Several new product announcements and acquisitions occurred in the IVR industry this past week. TMCnet’s Susan Campbell asked some important questions about selecting IVR systems and software.

How well do you invest in your marketing and advertising efforts? While a number of companies do understand that advertising is an important part of the marketing process and that marketing is the powerful force that keeps the doors open, too many others are quick to cut their marketing budgets when money is tight. This is a crucial mistake as every company needs to drive revenue and you can’t drive revenue without marketing. 

It is important to identify the correct target market for any advertising or marketing activities and IVR can be a valuable tool in the process. In a number of campaigns, IVR has been used in collaboration with the call center to drive effective lead generations and even closed sales. As the cost of traditional advertising continues to rise, marketing departments are increasingly turning to less traditional forms of marketing and advertising to make their mark.

Ed Silverstein also wrote about how IVR can be used for marketing efforts to improve a company’s image. “On one level, businesses and other organizations are using IVR for lower-cost calls that relate to sales, service, collections, inquiry and support,” TMCnet said.

IVR solutions also provide input and responses via spoken words and voice recognition, TMCnet adds. 

But it also has been found that IVR systems can integrate with various marketing techniques. For example, if a company was having a food drive it could accept monetary donations and food onsite, and could set up an IVR to process payments, promote an event, answer customer questions, and refer the public to additional organizations.

Juliana Kenny graduated from the University of Connecticut with a double degree in English and French. After managing a small company for two years, she joined TMC (News - Alert) as a Web Editor for TMCnet. Juliana currently focuses on the call center and CRM industries, but she also writes about cloud telephony and network gear including softswitches.