an affiliate marketing perspective, beginning with assessing the traffic for that particular niche. This can be achieved by answering the following questions:

• How many people are searching for keywords related to this niche?
• How great is the longtail list of keywords? (e.g. car insurance for drivers with good credit instead of simply car insurance)
• What kind of searches are being conducted?
• Are people actively looking for this product? 

Crooks implores affiliates to do their homework before pursuing a specific market by keeping an eye on what the competition is doing. This helps pinpoint the best approach for entering a new market by seeing what competitors are doing, and what you can do differently.

“What can you bring that somebody else isn’t doing right now? Are you passionate about it and able to convey in your language and tone that this is a product you really believe in?” asked Crooks. “People are going to pick up on that, and they’re going to respond to it.”

Malakian summed this approach up perfectly.

“If you’re doing a competitive analysis, don’t do it to look back – do it to look forward,” said Malakian. “Ask ‘what is my path to achieving this without replicating what’s already been done.’”

Cheque out our comprehensive e-book, “How to Scale ROI Across Publishers & Partners: An Affiliate Network’s Guide,” to unlock the secrets to maximising ROI.

Establishing Affiliate Expertise

Learning and finding opportunities are intertwined when analysing the landscape of a particular niche.

During the process, you’re also learning a lot about the product and educating yourself, sometimes around something that you don’t really have expertise in. Therefore, affiliates and publishers must become expert learners in order to extract that information, understand it, and then deliver captivating content.

“I’m a big proponent of really getting to know your [niche] … you need to have inherent knowledge of the product,” said Crooks. “Take enough time to really know that product to where you can go and have a conversation with a salesman and [educate them] about it – then you’re ready to start pursuing a niche.”

By educating yourself and establishing expertise, you’ll be better prepared to identify which merchants you want to work with and differentiate who’s selling good products that solve a need and who’s just selling anything.

Establishing a rapport with your audience is key to thriving as an affiliate. It’s crucial for your consumers to trust you, knowing they can rely on your recommendations and seek your advice whenever they encounter challenges – they’re looking for effective solutions.

“It’s important for you to know and understand what [their] challenges are, the right products or services for whatever the challenge is, and where to research to find that [information],” said Crooks.

Engaging a New Audience

The conversation spotlighted essential strategies affiliates can employ to build and engage a new audience. 

Crooks suggests that new niche affiliates begin by conducting keyword research to identify the issues people are encountering. Then, they can create content tailored to address those challenges or provide solutions to enquiries.

“Don’t try chasing the big keywords when you’re getting started,” said Crooks. “There’s going to be a lot of competition for those – anybody else who’s already established in that niche is going to already have a leg up on you for those big keywords – so start with the little ones as a blog post topic … then you’ll start ranking on the bigger keywords.”

Crooks also emphasised that conscious consumers will want to see your credentials when determining whether to trust your offerings. She explained that a strategically crafted About Us page can sway consumers in your favour.

“That’s a place where you can really make your sales pitch on why you’re amazing and why the recommendations you’re giving are to be trusted, so don’t make it just fast, and don’t make it too salesy,” said Crooks.

Monetisation After Engagement

Once you’ve engaged a new audience, you can carefully craft strategies for monetisation. But what if you still don’t have a large audience?

Crooks explained that niche affiliates don’t have to have a huge audience to be successful – they just need an engaged audience. When scaling and aiming for growth in a new niche, affiliates can either go wide or deep into their topics.

“If you have a site about pasta or cooking and want to go wide, you can talk about different kinds of noodles – spaghetti, angel hair, elbows, lasagna, [etc.],” said Crooks. “Or you can go deep [by discussing] wheat noodles versus egg noodles versus vegetable noodles versus lentil noodles. You can always find those areas to go deeper or wider on any given topic.”

Malakian echoed those sentiments by touching on how affiliates can leverage their expertise on a specific topic to provide multiple options to their audience.

“I can help tell you if you want X, Y, and Z, this is an option. If you want these other things, this is also an option,” said Malakian. “I think being able to help people see through the weeds is that role that you’re playing and can also help you scale considering you’ve now provided more options, and that’s going to create more monetisation opportunities.”

Crooks added an effective strategy for monetisation.

“Any noun can be an affiliate link, and I find that text links outperform banner ads … if you can put in a text link, you’re more likely to have somebody click on it than an ad,” said Crooks. “Interestingly enough, if you’ve got a banner ad on the same page as a text link for that product, the text link will perform even better.”

Measuring Success

The final stage of the roadmap for affiliates starting in a new niche entails identifying crucial KPIs and determining how to track them.

“I pay attention to what topics people are reading and focus on those topics…I also look at how many pages they’ll go to so I can do a lot of cross-linking within the site,” said Crooks. “Do you have just one page on that [topic], or can you get them to go to [multiple pages]? [Search engines] want to see if people are continuing to find information on your site.”

Crooks also identified time on the site as a key metric because it signals to search engines that people are finding valuable content and it’s worth their time in further exploring. 

“Keep putting out more content … I go for quality over quantity because it will help me with those other metrics,” said Crooks. “People are going to want to spend more time reading that whole article that they really love … they’re not going to go to five different useless articles just because you’ve got five on your site.

“I would rather put up one or two really good posts a week than put up something every single day that the reader could’ve gotten anywhere.”

Click here to join the Amplify Community and learn more about upcoming webinars.

Phonexa’s tech team has been working hard to innovate and build custom solutions across our products to optimise and power your performance marketing campaigns.

Here are just some of the new significant features and improvements we’ve made in recent weeks across our products.

Updates in LMS Sync & Call Logic 

Seamlessly Verify Lead Data Legitimacy with TrustedForm 

Overview: Phonexa has been updated to support TrustedForm Certificate API v4.0. Recommended by ActiveProspect as the most current version for utilising TrustedForm services, TrustedForm Certificate API v4.0 ensures users can seamlessly verify the legitimacy of the lead data.

Phonexa users can find this new feature within the “Trusted Form Retain” action in the Tracking functionality on Product and Campaign levels. 

Learn more: Event Tracking Type: Trusted Form Retain 

Transfer Unanswered Calls to Different Campaigns 

Overview: Operators are often unavailable to answer calls, and the call gets disconnected, resulting in lost revenue for the client and their publishers. Our new feature will mitigate the risk of any potential lost revenue and make sure one of your campaigns takes the call.

In the IVR Find Buyer block, we’ve added a new feature that routes a call to the next campaign in the ping tree if the first campaign does not accept the call for any reason. The call will continue to be routed to the following campaigns in the ping tree until one of the campaigns accepts the call.

Learn more: The “Find Buyer” block & The “Return Client” block

New Summary Reports for Publishers & Buyers Give Improved Data Analysis 

Overview: In addition to the detailed report on returns and adjustments, Phonexa now has summary reports for Publishers and Buyers that highlight critical insights, trends, and patterns for effective decision-making. Start monitoring performance from various sources, analyse data, and make decisions based on detailed reports on returns and adjustments from large volumes of data. With a new set of summary reports, Phonexa clients will be able to analyse data more effectively, group data based on different criteria, and make optimisations to their lead flows to eventually maximise earnings. 

Learn more: Return/Adjustment Summary (Publisher)

Learn more: Return/Adjustment Summary (Buyer)

Leverage Arithmetic & Logical Expressions to Derive New Data 

Overview: You can now use arithmetic and logical expressions to derive new data based on existing data with custom columns. This allows for more detailed and customised reports, providing you with the specific insights you require. Adding custom columns to reports allows you to display the information not included in the basic system reports. 

Learn more: Custom Columns For Reports

Are you looking for a particular feature or product functionality in Phonexa? Let us know by emailing info@phonexa.com.

Engaging potential leads across calls can often feel like navigating a labyrinth, but leveraging the power of conversational AI emerges as a beacon of efficiency and efficacy.

Matthew Black, the Founder and CEO of Mav – an industry leader in automated two-way texting – and Evan Smith, the Head of Sales for Mav, joined forces with Phonexa COO Jeff Schaffer to illuminate the transformative potential of the technology as part of Phonexa’s Amplify series.

Delving into the economic impact and efficiency gains, the trio discussed how pioneering AI-driven text-first strategy is reshaping outbound call outreach and crafting an inbound-style experience that resonates with leads and propels conversion rates to new heights.

Let’s dive into the key takeaways and insights from the enlightening conversation.

Watch the webinar here.

High-level Pain Points Call Centre Operators Encounter

The informative session kicked off by taking a hard look at call centre operations, challenges, and where conversational AI belongs in the world of lead generation.

Speed-to-lead is outdated, and in its place, the importance of speed-to-experience – leveraging conversational AI to get in touch with a consumer and take them off the market before a competitor reaches them – cannot be overstated.

To illustrate this point, Schaffer presented the following hypothetical scenario: a consumer submits a form, returns to their busy day-to-day life, and the respective call centre wants to contact them without conversational AI.

“The trend used to be email – people used to open and reply to every single email they got, and then email became something people couldn’t stand anymore,” said Smith. “With the advent of power diallers, lead generation, and comparison shopping sites, it became [overwhelming] to watch your phone blow up with call after call after call.”

Black echoed these sentiments by sharing his experience shopping for a mortgage loan and being bombarded with calls from unknown sources, eventually becoming the specific use case for launching Mav.

Today, Mav uses conversational AI to offer “speed-to-experience” for SMS.

Solving Pain Points with Conversational AI Across Calls

Smith demonstrated how text messages helped fill the void from dwindling contact rates since consumers are more likely to read every text message they receive rather than answer each call that comes in.

“Now, with AI, when you tack on those open rates that no other channel gets and tack on automation, you’re able to do call centre-like work without actually having a call centre,” said Smith. “That’s where Mav has come in to be that minimum viable call centre that can operate entirely over text message – it can reply, qualify, do lead outreach, lead intake, and can live-transfer calls.”

High labour costs and attrition are common challenges of operating a call centre and also make it hard to run campaigns.

Conversational AI over SMS can solve these issues, saving call centres tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process.

Best Practises for Lead Nurturing & Re-engagement for Calls

Black explained how the benefit of using conversational AI over SMS from the lead’s perspective unlocks when they look at it as a utility.

“[Consumers] can use this experience to get from point A to point B,” said Black. “Point A may be, ‘Hey, this is X insurance agency following up on a quote.’ Point B could be getting that quote or getting in touch with an insurance rep.”

Black views the transition from Point A to Point B as an opportunity to educate consumers and further differentiate your brand from the competition by providing value – for example, by answering any pressing questions a prospective customer may have regarding your product or service. He shared one of his client experiences to drive the point home.

“We have a customer that’s a larger life insurance company, and when we were building their experience that delivers a life insurance quote online over SMS, a lot of the leads were asking, ‘What term policy do I need – 10, 20, or 30?’” said Black.

He soon realised that whenever the leads called into the customer service centre, the reps always said the same thing: ‘Do you have a mortgage? Do you have a child that’s going to graduate college? And if so, pick a term length that matches that policy.’”

To improve the conversational flow, Mav customer service reps prefixed those questions with, “Consider picking a term length that lasts until your mortgage matures” or “Pick a term length that lasts until your child is out of college.”

“[Prospective customers] then feel educated, gain some value, and know how to appropriately answer those questions along the journey of getting a quote,” said Black. “And that’s the kind of speed-to-experience that makes it a curated journey and sets you apart from everyone else.”

Operational Efficiency

Smith shared his experience running a call centre to highlight how conversational AI makes processes more efficient by requiring less manpower.

“If I had Mav back then, that call centre that was 100 people could’ve been 15 because the conversational AI could sit in front and be a call centre for the call centre,” said Smith.

Smith lauds conversational AI for essentially performing lead triage by scrubbing out uninterested consumers, getting rid of those unqualified leads, and trimming down the list of phone numbers to call by removing those who don’t respond. This also helps to reduce overhead costs by addressing issues related to attrition, which can price call centres out of growth.

Smith explains that the general rule of thumb when replacing a call centre rep is that it’s going to cost one year’s salary. For instance, if a former call centre rep was making $30,000, it’s going to cost that much in lost revenue, new training, HR, and more just to get a new rep back to the level of the person that churned out.

“Even if you have 10 reps and lose four, that’s $120,000 a year that you’re burning on attrition,” said Smith. “If you could run a four-person call centre instead and you only have to replace one person, conversational AI just saved you $90,000.”

Operational efficiency ultimately sets the stage for a call centre to achieve long-term growth.

Take an interactive Product Tour to discover how Call Logic and Cloud PBX streamline inbound and outbound call management and enhance the incoming caller experience. Get a demo with one of our experts and build your plan today.

Customising Sales Scripts and the Customer Journey

Smith touched on how conversational AI improves efficiency as it pertains to changing the customer journey based on where a lead originated from, especially when compared to a human who may take a script down several paths when working on a lead.

In the end, it comes down to whether you want to offer a talk-to-human option for all leads at the top of the funnel or wait until you qualify them.

“For a third-party aggregator in the home services field, you may want to scrub out anybody that’s looking for repairs – if you’re a remodelling company, you don’t want to talk to somebody about repairing a couple of shingles on their roof,” said Smith. “Those leads are likely to come from a third-party aggregator and be of slightly lower quality. Mav scrubs those out and does not offer the talk-to-human option until after they’ve qualified.”

It’s these types of procedures that improve the experience for both the call centre and the consumer, particularly for the latter, since they won’t have their time wasted if they don’t qualify.

“Especially with third-party leads, you have to put yourself in the consumer’s shoes. It’s important that you make reference to the originating source,” said Black. “Bridging that gap is so important and will set you apart from all the [competitors] fighting for that consumer’s time and attention.”

Click here to join the Amplify Community and learn more about upcoming webinars.

When it comes to affiliate marketing, success hinges not only on the strength of your product or service but also on the quality of partnerships you forge with affiliates and publishers.

The key to driving revenue growth and ensuring long-term success is to establish enduring partnerships.

Amber Spears – the Co-Founder of East 5th Avenue, an affiliate management education and marketing company – recently joined Phonexa’s Amplify webinar series to talk about “Growing Your Affiliate Revenue and Building Lasting Partnerships through Programme, Process & People.”

East 5th Avenue has trained over 2,500 companies and helped them generate over $530 million from their training methods. Spears has been called upon by industry giants like Kajabi, Clickbank, and Digital Marketer to create courses on partnership and affiliate marketing that are being used by companies all over the world to grow their business with her proprietary methods.

From refining account management structures to incentivising performance and fostering open communication, Spears’ insights offer a roadmap for unlocking the full potential of affiliate partnerships and driving revenue growth.

Here are the key takeaways, as shared by Spears, shedding light on the crucial elements underpinning sustainable affiliate relationships.

Watch the webinar here.

Define the Ideal Affiliate for Your Business

Spears started the informative session by imploring viewers to define which type of affiliates would be an ideal match for their business.

Spears categorised affiliates into three types.

• Traditional Affiliates: Generate leads, help attract buyers, and facilitate brand-to-brand collaborations to open up new markets, verticals, and consumers. Marketing channels used by traditional affiliates include affiliate networks, email marketing, newsletters, SEO blogs, e-books, review sites, and media buyers.
• Influencers & Creators: Subject matter experts or micro- to macro-celebrities with a big social media or podcast following (or a smaller, more engaged audience).
• Ambassadors: Regular clients and brand enthusiasts who hold a big influence over their friends, family, and peers. Ambassadors are integral to businesses with referrals and testimonials.

The key distinction among the three types is that traditional affiliates, influencers, and creators have an audience, whereas ambassadors have influence. Ambassadors are not as effective at marketing as creators and, therefore, do not command the same audience.

The 3 Pillars of Partnership Marketing

Spears continued the deep dive into the intricacies of affiliate programme success by examining three essential elements of partnership marketing – programme, people, and process.

“When I start looking at [a programme], I might say, ‘We’ve got the people and the programme, but that means we have no process, so we have no consistency,’” said Spears. “Or we have the programme and the process built out, but we don’t have a good person in the driver’s seat – they’re doing 10 other things; they’re the social media manager, the copywriter, and they’re expected to be an amazing affiliate manager. That’s not going to work.”

Spears encourages managers struggling with any of these elements to assess their programme as a whole to identify areas for improvement. This will help programme managers determine whether they’re weak in one particular area or if all three elements need overhaul.

Programme

For programmes in need of improvement, Spears recommends the following steps for success:

• Develop a high-converting sales funnel
• Implement industry-leading payouts
• Establish sales tiers for your top affiliates based on volume and payout increases
• Provide white-glove, proactive partner services for top affiliates

Being proactive with partner services provided to top affiliates is crucial, according to Spears.

“If you do not woo them, take care of them, nurture them, they will go somewhere else,” said Spears. “You are sadly replaceable for them.”

People

“You want to align yourself with people – at your level or above it – who are going to give you good credibility and have offers, products, and services you feel comfortable promoting and are a service to your community,” said Spears.

What will ultimately make your internal people successful is hiring salespeople rather than “people” people.

“You have to have somebody who likes to hunt in this position, who is motivated by money, and who can actually close business – not just somebody who is good at talking and just managing and growing your current department,” said Spears.

For Spears, it all comes down to complementing the right sales personality with adequate training.

“They need clear KPIs, a generous [compensation] structure, and they need to be good at both cold outreach and management.”

Process

Regarding the process component of partnership marketing, Spears emphasised the importance of deep vertical integration by using an example of maximising opportunities for exposure when working with an affiliate partner that promotes you once a quarter in their email newsletter.

How do you maximise these opportunities? Spears encourages affiliates to start by asking partners the following questions:

• Can we also get on your podcast?
• Can we sponsor your podcast?
• Can we do livestreams together?
• Can we do banner advertising?
• Can we do co-branded blogs?
• Can we connect on LinkedIn and support each other on the platform?
• What are things we can do to own that category in that business?

After posing these questions, programme managers must assess how they can diversify the types of affiliate partners they work with.

“If we’ve already gotten really deep into influencers and creators but haven’t touched the other types, how do we start diversifying into those new verticals? How do we expand our team?” asked Spears.

Growing a team is a critical first step for a programme manager looking to expand into new verticals. Spears urges managers to foster loyalty among their affiliates by signing them up for Mastermind classes, incentivising them with prises or gifts, or, most importantly, planning the entire year with them.

“I closed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of sales as an affiliate manager, and one of my secret sauces was that I planned my whole year in advance with my top affiliate partners,” said Spears. “I knew what launches they were having, I didn’t put mine on top of theirs, I knew what contests they were doing, I was sending them referrals every month, they were sending me referrals every month – we mapped out our entire year so it worked together and not on top of each other.”

Tips for Structuring a Programme That Motivates Affiliates

Spears explains that nurturing partnerships and sustaining long-term success can be achieved through a handful of steps.

• Identify the sphere of influence and potential partners to pinpoint those who already serve your target audience
• Determine the standard in your niche by monitoring the practises of rival programmes
• Establish your terms, programme structure, and assets accordingly while keeping your ideal affiliate partner in mind

Spears views the process as a journey.

“Take care of [your partners] and build loyalty instead of just giving them money. You have to go the extra mile and that’s when you really start being sought after,” said Spears.

Plugging the Holes in Your Programme

Spears also warned programme managers who focus solely on attracting new affiliates.

By neglecting their current affiliates, programme managers risk having them poached by competitors.

“Anyone doing process should be looking at this and saying, ‘What are the holes in our current programme? What would happen if our top affiliates left? How do we make sure we build a moat around them so they never want to leave?” said Spears.

“They need white-glove service … be proactive and take care of them – keep regular contact and be responsive.”

Nurturing Partnerships

The importance of building lasting partnerships cannot be overstated. In essence, the key to sustained affiliate success lies in cultivating meaningful connections, aligning incentives, and continually adapting strategies to meet the evolving needs of both affiliates and the business.

As we navigate the dynamic landscape of affiliate marketing, Spears’ insights serve as a guiding light, illuminating the path toward enduring partnerships and sustainable growth in the digital age.

Click here to join the Amplify Community and learn more about upcoming webinars.

Phonexa’s tech team has been working hard to innovate and build custom solutions across our products to optimise and power your performance marketing automation campaigns.

Here are just some of the new significant features and improvements we’ve made in recent weeks across our suite of products.

Updates in LMS Sync & Call Logic 

Streamline Communications with Slack Notifications 

You can now start using Slack to make communications crystal clear. 

The “Send Slack Message” Tracking type automatically sends Slack messages to a particular user or channel when a certain event takes place, ensuring timely alerts.

And in case you missed it, we also recently launched a feature within Tracking to send leads to Google Sheets.

Learn more: Event Tracking Type: Send Slack Message

Ping Post & Smart Tree Support for Group Caps

Previously, our Campaign Group Cap only applied to direct post products. By popular demand, we now support group caps for ping post and smart tree products – the interface is the same.

Enhance Security with New Logoff Functionality

In an effort to enable instant security, we introduced a new safety measure that allows users to log out of all browsers and mobile applications. This feature gives access to view and display all active sessions, including details like the type of browser or mobile device being used, the last login date, and associated IP addresses. 

You can see the session information by going to Account Settings > My Profile, and then clicking on the Security tab and going to Sessions.

Start Tracking Changes with Products Log

Products Log is a new item in the Main Menu bar under System Management > Logs. This will start logging all changes related to the product per user and type of change. Logs will include adding and editing fields, changing product settings, and more.

Billing Made Simple with Newly Designed Interface

To make the Billing Activity easier to understand, we made improvements by updating the interface to make it appear clearer and added a filter to search for a specific transaction type. 

The “Billing Activity” tab allows you to view the billing activity both for pre-pay and post-pay buyers, including replenishments, payments, returns, and adjustments in LMS Sync, Call Logic and Books360.

Learn more: Buyer Configuration: Billing Activity

iClear Ensures Leads With Valid Addresses

In our continuous effort to enhance the security and efficiency of our systems, we’re excited to share that iClear now has Address Validation, a new feature that automatically verifies the accuracy of a lead’s address in real time. 

If you’re running a marketing campaign where geographical data for each lead is crucial, Address Validation serves as a gatekeeper, verifying the authenticity of each lead’s address.

If an address is found to be incorrect or suspicious, the system can either correct it or reject the lead, ensuring that only leads with valid addresses pass through to your system.

Learn more: iClear: Address Validation

Pause Publishers For Posting Invalid Leads

In addition to sending notifications regarding publisher Low Redirects, Invalid Leads, Low Volume, and more, Phonexa users can now pause a publisher for posting invalid leads.

The Invalid Lead Automation block allows you to pause the Publisher for a specified time if it reaches the maximum number of invalid leads. 

Learn more: Publisher Configuration: Notifications 

New Summary Report on Third-Party Service Results

Phonexa clients that use Email Hygiene, as well as IP and Phone Number Analysis across iClear services, now have access to a summary report on third-party service results. 

The clear, colourful, and easy-to-understand graphs, combined with numeric data, make the analysis of the results from those services easy to understand.

Learn more: iClear Summary

Configurations Made Clearer for Buyers with New UX

The newly revamped Billing Settings are designed to make configurations clearer for buyers. 

We’ve separated the widgets for the Balance, Recent Activity, Billing and Auto Recharge Settings, and Transaction History, which helps visualise all settings and activity in one tab for a better user experience.

Learn more: My Profile: Billing Settings

Updates in Opt-Intel

Protect Sensitive Information Across Suppression Lists

We’re now offering SHA-512, a cryptographic hash function as a new option for our suppression list management solution Opt-Intel to enhance data security by anonymising personal information.

Unlike MD5, SHA-512 provides enhanced protection, ensuring that sensitive data remains secure.

If a Phonexa user wants to manage email suppression lists across various marketing platforms without directly sharing or exposing an email address for privacy reasons, SHA-512 hashes all email addresses on their suppression list. 

Each email address is transformed into a unique, fixed-size 512-bit (or 128-character) hash value. 

For example, “test@phonexa.com” might be hashed into a long string like “3a7bd3e….” The client shares these hashed values with their partners instead of the actual email addresses. This way, they can cheque if an individual is on the suppression list without knowing their email address.

Updates in Lynx 

Additional Awareness into API Requests

There’s a new tab within the offer settings in Lynx called “Event Tracking” to show the frequency of API requests. Additionally, it’s important to note that this tracking is unrelated to financial transactions, conversions, or affiliate activities.

Are you looking for a particular feature or product functionality in Phonexa? Let us know by emailing info@phonexa.com.

Staying ahead of the curve is the key to sustained success in today’s ultra-competitive digital marketing sphere.

In particular, marketers striving to steer the ever-changing landscape with finesse and precision require a strategically planned roadmap for mastering the dynamic world of pay-per-lead (PPL) marketing.

Phonexa’s recent Amplify webinar, “Mastering the Dynamics of Pay Per Lead” brought together seasoned industry veterans Evan Weber (Founder, Publisher Finders), Sevada Markosyan (CEO at Zero Parallel and Profitise), and David Pickard (CEO at Phonexa UK) to dissect the latest trends and strategies in PPL marketing.

You can watch the Amplify webinar in its entirety here.

No stone was left unturned as the conversation delved into the intricacies of lead optimisation, emphasising the symbiotic relationship between publishers, advertisers, and the lead optimisation platform.

Here’s a recap of the key insights shared during the enlightening discussion.

Regulatory Changes Impacting the Pay-Per-Call Industry

Weber kicked off the conversation with a discussion on new rules adopted by the FCC designed to close a TCPA loophole that previously allowed single consent from a consumer to apply to multiple marketing partners automatically. Markosyan and Pickard continued the talk by illustrating the ripple effect these changes will have on the leadgen space moving forward.

“It will create changes within the industry – whether you’re a ping-tree model with direct post or a ping-post model, it will affect the way you gather consent and process leads,” said Markosyan. “We’re working on creating something ourselves to provide to our affiliates…we know a lot of people are looking at Zero Parallel, Profitise, and Phonexa to [create] a model that everybody can use…and help people navigate through a challenging time.”

“We’re pretty much used to regulation changes here in the UK with GDPR coming in 2018…what it gives us is a rulebook, essentially,” said Pickard. “We’re looking at this as a consultancy thing. We’re sitting down and coming up with strategies to launch something that can solve this problem.”

Lead Optimisation, CPC, CPL, and CPA

Weber highlighted the critical role of lead optimisation platforms, stressing, “It’s really important to emphasise how an actual algorithm is involved in distributing leads and how that benefits both the publishers and the advertisers on the front end driving the traffic.”

Pickard echoed this sentiment, emphasising the importance of visibility and tracking throughout the lead generation journey.

“Something that we encourage at Phonexa is visibility…from start to finish, first impression all the way through to final conversion,” said Pickard. “Essentially, the key use case for Phonexa is building an automation system to distribute those [leads]. Then, when they are distributed, and they’ve converted, automating your communications back to the media buying platforms – back to Facebook, back to Google – using all of their tips and tricks as well in terms of their automation tools.”

Pickard also emphasised the importance of first-party data for marketers to thrive in the post-cookie landscape.

“We’re encouraging people to take control of their data – use that data to influence their advertising – even if you’re just buying leads from your publishers,” said Pickard. “Feed that information back to your publishers so they know which campaigns are working and which customers are converting, and go and do more of what works. That’s Phonexa in a nutshell.”

Optimising on a Niche by Niche Scale

Markosyan underscored the importance of flexibility in lead generation models, stating, “It’s important that you have software that allows you to use whichever model you need to.”

He also highlighted Phonexa’s capability to support various payout structures within a single platform, enabling networks to cater to diverse advertiser and affiliate preferences.

“As a network, when we’re working with affiliates, we also have to be flexible [with] how we’re going to pay our affiliates – some affiliates will only work with you if you’re able to pay on a cost-per-click [basis], and some advertisers will only pay you based on a cost per acquisition,” said Markosyan.

“Phonexa allows us [to mostly] do cost-per-lead, which is the model we’re generating, and we’re paying our affiliates on earnings per lead…but we also have affiliates that we test with cost-per-click [and] cost-per-acquisition, and we have that logic built in, too. So, within one platform within the same niche and the same ping tree, we can operate all three different models and allow ourselves to be flexible to get the most volume and quality from our affiliates [while also] servicing our advertisers.”

Markosyan stressed that the right platform could efficiently handle all those payout models.

“If you’re interested in a platform that can take care of all those payout structures with the right ping-tree model and do it all within one niche, Phonexa can definitely satisfy all of that.”

Strategies for Lowering Cost-Per-Lead & Cost-Per-Acquisition

The in-depth conversation shifted toward actionable tactics for reducing costs and increasing profitability.

Affiliates strategically target consumers and optimise lead generation by focusing on specific days and times, cutting costs during off-peak periods for increased profitability. By analysing the detailed analytics networks provide, affiliates identify the most lucrative states and parameters, such as pay frequency and zip codes, to refine their targeting efforts. These tactics enable affiliates to maintain volume while reducing expenses, offering valuable insights applicable to new and existing affiliates looking to enhance cost-effectiveness in lead generation.

“A good way to do it is to collaborate with the networks that you’re working with to see what type of tools they have available to increase your click-through rate,” said Markosyan.

He also emphasised the importance of leveraging technology and data to optimise campaigns, citing Phonexa’s lookup functionality feature that allows consumers to avoid repeatedly filling out long, tedious forms.

“Consumers will be able to provide our form to our affiliate and still use it on their website, or they can use one of our offers, and the consumer can [enter] three bits of information – date of birth, social security number, and email address – and we’ll be able to do a lookup within our database to see if we have that consumer’s information already,” said Markosyan. “If we do, we can provide a verification page for the consumer to click through and verify it is the same information. Then we can process that lead without necessarily having them complete the entire application from start to finish.”

The end result, according to Markosyan, is a streamlined process that ensures a smooth customer experience and ultimately allows affiliate networks to track certain campaign metrics to ensure they allocate the right amount of funds for the best-performing campaigns.

Suggestions for New Publishers and Advertisers

The trio wrapped up the discussion by advising newcomers to the lead generation space to establish their identity and leverage existing platforms for optimal results. The key is specialisation and collaboration.

Markosyan affirmed that there are two things to consider when entering the leadgen space. The first is to determine your identity by establishing your role in the affiliate network ecosystem. Are you a publisher or an advertiser? Are you an affiliate manager?

“When you try to be everything for everybody, you end up being mediocre in all of those areas,” said Markosyan.

Markosyan encouraged new affiliates to focus on their strengths and leverage established platforms like Phonexa for streamlined operations.

“I agree…we give our clients access to all of the data and allow them to split test things and do what the numbers tell them. [By doing so] every day, you’re going to get incrementally better and incrementally closer to taking up margin or market share away from your competitors,” said Pickard. “Make sure you’re reporting on first impression all the way through to final conversion as a way of identifying each traffic type, split test it – source by source, campaign by campaign – and do more of the good stuff and less of the bad stuff and you’re going to end up in a better place.”

Stay tuned for more in our ongoing Amplify webinar series, and stay connected for the latest updates.

Click here to join the Amplify Community and learn more about upcoming webinars.

The somewhat uncertain economic forecast for 2024 anticipates turbulence and uncertainties amidst growing geopolitical risks and significant domestic challenges in the United Kingdom. However, one certainty remains for the foreseeable future: individuals and businesses will require financial guidance to optimise profits and mitigate risks.

As a financial advisor, you needn’t fret too much about the economic climate: come rain or shine, financial advisor leads will persist. All you require are robust lead generation, prospecting, and conversion strategies to attract customers and guide them towards conversion.

This article will delve into financial advisor prospecting, encompassing a range of strategies and techniques to identify and convert high-intent clients from previously generated financial leads.

Here’s why smart prospecting is essential for you as a financial advisor:

• It uncovers your most lucrative clients.
• It enables you to target these clients with the appropriate message at the right moment.
• It increases your conversion rate.

Without further delay, let’s examine the most lucrative financial advisor prospecting concepts and how to implement them effectively.

Differentiating Between Prospecting and Lead Generation

Wait a moment… isn’t prospecting the same as lead generation?

Absolutely not. Sales prospecting differs from lead generation as much as your sales team differs from your marketing team.

Here’s the distinction between sales prospecting and lead generation:

• Prospecting involves establishing a personal connection with a sales-qualified financial lead, whereas lead generation focuses on uncovering these leads in the market. Typically, a sales team conducts prospecting, while lead generation falls under the purview of the marketing team.

Although you must generate leads to facilitate sales prospecting – otherwise, you’ll have no one to approach – prospecting itself remains personal, while lead generation can be fully automated.

The 5 Most Profitable Prospecting Strategies for Financial Advisors

Financial Advisor Prospecting Strategy #1: Develop an Attention-Grabbing Selling Proposition

Over time, you’ll engage with hundreds and thousands of sales prospects, each with varying needs and desires – no matter how meticulous your targeting, no two clients will be identical – and you’ll need to demonstrate why you’re the best option for them.

In asserting your superiority, you’ll have one consistent tool at your disposal: your unique selling proposition (USP). Rest assured, you require a compelling USP that leaves them stunned, mouths agape with excitement, prompting them to enlist your services.

Source: GIPHY

Ways to craft a unique selling proposition in financial advisory:

1. Concentrate on the niches you are well-versed in. While it may be tempting to target a broad audience – after all, the more prospects, the better, isn’t it? – you can only effectively do so if you have a deep understanding of your niches. Whether it’s tax planning, wealth management, or aiding divorcees, ensure that you possess unique expertise and can substantiate your claims with data and positive feedback.
2. Analyse the competition. Once you have narrowed down your focus to several target niches, examine what other financial advisors are offering, including their strengths and weaknesses. This stage will likely reveal how you can distinguish yourself from the competition.
3. Leverage your strengths and others’ shortcomings. Document all the gaps you can fill and improvements you can implement. For instance, if your region is teeming with young professionals seeking to invest in environmentally responsible companies AND lacks relevant financial advisors, you may consider offering advice on sustainable investment strategies.

Examples of Unique Selling Propositions for Various Financial Advisor Prospects

A USP alone won’t suffice, but it serves as an excellent foundation for your financial advisor prospecting strategies. In the fiercely competitive financial arena, you must consistently leverage your strengths to nurture and convert financial advisor prospects effectively.

Financial Advisor Prospecting Strategy #2: Emphasise Added Value Over Aggressive Selling

Financial advisor prospecting involves a more personal approach than lead generation, so it’s crucial to empathise with the client from the outset. The clock starts ticking as soon as the client steps into your office: you have a limited window to earn their confidence.

Consider this scenario: a client has recently received a significant promotion and seeks financial guidance on managing the increased income. As a financial advisor, you have two primary selling approaches: a value-driven strategy and a hard sell, each suitable for specific financial advisor prospects depending on the circumstances.

Here’s how you can structure your conversation with a client, depending on the selling approach:

The essence of these two tales of financial advisor prospecting emphasises the importance of conducting a hard sell tactfully to avoid alarming potential clients. There’s no alternative: it’s either delving deeply into their requirements or risking losing them.

Financial Advisor Prospecting Idea #3: Pose Pertinent Queries

You’ve got it: prospecting for financial advisors hinges on earning the client’s confidence, which you can accomplish by posing pertinent questions and furnishing comprehensive answers without exerting undue pressure.

As a financial advisor, you can leverage insights from the customer’s previous interactions, such as on-site engagements, registration forms, referrals, and so forth. The better you understand your client, the greater your likelihood of asking the right questions.

For instance, if you’re assisting a small business proprietor seeking financial planning guidance, you can devise queries that help you comprehensively grasp their situation and narrow down potential solutions.

When conversing with a financial advisor prospect, seek to assess the following:

A well-crafted set of prospecting inquiries – akin to a financial advisor prospecting template – can uncover crucial insights about the client, aiding you in the nurturing process. It enables you to grasp the individual’s profile, their primary challenges, and how your offerings can enhance their financial standing.

Financial Advisor Prospecting Idea #4: Seek Referrals

Combining well-crafted prospecting queries with an irresistible USP might resonate with the prospect, paving the way for requesting referrals. However, each converted prospect reduces your financial adviser prospecting pool, necessitating a delicate balance.

Here’s how to garner financial adviser prospects through referrals:

1. Establish trust first. Avoid immediately soliciting referrals post-conversion, as it may come across as pushy – prioritise building trust as the primary indicator. Timing your request after a significant financial achievement or milestone, or when the client expresses satisfaction with your services, is more likely to yield positive results.
2. Be specific and transparent in your request. Express appreciation for selecting your services and clearly outline the type of prospective clients you seek. Remember, referrals can introduce high-intent prospects, so ensure you specify the ideal candidates.
3. Facilitate the referral process. Offer clients various contact methods such as website links, telephone numbers, emails, and other convenient avenues. Maximise communication channels while maintaining simplicity for referred individuals.

Lastly, remember to express gratitude to your prospects for spreading the word, regardless of the referral outcome. This gesture strengthens relationships and enhances the likelihood of securing additional referrals in the future.

Source: GIPHY

Financial Advisor Prospecting Idea #5: Implement Automated Prospect Management

While a significant portion of financial adviser prospecting requires manual intervention – after all, software cannot replicate the personal touch of in-person or telephone communication – certain aspects of the prospecting process can be automated. This includes email campaigns, social media management, event registrations, and prospecting analytics and reporting.

Consider the following automation suggestions for financial lead prospecting:

Phonexa offers comprehensive solutions for all these needs. Our bespoke lead management software suite addresses your prospecting requirements comprehensively, aiding in the conversion of financial adviser leads into prospective clients and subsequently into brand advocates, all while providing unified management via a centralised dashboard.

LMS Sync stands as one of eight exclusive lead and prospect management solutions offered by Phonexa. Alongside LMS Sync, there are seven additional options: Call Logic, E-Delivery, Cloud PBX, Lynx, Opt-Intel, HitMetrix, and Books360 – all accessible for just £100 per month.

Secure your suite of prospect management software today, or arrange a complimentary consultation to discover more about Phonexa.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who are financial advisor leads?

Financial advisor leads encompass individuals or businesses in search of financial guidance on topics such as financial planning, tax strategies, investment management, and other financial matters. These potential clients span all solvent age groups, excluding children and young teenagers.

Who is a financial advisee?

Financial advisees are synonymous with financial advisor leads; they represent individuals or businesses seeking professional financial advice or guidance. This sought-after assistance may cover career counselling, education, legal advice, and more.

How do financial advisors attract clients?

Financial advisors employ an array of strategies for lead generation, prospecting, and nurturing to identify potential clients and guide them towards conversion. This typically involves establishing a robust business with a distinctive selling proposition and in-depth subject expertise to both generate and convert financial advisees.

What distinguishes financial advisor prospecting from lead generation?

Financial advisor lead generation entails crafting a comprehensive strategy to capture the attention of a broad target audience of financial advisees, while financial advisor prospecting involves a personalised approach to sales-qualified prospects, such as through a phone call.

To establish yourself in the realm of financial consultancy and cultivate a reputable standing, it’s imperative to directly engage with the opportunities within this sector. Regrettably, alongside these opportunities, the journey may encompass certain pitfalls, often intertwined with the process of procuring leads for financial advisors.

Frequently, this approach is utilised to swiftly acquire high-quality financial leads. At first glance, it may appear as a shortcut to forging connections. However, beneath the allure of immediate connections lie costly errors that have the potential to not only impact your budget but also jeopardise your reputation and long-term prosperity as a financial advisor.

It’s crucial to recognise that the high-stakes venture of purchasing leads entails certain pitfalls that must be navigated to flourish in the fiercely competitive financial landscape.

Purchasing Leads for Financial Advisors: Key Attributes

Expanding your business and augmenting your client base through the procurement of financial leads is akin to embarking on a rollercoaster journey. There are ups and downs — some exhilarating, some nerve-wracking. Let’s delve deeper into the benefits of purchasing leads for financial advisors.

Advantages of Purchasing Financial Advisor Leads

1. Time-efficient: By acquiring financial leads, you can conserve a significant amount of time that would otherwise be expended on prospecting and lead generation.
2. Access to prospective clients: You gain access to numerous potential clients who may express interest in financial management and consultancy, obviating the need to seek them out from scratch.
3. Targeted marketing: Certain services providing financial advisor leads furnish tailored leads based on specific criteria, enabling advisors to concentrate on their preferred client profiles.

7 Costly Errors of Financial Advisors Make When Purchasing Leads

Financial advisors often delve into lead acquisition, sometimes for unfounded reasons. Yet, it’s imperative to exercise caution throughout this process.

Procuring financial advisor leads can not only incur substantial expenses but also potentially damage the reputation and standing of your brand within the industry. However, by acknowledging the drawbacks of purchasing leads and exploring an alternative, as discussed below, you can safeguard sustainable development.

The prevalent risks associated with buying leads for financial advisors include:

Marketing Tips for Acquiring Financial Advisor Leads

Here are some expert suggestions for you if you opt to procure leads for financial advisors:

1. Explore various providers: Before purchasing sales leads for financial advisors, thoroughly research and evaluate the lead generation service provider. Seek out reviews and success stories, and if feasible, request sample leads.
2. Start modestly: Begin with a small number of financial leads to gauge their quality and conversion rates before committing significant resources.
3. Cultivate leads: It’s crucial to dedicate time and effort to nurturing relationships with acquired leads through personalised communication and value addition, aiming to convert them into clients.

Ultimately, acquiring financial advisor leads can serve as a shortcut to securing potential clients, but finding leads of the right quality is typically challenging and comes with risks. Advisors must consider the costs against potential returns.

Now, if procuring leads isn’t the optimal approach to acquiring new clients, what alternatives do financial advisors have?

As a financial advisor offering insurance, retirement, budget management, and other services, concentrate on establishing trusted relationships. Leads are earned, requiring time and effort, but are indispensable in the long run.

Generating Financial Advisor Leads

Generating leads for financial advisors without resorting to purchasing them entails several effective strategies. Remember, if you aim to obtain qualified leads for financial advisors, you don’t need to employ all these strategies simultaneously.

You can start with those that add value and adapt as you gain momentum in the field. So, consider these top 10 tactics for generating financial advisor leads:

Source: 10 Innovative Ways To Master Lead Generation for Financial Advisors

Let’s delve into detail on several of the most effective approaches:

1. Automated lead generation software: Many successful financial advisors utilise software to assess financial leads, develop personalised content, and utilise integrated financial tools.
2. Content marketing: Through content marketing, you can captivate potential leads with valuable content such as webinars, podcasts, blogs, and eBooks covering topics like financial health, wealth management, and retirement planning.
3. Social media marketing: Make use of platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok to disseminate informative content and connect with potential clients.
4. Search engine optimisation (SEO): It’s essential to optimise your online presence to attract individuals seeking financial advice by utilising the most pertinent keywords and phrases.
5. Educational webinars and virtual events: Host online sessions addressing investment planning, retirement advice, financial literacy, and virtual workshops to draw potential clients.
6. Email marketing: Disseminating relevant content, updates, and personalised messages through targeted email campaigns is also advantageous for engaging subscribers.
7. Partnerships: Collaborating with related businesses or professionals can broaden your services and extend your reach to a wider audience.By employing these and other methods on the list, you can attract high-quality financial advisor leads genuinely interested in your expertise and services. This will help foster long-term relationships built on trust and value.

By employing these and other methods from the list, you can draw in high-quality financial advisor leads genuinely interested in your expertise and services. This will aid in nurturing long-term relationships founded on trust and value.

Automated lead generation software can certainly streamline the process of acquiring financial advisor leads while saving valuable time. Phonexa’s LMS Sync, a versatile lead management system, offers comprehensive functionalities.

The solution assists in monitoring potential customers, re-engaging inactive users, and optimising your acquisition strategies effortlessly.

Improve Your Financial Lead Generation Using Cutting-edge Tools

To effectively expand your customer base as a financial advisor, it’s essential to carefully procure and verify leads or, preferably, utilise cutting-edge tools for generating organic leads.

The suggested tactics such as SEO, social media ad campaigns, and content marketing are advantageous not only for financial advisors but also for affiliate marketing professionals and other digital marketing experts.

Unleash your business potential and enhance your marketing efforts by harnessing these popular methods, further amplified with the use of Phonexa’s innovative products.

Looking to elevate your advertising and performance marketing efforts? Explore Phonexa’s progressive software suite. Arrange an online consultation to discover how Phonexa can propel you to greater heights.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it worth buying leads for financial advisors?

Purchasing leads isn’t always the optimal method to acquire qualified leads for financial advisors. The acquired leads may not align with the advisor’s target audience or preferences, varying significantly in quality. Instead, utilising organic generation methods establishes relationships with interested prospects.

Why shouldn’t financial advisors buy financial advisor leads?

Financial advisors should avoid purchasing business leads due to the potential for costly mistakes. While it might appear to be a quick fix to expand client networks, there are several specific risks associated with purchasing leads for financial advisors:

1. Bought leads often lack quality and relevance.
2. They can lead to wasted resources and damage to reputation.
3. Purchased leads typically have a low conversion rate.
4. Buying business leads involves high expenses with uncertain returns.

What are some alternatives to buying leads for financial advisors?

Instead of purchasing leads, financial advisors can concentrate on organic methods such as high-quality content marketing, social media networking, referrals, and automated lead generation software.