Understanding Call Tracking Software: How It Works

One of the most significant marketing developments in the past few years has been the dramatic resurgence of inbound calls. Thanks to widespread mobile adoption, (reportedly there will 285 million smartphone users in the U.S. by 2023 /Source: Statista) businesses are able to capitalize on mobile searches and use click-to-call technology to immediately connect with consumers.

The surge of calls is a boon to businesses—though some are in a better position to capitalize on this opportunity than others. Inbound calls can pose challenges, such as knowing which channels are generating the most calls, or effectively tracking a consumer journey across different touch points. In order to get the most data from their calls, many companies have turned to call tracking software.

How Call Tracking Works

Call tracking is a technology that helps businesses identify the precise value and impact of their marketing efforts. If you work as a marketer, you can use call tracking to get the hard data you need to continue a campaign or to tip you off to know when to invest in a new strategy. Better still, call tracking analytics can pull information from all your marketing efforts to help you identify future trends and neutralize pain points along the way.

Companies that want to reap the benefits of call tracking do so by utilizing call tracking software, which will often not only allow you to track all your inbound calls but also manage all those calls and analyze the resulting data. Call tracking software works by employing a variety of features that can all help your business run more efficiently and optimize your marketing to achieve a better ROI.

1. Call Tracking Software Tracks Multiple Campaigns Across Different Channels

As a marketer, it is very likely that you are running multiple campaigns at once, oftentimes across different channels. Multi-source attribution from call tracking software gives you the ability to know where your leads are coming from. You get to decide which channels you want to track so that you only get the data that is important to you.

Employ tracking code on multiple websites and unique numbers for your radio, broadcast, and billboard ads so that every call that comes in can be quickly attributed to the appropriate marketing channel. If you are running multiple campaigns, call tracking software will be able to differentiate incoming calls from each campaign. Getting such specific insights into your channels and campaigns is critical for boosting your ROI.

2. Call Tracking Software Delivers Critical Data Insights

Beyond making it clear which marketing efforts are driving your calls, call tracking software goes farther and provides you with a host of other data sets that can be incredibly useful to your business. You can see information about caller demographics or their geographic location to help you get hyper-specific in your campaigns.

Call tracking software also provides real-time reports, meaning you can get all this critical data as it is happening. This is incredibly significant for when a campaign is over-performing and you want to take advantage and invest more resources right away. Marketers love call tracking software because it gives them the ability to log on the morning, noon, and night to see live snapshots of how they’re performing that day—opening the window to make shrewd financial decisions so they have the maximum impact.

3. Call Tracking Software Improves Operational Efficiency

The best call tracking software can also have a significant impact on how your business runs by improving call flow and creating a better customer experience. Call tracking software can be used to set up a custom IVR, which can greet customers and then route them with an automatic call distributor. Both of these features will ensure that callers are quickly connected with the right representatives and processed sooner—letting your business process more calls in less time.

You can also utilize call tracking software to achieve better customer service. Call recording gives businesses the ability to listen to the interactions between callers and representatives—these recordings can be used to optimize your sales funnel and employed as training devices.

Sophisticated call tracking software is used to help businesses track their marketing efforts and improve their ROI. Understanding how the many features of call tracking software can be taken advantage of is the first step towards setting your business on a path of sustainable growth.