800 Number Call Tracking for online marketing
I’m in the Orlando airport about to head home after attending the Annual Conference for Multichannel Merchants (ACCM). SiteAcuity had a big coming out party as we announed the official release of Site-to-Phone, our on-demand product for tracking web-to-phone calls and correlating them back to website activity and, more importantly, source campaigns - and keywords in the case of search traffic.
It quickly became apparent to me at the show that most multichannel merchants think the only way to track and analyze phone calls from their website is to use unique phone numbers. Prior to Site-to-Phone and Visitor Code Technology that was true. I am frequently asked about these unique phone number techniques and how our approach compares, so I’m going to spell it out in this blog post. Hang on, it may get a bit technical.
Visitor Code Technology (TM): This is SiteAcuity’s new patent-pending method of displaying unique Visitor Codes on each web page, typically near the advertised phone number, while simultaneously processing clickstream data to associate site visits with marketing campaigns. Similar to catalog source codes, sales/service agents collect the codes when site visitors call, commonly at time of conversion (lead or sale capture). Agents have real-time access to the detailed visit info for to provide better service, qualify more leads and close more sales. Marketers are able to track and analyze online-to-offline conversions and better optimize their marketing by more precisely determining which campaigns, including search keywords, are performing.
Pros:
- Inexpensive
- Tracks site visitors across multiple websites and site visits
- No need to change phone number(s) on the website
- Able to track source on leads submitted via web form; visitor code can be passed through a hidden form field.
- Able to import lead/sale records from external systems and match them with the unique site visits and associated campaign(s) - via the captured Visitor Code.
Cons:
- Agent must request the Visitor Code from the caller; less automated
Dynamic Phone Number Insertion: This solution involves reserving a range of phone numbers and having a system which cycles through these phone numbers, dynamically assigning/displaying one, as visitors hit the website. If/when the visitor calls, the system matches up the date/time of the call with the dialed number and associated visit/clickstream data. A given phone number will never be used/issued simultaneously for more than one site visitor. This solution is offered by companies such as Clickpath, ATG/eStara and a few others.
Pros: Highly automated.
Cons:
- Can be very expensive. The higher the site traffic, the more phone numbers are required.
- Doesn’t track site visitors across multiple websites, and no intelligence can be gleaned from a caller’s prior site visits (historic visits)
- Lack of phone number consistency can be a problem for many companies
- No ability to track leads submitted via web form
- Because the phone numbers eventually get recycled/reused, there is no ability to match up lead or sales records gathered externally in CRM or Order Entry systems.
Unique Phone Numbers: This solution involves displaying unique phone numbers on each web page associated with a meaningful campaign. This is the predecessor to the Dynamic Phone Number Insertion solution above. It is very rudimentary in that it does not deliver any intelligence on specific callers; it only gives pure numbers (i.e., number of calls or orders delivered by a specific campaign/phone number). This technique definitely does not work well for search marketers trying to figure out which keywords are converting - unless, of course, you have a very small universe of keywords.