June « 2011 « Mongoose Metrics

June, 2011

Integrate Web Analytics, Call Tracking and CRMs in One Marketing Dashboard

The most useful marketing performance reports are built on a foundation of comprehensive data collection. They include accurate and complete information covering all possible marketing interactions, ranging from website visits to phone calls to customer conversions.

Digital marketing agencies and corporate marketers rely on these reports to effectively evaluate campaign performance, identify trends and opportunities, draw conclusions, and then make campaign update decisions based on meeting goals and increasing ROI.

Generating these reports requires the proper tracking tools, understanding which metrics matter most and effectively combining all this information into an easy-to-review dashboard.

Following are the main things to consider when building your own marketing reports:

Integrate the Proper Tools

You need to be able to capture and record audience interactions online and offline, from new leads to lead conversions in order to properly track campaign performance. This requires the use of:

Web Analytics Platform (e.g. Google Analytics) — To capture sources of website traffic, what actions visitors take while on your site and online form completions.
Call Tracking Software (e.g. Mongoose Metrics) — To track phone conversions and associate them with a marketing initiative and website activity.
CRM Solution (e.g. Salesforce) — To close the loop on your marketing efforts, show which activities generated leads that converted to customers, and accurately determine ROI of marketing activities.

Measure Performance With Metrics

With the appropriate tracking technologies in place, it’s time to define the metrics you are going to use to show marketing campaign performance.

This starts with indexing all the various activities involved in your marketing campaigns, and then identifying how your audiences may interact with each. In addition, you’ll want to track how they interact with your company over time. Some common metrics to consider include:

Source: Referring website, call source (i.e. offline ad), PPC campaign/ad group/ad/keyword bid, email click through, keyword search.
Engagement: Click through rate, ad impressions, page views, bounce rate, time on site, last URL visited, repeat visits.
Conversion: Conversion rate, cost per conversion, form completions, phone calls, resource content downloads, coupon submissions.
Sales: Cost per acquisition, lead-to-customer conversions, contract renewals, up-sells.

The metrics you select should help you answer the following questions:

Are your marketing campaigns satisfying the targeted business objectives?
Are your marketing activities generating responses from target audiences?
What topics, messaging, promotions/specials, or calls to action seem to resonate best with audiences?
How qualified are the audiences you are reaching?
Are they taking the actions you want them to take?
Is the conversion rate in line with expectations?
Are campaigns generating high quality leads?
What type of return are you getting on your marketing investments?

Create a Marketing Dashboard

To simplify creating reports that answer these questions, consolidate your critical metrics from your tracking tools into a marketing dashboard. Select web analytic, call tracking and CRM solutions that can feed information to each other through the use of APIs.

By connecting performance metrics across tracking tools and reporting silos, marketers can create a complete, closed-loop marketing picture and be better prepared to review, evaluate and make campaign update decisions.

The following Mongoose blog post outlines some of the benefits of marketing dashboard and how to identify what should be included — Putting Performance Metrics into a Single Marketing Dashboard.

What technology and metrics do you use when structuring your campaign performance reports?

Call Tracking / Features, Tips, & Announcements — No Comments
28
Jun 11

Social Proof: Testimonials for Call Tracking

Social Proof: Assuming the actions of others reflect correct behavior for a given situation.

You like us on Facebook and more than 12,000 of you follow us on Twitter. Thanks! But with all the buzz about social media and the benefits of social proof, marketers often overlook one of the simplest – yet often elusive – tactics for building credibility with prospects: the testimonial.

Brian Clark, of Copyblogger fame, says testimonials are, “Intermediated word-of-mouth marketing, and they do work when credible.” He adds, “In fact they work very well indeed if you work hard to get the right kind of testimonial. They can provide the much-needed social proof that tips a wavering prospect into a paying customer.” Read more about Clark’s best practices for generating customer testimonials.

Testimonials for Call Tracking

Mongoose Metrics CEO Bradley Reynolds draws two winners for the company's testimonial contest. Winners received a new iPad2.

In the spirit of garnering good word-of-mouth about the benefits of call tracking, we’re delighted to announce the winners of Mongoose Metrics’ testimonial contest. Our CEO, Bradley Reynolds, randomly drew the winners in a drawing today. Each of these lucky customers is the proud owner of a new, iPad2:

Ben Pate, Co-Founder & COO of Web1 Syndication, Inc. www.web1syndication.com

Daniel G. Hidalgo, Senior Marketing Director, www.baldwinresearch.com

In all, 12 Mongoose Metrics call tracking customers entered our testimonial contest by providing us with stories about how and why they use call tracking to better understand offline conversions and optimize their marketing spending accordingly.

Read what they had to say about how call tracking helped their businesses grow.

Many thanks to all who entered:

Randy Abair, iMarket Solutions

Larry Bloodworth, Certified Transmissions

Ken Diamond, www.myoxygencontrator.com

Richard Guy, Dynamite Veterinary Marketing

Kristen Rakoczy, Ferocious Media

Tom Elliott, CKMG

Isaac Berkovits, AceWeb

Jason Owen, iContact.com

Michael Cohen, Green Dot Advertising & Marketing Solutions

Andy Anderson, CDC Federal Credit Union

How do you use testimonials to create social proof for your business?

Call Tracking / Integration / Offline Advertising / Search Marketing — No Comments
22
Jun 11

How to Integrate Call Tracking into A/B Testing

The beautiful thing about today’s tracking and reporting technologies — such as web analytics, call tracking and CRMs — is that marketers can use them to test which campaign aspects are better at converting audiences into leads. One way this is done is through A/B testing.

A/B testing enables you to evaluate how well a control version (“A”) compares in performance to a test version (“B”), which may have a different message, call to action, web page layout, color scheme and/or imagery. This type of testing is often used in ads, direct-mail pieces, email marketing and landing pages.

To accurately track performance, you’ll need to capture and record online and offline conversions for both the control and test versions. This can be done with web analytics for online conversions, and call tracking for offline conversions.

Following are the ways you can integrate call tracking into your A/B tests:

Integrate Call Tracking with A/B Testing

For those A/B tests that take place off your website — such as TV ads, direct mail, email newsletters, etc. — associate and integrate a unique call tracking number into the control version and another into the test version. As calls come into these numbers, the call tracking solution will record the conversions and associate them with each test version.

For website and landing page A/B testing, you can install a Javascript snippet provided by your call tracking vendor into the code of your web pages. When a visitor arrives to your site, the web page test version they landed on will be logged and he or she will be shown a unique tracking number via the Javascript. As a call comes into this number, a conversion will be recorded and associated with the corresponding control or test version of the web page.

Note: It is possible to manually add a unique tracking number to each A/B test page, but if a visitor leaves this page and goes to another on your site, the ability to associate offline conversions with an A/B test version will be lost. By installing the Javascript throughout your site, the tracking number follows them from page to page.

Once you have integrated the call tracking numbers, launch both the “A” and “B” test versions simultaneously and allow them to run until a statistically significant data set is collected.

Monitor and Analyze Your A/B Tests

To determine which version performs better, combine both online and offline conversions of each version to form a complete lead-conversion picture.

If your control “A” converted more, that’s the version with which to move forward. Likewise, if test “B” converted more, make this your updated standard. For an additional layer of data, integrate conversion data into a CRM to associate A/B test versions with sales.

Armed with this information, you can confidently make updates to your campaign based on conversion rate, lead quality and ROI.

For more information about A/B testing, visit the ion interactive blog.

Features, Tips, & Announcements / Offline Advertising — No Comments
15
Jun 11

Three Tips to Maximize Offline Advertising Conversions with Call Tracking

As we discussed in our post “Call Tracking for Offline Traditional Advertising,” offline advertising — billboards, radio, TV and direct mail — is a great way to reach target audiences, but you need to accurately track conversions to understand which ads are driving leads/action and generating an acceptable return on investment.

Armed with conversion data, you can more effectively evolve ad campaigns, including medium selection, headlines, messaging, promotions, calls to action and budget allocations.

However, since billboard, radio, TV and direct mail ad campaigns are offline, they are naturally more difficult to track than online banner ads and PPC campaigns.

We’ve detailed three call tracking tips to maximize the ability of each ad to produce results.

1. Use Strong Calls to Action

Depending on the medium, your audience may only be exposed to an ad for a brief moment, such as, the time it takes to drive by a highway billboard, listen to a :15 second radio commercial, or watch a :30 second TV spot.

In addition, your audience is not sitting in front of a computer, so ads and calls to action need to be highly motivating and memorable.

For this reason, when integrating a tracking number into your ad, make sure it is combined with a strong call to action.

• Make it Directive: Eliminate any unnecessary wording and simply tell them what you want them to do — “Call Today [Tracking Number].”

• Make it Valuable: Clearly explain what the prospect is going to get in return for calling — “Get 50% off your first month.”

• Create a Sense of Urgency: Make them feel like they will be missing out on an opportunity if they don’t act fast — “For a limited time only.”

2. Account for Geographic Location

When integrating tracking numbers into offline advertisements, make sure to take into account for the geographic locations of your audience:

• If you’re running an ad in a different part of the country than where your business is physically located, provide a toll-free call tracking number.

• Conversely, if your business is local, it’s probably better to display a local area call tracking number to show your community presence.

3. Tag Call Tracking Numbers and Integrate with CRM

For effective reporting, in your call tracking platform, tag tracking numbers with the corresponding medium (i.e. billboard, radio, TV, etc.), ad, messaging, call to action and any other details you feel are important to capture.

Next, feed these conversion details into your CRM software. This allows:

• Sales professionals to prioritize and customize lead follow-up communications.

• Tracking of which offline advertisements generate leads that convert into customers.

How have you used call tracking to improve offline advertising campaign performance?

Call Tracking / Integration / Sales — No Comments
8
Jun 11

For Digital Marketers: How To Sell Call Tracking to Clients

If you’re a digital marketing agency or corporate marketing professional, part of the way you demonstrate value to clients and managers is through campaign performance reports, for which you likely rely on tracking and reporting technology, such as web analytics platforms, CRM systems and call tracking solutions.

Of course, often these tools come with an additional fee, which you need to justify to your client or manager. To help you through the call tracking solution sales pitch, we’ve compiled the following tips:

1. Understand Their Motivations

Structure your pitch around how call tracking will improve your ability to achieve the objectives set for your marketing campaign. For example:

• If the person you’re pitching is focused on maximizing ROI, explain that with call tracking, you’ll better understand which marketing initiatives generate leads. That way, you can more effectively allocate resources and budgets toward activities that deliver a higher return on marketing spend.

• If your audience is more sales focused, concentrate your pitch on the fact that with a combination of web analytics, call tracking and CRM, you can accurately tie marketing initiatives to customer conversions. With that info, you can shift resources and budgets towards activities that have proven to drive leads that convert into customers.

2. Clearly Detail How Call Tracking Will Work For Them

You don’t necessarily need to get into the specifics of how call tracking works — although you should be able to answer the question if it arises. Instead, focus on explaining how you plan to implement call tracking into your campaign and how it will improve performance. For example:

• PPC campaigns — Add tracking numbers into PPC ads and integrate into landing pages to identify which PPC campaigns, ad groups, ads and keywords drive offline leads. Pairing this data with online conversions will enable you to better allocate budgets and evolve campaigns based on ROI.

• Email Marketing — Integrate tracking numbers into lead nurturing campaign emails and e-newsletters to better understand which specials or promotions motivate people to call.

• Mobile Marketing — Track calls that come in via mobile marketing initiatives — including apps, ads, text messages, QR codes and mobile sites — since these audiences may be more inclined to call than complete an online form.

• Offline Advertisements — Track calls that result from promotional initiatives — such as billboards, print ads and on-site promos.

• Tradeshows — Keep track of phone leads that arise from tradeshow booths to better measure and justify the resource and budget commitment for next year.

3. Explain What They Will Get For Their Money with Call Tracking

In addition to the benefits clients and higher-ups will see in marketing campaign performance, make sure your client or manager knows the features and functionality they will get for the investment, and the benefits. Some examples include:

• Web analytics and CRM integration — Automate data sharing to create a single dashboard with all campaign performance and lead conversion details for real-time review and analysis.

• Last web page visited — Understand what a lead was reading or watching right before they called as a way to improve follow-up sales communications.

• Call recording — Record conversations to learn the types of questions leads are asking ask as a way to guide marketing initiatives, and to help sales professionals better qualify and understand a lead’s interest. These recordings can also serve as one-on-one or group sales training tools.

• Caller ID — Collect useful information, including the call back number and name of the company or person that called.

Additional sales tips:

• Show enthusiasm. Get excited about what you’ll be able to do with call tracking, and let this show through in conversations.

• Keep it simple. Keep your descriptions on par with your audience’s understanding of call tracking. You want to express how call tracking will simplify things, which may be hard to do if your explanations are overly technical.

• Speak to a call tracking solution representative. Before your pitch, gain insight from a call tracking sales rep on how to sell the solution and its specific benefits to your client or organization.

• Encourage a trial. If nothing else, try to get your client or manager to agree to try call tracking for a couple months, and then make an educated decision on whether or not the solution is right for the organization long term.

What are some of the ways you got your client or organization to use call tracking?

Mongoose MetricsConversion & Call Tracking Blog