Have you received a call from the yellow pages to sign-up with them?
Yesterday my dad received a call from the yellow pages. The guy who called said that he just wanted to confirm that all the data in his listing was correct, and if so they will send me an invoice to “renew” his business listing subscription for another year. Also, they had an special offer for my dad just because he is awesome.
I told him, he’s a lucky man, what a great opportunity to waste money, he shouldn’t think twice…. to say no.
To start he doesn’t have a subscription in the yellow pages and he never had one.
Second, do people still uses yellow pages?
Rethink the strategy
I think their tactics is just plain stupid. I think calling people and trying to be that sneaky to tell them to renew their subscription when they don’t have a subscription is just idiotic. People will complain, they will end up with bad a review like this post.
It’s just bad marketing practice of them. Is that the best they can do?
This guy was probably a subcontractor or an affiliate who wanted to do a sale no matter what, but if that’s the case they need to do a better job.
I have few tips for them:
- They should have some guidelines for their marketers to follow.
- Our phones are in the National Do Not Call list, so they should update their listing monthly.
- They have to stop using sneaky tactics, that will not benefit them and people eventually will complain.
- They should have tried to promote YP.com instead the paper version that is slowly dying.
I hope they rethink their strategy and stop their dubious marketing tactics. What about you? Have you received this type of calls?
Photo by Frank Hebbert
Sometimes the tactics used by large corporations are really low. This tactics are based on statistics, maybe between 5% to 10% conversion rate it worth the effort.
I’m just wondering for the % of people calling to cancel or to complain.
Great comments Ricardo!
Thank you Chris.
Interesting. I had a “Survey Call” recently asking about the last time I used the Yellow Pages. I told them I could not even remember …it had been so long. I use the Internet to find stuff now!
HELLOOOOO!
Yes, even for local businesses it’s not really an option these days. I recently discovered this http://www.yellowpagesoptout.com/
Thanks for the comment.