The information outlined below applies to a wide range of analytics platforms, including popular platforms like Google Ads, Google Analytics, and Bing Ads. These platforms provide businesses with the ability to track the performance of their phone calls and understand the relationship between their online presence and the number of calls they receive. By integrating with these platforms, businesses can gain valuable insights into the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns and make informed decisions to improve the performance of their business.
Integrating phone calls with analytics platforms can provide valuable insights into the performance of a business's marketing campaigns. By understanding the relationship between phone calls and analytics data, and using a sufficient number of tracking numbers, businesses can ensure the highest level of accuracy in their reporting. However, it's important to understand the limitations of the data, and to interpret it with the intended purpose in mind.
About online tracking
Analytics platforms like Google Analytics work by tracking the interactions of users on a website. When a user visits a website, Google Analytics collects data about the user's behavior, such as which pages they visit, how long they spend on each page, and which links they click on. This information is used to provide businesses with insights into the performance of their website and the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns.
When a user visits a website that has integrated our service, the phone numbers on the page are dynamically replaced with a unique number that matches the visitor's session and our configuration. This allows businesses to track the specific source of each call they receive and understand how their online presence is impacting their call volume.
When a number is displayed on the website through our service, a record is created to match it against incoming calls. This allows businesses to see which calls can be attributed to specific website visits and ad impressions. The ability to match incoming calls with specific online sessions provides valuable insights into the relationship between a business's online and offline presence and helps businesses to optimize their marketing efforts and improve the performance of their business.
When it comes to tracking the performance of your business's phone calls, integrating with analytics platforms can provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. By understanding the relationship between phone calls and analytics data, you can make informed decisions to improve the performance of your business.
One Event per Call
Our integrations with analytics platforms have always followed the principle of one event per call. This means that for every call that has been associated with an online session, it is reported in the analytics data. This allows businesses to see the correlation between their online presence and the number of calls they receive, providing valuable insights into the performance of their marketing campaigns.
However, it's important to note that it's not possible to identify the exact customer who made the call as they are two separate and unrelated events. The analytics data can only track the calls that are associated with an online session and not the individual customers who made the call.
Unique Calls vs Unique Events
One of the challenges of integrating phone calls with analytics platforms is the difference between "Unique Calls" and "Unique Events". The "Unique Calls" metric measures the number of unique phone calls received, while "Unique Events" measures the number of unique online sessions.
Due to limitations in the analytics data, the "Unique Calls" and "Unique Events" metrics will rarely match. While the portal can identify exactly which calls are returning through the caller number, it cannot do so with the sessions. This means that the reporting of unique calls vs unique events will not always be accurate, and businesses should be aware of this limitation when interpreting the data.
Tracking Returning Customers
Another challenge of integrating phone calls with analytics platforms is the difficulty in tracking returning customers. The analytics data has no way of knowing if a returning customer is returning through a different campaign or the same one. All it knows is that the number has been dialed.
To ensure the highest level of accuracy between the call log and the analytics data, it is recommended to increase the number of tracking numbers used to track the online users. The fewer tracking numbers displayed, the less accurate the reporting will be. By using a sufficient number of tracking numbers, businesses can get a clearer picture of the relationship between their online presence and phone calls.
Intended Purpose of Data
The data that is pushed to the analytics platform is intended to show the trend or the effectiveness of the engagement between the Ad campaign and calls funneling to the business. It's important to understand that the data is not intended to show the identity of the callers, but rather the calls themselves.
Our goal is to provide businesses with a clear understanding of the relationship between their online presence and phone calls, and to provide insights into the performance of their marketing campaigns. However, it is not possible to match the reports one to one. The data pushed is intended to show the trend or the effectiveness of the engagement, not the identity of the callers.
Attributed vs Unattributed Calls
Attributed calls, refer to calls that are associated with a specific online session. These calls can be attributed to a specific ad impression or website visit, allowing businesses to understand the relationship between their online and offline presence. When a call is attributed to a specific online session, it provides valuable information to analytics platforms that can be used to track the performance of phone campaigns and make informed decisions to improve the performance of the business. Attributed calls are an important aspect of call tracking, as they allow businesses to see the full picture of how their online and offline presence are impacting their call volume and customer engagement.
Unattributed calls, or calls that have no matching online session, cannot be reported to analytics platforms that rely on ad impressions or website visits. This is because it is not possible to report an event without an online session to attribute it to. In the absence of an online session, it is impossible for analytics platforms to determine which calls are the result of a particular ad or website visit. This means that businesses may miss out on valuable insights into the performance of their phone campaigns and the relationship between their online and offline presence. To maximize the accuracy of reporting, it is important for businesses to ensure that their tracking methods are able to attribute calls to specific online sessions.
Why Unique Phone Numbers are Crucial for Accurate Phone Call Tracking
When using dynamic number tracking, it's crucial to make sure that a unique phone number is displayed on your website for each source and medium that you are tracking. By using unique phone numbers for each source and medium, you'll be able to track which source and medium are generating the most phone calls, allowing you to adjust your marketing efforts accordingly.
If you use the same phone number for multiple visitors across different sources and campaigns, it becomes difficult to attribute phone calls to specific sources or campaigns. This can lead to inaccurate tracking and reporting of marketing campaigns, which can result in poor decision making and a waste of marketing budget.
For example, if you have two ad campaigns running on different platforms, such as Facebook and Google Ads, and you use the same phone number for both campaigns, you won't be able to accurately track which ad generated the phone call. This can lead to inaccurate reporting and a lack of understanding of the effectiveness of each campaign.
To ensure that your phone call tracking is as accurate as possible, you should use a sufficient number of tracking numbers that are associated with each specific source and medium. This will allow you to track the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns accurately and make data-driven decisions to improve the performance of your business. By using unique phone numbers for each source and medium, you'll be able to attribute phone calls accurately and gain valuable insights into the relationship between your online and offline presence.
Common Reporting Issues Caused by Using Same Phone Number for Multiple Visitors
If the same phone number is displayed on a website for multiple visitors across different mediums and sources, the reporting can become muddled and inaccurate. It can be challenging to attribute phone calls to specific sources or campaigns, which can result in inaccurate tracking and reporting of marketing campaigns. This can lead to poor decision making and a waste of marketing budget. In addition, if phone calls are not attributed to the correct campaigns, businesses may miss out on valuable insights into the performance of their marketing efforts.
A common symptom of a misconfiguration in phone number tracking is inaccurate reporting of marketing campaigns. If businesses are not accurately tracking the source of their phone calls, they may attribute phone calls to the wrong campaigns or sources. This can lead to inaccurate reporting of the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, which can result in poor decision making and a lack of understanding of the true performance of the business.
Another symptom of a misconfiguration in phone number tracking is a lack of correlation between online and offline data. If businesses are not using unique phone numbers for each source and medium, they may miss out on valuable insights into the relationship between their online and offline presence. This can lead to a lack of understanding of how their online and offline marketing efforts are working together to drive phone calls and sales. By using unique phone numbers for each source and medium, businesses can attribute phone calls accurately and gain valuable insights into the relationship between their online and offline presence.
URL Tagging and How it works
URL tagging is a method used to track and match the phone number displayed on a webpage with dynamic numbers that detect the source, medium, campaign, click ID, and other important values. This process involves adding tags to the URL of the page or ad that is being displayed, which can then be used to attribute phone calls to specific sources or campaigns. For example, businesses can use the "utm_campaign" tag to specify a particular campaign to display and report on the keywords associated with an ad. This allows businesses to track the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns and optimize their efforts to improve their performance.
URL tagging works by adding special codes to the end of a website's URL. These codes are called UTM parameters and include tags like source, medium, campaign, and term. When a user clicks on an ad or visits a webpage with URL tagging, the UTM parameters are stored in the user's browser as cookies. This information can then be used to match the user's phone call with the source of the ad or webpage, allowing businesses to gain valuable insights into the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns.
While different platforms may use different terminology or have slightly different methods for implementing URL tagging, the general concept remains the same. By using URL tagging to track phone calls, businesses can gain a better understanding of the relationship between their online presence and phone calls, and make data-driven decisions to optimize their marketing efforts.
URL Tagging and Google Ads Auto Tagging
Businesses can ensure that their website is able to detect the right parameters and attribute phone calls to specific sources and campaigns. When a user clicks on an ad with Google Ads Auto Tagging enabled, a unique Google Click ID is added to the URL of the ad. This ID is used later to track which online session a call should be attributed to.
When businesses use URL tagging in conjunction with Google Ads Auto Tagging, they can add additional UTM parameters to the URL of the ad to provide more granular tracking and reporting capabilities. For example, a business could use the "utm_campaign" tag to specify a particular campaign to display and report on the keywords associated with an ad. This allows businesses to see display numbers on their websites for multiple ad campaigns and track at the same time which campaigns are driving the most traffic to their website thanks to the received phone calls.
By leveraging the power of Google Ads Auto Tagging and URL tagging together, businesses can gain a more comprehensive understanding of the performance of their ad campaigns and track the impact of their marketing efforts on website traffic and phone calls. This data can be used to optimize marketing campaigns and improve the overall performance of the business.