Lists that are very long can restrict the ability of marketing and contact center managers to be hands-on, because it is not easy for them to determine the importance and quality of the contacts on the list prior to being finished. Also, in the last part of all lists, the quality of left over contacts and efficiency worsen. So, if the list is huge, the stage close to the end of it can go on over many hours, which can disturb representative focus, drain their enthusiasm, and considerably decrease productivity because of the increased wait time between calls. The smaller the list, the more these idle intervals can be narrowed down. In the collection environment, calling lists need to be shortened even more to allow for the payments made every day by customers without the involvement of outbound collection calls. The lists need to be either the proper size to cover one day of outbound collection calls or, if a larger list is selected, it needs to be restored every day.

Contact center and marketing managers frequently need to end an outbound campaign when a promotion is finished, even if it means discarding a beneficial list. Assessing the correct amount of contacts in a list for any promotion will optimize the sales ratio and helps prevent circumstances where a good list has to be discarded because a promotion has ended.

Golden Rules, Not Magical Rules

Contact centers vary in size, reason, business type, and technological tools, making it not possible and disadvantageous to lay down a stiff set of rules or behaviors that promise successful campaigns. There are, though, particular "guidelines", which result from rational and thorough experience, and which can be suggested as Golden Rules. These are:

The size of a list needs to be figured going by the amount of representatives, call length, and calling hours, and not just going by the amount of contacts.

It is imperative to have a central calling list big enough to permit segmentation into campaigns or sublists within a campaign, but not big enough to extend over many weeks of calls.

For solicitation, less is more. Existing customers prefer not to be solicited by telephone more than four times a year, but for all direct marketing communications, an organization is not supposed to solicit more than eight times a year.

Success cannot be promised by magical rules because there are none, but keeping the Best Practices and Golden Rules in mind when producing and segmenting lists and when producing and assigning representative groups will make certain that managers can follow the development and result of their campaigns and will go a long way toward guaranteeing that resources are motivated and pleased. Generating and segmenting your list is where you should put the majority of your time, so you can collect all the profits of your outbound campaign.