Mongoose MetricsConversion & Call Tracking Blog

In December, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released a 79-page report [PDF] outlining a Do Not Track initiative designed to help Internet users better protect their privacy. On Friday, Feb. 11, the “Do Not Track Me Online” bill was introduced in Congress.

Do Not Track

According to New York Times journalists Edward Wyatt and Tanzina Vega, “Many of the problems the FTC is trying to tackle involve third parties that use technology to surreptitiously follow a user around the web, collecting data and then selling it, usually without the user’s knowledge.”

The Do Not Track report introduced in December recommends allowing web surfers to opt out of online tracking by activating a web-browser control that blocks third-party cookies. Firefox (Mozilla), Chrome (Google) and Internet Explorer (Microsoft) have all announced plans to integrate this type of feature into their next browser versions.

Do Not Track will have a negative impact on many advertisers who rely on an individual’s web history to show more targeted ads. These are known as contextual and behavioral ads, and according to Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers, made up about $12.1 billion in ad spend in the first half of 2010.

Mike Zaneis, senior vice president and general counsel of the IAB, says the online advertising industry would suffer “significant economic harm” if the government controlled the do-not-track mechanism and there was “a high participation rate similar to that of do not call.” (source: New York Times)

What does the bill mean for consumers and marketers?

If it is correctly constructed, Do Not Track could be a positive force for the consumer and the industry. The correct scope is to weed out people who are selling personal information or using such tracking for illegal purposes.

However, blocking all third-party cookies is not the correct solution. More so than advertising, the biggest uses of third-party cookies are in the website analytics space where companies place code from providers such as Google Analytics on their websites to measure and improve visitor interaction. Making sure to protect such uses is essential to improving consumer experience.

Many companies rely on the information from web tracking to improve their customer experience, so it is important to protect that feedback loop from specious legislation.

We’ve been bumping up against an issue with Twitter mentions recently so we reached out to the folks at HootSuite for an explanation. Maybe you’re having the same issue. Here it is in a nutshell:

Many of our followers mention and retweet our content. We’re thankful and we’d like to respond. Although it’s impossible when those mentions/retweets don’t show up in our mentions column within Twitter or HootSuite.  Here’s HootSuite’s response:

“We appreciate your patience. Before addressing this issue in depth, we first want to clarify what the Mentions column is. HootSuite’s Mentions column is designed to display everything you would see if you viewed your @Mentions within your Twitter account. If you log into Twitter, click “Home”, then click @Mentions, you should see exactly what you would see in HootSuite’s Mentions column — there should be no variance.

With that said, you may notice that when you do a search for your username in Twitter, you see mentions that do not appear either in HootSuite’s Mentions column or in Twitter.com’s Mentions view. In fact, Twitter does not regard these messages as Mentions; they regard them as Native Retweets.

As opposed to manually adding an “RT @username” in front of a message, a Twitter Web Retweet is created by clicking the Retweet button on Twitter.com. HootSuite also has this option for retweets, although it is not our default. When you use Twitter.com or HootSuite, recognizing a Twitter Web Retweet is easy — they are accompanied by a Retweet symbol.

Unfortunately, Twitter Search (http://search.twitter.com) displays Twitter Web Retweets without the retweet symbol. Instead, they’re displayed the same way as a manual retweet (“RT @username”). How they display on Twitter Search, and how they display on HootSuite as well as Twitter.com are very different. This is why the retweet by @SeanMcGinnis showed up in your #usguys column, and not your Mentions column.

The reason this message did not show up in “Your Tweets, Retweeted” was because, strictly speaking, this was not your retweet. Rather, this was @SeanMcGinnis retweeting himself using the Twitter Web Retweet method. If he manually retweeted that message, it would have shown up in your Mentions.

We do acknowledge that the difference between a “manual” retweet and a Twitter Web Retweet is confusing. However, our aim is to be as faithful as possible to Twitter’s API, and to display information exactly as our userbase would view this information on Twitter.com. If you have additional questions about the variance between your search columns and your Mentions columns, please let us know.”

Thanks, HootSuite, for the explanation.

Online advertisers are increasingly looking for advantages to get ahead of the crowd. What’s the next big thing? Who can help me find the secret sauce to more sales, more conversions, more success?

If you haven’t investigated call tracking, you are certainly missing an ingredient that can make your business go from good to great. Ask our satisfied customers. They often tell us that after implementing call tracking they see a 20 to 40 percent improvement in ROI for marketing spending.

OK, so here’s the deal. This post tells you everything you need to know to understand the Top Ten Things You Can do with Call Tracking.

1. See phone calls next to clicks in Google Adwords with Google Call Tracking. This clever tool allows millions of Google Adwords users to quickly and easily aggregate offline conversion information (phone calls) with online conversion data (clicks) to illuminate which keywords are driving phone calls. For the first time ever, marketers can view a complete picture of their online spending — and conversions — with an integrated platform showing phone call data alongside Adword data in the Google Adwords Placement Performance Report dashboard.
2. Simplify Your Life by Tracking Phone Calls with Google Analytics. For more advanced web marketers, it’s just as simple to track phone calls next to clicks within the Google Analytics platform. Google Analytics is a free web visitor tracking program offered by Google. It provides data related to how people interact (and convert) on your web site. Mongoose Metrics provides an integration which allows you to visualize your web form conversions alongside your phone conversions directly within the Google Analytics interface.
3. Provision Local and Toll-Free Trackable Phone Numbers. Whether your business needs toll-free numbers to convey a national presence or local phone numbers to serve hyper-local communities, a good call tracking solution will provide both options. International businesses which want to connect to local communities in Los Angeles, Montreal or London can do so with either local or toll-free numbers displaying on their web sites depending on specific marketing objectives. While toll-free numbers help your business appeal to a wider audience, local phone numbers are attractive to visitors who feel only comfortable doing business with people in their own backyards. Call tracking solutions which use local phone numbers are a natural fit for any business which receives geographically-oriented calls such as storage companies, auto dealerships, pizza parlors, hair salons and service professionals (doctors and lawyers).
4. Identify Which Keywords are Driving Phone Calls with Keyword Call Tracking. Whether you’re spending six figures or $600 each month on pay per click (PPC) advertising it’s imperative to know which keywords are performing and which ones should be discontinued. Call tracking provides the intelligence to drill even deeper by illuminating which keywords are making the phone ring. When web visitors visit your site and call your designated phone number, the call tracking software places a cookie on the visitor’s browser which tracks the entire click path from browsing through to completed sale. Action items from understanding this data would be to modify your PPC spending campaign as well as optimize your existing site to target terms which convert well via web forms and phone.
5. Become a Call Tracking Reseller with a White Label Call Tracking Product. A white label product allows call tracking agencies and resellers to take full ownership of Mongoose Metrics’ robust call tracking services, expert technical support and full suite of keyword call tracking intelligence. Features and benefits include: Choice of sub-domain which is fully customizable and branded; branded log-in page with logo; No visible reference to Mongoose Metrics; Full access for resellers and/or their clients to Mongoose Metrics’ technical support, and a time investment of less than five minutes for implementation.
6. Quantify Offline Conversions Resulting from Online Advertising. In addition to seeing phone calls next to clicks in numerous web analytics dashboards, call tracking features such as the interactive voice response (IVR) and ROI feedback tools let call tracking clients enter data related to the phone call for use in later correlation. For example, your customer service representatives can seemlessly enter in call-result data via a Mongoose Metrics IVR system at the end of their call.
7. Track Phone Calls in Canada and the United Kingdom. Until now it’s been difficult for Canadian and UK businesses to use toll-free and local phone numbers to follow visitors from web-to-phone to understand how their websites drive phone calls and ultimately, sales. Technology now makes it possible for multi-national businesses which need a presence on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean and north of the border to seamlessly integrate their online marketing strategies with one call tracking solution. Mongoose partners with only toll-quality providers such as Virgin, O2 and British Telecom.
8. Integrate Phone Call Analytics into your CRM. Take call tracking to the next level by integrating phone call data into customer relationship management (CRM) systems to provide even more granular data for sales professionals. Mongoose Metrics data easily integrates with Sugar, SalesForce and Microsoft CRM. The goal of this integration is to provide your sales and marketing team with a path analysis so they can understand why someone is calling and provide tailored information to potential customers.
9. PPC Call Tracking Integration with WebtrendsTM, OmnitureTM, Acquisio and Unilytics. Many larger marketers use a PPC Bid Management system like Acquisio or Marin Software to simplify the task of managing multiple PPC campaigns across numerous advertising networks. These bid management softwares allow marketers the ability to visualize and automate their PPC bidding. Mongoose Metrics integrates into bid management software like KENSHOO, Marin and Acquisio so that our customers can see their online conversion metrics alongside their offline conversion metrics.
10. Quantify Click to Call Conversions. For applications where it is easier to click to place a phone call, Mongoose Metrics provides a seemless drop-in interface to allow your client the ability to contact a representative of your company immediately. The Mongoose Click-to-Call interface is layered with many of the other Mongoose features enabling you the ability to visualize your complete offline conversion funnel within your existing business process.