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Any one of us who owns a cell phone – or even a landline with a digital handset – knows what a “Missed Call” is. We see a missed call notification on our phone saying we’ve missed a call, and we check to see who the caller was and call the person back (sometimes sooner and sometimes later, depending on the caller).,

However, depending on where you’re from, you might know that a Missed Call is much more potent than that simple explanation portrays. In the world of “pre-paid” phone time (a.k.a. airtime or load) – the majority of global phone owners, and close to 100% of the global poor, use prepaid – a missed call is very valuable because it is free. Neither the caller nor the recipient is charged for a missed call.

Billions of People Use Missed Calls as a Signal Because They Are Free.

I remember the first time I learned this lesson as an American living in the Philippines. I was waiting for my Filipino friend to arrive at my house, and when I saw his call on my phone, I answered it. He immediately hung up. I went downstairs to see if he was at the door – he was – and I was told: “Hey! Don’t pick up the phone if I call to let you know I’m here – then I get charged!” Lesson learned!

A “missed call” is known by a variety of names across the globe, including flashing, beeping, and miskol. And they’re extremely popular, being used to signal everything from how much milk you want to order in Bhutan to telling a friend: “get online I want to chat” in Syria. 

According to a study from the Learning Initiatives on Reforms for Network Economies (Lirne) in 2011, over half of Indian cellular subscribers made missed calls to convey a message.  In 2007, there were 130 million missed calls being made daily across Africa!  

In 2011, the Indian social activist Anna Hazare used missed calls to pressure the Indian parliament to pass a long-delayed anti-corruption bill. Though the bill had been tabled for years, politicians stalled its passage into law.

He wanted to engage the “voice” of the public to pressure parliament to take action, so he asked people to send SMS texts supporting the campaign. 80,000 sent a text. Hazare decided he needed more. So he asked people to join the movement by sending a missed call to the campaign’s local numbers.

In Just Two Weeks, He Had Received Over 35 Million Missed Calls: A 437-Fold Increase From the Original Text Campaign (Sources: 1, 2, 3).

Another way missed calls are being utilized to great effect globally is for marketing. Earlier this year, Twitter reportedly paid $30 Million to acquire ZipDial, an Indian-based startup that allows businesses to advertise a number and tell people to do a free missed call to that number. When they do, they’re immediately called back with more information about products or services, which doesn’t cost them anything!  

Imagine doing something similar for marketing, anti-corruption, or education and training programs! Let’s say you want people to retrieve key information when needed – for free.

So you advertise a phone number on billboards, radio, TV, etc. and ask people to make a Missed Call to that number whenever they need to get important information about the subject area of your work (for example, best practices on farming or tips on diagnosing certain illnesses). Missed Calls are also the cheapest way to enroll people in your campaigns so you can have their phone numbers and send them future messages.

What Is Missed Call Marketing?

No business could function without customers. That is immediately clear. But it’s not always clear how these crucial connections are made and maintained.

You probably have a ton of KPIs and logs to ensure your invoices are sent out on time and you’re responding to customer emails quickly. Still, in the digital age, it’s easy to overlook one of the most traditional and important ones. Forms of communication with the customer: the telephone.

The last thing you want to do is make a missed call, as it’s still the preferred option for customers when something important needs to happen quickly.

In the past, when telephone charges were relatively high, the concept of missed calls first arose. Back then, making a call for something as simple as chatting with a friend, contacting a company in another country, or promoting a good or service required some thought.

Many people began using the missed call as a form of communication, mainly when cell phones emerged to notify loved ones of their safe whereabouts. Even if the call costs have dropped significantly after the introduction of VoIP telephony, the practice of missed calls still prevails.

To connect with their customers and improve lead generation, businesses can use missed call services in conjunction with their marketing strategies. These services are based on the core psychological trait that people want to avoid paying for calls.

Missed call marketing is a modern marketing technique combined with other pull marketing techniques. This marketing technique captures the idea that the target market of a company’s advertising campaign is contacting that company for free. The public’s free contact with the company is an additional motivation for potential customers to go further and get in touch with the executing company.

How Do Companies Benefit From Missed Call Campaigns?

• Low Cost

With missed call marketing, there is no hold time, and you can pick your affordable outgoing call service provider to call the interested prospects back.

However, unlike other marketing strategies like toll-free numbers, businesses must pay high rates for the customer’s call, even for their hold time.

• High-Quality Leads

Missed call marketing only attracts interested clients. In contrast to other marketing methods, missed call marketing engages customers without bothering them. The caller is a potential customer who is already familiar with the products that generate high-quality leads for the sales team.

• CRM

Companies that use CRM for lead management typically get $8.71 back for every dollar invested in technology. Therefore, you must incorporate a CRM into your missed call marketing strategy.

• No Usage Limit

The number of times you can utilize the missed call notification service each day is unlimited. You can utilize it in whichever best suits your needs. Additionally, thanks to this, you’ll be able to manage each business call.

Since your agents are busy when you use missed call alert services, you will never miss a call or inquiry because their productivity will increase.

• Maximum Reach

Companies have the chance to solicit feedback from each consumer because giving a missed call is accessible to the end user; if the business offers a missed call option, the likelihood of receiving a response or comment rises.

A missed call marketing can have a significant impact when used in conjunction with IVR, outbound calls, emails, and SMS for integrated communication initiatives. Offering a Call-to-Action choice with the best engagement rate is a dependable solution.

How Missed Call Campaign Works

A business organization can create a marketing campaign that encourages audience interaction with the brand at no cost by using a missed call service. The call will end immediately as soon as someone dials the business number. The information that the company wishes to convey to the caller is sent to him directly via SMS, voicemail, or callback.

Any business can easily create a missed call campaign because it is so easy to do. All it requires of you is to sign up for a cloud-based missed call service, select the 10-digit number that will serve as your company’s missed call number, and connect the virtual phone number that allows you to connect multiple handles to missed calls easily.

Publicize this number by including it in your online and offline advertising, social media, and all promotional materials to raise awareness and set up your response procedures e.g., how to get in touch after the missed call reply. Will you respond with a text, voicemail, or call back from a natural person?

How Can You Use Missed Call Service for Business?

Lead Generation

With the help of missed call marketing, you may spread out the handling of high traffic and preserve your sales capacity. Integrating lead tracking and follow-up notes with CRM software for lead management systems.

You must include a missed call number on your marketing materials, such as brochures and flyers, to enhance response rates significantly and send automated responses for product-specific information or profiling when interested prospects place a missed call.

Customer Support

Using missed calls can help your support team to reduce customer handling time by managing customer support inquiries. You can also have your customers place a missed call for support by making. So, post your missed call numbers on your website, business cards, brochures, etc.

Your salesperson can speak with them when they are available after placing the call. No hold times or hang-ups, just excellent customer service.

Mobile Number Verification

Mobile numbers of customers can be verified using missed call verification services. If you use miss call for verification, your customers can be connected anywhere worldwide, especially in cases where SMS verification is impossible. It works with landlines and international numbers.

Coupon Delivery

Paper coupons are subject to inaccuracy because they only use human intervention. Customers who want to take advantage of a bargain need only make a missed call that automatically disconnects to the printed number and receive an SMS response with a coupon code. Then, they can use the coupons for the store or an eCommerce website. You only need to print a missed call number on promotional flyers or booklets to initiate your missed call marketing.

Survey

Surveying can be incredibly difficult, especially in rural areas. It costs a lot to reach out with large paper forms and process them. However, on radio, television, or during a roadshow, you can broadcast the survey question and the missed call numbers to answer using the missed call service. After that, you may examine the survey results in real-time using the reporting and analysis tools.

How Can You Make the Most of Missed Call Service for Your Business?

You may implement missed call campaigns as a vital component of your pull marketing strategy in various ways for your company. Missed call marketing can assist your company with various tasks, such as generating leads, encouraging app downloads, getting feedback, and more. Here are a few sample usage scenarios:

• Getting potential customers to make a missed call and using it to create leads is one of the most economical methods. Those interested in your goods or services can browse your listed phone number and leave a missed call to convey their interest.
• If you have an app and want to encourage more people to download it, you can ask those customers to give your company a missed call. Implement an omnichannel platform that will make it simple for you to accept missed calls and promptly respond to callers with an SMS that contains a link to your application’s download page. You can further assist this marketing strategy by giving your sales reps the responsibility of following up with app downloaders to provide further guidance on how to use your app and proactively address any doubts customers may have.

• Regardless of the sector in which your business operates, you may streamline and automate customer service and ask clients to leave you a voicemail when they require assistance. The unanswered calls will be immediately recorded in your current CRM and assigned to the appropriate customer care specialist. You can even employ various missed call numbers if you have a diverse client department for your goods or services.

• You can conduct voting polls by allowing your audience to make a missed call to specific numbers that will reveal user preference. You can assign phone numbers to each choice, for instance, if you want your audience to vote in a particular poll with numbered options. Each caller will then indicate their preference by making a missed call to the appropriate number.
• When a caller puts a missed call, you may quickly get input for your surveys by triggering the delivery of a questionnaire through SMS or Voice message.
• You can integrate the missed call service into your two-factor or multifactor verification process and utilize it to validate new clients.
• You may utilize the missed call service as a notification service and encourage your consumers to use it to make on-demand information requests, such as checking their account balance, obtaining travel information, or getting order or shipment status updates. If you link the service, incoming missed calls can also be stored in your existing CRM or enterprise resource planning system.

Remember that the ability to measure the outputs and outcomes is what truly adds value to any marketing initiatives you may undertake. You may maximize the effectiveness of your inbound marketing approach by using the missed call service offered by reputable integrated sales and marketing platforms.

Therefore, the value of the missed call service for your company is not in allowing your audience to contact you for free but rather in the fact that it will enable you to engage with them while also gathering essential audience data.

Suppose you use a missed call service campaign inside a sophisticated software framework to give you valuable, in-depth data about your audience. In that case, you can fully utilize the campaign’s potential. It will be able to divide them into narrow target groups with comparable characteristics and preferences, enabling you to send them wholly tailored messages.

We Want You to Harness the Power of Missed Calls

So here at engageSPARK, we’ve made it incredibly easy to create missed call campaigns using three-step wizards. You can add a local phone number to your account in just minutes (in 80 countries!) or (in ANY country) use our easy Android Relay App to receive missed calls and route them to your engageSPARK account.

Interested in learning more? Sign up for free – there is no monthly fee and no commitment. We can also give you a quick demo, and even do a free consultation to help you decide on ways to utilize the power of missed calls in your program