Scope: sending one recorded message to a list, what it costs, the legal checks before you start, and what to do when it goes wrong.
Not covered: live agent calling, inbound IVR, or anything with a conversation in it.
1. Check that this is the right tool
A broadcast plays one recording to everyone who answers. No agent, no listening, no reply. Everything below follows from that.
Run these three checks before you spend anything. If any answer is no, stop here and use a dialer with agents on it.
The pattern: the person already knows who you are, and the only open question is what they should do next. Cold lists answer at two to eight in a hundred, and the other ninety-two remember your number for the wrong reason.
2. Legal pre-flight
Do this before section 3, not after. These are operating conditions, like voltage. I am not a lawyer, and the rules below are the US ones. India, the Philippines, Nigeria, the UAE and the EU each set their own.
2.1 Consent. A recorded call to a mobile needs prior consent. If the message advertises anything, the consent has to be in writing. Keep the record of how you got it.
2.2 Identification. Every message states who is calling in the opening seconds, and gives a callback number. This is 47 U.S.C. 227(d)(3)(A), and it is also the only way people know it is not a scam.
2.3 Opt-out. Marketing messages offer a keypress opt-out, and you honour it immediately. Keep the list.
2.4 Calling window. 8am to 9pm at the recipient’s local time. Not your time.
2.5 Do Not Call. Load the registry numbers you are required to suppress into the campaign’s own DNC list. The software will respect a list you give it. It does not query a national registry for you.
2.6 The customer exemption is narrower than you think. “They bought from us” does not cover a recorded marketing call to a landline.
2.7 The penalty. Under 47 U.S.C. 227(b)(3) it is $500 per call, up to $1,500 if a court finds it was deliberate, and every call counts separately. Five thousand messages without consent is $2.5 million on paper. Cases settle lower. “We bought the list” has never been a defence.
2.8 Synthetic voice is not a loophole. The FCC treats AI-generated voices as artificial voices, so a cloned voice is the same rule with a worse paper trail.
3. Procedure: send a campaign
3.1 Install the broadcast edition. Voice Broadcast is a separate download from the dialer. Both can sit on the same machine.
3.2 Point it at your SIP trunk. Enter the server, username, password and the caller ID you want to display.
Expected: the line registers, and a test call to your own mobile rings with the right number on screen.
3.3 Import the list. CSV or Excel. Format the phone column as text first, or every leading zero disappears. Remove duplicates before importing, not after.
3.4 Record or load the audio. Ecsow records from a microphone, or takes a WAV or MP3. There is no text to speech, so each language needs its own recording and its own speaker. Have the person who actually answers your phones do it. A headset in a quiet room beats a studio voice that sounds like an advert.
3.5 Write to length. Thirty seconds is about 75 words. That buys four things and no more: who you are, why you are calling, what to do next, and the number to call.
Hello, this is Northside Dental calling about your appointment on Tuesday the fourteenth at three fifteen. If that still works, you do not need to do anything. To move it, call us on 555 0134. That is 555 0134. To stop these reminders, press nine.
Three things that script does right, and each one is a rule. It names the caller in the first three seconds. It says what to do if nothing is wrong. And it reads the number twice, because nobody writes down a number read once at speed.
3.6 Set the campaign parameters. Section 4 lists the ones that change results. Start with the recommended values there and change one at a time.
3.7 Turn on transfer or callback if you want replies. Campaign Settings, then Call Transfer. Enter the number that should ring when someone presses the key. Test it from a mobile before the campaign runs, because a transfer to a number your carrier cannot reach fails silently.
3.8 Send it to yourself first. Then to twenty numbers you control. Listen to the whole thing on a real phone line, not on the machine that recorded it. This is the step everybody skips and everybody regrets.
3.9 Start the campaign. Lines go off-hook in sequence. Watch the first fifty attempts before you walk away.
3.10 Export the results. Reporting is a file, not a live dashboard. Decide what you are measuring before you send: completed plays, keypresses, callbacks, and the numbers that failed.
4. Parameters that change results
Only six settings matter for most campaigns. Change one at a time, or you will not know which one moved the number.
| Setting | Effect | Start at |
|---|---|---|
| Concurrent lines | throughput, and nothing else | 10, if the list is under 20,000 |
| Retry attempts | reach, at the cost of repeat calls | 2 |
| Calling window | who is awake when you call | 9am to 8pm local |
| Answering machine detection | whether machines get the message too | on, leave message on |
| VAD sensitivity | how fast it decides a machine answered | default, raise only if you drop real people |
| Campaign DNC list | who is never dialled | load it before the first send |
5. Cost per campaign
Three lines of arithmetic, and the first one does most of the work.
Minutes = contacts x script seconds / 60.
Carrier cost = minutes x your per-minute rate.
Software = lines x monthly price, regardless of volume.
The carrier rate is the variable. At half a cent a minute, which is the cheap end of US domestic SIP, the message length alone does this to 10,000 contacts:
| Script length | Minutes | Carrier cost |
|---|---|---|
| 15 seconds | 2,500 | $12.50 |
| 30 seconds | 5,000 | $25.00 |
| 45 seconds | 7,500 | $37.50 |
| 60 seconds | 10,000 | $50.00 |
So a monthly programme of 20,000 messages at 30 seconds, on ten lines: $50 of carrier minutes, $50 of software, about $10 of numbers. $110 a month, roughly half a cent a message.
Compare that with reaching the same thousand people by voice, and the difference is not the dialer. It is the wages.
| 1,000 messages | 1,000 conversations | |
| Carrier minutes | $2.50 | $15 |
| Software and numbers | $3 | $7 |
| Agent wages | $0 | $400 to $1,800 |
| Total | $5.50 | $422 to $1,822 |
| Can answer a question | no | yes |
Break-even. Cost of one avoided no-show divided by cost per message. A $40 no-show against half a cent a message breaks even at about 7,300 messages. If your numbers are better than that, a broadcast pays. If they are much worse, the list is the problem, not the tool.
6. Throughput
Hours = contacts x 40 seconds / 3600 / lines. Forty seconds covers ring, message and hang-up for a 30-second script.
That puts 10,000 messages at 111 hours on one line, 11 hours on ten, and three and a half hours on thirty-two. Lines are the only lever that matters here, and they are shared: twenty lines running a broadcast leaves twelve for your agents.
7. Operating limits
| Maximum concurrent lines | 32 |
| Platform | Windows desktop, one machine. The machine must stay awake. |
| Audio input | Microphone recording, WAV or MP3 upload |
| Text to speech | None. Each language is a separate recording. |
| Keypress handling | One level: transfer to a number, or queue a callback. Not a multi-level menu tree. |
| Do Not Call | Loads a list you supply. Does not query a national registry. |
| Reporting | Exportable file. No live dashboard, no automatic A/B testing. |
| Support | Email, usually answered within a day. Nobody is awake at 8pm for a bad list. |
8. Fault finding
| Symptom | Probable cause | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Every call fails immediately | SIP registration rejected | Re-enter credentials, check the port and the caller ID your provider allows |
| Calls connect but nobody hears anything | Audio format the carrier will not carry | Re-export the recording as a standard WAV and test one number |
| First words are cut off | Script starts at full volume with no lead-in | Add half a second of silence at the head of the file |
| Answer rate falls over a week | Caller ID flagged by carriers | Rotate numbers, keep each under about 100 calls a day, and clean the list |
| Press-1 never reaches anyone | Transfer number unset, or unreachable from your carrier | Test the transfer destination from a mobile before the next send |
| Campaign stops halfway | Machine slept, or the network dropped | Disable sleep, keep it plugged in, and restart from the failure list |
9. Pilot before you commit
Send to fifty of your own customers first. It costs about a quarter and it answers the only question that matters: did anyone do what the message asked.
Play the recording to somebody who did not write it. If they ask who it was from, your first three seconds are broken. If they ask what they were supposed to do, the middle is.
The Voice Broadcast trial stops at 20 contacts per campaign, which is enough to hear your own voice on a real phone line. Licences start at $10 a month for one line, $50 for ten, $100 for thirty-two. No contract, 15-day refund.
If you have not chosen a carrier yet, the per-minute arithmetic is here. For the live-calling half of the same job, this explains why a conversation costs forty cents and a message costs half of one.
10. Questions from the field
How much does voice broadcast cost?
About half a cent per message. 20,000 thirty-second messages a month comes to roughly $110: $50 of carrier minutes, $50 for ten lines of software, and $10 for numbers. A longer recording costs more, because you pay per minute.
Is voice broadcast legal?
Yes, with rules. In the US, a recorded call to a mobile needs consent first, and marketing messages need written consent. Every message must say who is calling, and calls are limited to 8am to 9pm local time. The penalty is $500 per call, up to $1,500 if it was deliberate.
Can a broadcast transfer the call to a person?
Yes, with press-1 transfer. The recording asks the person to press a key and the call goes to a number you choose. Keypress callback works the same way and puts the number in a queue for an agent. Without one of those, a broadcast can only leave a message.
How long does it take to send 10,000 messages?
About three and a half hours on 32 lines, eleven hours on ten, and nearly five days on one line. Speed comes from the number of lines, not from the software.