26

Jun

Publishers and Online Merchants Should Track Phone Call Statistics as Diligently as They Track Their Web Stats

Posted by: Jeremy Reither

Anyone in marketing knows that the beauty of the marketing online is that you can measure and quantify the success of your marketing efforts. You can tell when people are visiting your website, where they’re coming from, how long they’re staying, and how often they take the action you want them to take (whether it’s filling out a lead form or buying a product). It’s all there, all the information you need to figure out whether your online marketing efforts are working.

Of course these types of metrics aren’t only available on the internet. Telephony services have long been touting the benefits of trackable phone calls, too. Some call tracking vendors offer services that allow you to track many of the same metrics you might track with your website analytics software: the source of the call (i.e.: which marketing campaign), the duration of the call, the geographic location of the caller, etc. Many of these services offer a ‘reverse lookup’ feature, meaning if the caller is listed you can get his/her name and address. What’s even better is that these calls can be recorded for quality control purposes.

Now if you’re a company that is purely web-based, you may not care much about phone call tracking. But if you are in an industry in which getting a customer on the phone is a key part of the sales cycle, then call tracking is for you. There is no better way to know which of your marketing efforts are yielding you the most calls. YellowPage companies might ‘guarantee’ you a certain number of calls per month, say, but how do you really know which calls came from which ad campaign? No, asking your customers where they found your number is not the method you want to rely on.

The great part of all this is how the two technologies (web analytics and phone call tracking) can be used together:

Affiliate Marketing: Have a different phone number display on your website (dynamically) based on which affiliate referred a visitor to you. The appropriate phone number can be chosen and displayed automatically using ‘phone number lookup’ code (i.e.: JavaScript) that may be provided by your service provider. Whereas now you may be unable to display a phone number on your website’s affiliate landing pages, with this method affiliates can be credited with phone call leads!

E-mail marketing: Use trackable phone numbers AND trackable URL’s in your e-mail marketing messages to get a comprehensive view of the success of your e-mail marketing campaign. You can get all the statistics you want about users who clicks on the links in the e-mail from your web analytics, and all the statistics about people who picked up the phone and called through your phone call tracking analytics. Many telephony service providers offer ‘click-to-call’ or ‘call-me-now’ features which you can also use in your marketing e-mails. This service allows prospects to have your agents call them by simply clicking a button and entering their phone number.

Of course you can use phone call tracking with traditional media as well, to help determine what is working, and what is not. Use distinct phone numbers for TV ads, radio ads, billboards, and business cards, and you will soon see that analysis of your traditional marketing channels doesn’t have to be guess work anymore.

Some companies offering these types of call tracking services include:

CallSource – Great entry level pricing ($89/month for a single line), incredibly helpful sales staff, and decent on-demand reporting on their website. They offer call-me-now feature at an additional cost. Reverse lookup and call recording is provided for all calls, free of charge.

CallBright – Packages start around $1,000 per month and include potentially dozens of phone lines.

WhosCalling – This service provider has a full bevy of services – all of the ones mentioned above – but are considerably more expensive than CallSource and VoiceStar. They also offer outbound call tracking, which most other vendors do not.

VoiceStar – Has a pretty impressive user interface and reporting system. They offer dynamic number display for websites, as discussed above, and can offer pretty competitive pricing. Packages start around $100 per month. I ended up choosing Voicestar for a recent campaign and have been pleased with their offerings, including private labeling of the account (for marketing agencies), useful reporting, and a relatively easy to use interface. Voicestar allows you to port over phone numbers you already have track them as you do numbers issued by the system. And if for any reason you leave Voicestar any numbers you use are yours to keep. I was told by one of their competitors that the Voicestar reporting interface was slow, and it is. For the low-volume campaign I’m running it isn’t that big of a deal, but for high volume campaigns it might be an issue. On the plus side technical support has been responsive with the few questions I’ve had, and overall I am happy with the service.

Others call tracking service providers worth looking into include CallCommand and CaptureTheCall.