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Tony Wright just posted an interesting piece on the importance of carefully determining goals prior to launching an online campaign.
Advertisers have learned that a print ad can be effectively evaluated by simply measuring the phone responses that the ad generates; these phone calls generally represent quality leads. Because of this mindset, it's easy to get seduced by large click counts when spending money on an online marketing campaign. In an online ad, though, a click doesn't represent the same level of success. For starters, it's anonymous and doesn't require much of a commitment from the person who saw the ad. You could get 100 clicks from an ad without capturing a single good lead.
Mr. Wright is emphasizing the need to set goals that go beyond simple statements like "I want to drive 1,000 visitors to my site for less than $500." Instead, create measurable goals like "I want this campaign to produce 50 new leads who either call the number we display on our website or fill out the prospect form on our contact page."
We're working hard to create call measurement tools that allow advertisers to gain greater insight into how their marketing dollars are performing...online marketing can yield incredible amounts of detailed guidance that has never before been available to marketing planners. Make sure your performance metrics go beyond a simple click count.
Click to call is now out of beta and will be debuting as a live feature this week. We'll be starting the application with customers who have easy access to their website's source code. Our programming team will assist with the implementation of the code snippets.
If you are interested in adding this functionality to your site, please contact your account representative for more information. For the first 6 weeks, we're limiting the application to simple click / call activity. In late June we will be rolling smart buttons that feature greater interactivity with backend scheduling.
Track phone activity by group or department
Phone codes allow employees to get credit for the inbound & outbound telephone calls that they place. When a call comes in on of one of our call measurement numbers, the employee who takes the call can enter his / her 4 digit code so the system can identify who took the call (without a manager having to listen to the call first). On outbound calls, the employees can key in their codes before placing the call. We've previously discussed tracking employee productivity.
Now there's a new wrinkle. When setting up the phone code list, callmeasurement.com users can add descriptive tags to each employee. Reports can then selectively show calls that were handled by specific groups.
A few customers have already gotten started with this feature - the most popular use is the designation of a "Department" for each employee. Managers can run quick reports that break down call activity by department (sales, service, etc.).
Contact your account representative for a quick overview on using this phone code labels.
Century Interactive will be proudly attending this year's Association of Directory Publishers Annual Convention, People and Proof: Pathways to Prosperity. Jack Doege is scheduled to appear on an expert panel that will be discussing call measurement and the role it will play in the future of Yellow Pages publishing. This session will take place on Saturday morning (March 31) at 10:15 and will be moderated by Lois Antelo of United Yellow Pages.
We've added a new feature to the summary reports that shows how many unique callers responded to a particular advertisement. You won't need to do anything different to access this information; the "Unique callers" information will automatically be added to the summary reports.
To see this in action, go the 'Call report' setup screen and expand the 'Show advanced options' link. Select the 'Sort results by' criteria that you wish to see summarized and then change the last drop-down box to 'Summary format'. Here's a sample screen shot:
This report will give advertisers an additional metric tool that can be used to gauge the effectiveness of a particular campaign. For assistance with summary call reports, please contact customer support.
American Idol's misdialing voters
We just got a call from a customer who made an interesting discovery. The guys at Reliable Nissan in Albuquerque have launched a new campaign that is using a unique toll-free number to track the results. We supplied them with the following number: 1.866.438.5705. This morning they were looking at their results and couldn't figure out why they received a flood of calls last night from about 8:00 until midnight. I'm not sure how they figured it out (I picture a gruff mechanic sheepishly stepping forward), but the problem was caused by American Idol voters who were misdialing.
If you wanted to vote for Chris Richardson last night, his call-in number was 866-436-5705. I know there have been problems with voters dialing 1-800-xxx-xxxx instead of 1-866-xxx-xxxx, but it seemed odd that 100+ people would mess up such an easy digit right in the middle of the number (dialing 438 instead of 436). Then I realized that American Idol doesn't show phone lines numerically - instead they use vanity numbers. The line that was displayed for Chris Richardson was 866-IDOLS-05. The people who called Reliable Nissan last night had dialed 866-IDULS-05. These people weren't transposing digits...they were misspelling the word IDOL.
Now I was curious. Were the same people repeatedly dialing in or did most of them figure out their mistake after the first attempt? (turns out there were very few callbacks from the same line) How many people stayed on the line after hearing "Reliable Nissan" because they thought it was just a sponsorship message that preceded their vote? (most hung up between 25 and 28 seconds, which is about when a caller first hears Reliable Nissan) While running my charts, I noticed something pretty interesting. Check out the geographical distribution of the callers:
Now check out this population density map:
It's pretty remarkable how the Geographical-Density-of-People-Who-Can't-Spell-Idol so closely mirrors the overall population. There are a ton of factors that should be skewing this data - most notably a ridiculously small population sample (less than 200 people) that's being drawn from a single television audience. If a few callers from the Houston and Denver areas had misdialed, our sample would be a near-perfect match.
Not surprisingly, Reliable Nissan doesn't share my excitement about this statistical phenomenon, so we've put together an application that automatically reroutes calls during the American Idol voting periods. I will absolutely be checking the results each week to see if this seemingly impossible distribution remains consistent.
New service: voicemail integrated with outbound calling, intelligent routing, click-to-call and more
We just finished combining existing services to create a new after-hours messaging system. Here are four of the elements we brought together:
- Virtual voicemail - callers are routed to a voicemail system that can capture the phone number plus user-inputed data and a voice message. These messages get compiled in the callmeasurement.com website and can also be automatically forwarded to email / third-party services (like a sales lead tool).
- Ring-to scheduling - our platform allows users to create routing schedules for incoming calls. For example, a call measurement number that is being for important customer service inquiries can be told to ring to 214-555-0001 on Monday through Saturday from 8 am until 6 pm. At all other times it should ring to 214-555-0002.
- Outbound call measurement - Track and record outbound calls going from employees to customers / prospects.
- Click to call - connect calls automatically through a web interface that dials both parties and tracks the results.
Bob's Car Service Shop closes each day at 6 pm. Sally Salesmanager tells the call measurement system to route all calls to the new voicemail system from 6pm each day until 8am the next morning.
If a customer calls in at 7:30 pm, he'll automatically be routed to a system that says "Thank you for calling Bob's Shop. Our normal service hours are..." Even if the customer hangs up without leaving a message, we'll still have his phone number (and probably his name from a reverse ANI lookup).
When Sally Salesmanager comes into work the next morning, she'll be able to run a voicemail report that shows her the 17 calls that came in last night after-hours.
Sally can listen to the messages that were left for any of the individual calls. She can respond to a message by clicking on the "Return this call" button; this will initiate a measured/tracked outbound call via our click-to-call technology (if Sally prefers, she can pick up her phone and dial the customer directly; the system would still recognize that a return call has been placed for that particular message).
In the sample image from above, notice that the first call has already been returned. Mike Mechanic was setup to receive email notifications for any missed calls that came from Internet leads, so he has already listened to that message and placed a return call. Sally can check out the original voicemail message and then listen to Mike's return call.
I won't go into all of the details at this point, but this new service also has the ability to handle intelligent routing for incoming calls. If the caller was responding to the oil change ad, he might hear "Thank you for calling Bob's Shop, home of the 15 minute oil change. If you'd like to schedule a service appointment, please press 1. To leave a message for our team, press 2." Any touch-tone information that gets captured could then be wrapped into a report and delivered to the appropriate destination.
As always, we're counting on our customers and partners to discover new applications for this service. It'll be cool to see what you can come up with.