In today’s data-driven world, understanding the customer journey is vital for businesses to optimize their marketing strategies effectively. While online interactions can be easily tracked and analyzed, marketers often overlook inbound call tracking.
Neglecting it for businesses that utilize phone calls to contact clients or existing users, even to a small extent, means leaving valuable data on the table, especially when such calls can be tracked with inbound call tracking software.
Ultimately, this is another source of data that can be integrated into the marketing puzzle. It’s an intriguing data source because customers or users who choose to call are more determined to contact a company than people who simply click on an ad.
No one accidentally dials a company’s contact line; there are no “miscalls” like there are “misclicks.”
In this article, we will explore how inbound call tracking works, who can benefit from it, and the prominent inbound tracking software available in the market.
I. Understanding Inbound Call Tracking
Inbound call tracking is a technology that allows businesses to track and analyze incoming calls from various marketing channels. By analyzing the path a person took to reach your number and the details about the caller derived from their online activity (such as device model, language, etc.), marketers can optimize their company’s web pages to attract more callers or even modify the messaging to ensure higher conversion rates for those individuals.
People call companies for various reasons:
Companies can use different phone numbers for different types of callers and ensure that the path a person took to reach a specific phone number prepares them and warms them up for a potential sale.
II. Benefits of Inbound Call Tracking
Implementing inbound call tracking offers several advantages for businesses seeking to refine their marketing strategies and boost sales:
- Enhanced ROI Analysis: Inbound call tracking provides comprehensive data on the sources and campaigns driving phone call leads, allowing businesses to allocate marketing budgets more effectively.
- Call Quality Assessment: By recording and analyzing phone conversations, businesses can evaluate call quality, identify training needs, and improve customer service.
- Personalized Customer Experience: Understanding the context of incoming calls empowers businesses to provide personalized and targeted experiences, resulting in higher customer satisfaction and increased conversion rates.
- Real-Time Analytics: Inbound call tracking platforms offer real-time analytics and reporting, enabling businesses to make immediate optimizations and respond to changing market dynamics.
III. Who Should Use Inbound Call Tracking?
Inbound call tracking is beneficial for a wide range of businesses. The critical consideration is scale: local businesses rarely have a genuine need for call tracking as their marketing budget (and consequently, optimization options) are limited.
However, larger companies that use phone calls as the main or one of many ways to maintain relationships with prospective customers should consider inbound call tracking in their marketing strategy, especially:
- E-commerce Businesses: Online retailers can attribute phone call conversions to specific advertising channels, enabling them to optimize their campaigns and enhance the customer experience.
- Call Centers: Businesses with call centers can monitor the performance of their agents, identify areas for improvement, and allocate marketing budgets efficiently.
- Multichannel Marketers: Companies engaging in multiple marketing channels, such as SEO, social media, and PPC, can accurately measure the impact of each channel on generating phone call leads.
IV. 10 Best Inbound Call Tracking Software
There are many different inbound call tracking software options on the market. When choosing one, consider not only regular factors such as pricing and ease of use but also integration capabilities, as inbound call tracking platforms are likely to be used alongside ad trackers and CRM platforms.
The list below is in an alphabetical order.
Callbox
Callbox offers comprehensive call tracking and lead generation solutions. It provides features like call recording, lead scoring, and CRM integration to help businesses drive conversions and measure marketing success.
- Pros: Comprehensive call tracking, lead generation, CRM integration.
- Cons: Pricing plans may be higher for certain features, limited customization options.
CallFire
CallFire offers a range of call tracking and communication solutions. It provides call tracking, IVR (Interactive Voice Response), and SMS marketing tools, suitable for businesses that rely heavily on phone communication.
- Pros: Call tracking, IVR capabilities, SMS marketing tools.
- Cons: Limited customization options, interface could be more intuitive.
CallTrackingMetrics
CallTrackingMetrics offers comprehensive call tracking and management solutions. It includes features like call routing, call recording, and advanced reporting, suitable for businesses in various industries.
- Pros: Comprehensive call tracking and management, call routing, call recording.
- Cons: User interface can be overwhelming, some advanced features require additional costs.
CallRail
CallRail is a robust inbound call tracking software that provides advanced call analytics and attribution. It offers intuitive reporting and integration with popular CRM systems, making it suitable for businesses of all sizes.
- Pros: Advanced call analytics, intuitive interface, easy integration with popular CRM systems.
- Cons: Higher pricing tiers for advanced features, limited customization options.
Convirza
Convirza specializes in call analytics and conversation insights. It offers features like call recording, sentiment analysis, and keyword spotting to help businesses optimize their marketing strategies.
- Pros: Call analytics, conversation insights, sentiment analysis.
- Cons: Limited CRM integrations, may require technical expertise for setup.
Invoca
Invoca specializes in dynamic call routing and detailed call analytics. It integrates with popular CRM systems, such as Salesforce, and offers comprehensive insights for businesses with high call volumes.
- Pros: Dynamic call routing, detailed call analytics, integration with Salesforce and other CRM systems.
- Cons: Higher pricing plans, limited support for smaller businesses.
Marchex
Marchex is an inbound call tracking solution that focuses on call analytics and conversation intelligence. It provides actionable insights to optimize marketing campaigns and improve call quality.
- Pros: Robust call analytics, conversation intelligence, actionable insights.
- Cons: Limited integration options, pricing may be higher for certain features.
Ringba
Ringba is a powerful inbound call tracking and analytics platform designed for performance marketers and call centers. It offers advanced call routing, real-time analytics, and conversion tracking, making it a versatile solution for businesses focused on driving inbound calls.
- Pros: Advanced call routing capabilities, real-time analytics, conversion tracking.
- Cons: Pricing plans may be higher for certain features, limited integration options compared to other providers.
Retreaver
Retreaver is an inbound call tracking and routing platform. It provides call attribution, call distribution, and real-time reporting, allowing businesses to optimize their marketing campaigns and efficiently handle incoming calls.
- Pros: Call attribution, call distribution, real-time reporting.
- Cons: User interface can be complex, may require additional setup time for customization.
V. Inbound Call Tracking in the Overall Marketing Strategy: A Case Study with Voluum and Ringba
We’ve mentioned several times that in most cases, inbound calls are not the only way of attracting customers. Most companies, apart from putting a phone number on their contact page, also use paid advertising and SEO techniques to generate organic traffic.
All these efforts should be measured and, ideally, analyzed in one software.
Voluum, a performance ad tracker, is the perfect solution for that. It can connect all client touchpoints from various paid and organic channels in one reporting engine, and it can be integrated with most popular inbound call tracking software.
Take Ringba, a popular inbound call tracker. Marketers can easily integrate it with Voluum by following these steps:
- Add pages with phone numbers as offer pages in Voluum and ensure that your offer URL contains the Voluum click ID token. In short, your URL should look something like this:
https://my.offer.com?clickid={clickid}
- Create a URL Parameter for values captured from the offer URL to have the possibility of dynamically adding them to the Voluum S2S postback. Creating a new URL Parameter will automatically generate a relevant dynamic token that can be used later in Voluum S2S postbacks.
- Obtain a postback from Voluum and add it in Ringba under Integrations / Pixels / Create Pixel. Your postback should look like this:
Note that this is a simplified setup that has some caveats and additional options. However, these general steps should apply to most platforms that serve as inbound call trackers. Contact our team if you want to learn more.
By using Ringba (or any other call tracking platform) with Voluum, you will gain the following benefits:
- Measure your total advertising costs and revenue.
- See how your marketing efforts translate into calls.
- Optimize your advertising strategy to increase call numbers or call conversion rates.
For a long time, marketers have dreamed of all-in-one solutions. Now they have it.
Final remarks
In conclusion, you shouldn’t let valuable customer insights slip through the cracks. Embrace the power of inbound call tracking and leverage the right software to unlock the full potential of your marketing efforts.
Connect an inbound call tracking software of your choice with Voluum to gain a competitive edge, drive higher conversions, and deliver exceptional customer experiences.
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