Call Tracking as an Advertising and Sales Optimization Tool: Review of Russian Services

You have context ads, targeting in social media, TV and radio ads on, banners placed. How do you know what ads bring more conversions?

You can buy a separate number for every advertising source and track the results manually. However, it complicates the analytics process too much and makes it time-consuming. And when we talk about Internet ads, we will not be able to say from what ad exactly a user came.

Call tracking is intended for such very cases, making it possible to track call channels; thanks to this, you can redistribute your advertising budget between more conversional channels.

Call tracking categories

There are two categories of call tracking: static and dynamic, which differ with the degree of call detail record and application areas.

Static call tracking allows assigning fixed phone numbers to every source of advertising. Then, reports already collect information on calls to every single number. Such call tracking is not expensive and is mostly used for tracking offline ads, as well as sources for which deeper data is not required (for instance, for contacts in social media accounts).

Dynamic call tracking allows assigning a unique number to every visitor for a period of the session and a while afterwards in order to let the system match online activity with the call.

When launching online ads, dynamic call tracking is ultimate because it enables a deeper analysis of these context ads and sees the whole customer journey.

As a rule, call tracking services provide both types of call tracking and enable their combination. What is more, some call tracking systems also provide other tools from additional communication channels (callback, live chat, website call, lead generator) to full-scale end-to-end analytics systems. Let us consider the differences and find out pros and cons of every system:

• Callibri;
• CoMagic;
• Calltracking.ru;
• Calltouch;
• Mango Office;
• Roistat;
• PhoneTrack.

This is a call tracking service with an opportunity to install widgets to communicate with the audience. It has a large numbering capacity per regions, while along with a temporary number there are temporary emails in a package. It allows integrating data into various analytics and CRM systems.

Callibri provides the following information: sources of clicks, names of advertising campaigns, search queries, banners/clips/landing pages or ads that brought visitors, region and city, browser, device, traffic type.

Pros:

• Advantageous rates.
• Number insertion with account for geolocation.
• Wide range of regional numbers.
• Opportunity to connect your telephone number to the call tracking service without entering into additional contracts.

Cons:

• For dynamic call tracking, a telephone number is assigned to a user only till the end of the session, which impairs analytics accuracy in some way.
• Federal numbers like 8-800 and respective talks, compared to competitors, are more expensive.

CoMagic enables tracking data about calls and ads in a single window—you do not need to switch between several services and see immediately which ads bring more calls. The service operates two types of call tracking—static and dynamic. What one can do with CoMagic is:

- To optimize online ads. CoMagic integrates into Yandex.Direct and Google AdWords in a few minutes and analyzes data per ads and ad groups, keywords, advertising spaces, retargeting audiences.

- To analyze keywords. Advertising efficiency is estimated at various CDR levels. Learn the keyword by which a user came who made a call and adjust your advertising campaigns in accordance with this data.

- To monitor call cost. CoMagic lets you understand how much every call costs thanks to detailed statistics of clicks, impressions, expenses, CTR.

CoMagic call tracking can be integrated with third-party CRM, context ad systems and advertising campaign aggregators, Yandex.Metrics and Google Analytics, split testing and online consulting tools.

Pros:

• Call tracking on the basis of its own communication provider with a choice of numbers on buying.
• Wide opportunities to integrate into internal and external systems.
• High ‘purity’ of numbers.

Cons:

• Type of service operation consultations depends on the rate: the default one offers only email support and no personal manager, so the issue handling speed at a minimum rate will be lower than at more expensive ones.

Calltracking.ru is one of the first Russian static and dynamic call tracking services. Like CoMagic, Calltracking.ru is a communication service provider itself. The company has its own fibre-optic network that covers the whole Moscow and nearest Moscow suburbs. This guarantees a good communication quality in this region.

The service provides federal and local numbers in 63 regions of Russia, covering 100 cities.

In the Integrations section, one can connect call tracking with context ads, analytics, and CRM systems. The service also has Call Scoring, a manager efficiency reporting tool. For a little money, you can order analysis of call records to estimate work of managers.

Pros:

• Simple to connect and set up.
• Advantageous price for many regions.
• Visual call reports in a personal account.
• Call tagging in voice menu and opportunity to evaluate managers’ efficiency.

Cons:

• Necessity to pay for connection in a number of regions.
• No minute package for a subscription.
• All talks are paid for from their first minute.

Calltouch is an end-to-end analytics system with call tracking and advertising management tools. The service covers 68 regions of Russia and uses numbers of Telemir communications provider.

Standard reports include data per traffic sources and segments, behavioral metrics (activity per week days and others), a book of leads with information about clients and deals. There are also extended reports with data per UTM-parameters and key queries. For your convenience, all this can be visualized by means of a dashboard.

Pros:

• Good information support and regular free training on how to operate the service.
• Opportunity to integrate into main advertising platforms, analytics and CRM systems of a client (even non-standard ones).

Cons:

• Higher cost than many big services have.
• No opportunity for unassisted connection of new numbers and call forwarding settings—you will have to ask for support.

Mango Office is a system of cloud business communications with the call tracking service. The company offers hosted PBX, widgets, Mango Talker—a decision for corporate communications. The number database covers more than 80 regions.

Unlike with many popular services, here you pay nor for numbers, but for their impressions on the website. In this case, the number of dynamic numbers is not limited.

Reports are formed depending on the chosen type of call tracking in a personal account. They contain information on the earning capacity and effectiveness of advertising channels, ROI, a call log.

Pros:

• Assigning a number to a caller for the whole period of the session and up to 30 minutes after leaving the website.
• No need to pay for a quantity of temporary numbers.
• Convenient hosted PBX with a large number database and simple integration with call tracking.

Cons:

• No demo version or trial period.
• Impossibility to connect own numbers.

Roistat call tracking is part of an end-to-end analytics system that includes the advertising management and split testing services, email tracking, widgets to get leads. The number database includes 91 cities.

When integrating into CRM, the system will be able to transmit a description to every source: you will see at once where the information was taken from, as well as other data: city, landing page, search query if dynamic tracking is used etc.

Pros:

• Detailed visual reports.
• Long testing period that can be extended if necessary.
• Simple integration into external services for end-to-end analytics.
• Opportunity to use usual and SIP numbers, to connect your own telephone for call forwarding.

Cons:

• Permanent control and setting check is required.
• Complex method of working with marks in advertising accounts.
• Statistics losses may occur.

Telephone analytics without number insertion enables tracking the effectiveness of online marketing channels without extra expenditures on numbers. Large companies will save dozens of thousands rubles on call tracking, while small enterprises will start monitoring efficiency of online marketing at minimum cost.

Basic idea: You place a program code on your website that partially covers telephone numbers. To see them in whole, a user must click. The system registers this click and determines a source of click, geography, and a keyword that the website user followed.

Pros:

• PhoneTrack interface allows to organically integrate number insertion into design of any website.
• You can replace not all numbers on the page, but only some of them.
• No professional knowledge is required. You can install a code on your website, having only basic knowledge of HTML.

Cons:

• Suitable only for work with online channels.

Conclusion

Many call tracking services provide a trial period upon request. With its help, you can check communication quality, having made several test calls to the company at different day times. Apart from that, it is worth preliminarily estimating the numbering capacity, too, especially if you are going to launch ads in several regions or use many advertising channels.

Learn more about the main advertising and analytics systems and tools in the Russian market from the White Paper Russian Digital Market Overview 2019