<table cellspacing='0' cellpadding='0' border='0' ><tr><td valign='top' style='font: inherit;'>My two cents: As long as the recipient has opted in to receive voice messages then there are many uses for this technology. We send millions of messages a month to all sorts of groups for appointment reminders, emergency notifications, rainouts for sports teams, political, search & rescue teams and many more. What we don't send is any sales related messages regardless if the recipient is on DNC or not.<br><br>With the recent explosion in voice-to-text technology, we're also now able to broadcast messages out and capture the recipient's replies by transcribing them to text and delivering responses back to the sender. Something like this is proving to be an invaluable service for emergency response teams etc.<br><br><div>Alan<br></div>www.group2call.com<br><br>--- On <b>Wed, 6/25/08, Trixter aka Bret McDanel <i><trixter@0xdecafbad.com></i></b>
wrote:<br><blockquote style="border-left: 2px solid rgb(16, 16, 255); margin-left: 5px; padding-left: 5px;">From: Trixter aka Bret McDanel <trixter@0xdecafbad.com><br>Subject: Re: [asterisk-biz] Opinions requested: message blasting<br>To: "Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk Discussion" <asterisk-biz@lists.digium.com><br>Date: Wednesday, June 25, 2008, 5:12 AM<br><br><pre>On Tue, 2008-06-24 at 20:51 -0400, Cory Andrews wrote:<br>> Chris - I think it depends on the usage scenario....here in the states,<br>> automated outbound messaging is a popular tactic amongst political<br>> candidates to deliver campaign statements and GOTV messaging to<br>> registered voters.<br>> <br>> In the mid 90's it was used as a telemarketing lead gen tool, but has<br>> decreased in popularity due to DNC regulations in the states. <br>> <br>not DNC, but telemarketing in general, in the US its illegal to play a<br>recording for
anything but religious and political messages. So if they<br>want to generate leads or do sales they are only allowed to (and infact<br>required to) give very brief information that cannot include a sales<br>pitch (doesnt mean people dont do it, just means that they can be<br>reported and fined if they do).<br><br><br>> It's also a great tool for "value added" services like<br>appointment<br>> reminders, school related notifications, group related notifications,<br>> service reminders, etc. As a lead generation tool IMO its effectiveness<br>> is limited, and it is generally regarded in a similar manner as spam.<br>> <br><br>Doctors offices regularly use them to remind people of their<br>appointments to reduce missed ones. A major US based online pharmacy<br>(yeah US based!) also does it to remind people their medication is on<br>its way so they know to expect it and report it missing if it does not<br>arrive. <br><br>In 1999-2000 I
worked for a company that was selling systems to airlines<br>(and anyone else that would buy the entire system) that would let<br>consumers choose how to be notified of their travel plans, letting them<br>choose pager, fax, sms, voice, email, etc. <br><br><br>If people thought of message blasting like email lists they probably<br>wouldnt be so upset over it as a whole and rather only be upset over it<br>when its unsolicited and probably sales related. Instead the average<br>person generally thinks of it as just phone spam because that is all<br>they think about and forget if they get such a call reminding them of a<br>real appointment or some other service. <br><br><br>-- <br>Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com Bret McDanel<br>Belfast +44 28 9099 6461 US +1 516 687 5200<br>http://www.trxtel.com the phone company that pays you!<br><br><br>_______________________________________________<br>--Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by
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