The Hidden Impact of Phone Conversion Tracking on Print Ads

Mike Rankin

Article presented by GotPrint.com

Shopping behaviors have evolved significantly in the past few years. There are many offline and online touch points average consumers interact with before making a buying decision. If your business requires any type of  interaction with a sales representative or you invest in offline ads, phone conversion tracking should be on your to-do list.

Here is a list of 3 reasons why you should incorporate phone tracking in your online and print advertising.

1) Budget Allocation:

Savvy marketers constantly shift marketing dollars to channels that are more profitable in an effort to increase efficiency and lower their cost per acquisition. Without proper tracking, you won’t have visibility of the full potential of your marketing efforts and this will directly affect the ROI of your ad campaigns.

Let’s assume that you are sending a direct mail postcard to 500 recipients where your main goal is to get new leads for a specific product. The postcard has a call-to-action that sends the users to your website (with a unique tracking tag) and a phone number.

Assuming that you got 10 leads from those that visited the website and filled the form to request more info about your product. If it costs you $1000 to get 10 leads, your CPA = $100.

If you run the above scenario, but with phone tracking in place, you will be able to accurately measure how many leads were acquired from a phone and online sources.

Let’s assume you received 20 new leads via phone. The CPA of this campaign will be $33 [$1000/(20+10)]. If phone tracking wasn’t in place, your marketing budget might be shifted to channels that have less CPA and this will limit the growth of your direct mail efforts.

Here is an example of how your reporting could look like:

2) Increase Conversions:

Not all conversions are created equal. The conversion rate of a phone and online sources will vary significantly depending on the industry and audience. Companies who deem phone conversions vital to their business see a higher conversion rate from phone sources than web based conversions. The main explanation for the conversion rate increase for phone sources can be attributed to:

A) The personal nature of phone communications. It’s easier and more effective to persuade and communicate with potential customers when they are talking to a live person. Remember that people buy from people, not companies.

B) Phone communications add a sense of trust and comfort to the end user. The legitimacy of a business can be asserted with a proper use of phone numbers.

C) Convenience: Mobile traffic is surpassing desktop traffic and a mobile-first mindset needs to be in place to ensure long-term success. The best call-to-action you can have for those on-the-go is to provide them with a handy phone number to get more information about your services or products.

Due to the above reasons, lead-based companies experience over 2X higher conversion rate from phone sources than online sources. If a proper phone tracking mechanism was implemented, you can easily track the conversion rate of each source (phone and online) and adjust the messaging on your print (or online) materials to focus on the call-to-action that yields higher returns.

Here is a list of online companies that creatively push for phone conversions to increase conversion rate:

A) Creative Smiles (Direct Mail Postcard):

B) AIS insurance (Website):

B) Ashford University (Landing Page):

C) RooterMan (Website):

3) Improve user experience:
The most overlooked advantage of tracking phone conversions is the ability to improve the user experience. The rich data you get out of phone tracking will empower upper managements to utilize user related data to better improve the customer experience and marketing messages.

When sale reps are interacting with the users via phone, they are indirectly expressing their concerns and questions which can be collected to address these issues on printed materials and web properties.

Keep in mind that the more granular data you track, the more actionable items you will get. Make sure to provide a unique phone number per traffic source in order to accurately optimize your campaigns.

Never underestimate the power of phone tracking because the data it reveals can affect the outcome of you marketing budget, strategy and even personal growth within organizations.

There is no limit to what channels you can utilize phone tracking. It can be used on any marketing source such as business cards, direct mail postcards, flyers, banners, landing pages, PPC ads and more.

Are you tracking phone conversions? Tell us how phone tracking have helped your company.