Call tracking software records information about incoming

telephone call A telephone call, phone call, voice call, or simply a call, is the effective use of a connection over a telephone network between the calling party and the called party. Telephone calls are the form of human communication that was first enabl ...

s and, in some regions, records the calls themselves. Call tracking is a technology which can enable the pay per call, pay per minute or pay per lead business model, allowing the tracking of phone calls to be associated with

performance-based advertising Performance Marketing, also known as pay for performance advertising, is a form of advertising in which the purchaser pays only when there are measurable results. Its objective is to drive a specific action, and advertisers only pay when that ac ...

such as Google AdWords, SEO Services, Display and Electronic Direct Marketing, and supplying additional analytic information about the phone calls themselves. Call tracking is a method of

performance A performance is an act or process of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment. It is also defined as the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function. Performance has evolved glo ...

review for advertising and/or staff. It is based on the technological possibility of measuring the behavior of callers and is thus the equivalent in telephony to the conversion tracking used on the internet. Via different channels, both procedures offer the opportunity of clearly assigning a customer response to a specific advertising medium.

Methods

There are currently four technological methods for telephone tracking. Besides an exclusively web-based function, it is possible to evaluate call numbers using a telephone server solution. In addition, there are a few software providers who support advertisers in telephone tracking.

Call-back function

The call-back function is exclusively web-based. Here, the internet user provides a phone number on the website of a company that is advertising at which he/she can be called back. As soon as the user confirms she wants to be contacted with a click of the mouse, the technology behind this automatically sets up a telephone conversation between the advertiser and the interested party. At the same time, a

cookie A cookie is a sweet biscuit with high sugar and fat content. Cookie dough is softer than that used for other types of biscuit, and they are cooked longer at lower temperatures. The dough typically contains flour, sugar, egg, and some type of ...

saves information on which

online advertising Online advertising, also known as online marketing, Internet advertising, digital advertising or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising that uses the Internet to promote products and services to audiences and platform users. ...

medium led to the telephone call. As a web-based service, this procedure is limited to advertising measures on the internet. Callback is often automated through the use of web callback or mobile phone applications.

Call number tracking

Unlike the call-back procedure, call number tracking does not include any web-based functions but is based on a telephone

server Server may refer to: Computing *Server (computing), a computer program or a device that provides requested information for other programs or devices, called clients. Role * Waiting staff, those who work at a restaurant or a bar attending custome ...

solution. As a rule, advertisers are provided a multitude of service numbers for customer feedback, where landline numbers can also be used. This enables each print ad, each online banner and any number of other advertising media to communicate an individual phone number as a response element.

Dynamic Call Tracking

Dynamic call tracking works similarly to

Google Analytics Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic and also mobile app traffic and events, currently as a platform inside the Google Marketing Platform brand. Google launched the service in N ...

but has additional software that allows websites to dynamically swap phone numbers presented to each user when the website loads. This is known as dynamic call tracking. In essence, providers for this type of service supply users with software that is placed on their website which controls what numbers are shown to users on the site. there are two main methods of Dynamic Call Tracking: * Channel based tracking * Unique session tracking Channel based tracking allows businesses to capture information on call sources down to the marketing channel, such as

AdWords Google Ads, formerly known as Google Adwords, is an online advertising platform developed by Google, where advertisers bid to display brief advertisements, service offerings, product listings, and videos to web users. It can place ads in the res ...

, Bing Ads, Organic and Referral Traffic etc. This provides a breakdown of the source of the call but does not provide particular information about the web session (if the call is from an online marketing source). This method involves assigning a particular number to a particular source of the web session. Unique session tracking tracks down each user session on a website, by pooling numbers and allocating each web session a number for a period of time, also known as dynamic number insertion. This allows web-tracking software to accurately link each call to a web session if it results in a call being made to the number shown. The data which can be drawn from this method can be: * Marketing Source * Marketing Medium *

Marketing Campaign Marketing is the act of acquiring, satisfying and retaining customers. It is one of the primary components of Business administration, business management and commerce. Marketing is usually conducted by the seller, typically a retailer or ma ...

* Content * Keyword *

Landing page In online marketing, a landing page, sometimes known as a "lead capture page", "single property page", "static page", "squeeze page" or a "destination page", is a single web page that appears in response to clicking on a search engine optimized s ...

* Conversion Page * Experiments (if A/B Split Testing) * Device Type * IP Address Location *

UTM Parameters Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) parameters are five variants of URL parameters used by marketers to track the effectiveness of online marketing campaigns across traffic sources and publishing media. They were introduced by Google Analytics' predece ...

This provides a much more rounded data-set for marketing purposes and can be integrated with industry standard software such as CRM Systems, AdWords, Google Analytics etc.

Static Number Tracking

Static number tracking allows marketers to assign an individual phone number to online and traditional marketing sources such as Newspaper, Radio, Television, Billboards and other mediums of delivery for marketing materials. It differs from session based tracking as software cannot be run to dynamically replace the numbers for each viewer, however, this is useful for marketing purposes.

References