Calldrip Blog | Lead Response, Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success Stories

Your Essential Guide to Call Tracking for Businesses

Written by Pam Georgiana | Nov 8, 2024 6:35:01 PM

Your sales team is killing it this month. They've received a record number of calls and are scrambling to follow up. You’re thrilled, but you're also wondering, what happened this month to generate all these calls? 

You need phone call tracking. Call tracking software attributes each phone call to the specific marketing channel that led your prospect to give you a call. That way, you can optimize your advertising and marketing strategies when you understand what drives people to contact you. In short, software for call tracking reveals which campaigns delivered your leads.

In this blog, you’ll learn all about call tracking for your business!

What Is Call Tracking Software? 

Call tracking software matches each inbound phone call to its source. It works by monitoring and recording information from incoming phone calls, including the source of the call, the caller's journey, conversation details, and the call outcome.

This technology assigns unique phone numbers to different marketing channels, allowing businesses to attribute calls to specific campaigns or advertisements. If there is a phone number attached to your digital or offline advertisements, web URLs, and pay-per-click search campaigns, you can track which sources generate the most calls.

This information is critical to many sales and marketing teams for managing time, money, and other resources. Call tracking software allows those teams to optimize the campaigns bringing in the most revenue.

Some of the best call tracking softwares, like Calldrip, also provide:

  • Text tracking software
  • Advanced call routing
  • Interactive response systems to respond to leads
  • Comprehensive analytics and reporting 

There are many options for you to consider when researching call tracking software. The best call tracking software will give you the benefits of visibility into your lead sources and analytics for marketing campaign ROI. It will also help you measure your team's sales performance and gather data regarding peak call hours to help you better utilize resources. You can learn more about call tracking marketing, or about sales call tracking.

Take your killer month, for example. Say you spent $10,000 on digital advertising this month. Your call tracking software tells you that during the month, you received:

  • 20 calls from retargeting ads
  • 10 calls from Facebook ads
  • 30 calls from Google search ads

A simple ROI calculation would be to subtract your expenses from your revenue. So, if you made $100,000 on those 60 calls, your ROI is $90,000; $30,000 from retargeting, $15,000 from Facebook, and $45,000 from Google search. 

Hopefully, you see the benefits of utilizing call tracking software to make these critical KPI calculations easier. Sales call tracking software gives you a clearer picture of which advertising channels and campaigns drive your sales.

How Does Call Tracking Work?

When a potential customer sees an advertisement and calls the phone number on that ad, call tracking software picks up the call and routes it to your call center or sales team. While the call is routing, the software collects and stores digital data about the customer and the source of the call. This happens automatically with no interruption to the caller's experience. You customize the call flow based on your sales team's process or schedule. 

Call tracking uses Dynamic Number Insertion (DNI) phone numbers. These are unique local or toll-free phone numbers assigned to a specific ad, both traditional and digital. DNI numbers can also track a particular marketing campaign. When a customer uses that phone number to call you, call tracking records the ad or campaign that triggered the call. As a result, you will know who your leads are and where they're coming from in real time. 

Call tracking also records sales calls to provide insights into your sales team's interactions with prospective customers. These recordings offer essential scorecards and training materials to improve sales performance.  

Today, AI powered call tracking solutions (like Calldrip) are revolutionizing call tracking solutions, bringing more intelligence, automation, and insight to the call tracking process.

7 Features of the Best Call Tracking Softwares

When evaluating the many choices for call tracking software, look for these essential features of call tracking software

Feature #1: Local Phone Numbers for Tracking

When a potential customer reviews a digital search ad or a local offline ad (such as a billboard), it’s beneficial for them to see a local phone number. That helps build trust! The phone number on that ad may be your office number in a different town or state, or a local number that looks familiar.

With phone call tracking software, purchasing unique local tracking numbers to attach to each online or offline advertising campaign is standard practice and will build trust among your potential lead list. 

Feature #2: Dynamic Number Insertion (DNI)

This feature automatically swaps phone numbers on a website based on the visitor's source, making it easier to determine how they found the site. This is how you track phone calls back to sources.

Feature #3: Text Capabilities

Just as prospects can call a tracking number on an ad, text tracking software can also do that with text-enabled phone numbers. Calldrip's numbers are all text-enabled and are sent to a separate and convenient inbox so your team can respond to those texts easily. 

Given the value of business text messaging, this feature has the potential to not only provide visibility into your lead sources, but also boost sales!

Feature #4: Call Recording and Transcriptions (also known as Call Monitoring)

The best call tracking solutions will include call monitoring as well. This allows you to record calls for quality assurance, training, and deeper analysis of customer interactions.

Calldrip is one great example!

Our all-in-one solution includes integrated call tracking, call monitoring, and sales coaching to ensure that you gain full visibility into your performance.

Feature #5: Client Call Analytics

Call and text tracking software can greatly improve sales team performance if it features detailed analytics. These analytics should include real-time reporting on crucial details such as:

  • Lead phone number
  • Ad or marketing source
  • Lead location data
  • Other referral sources/sales team
  • Peak call times
  • Call length

Data is the not-so-secret sauce that drives your marketing and sales teams to success. The more relevant data you collect and process, the more you'll succeed.

Feature #6: Routing Flexibility

The best call tracking software will go further than just tracking the source of your lead calls. It will also  route those calls to the most appropriate salesperson on your team. Your phone call tracking software should be customizable to your sales team's strengths and processes. 

With Calldrip, you can route both lead calls and texts to an individual salesperson or the whole team, whatever works for you to win that sale.  Another option available with Calldrip is an auto-attendant answering system, so that every customers  is created by a virtual receptionist and can choose where to route the call.

Feature #7: CRM Integration

Data is only good when it's accurate and available. The best phone call tracking software will attribute all client data collected to the correct lead record in your CRM system. As a result, your team will have complete transparency into the entirety of the sales relationship, from start to finish and on all channels and activities.  

With Calldrip's sales call tracking software, your team can prioritize your calls using CRM data and make each call in the prospect's record. As a result, your sales team can quickly, easily, and efficiently work through their call queues while automatically tracking and logging the calls into your CRM system. No more manually logging calls, and no one will slip through the cracks and be lost to a competitor.

4 Benefits of Call Tracking

Call tracking is a potent tool that bridges the gap between online and offline customer interactions. When implemented correctly, it can significantly enhance marketing effectiveness, improve customer experience, and drive sales growth. Here are four specific benefits of call tracking:

  1. Improved Marketing ROI: By identifying which marketing efforts are driving calls, businesses can allocate their budgets more effectively, focusing on high-performing channels and campaigns.
  2. Enhanced Customer Experience: Call tracking data helps businesses understand customer needs and preferences, enabling personalized service that can lead to increased satisfaction and loyalty.
  3. Data-Driven Decision Making: The insights gained from call tracking allow for informed decisions regarding product development, marketing strategies, and customer service improvements.
  4. Optimized Sales Process: Analyzing call data helps in refining sales tactics, training sales representatives, and ultimately closing more deals efficiently.

How to Implement Your Call Tracking System

We wrote an in-depth blog about how to create a call tracking system; if you're short on time here's an abbreviated version:

Step 1: Choose the Right Call Tracking Provider

Select a provider that offers the features you need, such as DNI, comprehensive analytics, integration capabilities, and reliable support.

Step 2: Set Up and Integrate

Implement the call tracking system on your platforms, ensuring it integrates seamlessly with your CRM, analytics tools, and other software.

Step 3: Train Your Team

Educate your staff on how to use call tracking technology and interpret the data, emphasizing its role in enhancing customer interactions and driving sales.

Step 4: Monitor and Optimize

Regularly review call data to identify trends, measure campaign effectiveness, and make adjustments to your marketing and sales strategies as needed.

If your sales team has trouble collecting and converting leads, the time is now to invest in call tracking software.

Calldrip's call and text tracking software will assist your marketing team in knowing what campaigns are working for your business and your sales team in following up on leads with intelligent data that drives sales.

Every day you wait to call, you leave money on the table.

Contact us today for a demo.