Richard's GlobalTmail Blog

3-Months of Progress

A lot has happened since my last article. This article contains a brief summary of the improvements to our system since February 21, 2012. More details are available in our Private Blog which is accessible to all paying Clients plus other invited guests. If you wish to have access to the private blog, you can email me at support@globaltmail-usa.com.

GroupCaller Upgrade Deployed

Over the long Memorial Day weekend we deployed our first major upgrade to GroupCaller. The new system allows us to sell multi-user licenses for any number of users. The Client now has manager privileges to view reports, time sheets, call progress and even listen-in, barge-in and "whisper" (i.e. coach) their agents live while on a call!

Full Billing & Reporting System Deployed

Clients can now view their CDR (Call Detail Record), graphical reports of useage, reload their minutes, get low-balance notifications to prevent their account from suspension due to non-payment and a host of other great management features. This new interface has been fully deployed and is being tested this week. You'll see a lew login link for "Client Account" later this week. This is a very major upgrade and one that we've needed badly for the past 6 months.  Now it's done!

Staffed Call Center Coming

Due to the requests of many Clients we'll be opening a fully staffed call center in the Philippines by June 22, 2012. I'll leave June 13 and return June 21.  Our staff should be trained and on the job by the time we return. In fact, there is a good chance limited operations will begin prior to our trip to Manila and other provinces.  The overseas operations will enable us to offer very cost-effective lead generation to our Clients without the need for them to do any cold calling.  In addition to lead generation we'll be offering other services such as appointment setting, surveys, collection calls and other related activities. 

CRM Upgrade Coming

We're deploying a major upgrade to our CRM system this week. The new system enables us to create multi-user accounts, offer team-management, better analytics and graphical reports, full Outlook syncrhonization and a much better, easier to learn, clean looking and more intuitive user interface.  You can expect to see us beginning to sell multi-user licenses within a week or so.

These upgrades have been needed for a long time and they're now reality!  I'd like to thank our entire technical team for their hard work and dedication to make these upgrades possible! To stay up to date, see and use these upgrades yourself, please visit our home page. 

New Website Coming Soon: CGOTV.ORG

Yesterday, I met with a small group of our most dedicated and active sales people for the purpose of crafting a strategy to go and get our share of the massive amount of political dollars that will be spent between now and election day in November on voice broadcast and get-out-the-vote calls.  Those present included myself, Gordon Clarke, Keith Hanson and Keith Harrison. Ryan Jessop is also a part of this spearhead group, but he lives in Montana so I didn't invite him to attend.

In keeping with our discussions, we're creating a new website this week:  http://cgotv.org. You won't find anything there today because we haven't yet uploaded any files. But we did reserve the domain name and I created the space on our company web server for this new site. The URL is an acronym that stands for Conservative Get-Out-The-Vote (CGOTV.ORG). Since this is a marketing effort with a political cause, we chose to set it up as an organization rather than a normal commercial website. We also decided that if we're going to enter the political arena, we would do so in support of a cause about which everyone in ownership and management is passionate:  Conservative values for America. We'll make a profit selling our services, but at the same time, our philosophy will be to provide the best services at a price far below that of the competition as our contribution to furthering the cause that we believe will preserve the America in which we believe. We are all determined to do our part to ensure that the current President has only one term in office, so the country can begin healing itself from all the damage he has already caused.

We'll provide discounted services to political parties and candidates who's political values are consistent with basic conservatism as we understand it. Our emphasis will be to sell  predictive dialing services because this is by far the most cost-effective service we offer. But we'll also offer robocalling, surveys and our new VMD services. We studied numerous competitor sites and got a number of good ideas about how to present ourselves. Surprisingly NOBODY out there in the voice broadcast or call center industry has declared themselves to be a CONSERVATIVE company, focused on rendering services exclusively for that political cause. But there ARE some voice broadcast firms that focus on Democrat and Liberal causes. Now "our side" has an ally ("us!") in this particular form of media! We have made the affirmative decision to only provide our political services to promote the cause in which we so strongly believe, so don't expect to find any Democrat or Left-leaning Clients sending political messages from our servers. If any liberal or left-wing Clients request our services, we will politely decline to provide service to them because this is a cause-based effort.

Since this is a limited-time promotion, we are controlling the the sales efforts (somewhat). Any Associate is welcome to join us to make these political sales. However, we will be selective and only accept those who are willing to put in the necessary time and effort. Naturally, the public will have full access to the website, which will be announced in both our public and private blog sites by the end of the week when the site is deployed. If you are interested in joining this sales effort, please contact either myself or Gordon Clarke our Director of Business Development (801-253-6365) directly. We are assigning geographical territories for this effort so we don't confuse the prospects with contact from multiple Associates. We welcome inquiries and offers of help from all who wish to join us.

The goal is to have our new HTTP://CGOTV.ORG website up and running before start of business next Monday, February 27, 2012. Keep watching this blog for related announcements.

In The News: New FCC Rules Against "Robocalls"

Well, this morning's news programs all carried the "big news" that now, the dreaded, evil robocalls will finally come to an end! Great news! The FCC is coming to the rescue of millions of Americans who simply cannot tolerate an unsolicited call on their PHONE! Oh the horror!

I got a couple of emails this morning from customers who were concerned about this dramatic news story. There was a problem with the story:  It is NOT news.  There's simply nothing "new" about it.  Both the FCC and the FTC had been charged with regulating pre-recorded calls sent through the phone system. This is one of the many services of GroupCaller^TM our flagship product.  For many years now, the FTC has been enforcing the very same rules cited in today's "big" news stories on this subject. The only real difference now is that the FCC has the authority to regulate "INTRA-state" calls, whereas the FTC could only regulate and enforce "INTER-state" calls.  Other than that, I don't see any change at all.

We're an FTC-compliant shop. That means, in all respects we endeavor to comply with all the FTC rules and regulations pertaining to all our services. When making voice broadcast calls, we only call phone numbers on which written permission was given to make such calls. Naturally, the available list is limited. There are "only" about 50 million such numbers in the USA after subtracting duplicate numbers and all of the numbers in the national Do Not Call registry .  "ONLY." Naturally, there are many, many people making pre-recorded commercial soliciations by phone with the use of similar equipment and software, but without the requisite written consent. I'm sure that's what led the FCC to copy the FTC's rules. A number of these operators (mostly very small companies, I suspect) only made such calls within their own state. This would effectively render the FTC rules unenforceable, assuming the small operators could afford legal counsel to fight a prosecution.

 As far as we're concerned, today's big announcement does not affect us in the least. We're already in compliance on the FTC rules, which makes us automatically in compliance of the FCC rules.  Here is a story from CNN that you can read for yourself. 

Also, it appears this year, a great deal of our marketing emphasis will be geared toward our newly rolled-out Hosted Call Center which uses the Predictive Dialing mode of GroupCaller^TM.  Since this mode only utilizes live operators, these rules won't apply to that service anyway.  Please feel free to contact me if you should have any further questions on this news story.

Complete USA Residential List Now Available - 278 Million Records

In addition to supplying a powerful, low-cost, predictive dialing application, voice broadcast and our new Voicemail Drop services, we also provide marketint lists. The newest addition to our family of marketing lists is the USA Residential list of about 278 million American households. 

This is a great list for telemarketing, cold calling and VMD campaigns as well as direct mail campaigns. Because we offer this list at such a ridiculous inexpensive rate ($0.005 to $0.00175 per record - way below market standard pricing), we issue no guarantee as to the accuracy of the list, other than to affirm that this list is updated regularly, and the latest update was January 2012.  The following demographic selections are available for this list: 

• First Name & Initial
• Last Name
• Address Line 1
• Address LIne 2
• City
• State
• Zip and Zip + 4 (Delivery Point Carrier Route)
• County Name & Number
• Latitude/Longitude
• First in Household
• Child Present
• MFDU (Multi-Family Dwelling Unit)
• Exact Age & Estimated Age
• Estimated Income
• Length of Residence
• Address Type
• Homeowner Type
• Dwelling Type
• Home Value
• Marital Status
• Ethnicity
• Median Years In School
• Gender
• DPV (Dwelling Point Value = a USPS code)
• Estimated Wealth
• Phone Number
• Time Zone
• Birth Date

This list is available for purchase in minimum blocks of 20,000 unique records per unit. You can purchase this list in the company store at any time. Your order will be ready for download normally within 24 hours. Please contact us directly if you have any questions by sending email to support@globaltmail-usa.com.

VMD Beta Ready Today - 70% OFF First Campaign!

Today we are releasing the Beta version of our Voicemail Drop system (VMD), and you can run your first campaign for a whopping 70% OFF!. This great new service allows the user to send a voicemail to cell phones without ringing the telephone! Unlike voice broadcast or telemarketing, the "intrusion factor" is completely gone! Since people don't even hear their phone ring, they just check their voicemail at a time that's convenient to them! "Problem solved!" 

Indirect Communications On The Rise

There have been numerous studies conducted regarding the social phenomenon that has caught fire during the past decade: Indirect Communications. Unlike in the past when people preferred to communicate directly with phone calls, face to face visits or even personal letters to one another, in today's age, the most popular forms of communicating have become texting, instant messaging, email and dropping messages on Facebook walls. All these communications methods have something in common: they are not "direct" and no instant response is expected or wanted.

This analogy shows "why" I've had such a positive response when describing the VMD to business owners and colleagues. So many times, people just want to leave a message rather than engage in a conversation. The VMD does just that. You can send one message at a time or thousands or even a million or more.

The Realities Of VMD

Keep in mind, this is the beta version. We didn't invent the VMD concept. But I discovered there are only 4 or 5 other companies offering this service, so we're definitely in the running to be a major provider of this kind of service. I have studied the competitors and compared them to our service. I believe ours is on a par with theirs regarding functionality, even in the Beta edition. One thing I discovered though, is that NONE of them are honest about the reality of using the service. The descriptions on their web pages leave the unmistakable impression that the service works impeccably well and that most if not all messages are delivered as expected.  Not so.

Not one of them can guarantee 100% delivery of messages or anything close to it. This has resulted in negative reviews by customers who expect it to "always" work when the truth is there are a significant number of things that can go wrong. Some of the most obvious reasons for failed message delivery are:

• Mailbox full
• Noise or static on the line
• Busy signal
• Failure to detect the voicemail ("no" telephony software is perfect)
• Cancelled voicemail service
• The phone line was transferred to another phone
• Voicemail service that operates differently than the "norm"
• Sending messages to non-cell phones
• Disconnected or non-assigned phone numbers in the database

There are other anomalies, such as the occasional call that actually goes through and a live person picks it up, or the phone that emits a partial ring, or the phone that actually rings multiple times with no message delivered and nobody on the phone when it's picked up.  These things DO happen, but in our tests, this type of errant call accounts for only a small fraction of the total calls dialed. The fact remains, our tests show the maximum amount of successful message deliveries we have seen is about 70%. In real-world deliveries on larger databases with this Beta release, I expect to see well under a 50% successful delivery rate.

But before you think there is something WRONG with this picture, stop and think. Compare this to normal Voice Broadcast. In our live call transfer mode of voice broadcast, only about 4% of the calls we make are ever played all the way through to a live party, for many of the same reasons as above. (This is actually HIGHER than the normal full-read-rate for direct mail.) But in voice broadcast, it's much easier to simply hang up before the message even begins to play. This is where the VMD comes in handy:  MOST people will listen to all or most of their voicemail messages. Because of this, the coverage with VMD is far higher than with Voice Broadcast (like 25% to 45% compared to 4%).

"Some" Negative Response Is Part Of Any Direct Ad Campaign

Also, don't expect to do complaint-free campaigns no matter WHAT form of direct marketing you choose. There are actually "no" direct marketing campaigns that are complaint-free when a company does more than just a single, tiny campaign of maybe a few thousand deliveries. It doesn't matter if you're passing out fliers and door hangars, sending direct mail, making cold calls, knocking on doors, doing voice broadcast or any other form of direct marketing - SOMEBODY will complain when you do this "en masse" because they'll claim they "hate" that type of advertising, selling, etc.  Many of the same people also claim to "hate" radio, TV, magazine, newspaper and billboard advertising. The difference is, it's much easier to lodge a complaint directly with the advertiser when it's a direct-media than when it's in a more traditional media. So I advise people, don't expect everyone who receives your message, no matter what the source, to be delighted you've contacted them. You'll always have a few nay-sayers out there. But at the same time, by handling these complaints professionally and positively, you won't have any real difficulty with them either, and you'll quickly find that the benefit far out-weights the detriment.

All-In-All, Two Great Additions To Our Product LIne-Up!

February is a GREAT month for us!  We're very excited about the two brand new services we just rolled out in February:  The VMD and our new Hosted Predictive Dialing system (announced in the February 10 article).  To know which is better for your applications, we need to consult with you. Although there are great aspects to the AMD and it fits perfection for some applicaitons, it's not appropriate for ALL applicaitons.  I can say, however, that by far the most cost-efficient lead-generation tool we have is the Predictive Dialing mode of GroupCaller^TM.  It works flawlessly and puts you in direct contact with good as many good prospects as you want or need.

Try either of these phenomenal systems for yourself at a huge 70% savings. Just go to our online store where I just posted the new Start-Up Campaign.  This is the fastest, easiest way to set up your campaign and get started.  At 70% OFF, how can you afford NOT to take it for a test-drive?

 

Hosted Call Center Now Available

This week we rolled out our fully functional hosted call center.  It's one of many operational modes for our flagship product, GroupCaller^tm.  We now offer a hosted solution for any size company to have the powerful features of a predictive dialing system right on their desktop, or the computer of their sales staff.

Companies as small as one person can enjoy the power of maximizing their time by talking to an unprecidented number of potential customers, debtors,existing customers or simply call to make announcements. It can be configured to ignore answering machines or leave messages. If all you want is to hear "hello" in your headset within 1 minute of terminating the previous call, this is the best solution on the market!

For a mere $27 monthly licensing fee, plus the small per-minute cost of the phone calls (list, DNC compliance and inbound numbers extra) companies from the 1-person firm to those needing to manage 100's or even 1,000's of agents can do so from anywhere that has a broadband connection and decent computer.  This is the perfect solution for those who want ot telecommute and companies that want to save a bundle on their overhead!

For more information, a demonstration and more exact pricing, email the founder, Richard Gaustad at rich@globaltmail-usa.com, register with the company and visit our home page. We're here to make YOUR business more profitable! 

List Acquisition Is Significant Boost

Last Friday we made arrangements to acquire the entire USA residential database with significant demographics attached to each record. This database will enable us to provide relatively complete calling lists for every area of the USA. In short, we'll now be able to service the core of our customer base:  Small Businesses.

Our primary campaigns at the present time are directed toward lead-generation for small and mid-sized companies who don't have the budget, know-how or other means to effectively and cost-efficiently generate leads for themselves. Advertising and lead generation are a constant source of frustration for millions of small businesses throughout the USA.  Our goal this year is to minimize this frustration for as many small companies as possible. In the process, of course, we'll experience great success, but only because we help enough other people get what they want and need.

This new lists contains the following demographic selections:

• First Name
• Initial
• Last Name
• Address Line 1
• Address Line 2
• City
• State
• Zip & Zip + 4 (Delivery Point Carrier Route)
• County Name and Number
• Latitude/Longitude
• First in Household
• Child Present
• MFDU (Multi-Family Dwelling Unit)
• Exact Age and Estimated Age
• Estimated Income
• Length of Residence
• Address Type
• Dwelling Type
• Home Owner Type
• Home Value
• Marital Status
• Ethnicity
• Median Years In School
• Gender
• DPV (Dwelling Point Value - a USPS Code)
• Estimated Wealth
• Time Zone
• Birth Date
• . . . . . and of course, Phone Number!

This information will allow us to compile more meaningful marketing lists for our Clients and thus improve response rates for their campaigns. For more information, register as a GlobalTmail Member (it's free!). 

 

 

 

New Voice Broadcast Ordering System

When we finally began focusing our marketing efforts on the sale of our main product (GroupCaller^tm), I discovered that we didn't have a good method of accepting orders for voice broadcast campaigns from customers and setting them up. As a result I created an ordering system designed to walk a new Client through the campaign set up procedure. 

Please feel free to check out this new process by accessing the campagin order form. There are a number of links associated with the set up of a campaign. You can get to the first one by following the link in the instruction area of the order form which ties to the Campaign Set Up and Order Table.   You should also study the Rate Table.  These links will provide you a wealth of information regarding all the details required to set up a successful voice broadcast campaign.

Essentially, there are 8 actions and/or decisions that have to be completed by each Client to set up each campaign they wish to run. After the first campaign is set up, some of these don't need to be repeated and the process becomes much easier and faster. The eight steps are:

1. Register as a GlobalTmail Client
2. Select the type of voice broadcast campaign needed
3. Select one of 3 Client subscriptions allowing deep discounted pricing, or opt for the Standard Client which pays "ala carte" for all services
4. Decide which database or customer list to call 
5. Create & record the sales or announcement script
6. Decide which area codes will be dialed & ensure the Client is subscribed for each area code
7. Arrange for the inbound Caller ID and automated opt-out phone line
8. Decide whether or not to use our Transcription Service to capture leads & place them in the client database automatically

Each element above is very important when running a campaign. Each one is explained in detail and has appropriate links to execute the required element, such as buy a database, subscribe & pay for Do Not Call area codes, buy the inbound Caller ID, pay for Transcription Services, etc. It may seem that the process is somewhat cumbersome, but it's not bad at all when I walk a client through the process. After the first campaign, subsequent campaigns become much easier to set up. After going through it once or twice, I expect Clients will be able to go through the entire process with minimal or no direct participation from us until they SUBMIT the order.  I expect many new Clients to sign up with us this year, so this process will likely be used a lot!

Re-Opening This Site

This blog was was closed for new articles since last July. This week, I opened it back up again as our public blog. The nature of articles you'll find here from now on will be more geared toward the public, and be of the nature of press releases. I've got a  major announcement I'll be making here tomorrow, so stop back in and check it out!

The new blog site that I opened last July has become a completely private blog site, effective today. Admittance to that blog site is by invitation only beginning today.  It's available only to paying customers of a certain caliber, investors and other people who have a significant impact on our development as a company.  In other words, my private blog is only for larger customers and financial  contributors who have a significant impact on the company.  As in the past, my private blog will be updated several times a week with new developments, future plans and other confidential information.  

As always, your comments and suggestions here are most welcome!  Don't expect updates here every week. I'll be posting articles here only on an "as needed" basis, so feel free to check it out whenever you have time (but don't expect daily postings).  

New Blog Site Coming

Be watching for it!  Sometime in the next week, I'll  publish a new blog site and discontinue most of my posts on this site. This is a public blog site.  But now that we're really beginning to ramp up the Phase I marketing effort, that means we'll begin making much faster progress toward Phase II and completion of the core GlobalTmail project.  As we do so, I'll be announcing milestones and proprietary software and systems that aren't really for public consumption.  For those reasons, I'm establishing a private blog.

This new blog is intended for those who are paying customers of GlobalTmail.  This group includes everyone who paid a fee to us since we started developing a viable marketing system for the company.  This includesthe  Port Incentive Group, the Port Referral Group, the Asset Management Group and especially, it's for all GroupCaller^tm licensee's.   

This will be a secure site that'll require your login and password.  The site is already "up" but it's not yet available.  I'm working on a login system, which should be completed today, that will allow you to access the blog with the same login information as your GlobalTmail account.  Keep in mind though, if you change your GlobalTmail account login information, you'll have to change this login information separately.  You'll get instructions on how to do this to maintain privacy around your access to this blog.

The new articles that I'll pulbish will be much the same as what you're used to reading.  The difference will be that this site is really geared toward those who are actively promoting GlobalTmail as a GroupCaller licensee.  Therefore, I'll have a number of articles devoted to that subject together with special training materials and links.  I'll also be discussing the finer points of using GroupCaller to enhance the profitability for all Licensee's.  

We're entering a new phase of development throughout the summer.  I'm excited that you're part of it. The new blog will also give you better and more direct access to me.  Whenever you have questions or comments I'll be encouraging you to send them to me through the blog site.  It's something I'll stay in touch with nearly all the time, even through my smart phone, which will have a version of this blog installed so I can instantly get messages from anyone with a concern or question.  It's just another way we're trying to provide the best service possible to all those who are making this GlobalTmail project possible.

Check back later today.  I'll be posting another article this evening to update you on the installation of the 2 new servers and whether or not we're able to fire up GroupCaller with the new configuration today.