Getting A Hold of Call Tracking Metrics

With so many opportunities for marketers to serve ads to potential audiences and drive them to convert through landing pages or phone calls, call tracking represents an advancement in the art of attribution that is a critical component of the modern marketing tech stack. 

How Call Tracking Works

Call tracking can inform agencies and brands on which marketing and advertising campaigns are causing people to answer the calls to action and pick up the phone.

Call tracking isn’t a new attribution tool to marketers, being historically used in out-of-home ad campaigns such as billboards and/or direct response campaigns like mailers, flyers, and business cards. 

Call tracking is typically implemented into digital advertising efforts through a process called dynamic number insertion (DNI). DNI generates unique call tracking numbers for every iteration of an ad, giving marketers the ability to deploy unique tracking parameters and connect conversions from their campaigns.

Some call tracking solutions use speech analytics technology within their software, which analyzes spoken conversations to classify call outcomes like purchases, appointments, or applications. This conversation intelligence is then pushed into the marketing platforms that your business uses providing real-time call data that is accurate and actionable.

With the ability to record calls, provide dynamically swappable local, tool-free, and international numbers, deliver custom notifications through email or SMS, and provide advanced reporting, call tracking technology has evolved from vanity numbers on static ads to an indispensable piece of tech for marketing.

How To Report on Call Tracking Metrics

By connecting with Google analytics, marketing automation platforms, and customer relationship management (CRM) tools, call tracking provides attribution and closes the loop on ad effectiveness. Call tracking can also unlock new understanding of keyword strategies, as well as visibility into channel performance.

Call tracking metrics that can help optimize your campaigns include, but are not limited to: lead source, time and date, purchase urgency, geographic locations, product or service interest, revenue generated from calls, barriers to purchase, and sales performance. 

Insights from phone conversations can be used to optimize marketing campaigns in four steps:

1. Track and attribute calls to previous customer touchpoints
2. Unify caller data from multiple sources in your CRM
3. Analyze phone calls to classify drivers, outcomes, and behaviors
4. Push conversation intelligence out to your marketing tech

Call tracking illuminates blind spots in attribution models in digital marketing, allowing you to see which web pages, campaigns, and keywords drive high-quality leads. A robust call tracking strategy also gives your marketing team the ability to allocate more spend to marketing that drives ROI and curtails wasted spend. 

Connecting Results to Call Tracking Metrics

If you receive 1,000 calls a day, but only 100 of those calls lead to a conversion event, how can you determine if that 10% contain high-quality prospects that might convert in a follow-up call?

Call tracking connects actions with attribution. By segmenting phone conversations into call drivers, call behaviors, and call outcomes, you can parse traffic into reportable categories, which helps create performance reports that make sense to stakeholders. 

Call Drivers

Call tracking software provides visibility into which products callers are interested in, which promotions they are responding to, and which referral channels are driving phone calls. 

Call Behaviors

With call tracking, what happens in a phone conversation between your sales reps and prospects isn’t a black box. Analysis into product experience, what information is exchanged and gathered, and if cross-selling offers are made during a phone call, can all be added to performance reports. 

Call Outcomes 

Most importantly, call tracking allows you to gather and analyze conversion information like purchases or returns, if appointments are booked, and what types of services are being activated. 

You can use call tracking to connect activities to outcomes, adding a layer of intelligence from phone conversations to your marketing performance reports which paints a holistic picture of your efforts.

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