Field Outreach: Making Direct Selling Communications as Easy as Possible with Digital Technology

The problem of communications is immensely important for direct selling. It is not a one-time effort; it’s an ongoing commitment to improvement. 

At a moment of massive global expansion in the industry, communications help ensure compliance and update distributors on company news quickly – among other hugely important uses.

Yet how do you make sure that distributors see your messages? 

Too many direct selling organizations use email, a profoundly unreliable technology, for crucial communications. 

What if your organization’s email address gets blocked, or marked as spam or promotion? What if the distributor never checks her email or checks the wrong folder? 

Relying on email in this way is a great way to guarantee organizational inefficiency.

The Dangerous Problem of Undelivered Communications

At a time when direct selling revenues in the United States have faced trouble, the field is only continuing to become more globalized. 

The global direct selling market is forecasted to increase by a CAGR of 6.4% from 2023 to 2030. 

This means more distributors to bring under the umbrella of a single brand identity, while targeting communications based on segmentation to make sure that each message from HQ is culturally and linguistically understandable for the distributor, as well as relevant.

Direct selling communications must also be easy to find. Imagine that you need to send distributors a vital message about new branding guidelines – but for 75% of them, the email ends up in their “Promotions” folder, so they never see it! 

Many of them might not be technologically inclined and not check their email at all. Others’ email accounts might mark your communication as spam. The results of this error could be disastrous. And it happens shockingly often, even with major companies.

Far too many direct selling companies struggle with the transmission of messages to the field – the question of whether or not their distributors will receive these messages, then readily be able to find and read them. 

Even leading direct selling organizations, many of whom still use emails or text messages to deliver crucial information, must contend with this question. 

How can you have an effective direct selling organization when you can’t even guarantee the timely delivery of communications to the field? You can’t. 

Digital Communications Tools for the Modern Distributor 

As so often in our more interconnected, global world, this problem has a digital solution. Performance Enablement Platforms (PEPs) for direct selling centralize and consolidate the entire distributor experience – the full sales and recruiting lifecycle – in a single, mobile-friendly platform. This includes (particularly in the case of Rallyware) aspects such as:

• Sales Incentivization
• Learning & Development
• CRM
• Integration with External Systems (e.g., Commissions Software)

Thus distributors treat this platform as their go-to technology platform for building their direct selling business. 

On one level this is simply the kind of technology direct selling companies need to adapt to the world today, where people check their phones an average of 144 times per day. 

On another level this technology provides distributors an all-in-one hub for their business-building needs, personalized to their goals and progress, while also helping organizations save money and drive revenue by consolidating multiple tools in one platform and unlocking distributor potential. (Rallyware, for instance, drives sales growth +53%, recruiting +67% and year-one retention +141%.)

Global Sales Force Results 2022-23: An All-in-One Hub for Communications

What is the relevance here for communications? 

Rallyware’s 2022-23 Global Sales Force Report shows that in 2022, globally, 212 million push notifications were delivered to field members via the mobile app; and of these, 97 million led to business-building actions. 

That means nearly 50% of push notifications led to actions. Distributors are engaged with their PEPs – overall, they are very active users, and only becoming more so, with 2022 seeing +15% more login sessions per distributor over 2021.

Thus, if direct selling organizations use PEPs to transmit communications, these are much likelier to be opened than if they end up in an email account that the distributor barely checks. 

Rallyware’s PEP offers a number of communications tools, each of which makes it easier to communicate in targeted ways with the global field:

• Segmented and Targeted Communications: HQ can send the right messages to a specific segment of their field hierarchy, en masse, instantly – even specifying message recipients by geographical region. 
• Universal Communications: HQ can send detailed messages to the entire field at once.
• Distributor Messaging: The field can communicate among themselves, including posting questions on message boards and forging relationships digitally.

This means that distributors receive messages on the same platform where they conduct the vast majority of their business-building activities, rather than having to find (and often missing) messages in their emails and other communications tools. 

And the messages are guaranteed to be delivered, because they use the digital interface relied on by all distributors for their business-building activities – not a separate email client that your company has no control over.

Ultimately, PEP provides an easy-to-access hub for vital communications from HQ to ensure that the right distributors read timely updates ASAP. The importance of this for large direct selling organizations is difficult to overestimate as the field becomes more global and rules, practices, and products change quickly.

Click here to learn more about Rallyware’s communications tools, and the all-in-one PEP for distributors that drives sales and cut costs for leading companies like Nu Skin, Avon, and Beautycounter.