The inbound call has become a powerful force for businesses of all stripes. Technology has made it easier than ever to research businesses and call them in an instant. As more consumers make these calls, companies have come to rely on inbound call tracking software.
Why are features like call tracking software, interactive voice response (IVR), and automatic call distribution vital to businesses today? One of the principal reasons is that inbound calls continue to be consumers’ preferred way to get in touch when making a purchase.
A study from Google shows that 61% of mobile users will call a business when they are in the purchase stage of the sales funnel. The Harvard Business Review says customers are still interested in talking to a live agent when considering goods and services.
This article explains what businesses need to know about inbound call tracking, the standard features of call tracking services, and how different industries can benefit from implementing a call tracking solution to get the most out of their prospects.
What Is Inbound Call Tracking Software?
Call tracking software enables brands to collect data from inbound and outbound calls that can be used to identify marketing campaigns or tactics that prompted the calls and assess their outcomes. For instance, when a consumer dials up a call and contacts a company that uses sales call tracking, the software helps to determine which ads, keywords, or web pages prompted a call.
In other words, call tracking services can grant access to data like phone numbers, call records, sources, ad campaigns, call duration, paid search keywords, mediums, etc.
Once a company representative is on the phone, the sales call tracking software uses conversational analytics to examine the language used during the call to determine whether a customer purchased something, received a quote, or scheduled an appointment — any action your business considers a conversion.
Then, companies can use the captured data to get marketing attribution and optimize their digital efforts or ad mediums to bring in more high-intent customers and inbound calls.
There’s no denying that the data trail can go cold right after a prospective customer picks up the phone. Therefore, brands equipped with the phone call tracking solution can prove their marketing ROI and pinpoint specific efforts that bring in the most sales calls.
Features of Inbound Call Tracking Software
Companies considering call tracking software should also be aware of the many different inbound call tracking tools. For instance, brands can use IVR and call routing to manage their inbound calls better.
These features will greet your callers with a customized message and interact with them to get the information necessary to direct them to the correct destination. This process lowers callers’ wait times and allows businesses to handle calls more efficiently.
Let’s examine in more detail the most common features of sales call trackers and call intelligence platforms like Phonexa’s Call Logic. Here are the six features to pay attention to when choosing the right software out of many call tracking solutions available on the market:
- Dynamic number insertion (DNI): Prospective customers often have online and offline interactions with businesses that use DNI to attribute inbound calls and outcomes to specific marketing campaigns. DNI implies utilizing different telephone tracking numbers like local, vanity, and toll-free phone numbers. This way, every call tracking number helps brands connect website visitors’ sources and sessions and understand how organic, paid search, and referral traffic influence call conversions.
- Conversation intelligence: As an intuitive solution and feature, conversation intelligence eliminates the need for manual call transcriptions and analysis. With the right online call tracking software and a suite of marketing automation solutions that Phonexa offers, businesses can automate content analysis, understand each caller’s needs, and identify significant trends among the target audience.
- Call recording: Companies equipped with the call recording feature can record calls automatically and save them with the help of the call log software for future reference. On top of that, brands can use call recordings to glean additional information and insights from phone conversations with consumers.
- Predictive modeling: Small businesses and enterprises can leverage the power of the predictive modeling feature. Apart from its ability to partly replace the team of analysts, it helps to automate a company’s lead generation process based on information gathered from previous conversions and buying habits.
As part of sales call software, predictive modeling also demonstrates the potential of marketing decisions that revolve around industry specifics and the process of designing the buyer’s journey.
- Integration opportunities: Even if your call intelligence platform has its call analytics, tracking, and recording software, its ability to integrate with other martech tools can improve your brand’s ability to collect, analyze, and interpret data to gain essential business insights.
The best call tracking software will offer various integration options and opportunities to work with multiple business solutions for customer engagement. Such integrations can vary from DNI-compatible website-building platforms to conversion rate optimization tools.
- Lead management: Strategic lead management and distribution help businesses improve conversion, retention, and sales rates. For instance, brands can segment leads based on their interests in specific products, geographic location, account size, etc. On top of that, they can leverage fair lead distribution by using specific rotation methods or lead assignment rules.
As mentioned before, most call tracking vendors offer companies toll-free and vanity numbers that can be used to drive and track their inbound calls.
These call tracking numbers help with driving inbound call traffic because they are free to call and are often easier to remember. Besides, a vanity phone number can become part of marketing campaigns that raise brand awareness, like “1800-CARS-NOW.”
Naturally, businesses can choose from various phone call tracking tools that vary based on the call tracking vendors and features they offer. Finding the right call tracking software for the business is one of the most critical decisions a business owner or a marketing executive can make.
How Does Inbound Call Tracking Software Work?
Calls tracking software provides brands with analytics that link inbound phone calls with the online and offline channels that prompted those calls. It also enables detailed attribution, allowing marketers to better understand keyword, medium, and campaign performance.
Many companies rely on phone calls as a principal channel for driving and converting high-intent leads. But, in many cases, inbound calls are generated by offline marketing efforts, while consumers typically use their smartphones to reach out to a business.
Tracking sales calls enables brands to bridge the gaps in their marketing strategy, connect online to offline buying journeys, and understand how calls fit into their marketing ecosystem.
Suppose you’re looking to launch call campaigns, track caller ID, define sources, learn about the customer’s website journey, and capitalize on captured data. In that case, it’s crucial to understand how to track a call and make the most of the call tracking systems.
How to Track Phone Calls With a Call Tracking System
After choosing a proper call tracker software, brands must enable DNI to track calls efficiently. When capturing call data through DNI, businesses should focus on the following factors:
- Invest in ad campaigns that bring in more high-intent callers
- Optimize products based on the landing and other web pages that generate the most calls
- Create content like webinars and blog posts that generate leads and inbound calls
Let’s take a closer look at dynamic call tracking in action. Here’s how it works:
Source: Phonexa
Ultimately, DNI allows understanding where the inbound phone calls originate and improving various aspects of your marketing strategy, ad campaigns, and business offerings.
Why Use Inbound Call Tracking Software?
Businesses have much to gain when they use inbound call tracking software.
To start, you can use inbound call tracking to get critical insight into the attribution for all your marketing efforts.
Attribution will show you how well each of your marketing initiatives is performing by showing you how many inbound calls you’ve received from your channels. It will clarify which marketing efforts are working successfully and which are falling below expectations.
Did you miss our recent article on the importance of call tracking in lead generation? Check it out here and learn how you can put sales data to work to improve conversion rates.
Sales call tracking and analytics provide an even more granular look at all your inbound calls, so you know where calls originated from and the demographics of your callers. These details are invaluable when planning your next campaign because they will let you know who you should target.
Other inbound call tracking tools can help your business when using software for call tracking. Using an IVR and call routing as part of your sales calls tracking gives you an efficient way to manage your inbound calls.
Callers are greeted by the IVR and provide responses that are useful in directing them to the right representative. Then call routing ensures the caller is connected to the first person available who can help them, all while providing the representative with all the relevant information the caller provided the IVR.
These inbound call tracking tools improve your call workflow and customer service experience.
Industries That Benefit From Inbound Call Tracking
Inbound call tracking is valuable to any business that uses lead generation marketing and manages a medium or large volume of inbound calls.
There are a significant number of businesses that can benefit from using a call tracking solution. Some include real estate agents, educational institutions, and home services. One of the industries that have seen measurable benefits to using call tracking software is financial services.
Finance
Companies that provide financial services like mortgages, accounting, personal loans, or other types of loans can use call tracking tools to create hyper-targeted campaigns that allow for improving their marketing ROI. The success of these businesses is a testament to the near-universal impact that inbound call tracking can have on companies looking to drive and manage more inbound calls.
Insurance
Insurance companies can benefit from implementing inbound call tracking as part of an all-in-one marketing automation solution. It will enable insurance agents to capitalize on the features of inbound call tracking and lead management solutions while optimizing their marketing efforts and getting quality insurance leads. In a nutshell, when agents can drive more high-intent leads, they can underwrite more policies.
There’s no denying that insurance carriers are in a great position to implement various call tracking marketing tactics. This way, they can ensure effective call tracking for websites and other channels and utilize online tracking phone numbers and other complementary tools to grow their business.
Healthcare
Companies operating in the healthcare industry can adjust their campaigns to reach more prospective patients using inbound call tracking. The right call tracking solution will give healthcare marketers the tools to be HIPAA compliant, like advanced call recordings that allow PHI (Protected Health Information) to be redacted from call recordings.
These tools allow healthcare marketers to improve their marketing initiatives without compromising patient confidentiality.
Home Services
Home service marketers must create a unified customer experience by providing existing and prospective clients with multiple quotes and distributing leads via mobile, email, and other channels.
Implementing inbound call tracking and analytics can bridge the gaps between offline and online initiatives, identify the digital channels that generate the most phone calls, and determine the ad campaigns that fall flat or require additional investment.
Fill in the Gaps With Call Tracking
Businesses often need help connecting online to offline buying journeys and bridging the gap in their marketing data and attribution. With inbound call tracking software, brands can eliminate the blind spots in their marketing strategies, elevate customer experience, improve engagement, and boost sales rates.
Ultimately, managing and tracking calls provide the visibility every company requires to understand, analyze, and optimize the entire customer journey across offline and digital channels.
Schedule a consultation to learn how Phonexa’s inbound call tracking software can help you capture and capitalize on call data, bring in more high-intent leads conversions, and streamline your ad campaigns.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does tracking mean in business?
Phone call trackers use tracking as a marketing technique that enables businesses to assess call campaigns’ performance using various tools. Simply put, tracking evaluates the effectiveness of ad campaigns aimed at bringing in call and web leads.
How does tracking work for inbound calls?
When it comes to tracking inbound calls, the vendors offer specific tools like DNI, IVR, automatic call distribution, and call recording to track sales calls and then analyze and save call transcriptions with the help of the call log software. They also use analytics to assess essential call data, show how effective the ad campaigns are, and yield valuable information that enables lead scoring, buyer sentiment analysis, and more.
How long does it take to track a call?
Call intelligence platforms typically do not set a time limit for the caller to stay on the line to track phone call location and capture other essential call data. The call is traced to its origin as soon as it is placed.
What is call tracking?
Marketing call tracking is a method used in performance marketing that generates and allocates a unique tracking call number to online and offline ad units and campaigns. Brands equipped with phone call tracking software then analyze call leads that come through that tracking number to identify the performance and ROI of the specific channel.
What is the call tracking number?
It is one of the many features available to companies through tracking solutions. It enables tracking phone calls and capturing such information as geographic location, caller ID, source, basic carrier information, etc. Call number tracking implies using dedicated toll-free, local, or vanity phone numbers assigned to specific campaigns or sessions.
How much does call tracking software cost?
The cost typically depends on various factors, including the tools and features a business requires, the size of the company or call center, and the number of sales reps and agents.
How important is call tracking for marketers?
Today, inbound call tracking is essential for successful marketing campaigns. It helps marketing experts determine which campaigns, ad units, keywords, and landing pages are most effective at generating web and call leads. On top of that, it helps to understand which marketing initiatives yield better results.
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