COVID has caused a dramatic cultural shift, which started through necessity but has become sustained as businesses have adapted how and where they function. The shift in working patterns has driven a huge digital transformation. Some changes are here to stay and, consequently, we all need to develop new best practices and workplace etiquette for this new era of flexible, hybrid, working.
What is hybrid working?
Hybrid working is a form of flexible working that allows employees to split their time between the workplace and working remotely, usually from home. It isn’t a new phenomenon, but its prevalence has been turbocharged by the pandemic and the subsequent, necessity, of the remote working experiment.
A wide range of research, including a YouGov survey and CIPD research, indicate that, post-pandemic, most workers want to continue to work from home at least some of the time. There is even talk of having the right to work from home enshrined into UK law.
The CIPD’s Embedding New Ways of Working post-pandemic report highlighted that 40% of employers expect more than half their workforce to work from home on a regular basis after the pandemic has ended. This is in stark contrast to data from the Office of National Statistics, prior to COVID-19 which showed only around 5% of the workforce worked from home. While some employees want to work from home all the time after the pandemic, most would prefer a balance where they are in the office for some of the week and at home for the remainder. This has led to the use of the term hybrid working. Many organisations are now considering what ‘hybrid’ means for them, how they might meet employee demands, and what will need to be in place for these new ways of working to be effective. For more information on this take a look at this infographic from Webex.
For most organisations, the introduction of hybrid working will require a significant culture shift, establishing new ways of working with associated policies and practices. For marketing services agencies, it is an opportunity to assess current systems and approaches to ascertain whether this next normal can be treated the same as the old days, or whether it needs a new approach altogether.
One thing is for sure, hybrid working is here to stay, it’s time to embrace it and make it work for you.
Hybrid work is about organisations adapting to how their teams work best and creating experiences that reach (and suit) everyone. Hybrid working will change organisations’ internal structures and strategies so it is imperative that marketing agencies understand the changes and develop blueprints on how best they can continue to access individuals and target prospects with marketing campaigns and content.
In recent times marketing agencies have contacted their prospects via a multi-touch marketing approach utilising telemarketing, digital marketing, events, social media, and direct mail. During the pandemic everything except events has continues to be used. Whilst face to face events are slowly starting again, we are a long way off these becoming commonplace again and it is still crucially important to be able to reach contacts remotely. A substantial number of people are still working from home and, if the surveys and reports are to be believed, will continue to do so under hybrid working. As an industry we must develop new remote working best practices to be able to grow and flourish in the hybrid era.
Telemarketing has long been one of the most consistent, and successful, methods of contacting prospects and one of the key factors of the hybrid era will be the ability to bolster your telemarketing outreach capabilities. Switchboard numbers are no longer of significant use, and in any case were notoriously hard to crack. Today's word demands you contact your prospects via direct dials, mobiles, social profiles, and email addresses. It's a much more personal level of contact and therefore one where you need to tread carefully as personal data is safely guarded by GDPR, but if you have your GDPR compliancy ducks in a row, you can collect and use the type of data which will give you access to the right prospects even in the hybrid era.
Getting it right in the hybrid era
Choose a marketing agency that can provide you with the right level and type of granular contact data to ensure you can target the right prospects. Top level contact data is now essentially obsolete. The right agency will already have the data you need. ProspectaBase has all the data required to equip your marketing campaigns with accurate company and contact data, to maximise lead generation efforts and drive results. With a particular emphasis on direct dial and mobile numbers, our data gets you to the heart of the issue by putting you in direct contact with those working from home. ProspectaBase’s database contains 57,000 direct dials and mobile numbers. These contacts can be segmented by a multitude of filters, to ensure the right audience demographic is being targeted, i.e. vertical(s), sizing by network component, geography and/or current vendor installation.
Additionally, ProspectaBase gives you access to a database of over 300,000 contact names and over 90,000 UK based businesses/organisations. Using ProspectaBase you can select your target audience with granular segmentation capabilities, drilling down using organisational infrastructure criteria such as number of users, physical server volume, virtual server volume, total data stored, and installation data. Once you've created your target list you can rest safe in the knowledge that contacting individuals on that list is going to be straightforward as the contact data contains many direct dial and mobile numbers. No more wallowing at the switchboard – go direct with the right data from the right database.
The benefits of ProspectaBase for the hybrid era include:
Mobile and direct dial numbers – crucial with switchboards notoriously difficult to reach the right decision maker
Email deliverability accuracy and cleanliness of data – to ensure emails can be sent to targeted buying personas (alongside other targeted efforts such as InMail and leaving voicemails via the mobile/direct dial calls)
Targeting end users from all angles and with relevant messaging – Prospectabase installation data can help you deliver relevant outbound messaging based on what technology end users are already investing in and using
For us, the hybrid era is an opportunity, and we want to turn that into an opportunity for you. We have the data you need to help your businesses thrive. Hybrid working is the future. Make sure you’re on board.