For years, marketers shunned telemarketing in favor of email marketing, as cold-calling received a bad rap and powerful marketing automation tools made email easier to do, even in a self-serve manner. However, many marketers have come full circle and realized that nothing quite brings in the benefits associated with a well-performed and strategic telemarketing campaign.

What are the four major reasons why telemarketing just does better than email marketing? Let’s take a look.

#1: Many of Your Targets Do Not Read Vendor Emails

If your target people are like most professionals in the business world, they receive an overwhelming amount of emails from colleagues, partners, friends, and family as well as existing vendors—often without enough time in the day to address them all. They have little time to peruse unsolicited offers or discussions. That is why open rates on B2B email campaigns don’t even approach 1 in 5, according to the Direct Marketing Association (DMA).

#2: Some People Are Simply ‘Phone People’

That’s right. We all know those people who could easily email or text us about something, but grab the phone and call us anyway. In fact, despite all the talk about email (no pun intended), a majority of professionals still pick up the phone when called at their business line. It may take several attempts, but they are far more reachable than by email.

#3: Live Phone Conversations Yield Referrals

Even if you are fortunate enough to have a target open your email and consider your promotion, the target person’s response is limited to the single, specific issue raised in the email. Moreover, if the issue/offer is not appealing or appropriate to that individual, the email gets deleted and dies.

Contrast that to a phone conversation where, even if the target person is not the ideal prospect, he/she may still help your cause by referring you to the right person—as in, “I don’t handle that, but my colleague does. Let me connect you.”

This is huge, because referrals enjoy a much higher conversion rate. That’s because the person doing the referring is typically a trusted colleague who has pre-screened the call via the initial discussion.

#4: Phone Conversations Bring Fresh Account Insights

Most phone conversations deliver new information about an account which you would not have possibly gleaned over email. At best, an email response may say something like, “I don’t handle that anymore.” Yet, that leaves you without answers to important questions: “What do you handle now?”, “Who does handle your old job?”, “Has something changed in the organization to change your need?”, etc. In the end, with 85 percent of emails going unanswered, your prospect database remains static and quickly becomes outdated.

A phone conversation can capture that type of information about the prospect account. When a call is performed correctly, a target may be willing to explain a change in role or a change in company needs, which informs you whether or not to continue targeting the account, and if so, under what circumstances and with what types of offers. Examples: “We no longer buy that technology, because it comes with our cloud service”, or “I was promoted and now manage the entire services infrastructure and am trying to find the right solutions for XYZ.” Not only are you breathing new life into your prospecting database, you could possibly uncover opportunities you had never before considered.

Conclusion: Telemarketing Should be Part of Your B2B Marketing Campaigns

We’re not saying telemarketing should be your exclusive method of prospecting, but we are saying the benefits of telemarketing are irreplaceable. Other channels, including email, simply cannot equal telemarketing’s ability to win new business and collect ongoing data about prospects and prospect accounts. Therefore, telemarketing should—at least—be part of your ongoing marketing campaign efforts.