What's Trending in 2023?

People often ask us “What are you seeing around the country?” As everyone strives to find their new normal, DCM identified three trends impacting today’s phone campaigns.

  • Do people pick up the phone at the same rate as they did 30 or 40 years ago? Of course not. However, over the past decade, DCM’s contact rate has been consistently 2.5–3 contacts per hour. Despite the huge shift towards digital communication, our ability to contact people remains steady.

    Further, the decreasing use of landline phones* is good news for telemarketing. People carry their phones with them and rarely change their phone numbers. Now, DCM’s texting option, used in conjunction with calling, helps boost campaigns by creating additional opportunity to make contacts and generate revenue.

  • Telemarketing is continually the most productive source for hard-to-reach leads. This is especially true for people buying new subscriptions. The average close rate for new sales has stayed consistent for the past twenty years at 4%.

    Industry-wide, close rates for subscribers were down across all channels during the pandemic but are steadily improving. As organizations push to rebuild their subscription base, telemarketing is vital to closing sales with elusive lapsed and renewing subscribers. A personal connection still generates the best response.

  • As the world continues to emerge from the pandemic, non-profit arts organizations are coping with the pressure of reduced budgets. As a result, phone campaigns are often smaller than they once were, amplifying the need for savvy strategy as we strive to rebuild donor and subscriber bases.

    Excellent planning and execution pay off. Our most successful campaigns are rooted in careful timing, a customized and highly strategic approach, expertly trained and managed callers, and a strong element of collaboration between DCM and client teams.

    On several campaigns this has already resulted in close rates returning to levels immediately preceding the pandemic. For one presenting organization, we generated nearly double the subscription revenue goal. Fundraising campaigns have continued to perform at increasingly strong rates across the board.

*According to the CDC’s biannual National Health Interview Survey, in 2020, 62.5% of adults live in a household with cell phones and no landline phone. This percentage has steadily increased since 2004.

DCM Staff Picks

Want to spice things up and try something new? Here are our favorite music, movies, books, and more from the past year, curated by the staff at DCM.

Books: Nightcrawling (Leila Mottley), A Sea of Tranquility (Emily St. John Mandel), An Immense World (Ed Yong)

Movies: Everything Everywhere All at Once, Nope, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

Television Series: Ted Lasso, Severance, Wednesday

Musical Artists: Beyonce, FKA Twigs, Florence & the Machine

Broadway Shows: Into the Woods, Hamilton, American Utopia

Concerts: The Music of Billy Joel and Elton John with the Houston Symphony, Idles, Pink Martini

Other Performances: Barber of Seville (Austin Opera), The Notebook (Chicago Shakespeare Theater), Rutter Requiem (St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, San Antonio)

Amanda Zook