Text Fatigue? Franchise Prospects Are Now More Likely to Respond to Email or Voice than Texts for Initial Contact

December 28, 2021 — Aspiring owners say that they are most likely to respond to an email as the initial contact about a franchise they are interested in according to the December 2021 “mystery shopping” survey by FranchiseInsights.com. But in a reversal of the trend seen in the first half of 2021, prospects now indicate voice as second in order of preference for initial contact when respondents were asked to rank voice, email and text. Text messaging has fallen back to third place in recent months.

While the survey does not glean “why” behind this change, the lower preference for initial contact by voice emerged during 2020, the first year of the pandemic. 

Also in the December survey, 45% said they were “unlikely very unlikely to accept a phone call from a franchise” if they had “not previously received a text message or email from that company with more information.”  This is a significant drop from 64% seen as recently as October 2021. 

Summary: Best Practice For Initial Contact

Email remains the most preferred channel for initial contact, at 43.6% of respondents. Of course, the asynchronous nature of email makes it the most effective channel outside of business hours, and on weekends and holidays. It is also a more rich medium for making your brief “elevator pitch” or conveying information such as video, links or a pdf brochure. Given the  dominance of mobile phone use over landlines among business buyers, email is the best place to introduce yourself and begin to tell your story.

Moreover, Apple’s prompt to set up its “silence unknown callers” feature, introduced in the April 2021 iOS release, magnifies the importance of emailing an introduction first, so that the prospect knows to expect a call from you and add you to contacts. For leads that do not respond, following up with a personalized text after noon (9 am on the West Coast) is a good practice.

The Franchise Insights “mystery shopping” survey is conducted monthly among aspiring business buyers inquiring about franchises at the brands of FranchiseVentures.

FranchiseVentures is the leading franchise lead-generation platform for potential franchisees to thousands of growing franchise systems in the United States and Canada. Its franchise lead generation brands include Franchise.com, Franchise Solutions, Franchise Gator, Franchise Opportunities, Franchise For Sale, SmallBusinessStartup.com and BusinessBroker.net, and together they provide the largest aggregation of prospective franchise buyers in the U.S.

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Published on Wednesday, December 29th, 2021.