Understanding call tracking: How do you set up call tracking to increase conversion rates?

• What is call tracking?
• What types of call tracking are there?
• How does call tracking actually work?
• How can you make the most of call tracking?
• Why is call tracking so popular?

What is call tracking?

Call tracking is becoming an ever popular tool for businesses. Call tracking allows users to identify the call source. This provides business intelligence that can assist in improving sales conversion rates.

Call tracking can help pinpoint exactly which marketing campaigns, social channels or adverts have triggered an inbound phone call. By using tracking numbers to capture detailed call data, sales, marketing and customer success, teams can optimise and measure the performance of their customer conversations.

It is often difficult to understand the source of a sales lead and how enquiries are born. Many businesses will want to understand what inspired a customer to call them. Call tracking can provide that hidden link. It is most valuable for marketing and sales teams. There are various analytical tools within Google Ad Manager, as well as within email marketing platforms, that monitor clicks and conversions.

However phone call lead sources often are left unknown. This is where call tracking comes in. Zadarma offers various types of call tracking with supported call tracking analytics, accessible via users’ personal accounts. This provides holistic call data intelligence. For instance, it can often provide an understanding around which advertising channels produce the most customer leads, enquiries and transactions.

What types of call tracking are there?

STATIC CALL TRACKING

Static call tracking is most often used for offline marketing purposes. Most commonly on a poster or signage where the number will be displayed in a static way and is a permanent fixture. The physical sign, for instance, will have its own dedicated phone number and the call tracking will automatically determine the source of where the customer saw the signage advertising the business information.

DYNAMIC CALL TRACKING

Dynamic tracking in contrast is often used across all online advertising initiatives. This often includes contextual advertising, digital banners as well as online magazines, websites and digital publications.

Dynamic call tracking is more advanced in that it often uses separate numbers assigned to each visitor. For example this could be a dedicated phone number to monitor website calls and separate phone numbers for online advertising calls. When the customer calls, the system will determine which channel source the call originated from.

Through implementing Dynamic call tracking, users are able to analyse the overall behaviour of the user on your website through implementing. This intelligence allows interested parties to understand the depth of the views, the number of visits, the source of the lead and time of the call.

You can link up Dynamic tracking to wider analytics through Google Analytics which allows users to set up goals as well as refine and optimise their campaigns more effectively through leveraging the call tracking insights.

How does call tracking actually work?

Incoming calls are typically tracked by using call tracking software solutions offered from various providers including VoIP technology solutions. 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 user journey ahead of finding the business number and making the intended call. The flow below summarises a typical call tracking process.

1. The system assigns a unique tracking number to each marketing campaign or advertisement. The potential customer sees an online advert and dials 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. In most instances this is usually someone who handles sales enquiries.
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 as well as advanced reporting capabilities and analytics. These features can provide businesses with even more call intelligence data.

How can you make the most of call tracking?

Follow these 5 simple steps to achieve call tracking effectiveness:

Step 1: Defining your objectives, goals and KPIs

Setting your objectives is a fundamental part of any successful task. It is important to isolate what you are looking to measure and what marketing channels need tracking to be implemented.

Once you know what insights you are looking for, you can work back from there. It may be that you want to simply understand the source of the call, or perhaps you wish to understand more about your target audience, such as gain demographic insights. Once you understand your objectives, you can set up your goals and key performance indicators from there.

Step 2: Purchase and set up your call tracking phone number

VoIP providers offer a range of call tracking numbers to purchase. These are often unique phone numbers which you can pair to a specific location or a marketing campaign or marketing source.

Zadarma offers a simple call tracking service that allows you to pair a unique number to a marketing channel. This allows you to evaluate the effectiveness of different advertising strategies, exploring ROI of advertising spend across different media channels. It analyses the number of incoming calls (phone numbers are assigned to the advertising channels) and shows additional call data and client sessions on your website.

Step 3: Set up call routing

Call routing is the process of sending incoming phone calls to the right person or team. Zadarma also offers call routing. This allows users to set up call tracking rules to forward or route the call onto a specific call agent.

There are different routing options ranging from sequential routing where the call is routed through a specific agent or time or geographic routing based on opening house or where the nearest office is. Call routing dramatically reduces call hold times by instantly connecting callers to an available agent or letting them schedule a callback. Because call routing connects customers to qualified agents the first time, call transfers and escalations aren’t necessary.

Step 4: Set up reporting dashboards, monitor & optimise

Call tracking unlocks various avenues of data insight. The best way to capture these is through setting up sales call tracking report analytics. You can enable various performance indicators including the following to monitor and optimise how well your call tracking strategy is going:

• Call volume tracking filtering by media channel and marketing campaign
• Call conversion rate tracking
• Average call handling time
• Customer call satisfaction level (score giving after an ended call)

The beauty of call tracking is that it is a living system. Users can review which campaigns and channels produce the best leads and test and learn campaigns, optimising call-flow and workflow routing, call greetings, and general settings as your volume grows.

Step 5: Setting up call tracking integrations

Call tracking operates at its best when additional software and tools are integrated around it. For instance Zadarma’s call tracking solution integrated with a range of call management tools. If users register with Zadarma’s call tracking tool, users also gain access to Zadarma free tools.

This includes access to the PBX phone system, Teamsale CRM, and additional call performance services such as call forwarding. CRM integration enables more effective data analysis. Some businesses will use messaging apps to send important alerts to agents for example, concerning missed calls.

Zadarma’s call tracking solution is equally integrated with external partner tools such as popular CRMs (ZohoCRM, Salesforce), as well as messaging apps (Slack, Telegram, Facebook Messenger).

Why is call tracking so popular?

Call tracking provides valuable insights that can supercharge how your business operates and interacts with customers. By understanding the source and quality of calls, managers can make data validated decisions to improve business operations, optimising business performance whilst enriching return on investment.

It is proven that customers continue to actively engage with organisations via the telephone. A phone call enquiry is one that will come with higher purchase intent when compared to a completely remote digital enquiry. Businesses can ensure that they make call leads more effective through introducing a call tracking system.

This technology is unlocking hidden secrets that allow managers to understand the most effective sales and marketing channels. This results in improved sales and marketing channels, larger sales pipelines and higher sales conversion rates.

Zadarma offers a free call tracking system, which takes a matter of minutes to set up. The only condition is that you need to connect virtual numbers (which you wish to use for tracking) for at least three months.

For a dynamic call tracking, you need to connect at least 2 phone numbers. If you would like to understand how to set up a virtual number and call tracking then simply find more information on the call tracking webpage.