How to improve lead generation to customer engagement and book more appointments, based on 2024 Verse data
In today’s ever-evolving, highly-competitive landscape, it’s crucial to stay on top of current trends in customer engagement, preferences, and behavior.
With lead generation laws set to change in early 2025, things are about to get even harder for sales and marketing teams.
This year, we at Verse have been working hard to collect and distill our wealth of customer engagement data in order to help you improve your approach to both lead generation and engagement.
Engaging millions of leads weekly, we have insight into which channels, choice of messaging, and times of day will work best when contacting leads.
Let’s go over five of our most surprising and impactful takeaways from 2024—from engaging leads more effectively to meeting customer preferences, and ultimately booking more appointments.
Takeaway #1: Use 24/7 coverage for customer engagement
In our whitepaper on the best times to contact leads, we found that 45% of leads responded outside of business hours, while 40% of leads responded during business hours.
This points to the massive importance of 24/7—or after hours—lead coverage. When companies fail to respond after hours, they are missing out on a significant amount of leads that want to talk. Often, this is the case.
This is especially important when you consider that speed to lead is a huge deciding factor for buyers:
- 78% of leads will choose the organization that contacts them first.
- After waiting just one hour, the likelihood of successfully contacting a lead drops by 10x.
- Leads are 21x more likely to convert if contacted within 5 minutes.
Driving the point home, we also found that leads are 36% more likely to qualify during after-hours than they are during business hours.
When many people—your potential customers—are working full-time, they often don’t have the opportunity to talk while your business is open.
Customer engagement rates during holidays
In another study on holiday engagement, we found that leads are just as likely if not more likely to respond on most holidays.
This data paints a similar, yet simple picture: people want to engage when they have time.
In addition, we found that lead engagement rate was not only strong; lead qualification rate followed suit, with Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day all seeing higher than average qualification rates than non-holidays.
Takeaway #2: Engage customers via text before calling
Earlier this year, we set out on a mission to determine what actions boost call answer rates the most.
In a study of over five million leads, we found that call answer rates nearly doubled when the lead was sent a text message before being called.
When calling only, answer rates were 29.9%; when texting and calling, answer rates shot up to 58%.
This makes sense when you consider the popularity of text, as well as the amount of spam calls that consumers receive on a daily basis. Often, people aren’t ready to jump on the phone with a company right away.
When you confirm your identity over text and ask before calling, the customer is more likely to answer. This also demonstrates a respect for customers’ time and individual preferences—which can go a long way in building lasting customer relationships.
In addition, we found that leads are 86% more likely to qualify when texted and called, rather than just called.
This is likely due to the fact that if leads are asked before being called, they have shown significant interest if they are receiving a call; however, this fact can help teams save time by not calling leads who will never qualify, and/or don’t want to be called.
Takeaway #3: Improve customer engagement by asking questions
Looking at the millions of texts we send customers on a weekly basis, we collected data on which messaging performed best.
Using these millions of data points, we found a clear trend: asking questions via text is more likely to get you a reply.
We found that open-ended messages, especially those referencing “checking in”, perform more poorly than messages that pose a direct question.
Something like “Is now a good time to chat?” works substantially better because it warrants a quick reply—whether that’s a yes or no.
In this example, you can see that asking a direct question led to an over 500% increase in reply rate.
Lead qualification via SMS for better customer engagement
In a similar way, the data showed that leads are highly likely to reply to qualifying questions via text.
This trend demonstrates customers’ willingness to respond to simple and relevant questions.
While asking qualifying questions adds efficiency and familiarity to the text conversation, it can also help companies personalize their approach for each customer.
Here are a few examples of qualifying questions we referenced (see more in this blog):
- What is the price point you’re looking to stay around for this purchase? (74% reply rate)
- I would be happy to help. Is this your first time getting pre-approved? (88% reply rate)
- What is the price range you’re looking to stay around? (82% reply rate)
- Great, I just have a few questions so I can get you connected with a lender. Has your employer changed within the last 2 years? (92% reply rate)
Takeaway #4: Use a ladder model for customer engagement
When studying lead conversion rate, we found that companies who asked leads to schedule a phone call had a 20% higher success rate than companies who asked to book a hard appointment.
We believe that this is for one simple reason: calls represent less commitment than hard appointments.
This is notable because it points to the importance of warming leads slowly.
While companies tend to push leads towards hard appointments too early, it is more beneficial to engage the lead on their terms, in a slower manner that is more low-effort for them.
This philosophy is consistent with what we call the engagement ladder.
What is the customer engagement ladder?
Put simply, people want to start with low-effort engagement, such as texting. Once they’re engaged and interested, you can slowly escalate them to higher-impact engagements—but only if they hit each rung on the ladder.
By allowing prospects to move up the engagement ladder at their own pace, you’re respecting their buying journey.
Instead of forcing them into high-pressure scenarios early on, they can naturally progress through stages of engagement as they gain trust in your product or service.
Taking this customer-centric approach doesn’t just close deals—it builds long-term relationships.
Takeaway #5: Prioritize first-party lead generation
Of course, all of the above tips will work best if you’re using them on first-party leads.
In addition, moving into 2025, first-party leads will be essential for legal compliance.
The 2025 FCC ruling on lead generation
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the governing body for communications in the United States, released a new ruling that closes the “lead generation loophole” by prohibiting:
“[L]ead generators, callers, and texters from using a single consumer consent to inundate consumers with unwanted texts and calls when consumers visit comparison shopping websites.”
It also states that texters and callers must obtain a consumer’s prior express written consent” and this requirement “applies to a single seller at a time”.
For example:
- This means that someone who gave consent on a home services comparison website must give consent to specific companies, perhaps by checking box(es). This consent only extends to those specific companies—not any other related companies present on the website.
In addition, the FCC ruling stipulates new laws around robotexts and robocalls, including robust consent requirements, and that robocalls and texts must be logically and topically associated with the website where the consumer gave consent.
For example:
- If someone gave consent on a home services website, if they were to be contacted about something unrelated, such as travel deals, that would be in violation of the ruling.
All in all, this means that the business of acquiring third-party leads will become more difficult, as lead generators can only gain consent for a single seller at a time.
The rule will go into effect on January 27th, 2025.
While there are plenty of ways to comply with the FCC’s ruling, it will change the landscape of lead generation moving forward—especially for lead generators and any business reliant on third-party leads.
With data privacy concerns at an all-time high and the implementation of rules such as the FCC’s and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), trends point to the decline of third-party leads, with first-party leads becoming the best alternative.
Why first-party leads?
Unlike third-party leads sourced or bought from an external organization, first-party leads are sourced directly from your company’s channels.
As people who have directly engaged with your brand, first-party leads are the most valuable type of lead because:
- They have shown a direct interest in your company and/or product.
- They have given your company prior express written consent to contact them.
As you nurture them through the funnel by giving them more information and creating an authentic connection, first-party leads are more likely to convert than third-party leads are.
With the FCC’s impending rule, companies must consider whether the benefits of third-party outweigh the risks.
The superior strategy that most companies are leaning towards centers around first-party leads, which can be obtained through improved brand marketing.
Marketing teams should focus on driving website traffic to generate more first-party leads, which can be done in many ways, including:
- Developing high-quality content marketing that drives people to click.
- Using ads or social media to drive website traffic.
- Having a robust Google reviews presence to improve searchability.
Once customers fill out a form on your website, they become a first-party lead. You can then nurture them towards the end of the funnel.
Improving lead generation and customer engagement
Moving into 2025 and any challenges it will bring, Verse is your partner for lead generation and engagement.
Our fully-managed SMS platform automatically engages and qualifies leads with conversational AI and human concierges for quality assurance.
Through handling SMS compliance for our partner companies, our platform mitigates the risk associated with the current and future FCC rulings.
At Verse, we help you improve customer engagement and experience with:
- Fully-managed SMS at any scale with expert script design.
- Effortless, 24/7 customer engagement without any extra work or staff from your company.
- Automatic lead qualification and lead nurture for up to six months.
- Compliance enablement and guidance.
- Lead source tracking, full conversation transparency, and advanced analytics.
Learn more today or see your custom ROI with Verse using our calculator tool.
