One of the reasons internet marketing pros love the online channel is the availability of metrics to track initiative (and site) performance.
There is no exception with email marketing. With proper analytics integration, we can see how much money (or how many leads) a specific email campaign produced; compare the dollar value of different links within the email; segment out high-value subscribers for more targeted campaigns; and the list goes on. This is key for any email initiative, no matter how small.
However, one analytics item that I see a lot of email marketers omit is call tracking. A call tracking platform allows you to create new numbers (auto-directing them to any number you want) and have detailed metrics about your calls. On a simple level, it is nice to have more information about your incoming calls, but more importantly it’s key to see what campaigns are generating what calls to your business.
Now if you only sell online and have no number to reach you, then this is obviously obsolete. But if you take sales orders over the phone, receive phone leads, or have customers call for other information, call tracking is very important. For the calls to your business last month, do you know how many were from site visitors that came to your site through your email initiative?
While call tracking can be helpful for all of your online marketing efforts, let’s look briefly at how it works with your email program.
1.Create Call Tracking Number: The first step would be to create a call tracking number to use for your email initiative. On a basic level, this could be one number that is used for all email activity. To get more granular, you can create different numbers for different campaign categories. Don’t go overboard though unless it makes sense for your list and size of business.
2. Static Number Within the Email: The starting point would then be to have this number in the actual email that goes out (wherever you normally have your toll free or local number). This way anyone that makes a call after receiving the email will be tracked.
3. Dynamic from Click-Through: Taking it one step further; we have the number on your website dynamically change to our email number if someone clicks through from the email. This then allows us to see how many calls came in from the website specifically from people that clicked through from our email. Only those visitors will see this call tracking number, all other site visitors will see the standard number (or whatever other call tracking rules you have in place).
This may sound complicated, but with the right platform it is pretty quick to implement. In a nutshell: a small piece of code is placed on every page of the site where there is a phone number. Another line of tracking code is placed on the end of all links within the email. Finally a quick instruction on the call tracking platform admin and you’re ready to start reviewing metrics!
One more cool thing: with many call tracking platforms (the one I license has this), you can have a quick ‘whisper’ audio clip play right before the receiving end connects with the caller. Something like: “email call” so your sales team answering the phones knows the source.
- Forest Bronzan
Other posts you might find of interest:
Introduction to Email Segmentation
We use this very technique with our vacation rental and resort clients as part of our NAVIS Narrowcast system. We can track all marketing camapaigns, including email and even keywords using unique toll-free numbers. Our clients around the U.S. love it!