What Is Call Tracking? Definition & Why Businesses Need It

Call tracking is the process of tracing the source of incoming calls. This call function is commonly used in sales and marketing lead generation efforts, attributing phone calls to specific campaigns or advertising channels. The data collected provides valuable insights useful for optimizing strategies. Beyond the call tracking definition, it comes with powerful capabilities that enable businesses to improve customer experiences and lead conversions.

In this article, we’ll take a deeper look at how call tracking works and how it benefits a business’ marketing efforts.

How Call Tracking Works

Traditionally, call tracking works by asking customers how they found out about you during a call or assigning a unique phone number to specific advertising campaigns. The method involves buying additional toll-free numbers from a business phone provider and using billing records to identify the number of calls coming from a channel or campaign.

Today, call tracking software has automated the whole call tracking process by eliminating the need to manually record or review data. Modern call tracking works by transferring calls through the call tracking software, tracing the phone number to a campaign piece, and collecting caller data. The software routes the call to your business based on your call forwarding rules. The entire process occurs within seconds and isn’t noticeable to the caller.

Call tracking software providers offer a version of call tracking that uses a dynamic number insertion (DNI). This strategy is strictly used in digital formats, such as websites and landing pages, instead of using unique phone numbers. Through DNI, it assigns every marketing material its own tracking number. All phone calls coming from the call tracking numbers will be routed to your business line.

CallTrackingMetrics enables businesses to assign tracking numbers per advertising channel. (Source: YouTube)

Benefits of Call Tracking

Based on the call tracking definition, it is a system used to measure the impact of inbound calls driven by marketing initiatives. In this case, any business that relies on customer calls benefits from having a call tracking system.

Here are the many benefits of including call tracking in your marketing initiatives:

• Gain insight into your marketing campaigns: With call tracking software, it’s easier to attribute incoming calls to specific marketing efforts. Whether it’s an online or offline campaign, call tracking monitors which ones are generating the largest volume of calls and finds opportunities to improve future campaigns.
• Understand the customer journey: Call tracking helps measure the impact of phone calls on the customer journey. Many call tracking software solutions integrate with customer relationship management (CRM) tools like Salesforce, allowing businesses to gather real-time caller information.
• Improve customer experience: Another benefit of call tracking is promoting seamless phone interactions. By capturing first-hand customer information, it allows you to identify what resonates best with them and understand every caller’s intent. This increases the chances of converting callers into repeat customers.
• Boost return on investment (ROI): Call tracking delivers helpful insights that provide a holistic view of customer behavior and campaign performances. This enables your business to optimize your high-performing campaigns and boost your marketing ROI.
• Manage contact center agents: Call tracking features include call recording, which provides an opportunity to monitor conversations between callers and your agents. This allows you to evaluate the performance of your call handlers while getting to know customers from a different perspective.

Disadvantages of Call Tracking

While call tracking offers multiple advantages to businesses, it also has its downsides when improperly implemented. Before integrating this call function into your phone system, here are the potential drawbacks of call tracking:

• Plans become too costly: Depending on the call tracking software provider, subscription plans may vary depending on the call volume and desired features.
• Multiple phone numbers risk confusing customers: Assigning unique phone numbers to every campaign risks confusing customers by keeping the wrong contact information. Having a vanity number for all your campaigns has a higher recall rate among customers.
• Too many phone numbers affect search engine rankings: If call tracking was set up incorrectly, it potentially harms search rankings. Search engines want to display only the most reliable information, so it uses your business phone number to fit that qualification. However, using too many numbers on directory listings or local citations affects the strength of your local rankings.
• Requires frequent updates on phone numbers: To avoid confusing customers and search engines, call tracking needs frequent updating of marketing collaterals and phone numbers to ensure accuracy in call tracking data.

Use Cases of Call Tracking

Call tracking works essentially for any industry, particularly for businesses using a phone number in their advertising activities and seeing how their callers heard about them. If you rely on inbound calls to gain more customers, call tracking is the right solution for you.

Here are the different uses cases where call tracking is most useful:

• Digital marketers wanting to measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns: Call tracking helps marketers evaluate the performance of their marketing campaigns and determine which marketing channels lead callers to contact a business. It measures the effectiveness of advertising strategies and optimizes future marketing campaigns.
• Customer-facing departments looking to improve customer service: By tracking phone calls, customer service departments gain insights into customer interactions and understand their intention behind the call. The data collected and call recording will help them analyze customers’ responses and provide a newer perspective about their needs and how to serve them better.
• Real estate agents wanting to attract more homebuyers: Real estate firms rely heavily on phone calls, especially in observing clients’ conversion rates in their marketing collaterals, such as social media and email marketing. Often, potential homebuyers prefer talking to a human agent over the phone. That is why any real estate business investing in marketing tools should use call tracking software to close more deals.
• Financial companies that want to build trust with clients: Budget-conscious clients often find it difficult to decide whether to buy a financial product or service. With so many questions in mind, phone calls play an important role in searching for insurance, credit, or mortgage. In this case, financial companies use call tracking to get customer insights and deliver personalized customer service.
• Hotel and travel operators relying on phone calls for bookings: Hotels, spas, and tour operators depend on phone bookings to manage client reservations. Call tracking helps businesses identify which source drives the call and fund marketing activities that convert. It also empowers businesses to create personalized experiences and improve customer interactions with every single guest.

Providers With Call Tracking

With so many call tracking providers in the market that offer the same functions, finding one that suits your business needs isn’t easy. Some voice-over-internet protocol (VoIP) providers even offer it as part of their VoIP business phone features. To help you decide, we rounded up the best call tracking providers to support your campaign efforts:

• CallRail
• CallTrackingMetrics
• HubSpot

CallRail is a call tracking and marketing analytics service offering free local phone numbers, call minutes, and text messages. This software provides various call tracking features that enable users to monitor marketing activities, such as keyword-level attribution, social media posts, and website visitor data. Plan starts at $45 per month, and upgrading to high-tier packages offers more access to robust analytics features.

Visit CallRail

CallTrackingMetrics is a call tracking solution that utilizes conversation analytics and multi-channel call attribution to produce data-backed advertising strategies. Its robust platform allows users to explore different tracking options, whether through paid search, TV ads, print collateral, or search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. Plans start at $39 per month, plus usage. Usage charges depend on plan tier and phone number type.

Visit CallTrackingMetrics

HubSpot is an all-in-one sales software that helps you make calls directly from your browser and track them in your customer relationship manager (CRM). Its call tracker feature automatically logs sales calls while allowing managers to coach staff through conversation intelligence. This tool provides transcription for call analysis, call commenting, and keyword searching. Since HubSpot’s call tracker is part of its sales platform, users have free access to all call tracking features.

Visit HubSpot

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQS)

Do I have to change my main business number on my website when using call tracking software?

No. Call tracking providers use a script that dynamically switches your phone number with tracking numbers. However, website visitors, search engines, and crawlers will continue to see your business phone number without the need to change anything.

What marketing campaigns does call tracking apply to?

Call tracking applies to both online and offline marketing efforts. Offline campaigns include yellow pages, print ads, direct mail, billboards, and TV and radio commercials. Online campaigns, on the other hand, include organic search results, online directories, web referrals, and social media platforms.

What are the factors that measure the effectiveness of call tracking?

Call tracking offers a host of important information to gain insights into your marketing activities. These include call duration, call volume, time of day, call sources, first-time callers, and landing page performance.

Bottom Line

Data only becomes useful when you turn it into actionable insights. Call tracking fills in the gaps in your lead generation efforts by telling exactly what marketing strategy drives phone calls into your business. In turn, the collected data will help you optimize your digital marketing performance and enhance the entire customer journey by integrating online and offline data resources.

If you’re looking for more options to consider, check out our article on the best call tracking software. We rounded up the top six providers in the market based on different business needs and budgets.