Are You Betting On The Best Practices For Reaching Franchise Prospects?
By: Michael Alston for Franchise Insights
January 29, 2025 – Franchise prospects want to know who is calling before accepting a call. More than thirty-seven percent (37.2%) of respondents indicated that they preferred to be emailed first as an initial contact by a franchise they have expressed interest in, according to the recent December 2024 Franchise Insights Mystery Shopping survey.
After email, another 30.2% of respondents indicated the desire for a phone call for an initial contact from the franchise. This order of first preference is consistent with our five prior years of monthly “mystery shopping” surveys.
Further, in forty-five out of fifty-nine monthly surveys (76.2%) in the last five years by FranchiseInsights.com, email was the clear preference for initial contact. In most of the other fourteen surveys, email either tied with text messaging, or text messaging were slightly ahead.l
The optimal order for initially following up with franchise prospects involves considering the odds. Segments of the pool of franchise leads will prefer one of the nine permutations in order of three contact methods (email, voice and text).
In the most recent data, almost half (46.5%) of respondents said receiving a text was the second most preferred choice for initial contact about a franchise they are interested in learning more about, consistent with most of the prior five years of monthly surveys.
Getting a text was least preferred as first contact at 30.2%. Given these clear preferences, the likely most productive sequence is email, a follow-up text, and then a phone call.
Almost 54% of respondents said they were “unlikely or very unlikely to accept a phone call from a franchise” if they had “not previously received an email or text message from that company with more information.”
Also in the same December 2024 survey, 53.5% of respondents said they were “unlikely or 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.”
So email remains the most preferred and likely most effective channel for initial contact, followed up by a text to confirm a voice call, if not accomplished in a personalized email up front.
See our resource on best practices for initial response to a franchise information inquiry for more detail.
The Franchise Insights “mystery shopping” survey is conducted monthly among aspiring business buyers inquiring about franchises at the brands of Franchise Ventures.
Franchise Ventures 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, January 29th, 2025.