A brief guide to Call Tracking Phone Numbers: What are they, why do you need them and how to get them in 4 steps

Before diving into Call Tracking Phone Numbers, let’s talk about Call Tracking for a bit.

Call Tracking enables Marketers to understand their call volumes and assign call conversions to different channels, campaigns, adgroups, ads, keywords, pages, listings or wherever you have visible your phone number (from newsletters to TV).

But how Call Tracking does that? With Call Tracking Numbers.

Short Definition

Call tracking numbers, are specialized phone numbers used by businesses to track the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns. Each unique number is assigned to a specific advertising channel, such as TV, radio, print, or online ads. Through call tracking software, these numbers forward calls to the business’s main line while capturing essential data like caller details, call duration, and source. This data is analyzed to measure campaign performance, optimize marketing strategies, and enhance customer engagement.

Extended Definition

Call Tracking Phone Numbers or simply call tracking numbers, are numbers used by businesses and marketers to track and measure the effectiveness of their advertising and marketing campaigns. These numbers are unique to each campaign and are assigned to specific marketing channels such as TV, radio, print ads, and online ads.

These numbers not only forward calls to your business’ regular number or mobile number, with no change in the process whatsoever, but with a call tracking software you can even record calls or play whispers to agents prior to answering the call, or create different routes based on your needs (e.g. during the weekend or the hours out of office forward all calls to voicemail, or with advanced call routing you can route a caller to the agent that has spoken before to personalize conversations and enhance the customer experience.

When the call is made, call tracking software captures valuable data such as the caller’s phone number, the time of the call, the duration of the call, how many times the caller called, the location of the caller, the call page etc. This information is stored and analyzed to provide insights into which campaigns are driving the most calls and which channels are delivering the highest ROI.

Call tracking phone numbers also provide valuable insights into customer behavior and preferences. By analyzing call recordings, transcriptions, and tags, businesses can identify common customer pain points, improve their sales scripts, and provide better customer experience.

Yes, there are Local Numbers and Toll-free Numbers.

Local Call Tracking Numbers are the most suitable choice in case you want to attract local customers. These are phone numbers with a local area code that businesses can use to track calls from specific regions or cities. For example, a business might use a local phone number with a New York area code to track calls from customers in the New York area. Many people prefer to purchase products or services from their local market. So, selecting a tracking number with a familiar prefix will give your business a head start.

Toll-Free Call Tracking Numbers, on the other hand, are free for your customers. These numbers are phone numbers with a specific prefix, such as 800, 888, or 877, that allow customers to call the business for free. Toll-free numbers are often used for customer service and support, and businesses can use them to track calls and leads from specific marketing campaigns. They are preferred to demonstrate a national or a global perspective for your business, without charging your customers with the hefty price tag of long-distance fees.

The main difference between local and toll-free phone numbers is that a local phone number is associated with a specific geographic location or region, while a toll-free phone number can be used to receive calls from anywhere within the country without the caller incurring long-distance charges.

Another difference between local and toll-free phone numbers is that toll-free numbers are typically associated with a national image or regional presence, while local numbers are more commonly used by small and medium-sized businesses that operate within a specific geographic area.

Call Tracking Numbers are the heart of Call Tracking. A Call Tracking Software is designed to help Marketers to track and analyze better the impact of their marketing activities (offline or online) and connect the different touchpoints to investigate the full user journey.

• Marketing Attribution: Call Tracking can help bridge the marketing attribution gap. Knowing what generated each call and attributing each phone lead to specific channels/campaigns/adgroups/keywords, without asking a potential customer “How did you find out about my business”, will give you a boost to your multi-channel attribution.
• Optimize on quality leads, not clicks: Instead of counting bloated clicks on click-to-call buttons, with a call tracking software you can customize what a conversion means to your business by setting up rules and criteria. For example, you may want to sent to Google Ads only the calls that lasted more that 3 minutes or only the first time callers.
• Boost Local Presence: Show your customers where you’re based – whether it’s in your own local area or in another state across the country.
• Improve Landing Pages: You can deep dive into call data and see the callers’ journeys. Investigate which pages they visited before the call, which is the action or call page (the page that made them call you) and which were their actions after the call. You may find some patterns that will lead to page, message or cta copy improvements. You can, also, create A/B testings to see which cta copy originate more phone calls.
• Classify your Phone Leads: With Tags & Scoring you can score leads after each call and turn your focus to winning them as customers and handle your time efficiently.

But, even though Call Tracking isn’t a new Technology, it’s living its golden era. That’s because Marketers, now, are even more data-driven and have realised the impact of the missing data to their Marketing Strategy and decisions. For example,

1. Lead Management: Lead Management Features, make it easier to increase conversion data accuracy and simplify your tracking process. You can use automation rules for streamlined lead classification and integration triggers to supercharge your call data.
2. CRM Integrations: Phone Leads can have a huge impact on your CRM Attribution. You can create contacts when a new lead calls your business for the first time, or update existing contacts with phone lead data.
3. Slack: Slack is huge due to the new WFH culture, and now it’s so much more that a chatting app. Embrace Slack’s Feature like channels, and turn your slack workspace into a lead management machine by sending call notifications when a new phone call is placed. Plus, you can take action asap in case of a missed call, so that you eliminate the chances of loosing a new prospect.
4. Form Tracking: Most of the call tracking softwares, offer form tracking for better understanding of lead activity, and calculate accurately your lead conversion rates.

Actually is pretty easy to acquire tracking numbers, in fact it will only take you a few minutes, just follow the steps bellow.

In case you need it, here is the detailed guide:

Call Tracking can be a powerful weapon for your business or for your clients (if you have a marketing agency, remember you can always sell it as White Label). Having all your phone leads data, in one centralized place, ready to be analyzed and pushed to your integrated apps, it can help you save some valuable time on creating call conversion tracking workarounds, while bringing untapped insights about your phone leads and customers to the surface.

FAQ – Call Tracking Phone Numbers