The Best Call Tracking Software of 2023

With so many call tracking tools and solutions to choose from, we've compiled this free comparison guide to help you compare and identify truly the best call tracking software for your specific needs.

Provider
Features
More details
Call Tracking with Keyword-Level Tracking
  • Business text messaging and custom notifications
  • Drag and drop custom call flow builder
  • Real-time reporting and powerful integrations
Voice Search With Conversation Intelligence
  • Track calls and customers from searches, social, display, and more
  • Multi-touch, consistent and accurate call attribution
  • Activate call tracking data across your marketing stack
Identify Words And Phrases That Indicate Which Calls Are Qualified Leads
  • See your customer's journey through your website with visitor timelines
  • Multi-Touch CPL reporting ties inbound data to ad spend data
  • Configure a new call tracking number in less than a minute
Monitor Your Conversion Analytics And Compare Marketing Initiatives
  • Test geographic areas using unique call tracking numbers
  • Track actual conversions and learn your true ROI
  • Test certain location types by assigning each type a unique call tracking number
Powerful Call Tracking For Calls, Forms, Chats, Texts, And More
  • Generate instant communications back to your customers
  • Live chat, click-to-call forms and text communications
  • Local and toll-free tracking numbers in over 80 countries
Attribute Calls, Measure Campaigns, And Optimize Customer Experiences
  • Add call tracking to your existing software platform to prevent data silos
  • Build the exact call tracking solution your business needs
  • Deliver accurate, detailed reports in the format you need
Instant Call Tracking With Dynamic Number Insertion
  • Identify online and offline channels that generate calls
  • Integrates call tracking data with Google Analytics and Adwords
  • Track leads across channels and easily report results to clients
PhoneWagon
No reviews
  • Business text messaging and custom notifications
  • Drag and drop custom call flow builder
DialogTech
No reviews
  • Track calls and customers from searches, social, display, and more
  • Multi-touch, consistent and accurate call attribution
CallRail
No reviews
  • See your customer's journey through your website with visitor timelines
  • Multi-Touch CPL reporting ties inbound data to ad spend data
CallCap
No reviews
  • Test geographic areas using unique call tracking numbers
  • Track actual conversions and learn your true ROI
CallTrackingMetrics
No reviews
  • Generate instant communications back to your customers
  • Live chat, click-to-call forms and text communications
Twilio
No reviews
  • Add call tracking to your existing software platform to prevent data silos
  • Build the exact call tracking solution your business needs
WhatConverts
No reviews
  • Identify online and offline channels that generate calls
  • Integrates call tracking data with Google Analytics and Adwords

What is Call Tracking Software?

Call tracking software is yet another useful tool that measures the impact marketing efforts have on

lead generation and sales. By tracking and recording information gathered from incoming phone calls, businesses and marketers can accurately attribute those calls to the marketing channels that drove them. Call tracking helps determine the most profitable sources for leads and how your customers prefer to communicate.

Call tracking software generates unique phone numbers for each marketing campaign so that each effort can be monitored. This includes local SEO services, pay-per-call, pay-per-minute, or other online- and offline- call-based marketing campaign models. Call tracking helps evidence-based marketers and campaign managers view real-time data and determine the efficacy of campaigns.

Why Use Call Tracking Software?

The current state of online shopping and web browsing indicates that many customers and clients

now choose to communicate with businesses using online tools such as web chat, social media, and now, most recently, a resurgence of texting. For those reasons, it can be easy to forget that the majority of sales and leads are actually still acquired with phone calls.

Before call tracking was made easily accessible for small business, most marketers were left in the dark regarding lead sources. At its core, call tracking software uses a relatively simple process: it eliminates the guesswork by tracking the phone numbers associated with specific advertisements. Back then,   most data was compiled only from simple-to-track online form conversions, so determining the ROI and a campaign’s most effective ads was often a much simpler process – but these days that kind of information is limiting and doesn’t provide the entire scope of a project.

Now, we find that many (in some industries, even most) leads and sales are generated from phone calls. In sectors like financial technology, automotive, hospitality, travel, and healthcare, intelligent call tools provide necessary insights of an ad’s impact.

Can Call Tracking Data Improve Marketing ROI?

This compiled data gauges a campaign’s performance and impact on ROI, and therefore its overall

value to a company. Because it is directly associated with lead generation, determining the impact on ROI becomes as simple as providing at-a-glance data generated in monthly or quarterly reports.

By introducing call tracking software to a current marketing campaign, marketers gain insights in not only their search engine results, but also Google AdWords. Even print ads in flyers and newspapers can be measured. Experimental marketers find this feature particularly useful, especially when testing new platforms or testing with riskier strategies.

This data helps management determine the best course of action for existing campaigns across multiple platforms. Management can make decisions based on the return of investment, including where the strategy can be improved for future use. They may even use this data to justify abandoning a less successful campaign altogether.

How Call Tracking Software Works

The numbers used by call tracking software are usually local or toll-free, purchased from traditional

phone carriers for a set price or automatically generated by the software (the method varies by brand).

Marketers associate unique toll-free numbers with engagement over various campaign channels and sourced from specific advertisements. Social media ads and keyword tracking might be the most obvious choice, but these software packages are also capable of tracking, recording, and reporting the data of television and radio ads and print collateral, known as static number tracking.

Keeping a watchful eye on every campaign, even seemingly minor ones, helps provide a well-rounded picture of the most and least profitable advertising efforts. When customers call, the unique number provided by the software records the ad source based on the associated phone number. Since customers aren’t always willing or able to complete a survey that asks questions like, “Where did you hear about us?” utilizing call tracking software is often the only way to source a call.

Detailed Reporting

Call tracking solutions also provide standard metrics on call duration, geolocation data, time

distribution, and the digital marketing source whether as organic search analytics and referral traffic. Some brands provide call routing functionality information and interactive voice response systems (IVRs), which prove valuable for any sales team. IVRs aid in qualifying leads and providing managers with detailed reporting instantly, which minimizes time wasted compiling data manually and helps determine value faster.

Reports and generated caller profiles establish caller demographics and calling peak times, isolate major issues to geographic location, and highlight frequent and repeat callers to examine trends, concerns, and successes.

This method of performance review allows executives to gain a full scope of their marketing efforts and determine the return of investment for each venture. With a complete picture of the ways by which new customers discover and communicate with brands, teams can improve conversion optimization and implement a more effective marketing strategy.

Why SMBs Should Consider Call Tracking Software

Call tracking software helps marketers better target audiences and measures the effectiveness of campaigns. It provides a multitude of relevant information for any business.

Record inbound calls

Call recording allows call center managers to point to specific dates and times that receive the highest influx, which helps estimate peak hours – and helps small businesses save money by more effectively scheduling around the busiest times of the day or week. Call center managers, for example, aim to provide clients with effective support during their busiest hours. This kind of intelligence is made available at-a-glance with call tracking software, which can help direct staff and point to problems that arise with employees having difficulty closing sales.

Refine your SEO endeavors

Taking the time to listen to recorded calls sounds like a daunting task, but doing so delivers a more thorough picture of your SEO approaches and performance. It also helps with landing page optimization, since the software pinpoints the search queries or keywords that led potential customers to your service, and which words were responsible for generating phone calls. It can also provide the location of the caller, which offers a better estimate of a customer base’s demographics to enable better targeting. This kind of knowledge assists teams in optimizing web pages and determining conversion trends, which are often triggered by specific geographic locations or keywords. Such data also enables marketers to create or improve a new content strategy depending on these factors.

At-a-glance advertising channel comparisons

By assigning unique phone numbers to specific ads, you can also make quick comparisons between different platforms, which helps managers decide the most effective channels for a specific set of messaging. For example, if a business owner spends a large chunk of his or her advertising budget on print flyers, they can easily decide how lucrative it would be to abandon print efforts and instead invest in better social ads or some other, more profitable channel.

Make quick, data-based decisions

Most call tracking software tools feature automatic reporting capabilities, which provides easy-to-read data on callers and their geography, the call duration, number of calls, and more. This information is accessed easily, which better enables executives to make educated decisions about their advertising budgets and overarching goals. Having these records easily accessible can also expedite meetings for the same reason.

Customers Still Prefer to Make Phone Calls

While social media remains king of communication, certain industries rely primarily on the kinds of

everyday customer communications that occur through phone calls. Form-fill leads are worth on average only a small percentage as compared to call leads, and the absence of a reliable tracking system undermines the success of PPC strategy since those conversions are unaccounted for.

Customers in many industries prefer to make phone calls over sending an email or using Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

When in search of legal services or a new home, customers prefer to call the law firm and brokerage. Information Technology (IT) services are almost always handled over the phone, as are financial service inquiries.

Making major purchases and life-changing decisions are usually made with care, and many feel more secure when hearing a human voice guide them through the process.

Home services, such as plumbing and babysitting services, still rely on search engines with common keywords, such as “plumbing service” or “Manhattan babysitters.” However, those services are often obtained with a phone call. Businesses that prioritize their Google visibility, even those with a brick-and-mortar presence, should also have a call-capturing strategy in place (if not simply because that’s where many potential customers think to check first).

Features of the Best Call Tracking Software

Call Forwarding

Call tracking allows you to automatically forward calls to the right staff members, so calls are

guaranteed to be at least somewhat expedited every time.

Instead of a caller waiting to be connected to the appropriate party, they’re directed to the right person or department based on their needs. This is a near-effortless way to improve customer service and response time (the same way that implementing a call queue limits frustration during an inevitable wait time by reassuring customers that they will be helped soon and haven’t been forgotten).

CRM Integration and Caller Profile Generation

Call tracking software creates caller profiles based on captured data, such as location, the type of

device they used to make the call, its duration, and the time of day or week.

If your businesses already uses a dedicated CRM program for sales, make sure to also use a call tracking software that integrates with it. This ensures all relevant details collected in the system’s generated caller profiles aren’t lost when new contact records are formed.

CRMs that are integrated with call tracking platforms and dialers allow for marketing automation. This ensures that you gather call analytics as you track calls. Call data can be used to improve offline marketing, manage customer experience, and loser staffing costs at a contact center.

Mobile Call Tracking

Due to their omnipresent nature, smartphones and other mobile devices are now used more than ever

to consume media and for communication of all kinds. Choosing a software brand with comprehensive mobile tracking numbers allows teams to compile data on as many customers as possible.

Younger generations are experiencing a shift in buying power and are able to rely almost entirely on their smartphones for everyday communications and purchases. For records and analytics reports to be as accurate as possible, every type of caller must be accounted for. Mobile accessibility is one of the most fundamental of all call tracking features.

Real-Time/Historical Reporting

Particularly for industries with stark peak seasons, having year-over-year data helps executives make

quick comparisons for faster decision-making. Since call tracking software provides instant geolocation reports and caller profiles, this process is now easier than ever with the right tools.

This kind of automatically-generated report also saves man hours and alleviates staff responsibility for keeping data. Even free tools like Google Analytics can be integrated with most call center software and call tracking tools to ensure that you get actionable information from reports.

Tracking via Dynamic Number Insertion

Many industries rely on their search engine results to gauge overall campaign strategy results and to

obtain business through keyword entries. Call tracking software analyzes web session data via dynamic number insertion.

Under this method, tracking software temporarily assigns call numbers to different web sessions, which are tracked the same way as incoming calls. Dynamic number insertion is often used to determine caller data such as specific keywords, the conversion page, the device types used, and results for any split (A/B) tests you run for specific campaigns. A similar approach, static number insertion, assigns unchanging numbers to static traffic sources such as a number heard in a radio ad.

How Call Tracking Software Affects KPIs

Call tracking can bridge the gap between your online and offline customer behavior. This type of software covers a standard set of metrics, often customizable, and all of which are valuable in determining ROI and measuring the success of each campaign.

Calls and Revenue from Split Tests

Tracking the number of inbound calls and the revenue gained from each should be taken into account as separate KPIs. A/B testing becomes an inevitable part of any marketing campaign, which can be an imperative metric for SEM campaigns. Form submissions and sales contribute to conversion data, and A/B testing landing pages can help you decide where to focus efforts, depending on the amount of online traffic responsible for revenue.

Keyword Driving Leads

While AdWords provides a snapshot of the number of Google-sourced calls received, that’s a limited

view. Gaining insights into the specific keywords that drive leads from Google ads also means gaining insights about revenue opportunities for your PPC campaign. This offers an overview of which words are power-players and which ones aren’t worth your time.

Tracking your keyword level ensures that each campaign is optimized. When integrated with a call tracking service, teams will know which efforts lead to the highest conversions.

Number of Calls & Leads by Channel

This is one of the simpler metrics, but a must-know for any marketing manager looking to refine their

organic or paid search efforts. When testing new platforms, like if your business just created its first page on a new social media channel, seeing how many calls it brings can help conclude if you think you’re spending wisely, or which social channels could be more effective based on your target audience.

The same can be said for your number of leads, which is a broad KPI, but useful for organizations that might have a large social presence, ads in print, and other types of media, including television. You can even assign a unique number to a business card if you’re fond of old-fashioned face-to-face networking. Regardless of your preferred marketing campaign techniques, there’s an ideal call tracking system for every small business in search of better visibility over their campaign success.

Top 5 Providers

PhoneWagon

No reviews

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DialogTech

No reviews

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CallTrackingMetrics

No reviews

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