Best Practices For Engaging Credit Card Debt Settlement Prospects

As more and more Americans find themselves facing credit card debt, the need for credit card debt settlement products and services expands.

The best practices highlighted below will help ensure your lead generation campaigns geared toward credit card debt settlement prospects are set up for success.

UNDERSTAND THE IMPACT OF SEASONALITY

With many Americans racking up credit card debt toward the end of the year as holiday spending climbs, January and February can be prime months for advertising credit card debt settlement products and services.

• Prepare your infrastructure: Make sure your call center is appropriately staffed to handle increased call capacity when seasonal volume picks up, and consider extending call center hours.
• Adjust creative: Creative can be tailored to incorporate seasonally appropriate messaging to show you understand your target audience’s challenges. Focus on highlighting the benefits of how your product or service can help prospects overcome mounting holiday bills.

DIVERSIFY MEDIA CHANNELS

In November 2019, Google placed significant restrictions on the advertising of debt settlement and debt management services and banned the advertising of credit repair services, fueling the need for media channel diversification to prevent over-reliance on a particular channel.

• Determine what channels work best for your campaign: Email and call-based advertising campaigns are highly scalable and can be key components of successful credit card debt settlement lead generation campaigns.
• Identify key publishers and networks to partner with: Carefully evaluate new publisher/network partners to help amplify your reach quickly. Publisher partners should practice media diversification, offering multiple solutions under one roof and should maintain a focus on compliance. Ideally, seek out partners with robust, in-house, dedicated compliance teams, including on-staff counsel.
• Train your staff to adapt to change: Ensure your sales and call center staff members are properly trained on new sales strategies and have the scripts prepared in advance to engage and convert prospects derived from new channels. Sales agents should be prepared to provide additional information to prospects that may not be as highly informed as Google search-derived prospects.

DEVELOP A ROBUST OUTREACH STRATEGY

Although the supply of consumers looking for credit card debt settlement products and services can be abundant, especially after the holiday spending season, the competition is also fierce. In order to compete, advertisers need to be aggressive, but strategic, with their outreach plans.

• Timely follow up is essential: With many advertisers vying for attention from the same pool of consumers, following up with interested prospects as close to real-time as possible is crucial.
• Don’t rely solely on phone calls: Many prospective credit card debt settlement consumers may be avoiding phone calls from debt collectors, making them afraid to answer the phone. Be sure you have a robust outreach workflow in place that incorporates email, SMS and social outreach in addition to phone calls.
• Prioritize nurturing: Since credit card debt settlement prospects can have a relatively short lifecycle, typically converting in as little as one to two weeks, advertisers may be so focused on reaching new leads that they don’t prioritize nurturing existing leads. Following up at a regular cadence via emails focused on re-engagement can result in new and repeat consumers.

FOCUS ON OPTIMIZATION

As with any lead generation campaign, monitoring results and making adjustments based on outcomes is essential for credit card debt settlement lead generation campaigns, as incremental improvements over time drive growth and profitability.

• Test and iterate creative: Test various subject lines, headlines and images to determine what creative is resonating best with your target audience. Iterate to improve creative performance throughout the campaign lifecycle.
• Share data with publishers: Empower your partners to optimize by providing them with outcome data as closely to real time as possible, ideally daily, enabling them to make adjustments to quickly and effectively improve campaign performance.

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