How To Set-up Call Tracking

One of the most frequent questions I get asked by potential customers is “how easy is it to set-up call tracking?”.

Before I show you how simple it is, I must first explain that there are essentially two types of inbound call tracking options you can have in your marketing arsenal – which you can use separately, or together.

Call Tracking Options: Static vs Dynamic Numbers

The first option you can use are ‘static tracking numbers’. These are new tracking numbers you would use to replace your existing phone numbers in your advertising.

These tracking numbers will simply forward your calls to an existing landlines or mobiles. You can use static tracking numbers wherever you want to track calls, such as in a magazine advert, a direct mail piece, or a click-to-call extension on your pay-per-click marketing.

The second option are ‘dynamic tracking numbers’ which can be used on your website. Instead of having a single tracking number, like above, where all your web visitors see the same one, these work by changing the phone number for every visitor who comes to your website.

For example, say you have 100 visitors on your website at the same time, each of them will see a slightly different variation of your number:

[For those that ask why the middle screenshot shows our number in red versus the others in grey, this is because we are running Calltracks in conjunction with A/B testing software.]

In the example above I used 3 different browsers and took a screenshot in each one. As you can see each time I was given a different 020 number. You can try this by yourself by viewing our website from different PCs, or from different browsers.

As the Dynamic numbers we supply are changed to be different for each visitor, it means when a visitor calls you can report on the:

• Source
• Medium
• Keyword
• Campaign

You can also see more detailed information on pages viewed before, during and after the call because as the visitor navigates around your website they keep seeing the same number.

How to set-up a static call tracking number:

1. Click “New Advert” in a campaign folder
2. Enter “Advert Name”
3. Select “Media” (you pre-define these options)
4. Select “Media Title” (like ‘Media’ these are pre-defined)
5. Pick what type of tracking number you want to use (local geographic / national e.t.c)
6. Pick what number you want to forward the calls to
7. Enter an “End date” (allows enhanced reporting)
8. Click save

You will then be presented with a new tracking number that you can use, in this case, for my new email newsletter.

How to set-up a dynamic call tracking number:

Dynamic numbers require a bit of HTML knowledge so you may need to pass this to your web developers, but it essentially requires two small changes to your website:

• Insert one line of Javascript into your website just before the closing /body tag (we recommend inserting it across the whole site and any pages hosted on sub-domains). For example:

• Where your phone number is displayed, for example in the header or on your contact page, you will need to be put it inside a span tag with a unique identifier. If you have multiple numbers you want dynamically changed, each will have its own identifier. These identifiers will then allow our software to pick up that this number needs to be dynamic and it will change it each visitor. An example of 2 different identifiers, one for a sales department and one for support could be:

It is as simple as that! This can also work with click-to-call functionality using text or images.

As always please let me know your thoughts, below, or if you have any questions or want me to explain any of the above in more detail?