Despite many experts’ predictions, phone calls are not dead. According to Google:
- 61% of mobile searches result in a phone call
- 40% of mobile searchers clicked on click-to-call ads.
Of smartphone users, a massive 94% have needed to call a business directly when searching for information, whether click-to-call is available or not.
Econsultancy – Google click-to-call used by more than 40% of mobile searchers
More importantly, phone calls convert at significantly higher rates than other channels. Inbound phone calls boast a conversion rate ranging from 10-50%, while most other sources remain in the low single digits.
For marketers, this means one thing: If you’re not tracking and analyzing phone calls, you’re leaving money on the table. That’s where conversational analytics comes in.
This guide will walk you through what conversational analytics is, how it works, and how you can use it to optimize your marketing campaigns, improve lead quality, and gain a competitive edge.
What is conversational analytics?
Conversational analytics utilizes AI to extract data from incoming phone calls. This includes basic information like the caller’s name, number, and marketing source as well as more advanced data, like conversation intelligence. The latter analyzes the content of a phone using AI, machine learning, and natural language processing to distill the sentiment and potential lead quality of a caller.
Conversational analytics refers to the process of analyzing and extracting insights from natural language conversations, typically between customers interacting with businesses through various conversational interfaces like chatbots, virtual assistants, or other automated messaging platforms.
IBM Definition of Conversation Analytics – “What is conversational analytics?”
Integrating the data gathered from conversational analytics with other tools and platforms, marketers can gain a complete understanding of the customer journey. They can access valuable insights that will allow them to optimize their marketing campaigns, allocate resources smartly, spot bottlenecks and other issues that might affect conversion rates, and create personalized content and ads that will target their audience more effectively.
🔥 Learn more about conversation intelligence 👉 What is Conversational Intelligence & How It Can Drive Growth for Your Business
🔥 Or how about a bit more about lead quality? 👉 How to Prioritize & Improve your Lead Quality over Quantity
How do conversational analytics work?
Conversational analytics relies on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to analyze call data effectively.
Here’s how it works.
This process begins with collecting data from various communication channels such as chatbots, call centers, social media, emails, and feedback forms. The collected data, often unstructured, is then cleaned and segmented to make it usable.
Natural Language Processing (NLP), a crucial technology in this process, breaks down text into manageable parts, identifies grammatical structures, detects key entities, determines the emotional tone, and understands the intent behind messages.
Machine learning algorithms then analyze this processed data to identify patterns and trends, learning from historical data to improve accuracy. These insights are visualized through charts, graphs, and dashboards, making them easy to understand and act upon.
The ultimate goal is to provide actionable insights into customer preferences, pain points, behavioral trends, and campaign effectiveness. For example, a company might collect customer service chat logs and call transcripts, clean and segment the data, apply NLP techniques to identify sentiments and intents, use machine learning to classify and cluster conversations, visualize the results in a dashboard, and use these insights to improve products, customer service, and marketing strategies.
🔥 Click here to learn more about how Nimbata deals with call transcripts 👉 Call Transcripts
Conversational data can then be visualized and used for reporting. The call recordings and transcriptions are also an important source of marketing data and team evaluation. You can use them to see whether your agents and sellers handle the calls effectively, if the scripts work if there are patterns in customer inquiries and issues, etc. This data can then be fed to integrated tools like CRM, ad tools, and SEO and provide better optimization options.
Key marketing benefits of conversational analytics
We established how conversational analytics work. Now, we will see how exactly they can help your marketing efforts.
Marketing & call performance optimization
With conversational analytics, you can track and analyze incoming phone calls for key performance indicators. Think KPIs like call duration, abandonment, missed calls and the one you probably care most about, call conversion rates.
The data gathered can then be used to discern issues arising during call conversations, see where your team is lacking, what works and should be doubled down on, and what needs tweaking or even completely discarded. More successful calls mean more data for your marketing and more conversions for your business.
🔥 If you want to learn more about conversion rates 👉 How to set up Call Conversions properly to attract more high-quality leads
It’s this data that will contribute to marketing optimization and success. A clear picture of the customer journey and a deeper understanding of the audience profile will allow the marketing team to create personalized content and configure campaigns for maximum potential. This will create a virtuous cycle of marketing bringing in more phone calls which will generate more data which will result in an even better optimization.
Lead generation & conversion rates
We mentioned it above already, but we will expand on it here.
More and better data means that you can improve lead generation conversion rates. Tracking and analyzing calls will allow you to gain valuable insights into what makes or breaks your lead generation and sales effort. You can identify the sources that drive high-quality leads, which tactics, scripts, or even sellers are more successful, and see what you can improve. conversational analytics will unlock training opportunities and new methods that will bring in more leads and increase your conversion rates.
Data-driven decisions & competitive edge
Marketing is becoming more data-driven than ever, and companies that fail to leverage call data are at a disadvantage. Conversational analytics will give you the ability to understand your customers on a deeper level. You will have a transparent view of their needs and preferences. You can then tailor your marketing, products, and services to their demands and outsmart your competitors.
Enhanced customer understanding
Conversational analytics allows you to gain a deeper understanding of your customers. By analyzing their interactions with your brand, you can identify common pain points, preferences, and needs. This information helps you create more targeted and relevant marketing campaigns that resonate with your audience.
Increased ROI
One of the main benefits of conversational analytics is its ability to boost ROI. By focusing on strategies that resonate with your audience, you can reduce wasted ad spend and maximize the impact of your marketing efforts. This means more efficient use of your budget and better results for your business.
Content strategy development
Creating content that resonates with your audience is crucial for effective marketing. Conversational analytics can help you understand the topics and themes that matter most to your customers. By analyzing their conversations, you can identify trending topics, common questions, and areas of interest.
Eventually, it all comes down to data. Detailed conversational analytics lead to informed decisions based on actual information, instead of false assumptions. They break down echo chambers and lift walls that don’t let you see the truths that will make your business grow. You need data to optimize everything in your business. Marketing, sales, and customer service, all rely on them.
Should you integrate conversational analytics with other tools?
Conversational analytics on their own can improve your decision-making process significantly. But if you want to fully take advantage of them, make sure to integrate them with other software as well.
Google & Social Media Ads
Feeding your Google Ads account with conversational analytics data will enable you to measure ROI more effectively, create personalized ads and optimize existing campaigns or establish new, more targeted ones. These actions will increase your ROI and lower your cost per conversion. Not to mention that Google Ads Smart Bidding will have more data to work on and optimize its strategy.
Your social media marketing can also benefit from conversational analytics. Integrating Facebook or Instagram with a conversational analytics platform will allow you to see which ads perform better and drive phone calls and leads. Just like with Google ads, you can then use this data to further optimize your social media marketing and increase ROI.
Analytics Software
Tools like Google Analytics or other platforms will provide you with on-point reporting on things like consumer behavior, and marketing channel effectiveness and give you a 360-degree view of your marketing performance. Integrating ads analytics with conversational analytics will allow you to measure the conversion rates of your marketing channels, webpages, and even keywords and individual ads.
CRM
CRM systems are the cornerstone of modern business operations. They contain data from every customer and lead that interacts with the business. Integrating your CRM with conversational analytics will feed the former with call data from every marketing channel, campaign, ad, and keyword and provide your sales teams with information that will allow them to better understand their prospective customers. Then, they can use this data to approach them in a way that shows that they understand them better and increase conversion rates and marketing ROI provably.
🔥 If you want to learn more about CRM data enrichment click here👉 CRM Data Enrichment 101: An overview with actionable insights
Steps to implement conversational analytics in marketing
Implementing conversational analytics in your marketing strategy might seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. Follow these steps to get started:
- Choose the right software: Look for AI-driven platforms with sentiment analysis, keyword tracking, and CRM integrations.
- Set up data collection: Ensure all inbound and outbound calls are tracked across marketing channels.
- Analyze & interpret data: Identify patterns, trends, and opportunities for optimization.
- Apply insights to campaigns: Refine targeting, messaging, and ad spend allocation.
- Integrate with other tools: Sync call data with CRM, analytics, and ad platforms for a complete picture of performance.
Choosing the best conversational analytics software
Before selecting a platform, ask these key questions:
✔️ Compliance: Is the tool GDPR/CCPA compliant?
✔️ Accuracy: How reliable is its transcription technology?
✔️ Call Summaries: Does it provide AI-powered summaries?
✔️ Advanced AI Features: Does it offer sentiment analysis and intent detection?
✔️ Seamless Integrations: Can it connect with your CRM, ad tools, and analytics platforms?
If your option answers these questions to your satisfaction, then you can rest assured that you have made a good choice.
Call Tracking Definition
Call tracking refers to the technology that enables the monitoring and recording of inbound phone calls. It’s essentially a system that uncovers how callers discovered your business. By assigning unique phone numbers to different marketing channels, Marketers can pinpoint which ads, campaigns, or search keywords are generating calls. This data is critical because it shows you what’s working in your marketing strategy and what’s not.
💡Check out the complete Call Tracking Guide!
Why choose Nimbata?
Nimbata offers cutting-edge call tracking and conversational analytics, including:
- Call recording & transcriptions
- AI-powered call summaries
- Keyword and phrase spotting
- Real-time analytics & reporting
- Dozens of integrations (Google Ads, CRM, analytics tools, etc.)
You can unlock new insights and use them to optimize your marketing campaigns. You will have enhanced customer data, a vastly improved lead generation and qualification process, and the ability to create personalized and better-targeted ads.
As we said before, conversational analytics capture different types of data. Here, we are going to present some of the insights that you can gather with Nimbata.
- Marketing attribution: see which keywords, channels, campaigns, ad groups, and web pages drive calls
- Caller’s name, number, location
- New or repeat caller
- Day and time of call
- Whether the call was answered or went to voicemail
- Holding time, call duration and abandoned calls
- Sales call, inquiry or appointment
- Lead evaluation and scoring
Integrating these data with other marketing tools, you can create a unified reporting picture and see the complete customer journey.
Conclusion
In 2025, marketing without conversational analytics is like flying blind. Phone calls are still a major driver of high-quality leads, and ignoring call data means missing out on valuable insights and revenue opportunities.
By leveraging conversational analytics, you can:
- Marketing Optimization
- Call handling performance
- Sales
- Lead generation
- Decision-making and competitiveness
All in all, conversational analytics is a modern and valuable tool that can propel your business and offer you an advantage over your competitors.
