A voicemail drop service allows you to send a pre-recorded message to someone’s voicemail. It does not involve ringing their phone or expecting them to answer before the message plays. Once you have recorded a message and uploaded a contact list, the voicemail drop service takes over, delivering your message to hundreds or thousands of people without you having to do a single thing. You probably spent the entire day on the phone this past Tuesday, leaving forty plus voicemails that you then had to manually delete. If you have, you are not alone. This kind of scenario is the reason why this kind of tool has been developed and has seen such rapid growth. It is used not just by sales professionals and real estate agents, but by collection agencies, clinics, political campaign workers, and any other profession that requires a high volume of outbound calls. It is not a new technology either. Carriers have supported the infrastructure for a long time, and it was just recently that small businesses began to find the most interesting use cases for it.
How and Why Ringing Phones Became Such a Problem
No one picks up calls from unknown numbers. Everyone got tired of spam calls, and everyone is happy to send anything that is not a local number straight to voicemail – half of them not even stopping to listen to the message. That is a harsh reality to live in, if you are the owner of a small business with a fantastic offer, a fantastic script, and a fantastic sales rep. No matter how many people you call, no matter how well you phrase it, your message is not going to reach them unless they pick up on the first ring. When they do, their phone is going to ring in their ears, possibly interrupting their lunch break, a date, and a thousand other things they did not plan to spend listening to you. Skipping the ringing, however, changes the equation entirely. The message will wait for them to listen on their own terms, rather than demanding them to stop what they are doing and face a grating dial tone until they finally grant you permission to speak by pressing the answer button. It is a much better first impression and makes it significantly easier for them to simply listen. It is also more difficult to hang up right then and there when they are being asked to make a single small decision.
How a Ringless Voicemail Service Gets Messages Delivered
A little bit of technology is needed to explain just how these messages get to voicemail without a ring. A ringless voicemail service connects directly to a carrier voicemail server. There is no call involved, at all. Your call is dropped as soon as it recognizes that the recipient has an answering machine or voicemail. The recipient will receive your message just as any other voicemail, including potentially a text message or a notification with a visual bell depending on their carrier and phone. There will be no attachments, links, or applications involved. What matters when choosing a ringless voicemail service is what they can do for you, specifically. The more expensive a service is, the more control you will find as a user, but also the more responsibility you will have to meet. In terms of delivery, you want to look for one that has excellent tracking and reporting, meaning that you can see exactly which messages got delivered and which did not. The cheaper options will happily report the message as delivered even when it has failed.
Who Gets the Most Out of This Kind of Outreach
Anyone who needs to reach hundreds or thousands of cold prospects with the same message benefits massively from a voicemail drop service. Some specific industries see much greater benefits than others, however.
- Real estate agents use it to follow up with leads after an open house or expired listing showing.
- Brokers and agencies use it to follow up with cold prospects, especially those whom they received an email from, prior to a phone call.
- Medical practices use it to send reminders for appointments, which drastically reduces the number of no-shows by default.
- Charities and nonprofits use it to promote events, and local businesses use it to promote seasonal offers.
- Salespeople, however, are the single biggest category, in terms of sheer volume, as they are the ones who tend to use it to warm up prospects before any other outreach, such as a phone call, is executed.
Any voicemail drops meant to get someone to call you back benefit incredibly from this kind of approach. A simple message saying “We noticed that you checked out our website’s pricing page, and we will be calling tomorrow” primes your prospect, getting them to remember you and, potentially, to even wait for your message. When you do call back, they are much more likely to pick up your call.
What to Look For Before You Sign Up
When shopping around for a voicemail drop service, it is very easy to get dazzled by promises. Everything sounds the same: unlimited this and instant that. What you should be looking for are these four things.
- In most jurisdictions, including the United States, there are laws regarding automated messages and phone calls, so your voicemail drop service has to be fully compliant. A decent provider will have built-in tools for you, as a user, to make sure that everything you send is compliant, including do-not-call scrubbing.
- Another essential aspect that you should be looking for is the personalization and customization options. Can you upload your message and make it sound personalized, or is your message going to sound the same and robotic every single time? Can you use placeholders for names or other variables? Can you schedule delivery for specific hours and days of the week?
- A third thing you should look for is reporting, and a fourth, is support. Nothing is going to be perfect, so you should look for a service that has a human being behind it that you can talk to at any point.
Pricing is obviously an important factor as well, and there are two types: per drop and monthly subscription. The cheapest option is rarely the best option, as they usually mean poor delivery rates and carrier connections that fail frequently.
Writing Messages People Actually Listen To
Most businesses that use a voicemail drop service make the same mistake at least once. The drop itself works, except that the thirty seconds of your life that you invested in this message just gets deleted right when it finishes playing. To not have your voicemail drops deleted before they are heard, it is essential to keep them short and to the point.
- Fifteen to twenty-five seconds is enough time to introduce yourself, explain one thing, and ask for one thing.
- No three points, no your entire life story.
- Your goal is not to convince someone that they need you or to fall in love with your brand, it is to get them to do something.
- Call you back, reply to your text, or at least remember that you exist.
Speak like a human being, and not like a computer-generated recording. Read your script out loud and edit it as if you are going to deliver it as your own voicemail. No, you do not need to sound like a smooth talker, in fact, it is better if you do not. Any script that makes you sound like someone who speaks in long-winded sentences and never says anything concrete is a script that needs to be rewritten. It is also much better to use the prospect’s name, wherever possible, rather than to greet them as a valued customer. Give them an action to take, even if it is to expect your call tomorrow. Saying “We will call you tomorrow” is much better than “I hope to hear from you.”
Mistakes That Wreck Campaigns
The mistakes that cause the best results to be lost, or for beginners to lose confidence, are all very similar.
- Calling the same script on the same list of cold prospects without any segmentation is a surefire way to get poor results. Segmentation involves deduping your list, and then breaking it up into smaller segments based on their interest level. Then, each segment gets its own version of the script, tailored to what it is that they want.
- Another common mistake is to call at inconvenient hours. Leaving a message while they are at dinner is a much less effective use of your time than skipping the ring and waiting for their convenience.
- Another thing to avoid is to call too often. Calling the same person every single day for a week is going to result in them opting out, or complaining to the authorities, whichever comes first.
- Following up by a different channel is something that you absolutely should do, and not just by a voicemail drop. Voicemails, texts, emails, and direct phone calls are all different methods of communication that can each be utilized to great effect.
- Finally, analyzing the data is something that people tend to skip out on. If your callback rates are particularly poor, it is better to identify why you are getting these results before doing anything else. Is it your script, your timing, your list, or something else?
Measuring Whether It’s Worth the Money
You do not need to be a math wizard to estimate whether a voicemail drop campaign is worth its cost, but you should still do it. You want to keep a tally of the following:
- Number of drops delivered
- Number of callbacks
- Number of replies
- Number of conversions
You want to weigh this against your cost per drop, and the amount of time that you saved by not having to dial a thousand numbers. Even the best campaign with the best callback rates can be a disaster if the cost per drop is prohibitively expensive and you would have done better spending that money on a sales rep to dial these numbers for you. A ringless voicemail service that costs a couple hundred per month and gets you twelve leads, where you then follow up and turn three of them into paying customers, is a great deal. It has paid for itself several times over, and it is something that you definitely want to continue doing.
Testing is also important. You should run your campaign twice, using similar scripts on similar segments, and see what works and what does not. You should experiment with the time of day, and the length of the voicemail. Doing these things for a few weeks should give you a script that your prospects actually want to listen to, rather than one that you think they want to hear.
Conclusion
A voicemail drop service is not a magic bullet, that will turn your ordinary campaign into an extraordinary one overnight. However, it does provide you with a very useful channel of communication that can get your message across, without putting the recipient on the spot. Choosing a voicemail drop service or a ringless voicemail service that prioritizes legal compliance and provides good reporting, keeping your messages short, personalizing your message when possible, calling at the right time, and following up with another channel of communication are the best ways to turn a potentially mediocre experience into a fantastic one for your client, and a profitable campaign for you. You do not need to invest heavily in a voicemail drop service to get excellent results. All you need to do is follow these simple steps, and experiment.
FAQs
What is a voicemail drop service?
A voicemail drop service is a platform that allows you to send a pre-recorded message to someone’s voicemail.
Is a ringless voicemail service legal?
It depends on the jurisdiction and the people that you are contacting, but in the United States and several other countries, there are laws regarding automated phone messages and calls, and you must be careful to comply with them.
How long should a voicemail drop message be?
Fifteen to twenty-five seconds is the perfect length of a voicemail drop message. You want to introduce yourself, explain one thing, and ask for one thing.
Will people get notified when I drop a voicemail?
Yes, they will get a voicemail notification, which looks a little bit different on every carrier.
How much does a voicemail drop service cost?
This varies from company to company, and there are two kinds of pricing: per drop, and monthly subscription. Very cheap voicemail drop services tend to have bad delivery rates, so they are not always the best value.
Can I personalize messages for each contact?
Yes, most companies offer this option.
What’s the best time to send voicemail drops?
Mid-morning or early afternoon is usually best, but some industries do better at specific days and parts of the day.
Does a ringless voicemail service replace phone calls?
Not entirely, but it can complement them. It is best used as an introductory or follow-up messaging device, in coordination with text messages, emails, and regular phone calls.