Call Tracking

Many businesses in various industries are relying on inbound phone calls to capture leads and acquire new customers. Without being able to automatically tie these inbound calls directly to the marketing channels and digital marketing campaigns that callers were interacting with before calling your business, it might be challenging for marketers to track the effectiveness of their marketing efforts, maximize their ROI, and optimize future marketing strategies. Call tracking software can handle that challenge for businesses.

What is Call Tracking?

Call tracking is a technology that can tell how callers found a business and which specific marketing efforts led them to pick up the phone and initiate the call. Call tracking tools are particularly helpful to sales and marketing teams as they allow them to make more informed, data-driven decisions to create better customer experiences, improve their marketing initiatives, and drive more business revenue.

What is Call Tracking Software and How Does it Work?

Incoming calls are typically tracked by using call tracking software solutions delivered by numerous call tracking providers. The information collected by a tracking tool is used to help businesses evaluate the success of their marketing campaigns and get better insight into customer journey data. Below is an example of how call tracking software works:

1. The system assigns a unique tracking number to each marketing campaign or advertisement. Potential customers see an online ad and dial the number displayed.
2. An inbound call is routed to the business’s main phone line by a call tracking provider and received by a company’s representative, usually a sales rep.
3. The call tracking software captures and stores the essential call data (caller ID, call source, and other relevant data) and delivers the insights to the business.

Besides tracking call information, call tracking platforms may include a range of other features like call routing, call recording, call scoring and transcriptions of phone conversations, quality assurance monitoring, advanced reporting capabilities, AI-powered call analytics, etc. These features can provide businesses with even more call intelligence data.

Benefits of Using Call Tracking Software

Improved marketing efficiency

Call tracking tools enable marketers to get valuable insights that show what marketing channels, campaigns, and keywords are driving the most phone calls and how many of those calls come from high-quality leads. This way, marketers can have a better understanding of which marketing efforts are working and which ones are not.

More informed decision making

Call tracking enables marketers to make more informed, data-driven decisions. By tracking calls as conversions, they can easier determine the ROI of particular marketing campaigns, make informed bidding decisions on PPC campaigns, and better optimize the ad spend to reduce wasted advertising budget.

Enhanced customer experience

Advanced call tracking features like whisper messaging, call monitoring, and call recording can help customer-facing teams deliver better customer experiences. E.g., with whisper messaging, the message is played to the agent before they answer the call. That provides the agent with more context about the caller, enabling them to personalize the interaction.

What are Call Tracking Analytics and Metrics?

Call Source: Identifies the source of an inbound phone call (digital ads, offline ads, PPC campaigns, organic search, specific keywords).

Call Volumes: Measures the number of calls generated by each marketing campaign or source and shows which campaigns were more efficient.

Caller Location: Shows the geographic location of the callers, which helps determine which regions generate the most high-quality leads.

Conversion Rate: Indicates the percentage of inbound calls that resulted in a desired outcome, such as a sale, appointment booking, etc.

Visitor to Call Ratio (VCR): Measures the proportion of visitors who make a call after visiting a website and helps identify the channels that generate high-intent leads.

Call Duration per Campaign: Shows the average duration of calls generated from a specific marketing campaign or source (longer duration calls often indicate more engaged prospects).

What Business Should Use Call Tracking?

Call tracking platforms can be used by various businesses of nearly any size and industry. In general, any business that wants to seamlessly track the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns, improve their customer experience, and optimize inbound call conversions should consider implementing a call tracking solution into their business operations.

Thus, both small businesses looking to improve their local SEO campaigns and large enterprises searching for more efficient ways to track their marketing and sales data can benefit from using call tracking solutions. The particular examples of industries include marketing agencies, eCommerce businesses, financial services organizations, automotive, travel, insurance, real estate, telecom, and home service professionals, as well as those requiring HIPPA compliance (such as healthcare providers).

FAQs

What is session-level call tracking?

Session-level call tracking, also referred to as session-based call tracking, is one of the call tracking methods used by call tracking systems. With this type of call tracking, a unique phone number is assigned to every website visitor for the duration of their session. If a prospect calls a business after their session expires, the insight into the referral keyword that brought a visitor to the website is lost, which is considered a major disadvantage of this call tracking method.

What is the dynamic vs. static call tracking?

Dynamic and static call tracking are both call tracking technologies used to capture data from inbound phone calls. In the case of dynamic tracking, unique phone numbers (known as dynamic phone numbers) are assigned to each online source and then displayed to visitors based on where they are coming from (a website, a marketing campaign, a Facebook ad, etc.). With static call tracking, on the other hand, a single static phone number is displayed to visitors and doesn’t change. The downside to this call tracking method is that it doesn’t track the source of the phone leads and provides only limited call metrics.

What is dynamic number insertion (DNI)?

Dynamic number insertion is a call tracking feature that attributes a unique phone number (dynamic phone number) to each source you wish to track. E.g., website visitors who click on Google Ads will see a different phone number than those who come to the website through organic search results. Thus, DNI carries all the information to track the source of visitors and determine which marketing initiatives drive more high-quality leads. Dynamic number insertion can also be used to track the effectiveness of offline campaigns.