Talking Leads

SpeechWorks, a company that develops speech recognition systems to answer incoming calls, has generated about 6,000 leads with its first multi-pronged direct marketing campaign.

The Boston-based firm has spent about $2 million since kicking off the DM effort this summer, said Lauren Richman, director of corporate marketing.

To spark interest among Fortune 1000 companies and attendance at Web seminars, SpeechWorks has been sending out small quantities of postcards and self-mailers to top executives and technical staffers. The primary source of names for the mailings were subscriber files from vertical trade magazines such as Global Telephony and Call Center Management.

In the same publications, direct response space ads were placed, showing a blurred photo of a hand ready to push a number on a telephone keypad. The copy reads