There are several call tracking terms that are regularly thrown around by people who are involved in the industry.
If you are new to the call tracking industry, then you probably have some questions about the definitions behind them.
Here is a list of some of the most important call tracking terms that you will want to become familiar with:
Google Analytics for the phone.
A way for marketers to track which ads, campaigns, and keywords are generating phone calls. Call tracking is accomplished by marrying a phone number to a specific marketing channel or tactic. This can be done for online or offline marketing tactics.
More detailed explanation: 5 Things You Need to Know About Call Tracking Software
These are local or toll free numbers provided by a call tracking company. These numbers can be routed back to your business number. These call tracking numbers are the numbers that appear on your marketing material. Different call tracking numbers are used on different marketing material. One number is associated with PPC, another is associated with organic search, for example.
This allows call tracking numbers to display on your website temporarily and dynamically. If someone visits your site via a specific organic search, they will see a certain call tracking number. However, if they visit your site via a paid ad, they will see a different call tracking number. This allows Convirza to determine which marketing campaigns, ads, and keywords generated the phone call.
This is all accomplished via a snippet of Javascript installed on the site of the company using call tracking.
More detailed explanation: DNI Call Tracking Crash Course
A proprietary tool from Convirza that takes call tracking to an entirely different level. Conversation Analytics uses speech recognition technology and thousands of proprietary algorithms to actually analyze the content of phone calls–the actual conversation, words and phrases on the call–to determine what happened on the call. It can determine–again, based on the words and phrases said on the call–if the caller was a qualified lead, if they booked an appointment, if they made a sales inquiry, if they are price sensitive, and a host of other things.
More detailed explanation: How Conversation Analytics Works [Video]
Some companies want to make their current phone numbers call tracking numbers. In other words, they want to run Conversation Analytics on the calls that are coming into their business via their current phone numbers. The way this is accomplished is through a process called ‘porting.’
Here’s the background: you own your phone numbers. Your telephone company does not own your phone numbers; they’re yours. You own them. And federal law mandates that telephone numbers are ‘portable,’ meaning that you can tell your phone company to ‘port’ a phone number to a different telephony provider. Thus, if you want one of your current phone numbers to be a call tracking phone number, it can be ported to Convirza.
This process takes anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. We only charge what it costs us to port the number. Porting allows any number to be a call tracking number.
It doesn’t matter if you know what it stands for (it stands for Interactive Voice Response), it matters if you know what it does. IVR is the recording that you hear that says, “For sales press 1. For marketing press 2. For customer service press 3.’
When someone answers the phone at a business they can hear a short (1-2 second) message that says whatever you want it to say. For example, if the caller is calling after an organic search, the message could say ‘Google search.’ Or, the Whisper Tone could advertise your agency to your client. It could say ‘Another lead from XYZ Agency.’ That way your client (if you’re an agency) can hear your agency’s name every time they pick up the phone. They’ll think you’re awesome.
And keep in mind that the caller doesn’t hear the message, only the person answering the phone at the business.
The process of setting up call tracking numbers. Generally takes like 30 seconds.