How to Use CallRail to Track Marketing Campaign Performance for Your Business

Automation and technology are making everything easier and more efficient—but only when you put them to use properly. Have you heard of CallRail? Perhaps you’re looking for more information before you decide, or maybe this is the first mention you’ve heard of it and are just looking for better campaign tracking tools. Either way, this guide will cover everything that you need to know about putting CallRail to use to improve your performance tracking and more. 

Do you have the manpower to dedicate to tracking and analyzing campaigns around the clock? Can you afford to pay someone just to pore over data and get the tracking details you need? Moreover, with the advent of AI and automation, why should you even consider it?

You shouldn’t. Save your people for the tasks they’re better suited for—the client interactions, the sales calls, the intuitive, complex work that even today’s impressive automation can’t replace. Tools like CallRail take all the work off your plate and make sure that you’re able to customize your tracking metrics to get the performance reports you need. This will help improve your campaigns by allowing you to implement real-time changes based on the metrics, and even automate tracking based on specific parameters, and more. 

We know what you’re thinking: But I already use Google Analytics (or another online analytics tool) -- do I need another one?

The answer to that comes in the form of another, quite critical, question:

Who’s tracking your phone leads? 

Online analytics tools are great, but even in 2021, you still need to monitor and track your phone leads. Even the most “comprehensive” reporting platforms overlook phone tracking, and that’s not helping anyone. Taking the time to track these leads will give you actionable, detailed data insights that can help you figure out which campaigns are delivering those leads, and which ones might need a little more work.

(And, if you want to streamline even further, ask how our virtual receptionists at Smith.ai can handle your lead intake calls and other call answering services to provide consistency for easy tracking and more!)

So, let’s start by talking about exactly what CallRail is, what it offers, and why your business needs it. 

What is CallRail?

According to the company’s website, CallRail is “a marketing platform for businesses that rely on quality phone calls, leads, and new customers to grow and succeed. Our software gives customers visibility into their marketing efforts, so they know what's working and what isn’t.”

Essentially, CallRail delivers Call Tracking, Conversation Intelligence, Form Track, and a Lead Center to help you track and manage your phone leads. This will deliver valuable insights to help you make more informed decisions about your marketing campaigns. This saves you time, money, and the effort of doing the work yourself. 

More than 175,000 companies use CallRail for performance tracking solutions, appreciating its real-time tracking and insights, along with the robust suite of available tools and features. Most of the users are small to midsize businesses and their marketers, along with plenty of entrepreneurs—they serve dentists, real estate agents, home service pros, lawyers, car dealers, and more. 

The tool integrates with over 700 marketing platforms and apps, offers plenty of options for customization, and makes it easy to call, text, and manage leads in a single place. You can use AI to automate call transcription, generate and track forms, and track every single call from its point of origin with a dedicated number. 

There’s a free trial for new users and the plans available offer options that you can mix and match to create the perfect combination. The trial includes 10 local numbers, 100 texts, 1,000 form submissions, 10,000 transcription minutes, and 500 softphone and local minutes along with customer journey insights, so whatever you can use of this in the 14 days will allow you to see whether CallRail is right for you. 

How does call tracking work?

Call tracking is a fairly simple concept. A different number will be assigned to every marketing campaign, whether it is set up online or off. Then, when a potential lead calls, they will be forwarded to the main business number while the source number is recorded for tracking purposes. The caller on the other end doesn’t know a thing—they experience a normal phone call. Meanwhile, you get information on where someone found your information so that you can measure the performance of every campaign. 

Click-throughs and online conversions are great, but millions of people still prefer to pick up the phone. If you list your main business number in every campaign, you’ll never be able to tell which marketing campaign sent people to your business—that means you can’t, in good faith, know for certain which campaigns are effective and which ones aren’t. 

Many companies have implemented call tracking and then realized just how much valuable data they’ve been missing. Imagine finding out that that multi-thousand-dollar advertising campaign is bringing in only half as many leads as your mostly-free SEO marketing—you'd be incensed that you’re wasting that kind of money on an ineffective campaign. And yet, without being able to see the lack of incoming phone leads, you’d never know. 

When you have this data, however, you can turn it into actionable plans to make the necessary changes so that you are getting the best return on your investment every single time. Not only will you build your bottom line with better campaigns, but you’ll make better use of your marketing budgets when you know what’s truly working (and more importantly, what isn’t). 

The benefits of call tracking

There are several benefits to tracking calls. We’ve sort of touched on a lot of them throughout the article, but now we want to highlight them all and explain them further so that everyone is aware of just how beneficial this practice can be. 

• Valuable Call Tracking Metrics: When you use a tool like this, you can track the number of calls, call trends and patterns, duration, time of day, location of origin, keywords, and even the performance of PPC landing pages to see which ones are generating the most leads and calls for your business. 

• Customizable Metrics: If you don’t want to track all of those things, or even if you have something different in mind that you want to keep tabs on, you can set up your own parameters to get real-time insights on just about anything related to the incoming leads that reach you via phone. 

• Team Performance Tracking: When you’re tracking calls, you can even tag ones that come from different members of the sales team or customer-facing staff that you have. That way, you can determine how best to route calls, who to promote, and which employees might need a little more coaching or support. 

• Call Recording: You can record the calls that come into your business to help identify coaching opportunities, check on customer service, and more. This is a great training tool, and it can also give more insights about your marketing campaigns by listening to what the caller has to say and what concerns or questions they have. 

• Automated Transcription: In addition to recordings, you can also use AI to create transcripts of all of your calls that can be analyzed for training opportunities, marketing performance metrics, and more. This will give you the insights that you need to make changes to improve your campaigns and your team’s service capabilities. 

• Notifications: Many call tracking apps will provide instant notifications that allow you to make changes in real-time. That means you don’t have to wait until a campaign is over to find out that it actually lost money. You can learn what’s not working, make adjustments, and get the profits back on track, all in less time. 

• Better ROI: When you know what’s not working, you can cut the fat. You can also find the campaigns that are working and put a priority on them. This ensures that you’re maximizing your return on investment (ROI) with all of your marketing campaigns. 

• Marketing Budget Savings: When you aren’t wasting money on campaigns that aren’t working, you’re going to be able to save big when it comes to your marketing budget. Not only that, but you will probably add to the savings by identifying the campaigns that ARE generating the best ROI and even realize that some of your best performers are the cheap (or free) campaigns that you’re running. That’s going to leave a lot more room in your marketing budget for other needs. 

What makes a good call tracking solution?

CallRail is a great platform, but what is it that makes it such a good choice? And what should businesses be looking for if they want to check out other platforms? There’s a lot to consider and some of the factors will depend on what your business needs. However, there are also some elements that everyone will want to keep in mind. 

The first, of course, is value—what are you getting for the money? Mind you, no one said anything about “cost”. Sure, the price matters, but not without considering what comes with it. This is an investment, after all, and you need to treat it as such. Consider whether the pricing is reasonable for the features and services that you get and compare a few plans to get an idea of what “reasonable” looks like if you need more insight. 

You’ll also want to make sure that you have the number available that you want. Does the platform allow tracking numbers in your local area codes? Can you use toll-free numbers? After all, if you’re located in Kansas City and people have to call a California area code, they’re probably going to be a little suspicious. 

Reliability and responsiveness should be next on your list. Is the provider going to be there when you need them? What kind of support do they offer? Are there a lot of issues with the system or bad reviews? What about if something goes wrong—will the provider have your back and ensure that your calls and data collection continue uninterrupted? If you want the best call tracking, you need the best partner. 

A platform that is easy to use will also be essential. You don’t want something with a learning curve so steep that you can’t possibly figure it out well enough to use it effectively. Make sure that the tool is intuitive, it includes proper support documentation and tutorials and helps you learn the system so that you can use it effectively. 

Finally, you want a tool that integrates with the rest of your metrics, tools, and software. Otherwise, it’s not going to be very useful in streamlining and maximizing your performance if you’re having to go back and forth between apps to track data. CallRail, like all the best tools, integrates with the likes of Salesforce, Google Analytics, Google Ads, and others. 

Maximizing performance with CallRail and other call trackers: it’s about better marketing, and it’s about time

Whether you choose CallRail (which is a great option, in our professional opinion), or any other call tracking solution, you’ll be able to know exactly which leads come from which campaigns so that you can ramp up your marketing efforts where they’re making an impact and make changes to the ones that need a little tweaking here and there. 

You can even take your tracking one step further with the help of the virtual receptionists at Smith.ai. We can field all of your lead intake and screening, or even just handle after-hours and overflow calls, tracking every call and integrating with the software that you use to keep you informed about every single call that comes in, even when you’re not there to take it. Plus, we can help with a host of other mission-critical services like appointment scheduling, payment collection, 24/7 live website chat, and more.

Schedule your consultation now to find out how our virtual receptionists can help improve your overall business performance with a customized solution for call answering, tracking, lead management, and more. You can also reach us at hello@smith.ai or (650) 727-6484.