In the footsteps of the United States' creation of a national do not call registry, Australia has just launched their own defense to intrusive telemarketing calls. Australia's do not call registry came in response to a public outcry (just like the one in the U.S.) to limit all those unsolicited calls that interrupt our private lives.
Do not call registries are not a new thing. It's been several years since U.S. politicians gave the go ahead for the national do not call registry that consumers love and telemarketers detest. I remember when the do not call registry was first implemented and we had to start purging any records on our calling lists where I was working at the time that appeared on the list. I remember talking about this with some of the big-wigs on the telemarketing team and voicing my concern over how the new registry would affect our telemarketing strategy going forward. I also remember being told that the registry would have little impact on telemarketing. At the time, I wondered if the director who told me that was delusional. Now, I wonder if he still works in telemarketing.
According to the Federal Trade Commission's Do Not Call Report for Fiscal Year 2006 delivered to Congress on April 5, 2007, by the end of the four days after the do not call registry opened in the United States on June 27, 2003, over ten million phone numbers were added to the list, and at the end of 2006, over 130 million phone numbers were on the list. The writing was on the wall back in 2003 when the national do not call registry was created in the United States. While many marketers may have been slow to react and change their strategies to keep up with the changes happening in the world around them, I'm sure there are many, like that director I once knew, who were slow to react and missed valuable opportunities to be the first to market with creative new marketing solutions. Now that the do not call registry is entering Australia, marketers will need to be proactive, not reactive as they were in 2003.
What kinds of alternate marketing strategies to you see being implemented to make up for the loss in telemarketing opportunities? Do you think those strategies effective?
Now if they could only apply the same rules to mobile phones because people still get an incredible amount of automated calls, especially on their work mobile phones. Also, I'd like to see "do not fax" lists as well because every morning our fax machines have stacks of travel-related or stock tip print-outs and that actually consumes an easily quantifiable cost when it comes to toner & paper.
Posted by: Scott | June 7, 2007 6:00 AM | Permalink to Comment