What marketing KPIs should I be tracking? The best marketing KPIs depend on your business and industry. Some of the best potential KPIs to track include sales revenue and growth, cost per lead, customer acquisition cost, customer lifetime value, conversion rates, and more. Marketing KPIs — Key Performance Indicators — are the lifeblood of your…

In marketing, there’s no such thing as a guarantee. Any marketer worth their salt will tell you how difficult it is to promise a specific return when there are so many variables in play, and when so much can be up to chance. But Phorge, a digital marketing agency based in Sydney, Australia, which specializes…

The Appealie Awards are a brand new set of software honors created to recognize SaaS applications that delight users. On Wednesday, Appealie announced CallRail as a 2017 winner in its Overall SaaS category. CallRail joined applications like ChurnZero, LiveChat, Xero, and Zendesk as one of 16 winners in the category. In its inaugural selections, the…

We ended 2017 with a bang and a lot of great new releases! We added a Facebook integration, improved user workflow and permissions, and introduced some great new features to the CallRail API. Want to see what we built? Here’s everything we shipped in Q4 of 2017. CallRail’s Facebook Integration Although CallRail has always been able…

How to measure email effectiveness Email effectiveness is a broad phrase to describe the way in which marketers define success for their email campaigns. Because “success” is in the eye of the marketer, this can mean various things. Most commonly, success is tied to the meeting of goals which is why it is so important…

As part of the UX team at CallRail, I work with content writers to create and maintain CallRail’s support documentation. Each day, I pull reports on the topics customers search for on our Help Center. When looking at these reports, my goal is to understand how people talk about CallRail and call tracking: Which words…

More and more potential customers are using web-based methods to communicate with businesses or signal interest. These days, when a user submits a form through your website, they often expect lightning-fast response times. The quality of these inbound sales leads fades rapidly, so businesses that fail to follow up while leads are warm can miss…

Determining the return on investment (ROI) of your social media marketing efforts can seem like a daunting task. The internet is full of how-to guides and best practices promising results, but at the end of the day, how are you going to justify the time and money you’ve spent on social media marketing and reconcile…

Legal marketing is an industry where phone calls are one of the the most reliable ways to drive leads and conversions. Online form submissions and emails can still yield big dividends for dedicated digital marketers, but the peace of mind you get from speaking to a real human being means that phones are king, especially…

The Call Flow Builder from CallRail increases the power and flexibility of your tracking numbers by routing every call to the right person, every time. Loaded with functionality and customization options, the Call Flow Builder saves you time and money while serving as a robust Interactive Voice Response (IVR) solution for your business. Whether you’re…

Organic search, or unpaid search, is the technique in which search engines pull the most relevant matches for each user’s entered keywords from all of the indexed content within the internet and lists the results in order of relevance to the query rather than displaying advertisements. Organic vs Paid Search Organic search differs from paid…

The year 2017 has seen seismic shifts in tech, business, world events, and everything in between. Whether you’re a marketer who’s just dipping their toes into the waters of digital advertising, or whether you’re a seasoned maestro of all things Big Data, your business will almost certainly be impacted by the events of 2017. As…

According to Girls Who Code, 74% of young girls express interest in STEM fields but only 26% of computing jobs are held by women. In our Women in Tech series, we dig into what drives some of our most driven employees to lead successful tech careers. Her zeal for her craft brightens the room. I…

Boxing Day — the capstone holiday of ‘Silly Season‘ — is fast approaching for Australian retailers. It’s the most wonderful time of the year for those in the mood for holiday cheer, but also for businesses: The stretch from mid-December through early January is the busiest shopping season of the year, and represents a huge…

Get Started with Google Analytics Any type of company–from a small business, a sprawling franchise system, or even a content focused site– must track the online metric associated with their digital presence. Google offers free resources like Google Analytic (GA) and Search Console to help businesses understand the metrics behind their marketing efforts and improve…

Pro Facebook marketers know that campaigns succeed or fail because of audience targeting. After all, advertising on any channel is all about hitting the right person with the right offer at the right time. Luckily, Facebook Custom Audiences help you define a clear audience for each of your Facebook ads, which ensures you aren’t wasting…

David Schroeder’s eyes light up behind his rectangular eyeglasses and he flashes a small grin as he begins rattling off the places in which he’s worked and traveled: “I’ve had the unique experiences of working in Brooklyn, Uganda, Cameroon, Mexico, Honduras, Dominican Republic, the Philippines, North Korea…” In my mind, I can hear the proverbial…

Whether your sales team works in B2B, B2C, or anywhere in between, it’s critical to make investments in your personnel. Your sales reps are just as essential a part of your day-to-day operations as engineers, marketers, and support agents. And as DePaul University reported in 2016, the average turnover cost for a sales rep is…

Introduction [Madelyn] Hi everybody. Welcome to today’s webinar. We’re really excited that you could join us today. We’re going to be talking a ton about SEO and how you guys can improve moving forward, especially as you’re getting ready to plan for 2018. So let’s go ahead and get started. So my name is Madelyn…

It’s no secret that Facebook marketing is an integral part of any data-driven marketer’s playbook. Just last quarter, Facebook reported marketers spent over $9 million in advertising on their network. And with the launch of Facebook’s Call Now button nearly 2 years ago, phone call and text message conversions from Facebook have been growing. BIA/Kelsey estimates…

What is Data-Driven Marketing? Data-driven marketing is the practice of leveraging a data set to push a marketing strategy for a product, place, or service. The data used for this kind of advertising can range from market research for identifying a target audience, to sales and customer interaction data. Advancements in marketing technology over the…

Whenever phone calls or text messages are made, there are typically two pieces of information that can be used to identify your new inbound lead: a phone number and a Caller ID Name (CNAM). Here at CallRail, we display both the phone number and the calling party’s name inside the Call Dashboard and Lead Center to…

What are Offline Call Conversions? Offline call conversions are phone leads originating from any campaign that is not displayed online. These include billboards, print ads, direct mail, advertisements over the radio or television, and more.   Benefits of Offline Marketing Present day marketing often revolves around online marketing, whether it’s paid or organic. However, the…

What is the CAN-SPAM Act? The CAN-SPAM Act stands for Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing. Signed into law in the United States in late 2003, CAN-SPAM is the first such law to establish a nationwide set of standards for the sending of commercial email. Under CAN-SPAM, the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) is…

What is Marketing Automation? Marketing automation is the software marketers use to communicate with their audiences, manage their databases, and extract valuable insight on the success of marketing efforts. It eliminates the manual work involved in deploying campaigns, segmenting audiences, qualifying leads and passing them to sales. Why Do Marketers Use Automation? Email has historically been…

  What are Whisper Messages? Whisper messaging is a call tracking feature that informs your side of the line (before connecting) which marketing channel your potential lead is calling from. With applications like CallRail’s keyword level tracking, the whisper message will notify you of what keyword from what campaign led a caller to pick up…

What are Phone Call Dashboards for Google Analytics and Google Data Studio? Phone call dashboards for Google Analytics and Google Data Studio help you see the call data associated with your marketing campaigns in real-time. This includes metrics such as the marketing source, the paid keywords used in search, the duration of the phone call,…

Research shows increasing power of smartphones in driving holiday sales Black Friday is a big deal, regardless of whether you’re a consumer or a retailer. Astute shoppers get to enjoy deep discounts (and maybe even viral fame), while retailers see what is typically one of the most lucrative shopping days of the year. No matter…

What is Inbound Marketing? Inbound marketing is the process of persuading the buyers to come to you—it’s where we as marketers meet our audience and engage with them on their own terms. In short, inbound marketing is a modern, data-driven approach with many facets that work in tandem to attract people to your brand, which…

CallRail’s intuitive self-service software, tracks, records, and analyzes phone calls, enabling data-driven marketers to optimize campaigns and increase customer acquisition all while proving and improving marketing ROI. View this 8 minute demo, and get an introduction to all things CallRail: Video Transcription Hi, I’m Rebecca. And today I’m going to show you the tools that…

In the not-too-distant past, B2B marketing was synonymous with rows and rows of phone desks, each staffed by an agent who made cold calls to other businesses. This is one of the most expensive and time-consuming ways to market to an audience — it has a high upfront cost for equipment and training, requires dedicated…

Video Transcription Let’s go ahead and get started. I wanted to say, first, thanks for joining us today for our webinar, “How PPC Pros Track AdWords.”    Introductions and Housekeeping We’re really excited you joined us today. First things first, wanted to kind of go ahead and introduce ourselves before we get started. My name…

How to Grow Your Brand’s Social Media Audience The steps to growing your brand’s social audience include identifying your audience through personas, finding the best channels for your target market, creating quality, targeted content, and using paid and boosted posts and elements of influencer marketing. Keep reading to learn the in-depth how-tos for these steps… In…

CallRail has increased revenues by 905 percent from 2013 to 2016 Today, we’re excited to announce that CallRail has been named the 128th fastest-growing company in North America on this year’s Deloitte Technology Fast 500 list. The Deloitte Technology Fast 500 is a yearly ranking of the fastest-growing firms in the fields of media, telecommunications,…

What is A/B Testing? A/B testing means experimenting with two versions of a website, app, or other marketing property to determine which version best achieves the goals and proves the hypotheses of the experiment. Marketers often refer to A/B testing as split testing. The split refers to the fact that there are two versions of…

Guest post by Dsquared Media In the world of today, with the help of the internet, an increase in technological advancements and numerous print options, people are starting to find the services they need differently. While many service-based businesses have thrived off of word-of-mouth and referrals for years, they’re starting to realize that these efforts…

What is ROAS? “ROAS” is an acronym that stands for “return on ad spend.” This is a metric that advertisers use to judge the effectiveness of their advertising dollars. You can calculate ROAS by dividing the revenue generated from ads by the cost of those ads. Why is ROAS an important KPI? Calculating return on…

B2B marketing can be something of a high-wire act for even the most accomplished firms — you’ve got to carefully walk the tightrope of delivering results to your clients while also maximizing the health and growth of your own business. Making sure your clients’ needs are aligned with your own is a nonstop challenge for…

Updated: July 24, 2018 What is Parallel Tracking in Google Ads? Parallel tracking is a method of loading a landing page URL of an ad separately from a tracking URL, which loads in the background, in order to decrease landing page load time. Effective 2018 Google Ads will use this type of tracking by default…

In the age of big data, having a clearer send of advertising ROI is crucial for marketers in any size organization. That’s where we come in – call tracking and analytics can help you figure out what marketing campaigns are driving valuable phone call leads and which are missing the mark. And with the added…

Guest post by Veronica Khoury, CallRail Sales Development Representative Earlier this month, Team CallRail had the chance to invest in our community by volunteering with local nonprofit, Trees Atlanta! Founded in 1985, Trees Atlanta’s mission is to protect Atlanta’s urban forest while educating the public on the importance of environmental preservation. The organization strives to…

How Do Search Engines Work? Search engines crawl websites for information, index and store the data, and then retrieve the most relevant and popular result specific to a user’s search query. Crawl Most search engines crawl through the vast expanse of material on the internet through links. “Links allow the search engines’ automated robots, called…

Team CallRail had the pleasure of attending and sponsoring HubSpot’s 2017 INBOUND Conference and we’re still reeling from their killer lineup. If you’re wondering — yes, Michelle Obama’s discussion lived up to the hype, not to mention other stand-out discussions with Issa Rae, Brit Marling, Elaine Welteroth and more. Did you miss out on the show? Check…

This past quarter we saw some great new releases inside the CallRail application. We were focused on improving our overall user experience, increasing the power and usability behind our Call Flow Builder, as well as introduced some great new reporting features. Ready to check it out? Here’s everything we shipped in Q3 of 2017: CallRail’s…

Customer-facing community spaces are on the rise across industries. At this year’s CMX Summit in Los Angeles, community managers from around the globe gathered to talk about cutting-edge strategy and best practices for fostering member connectedness, determining ROI, and optimizing user experience. If you’re looking to take your community to the next level, or even…

What is Speech Recognition Software? Speech recognition software is a computer program that’s trained to take the input of human speech, interpret it, and transcribe it into text. How Does It Work? Speech recognition software works by breaking down the audio of a speech recording into individual sounds, analyzing each sound, using algorithms to find…

Team CallRail just got back from Inbound 2017 in Boston, MA, and we’re still reeling from all the excellent panels, speakers, and events. There were so many excellent talks to attend, with industry leaders speaking on hot new trends, the latest and greatest marketing technology, advice for aspiring creatives, and even hosting Q&As on how…

Inbound 2017 returned to Boston, MA, last week, for the sixth annual event hosted by inbound marketing software provider Hubspot. More than just a marketing conference, Inbound is part Ted Talk, part social mixer, and part seminar on cutting-edge marketing tactics and technology.  And there were plenty of talks and panels offered for professionals of…

When compared to most other industries, the path to conversion in the healthcare field is a long and winding road. Appointments for care or treatment first require consultations between patients, specialists, and medical practitioners, so most providers forego online registration systems in favor of an ever-reliable metric: Phone calls. Prospective patients still largely prefer to…

According to Girls Who Code, 74% of young girls express interest in STEM fields but only 26% of computing jobs are held by women. In our Women in Tech series, we dig into what drives some of our most driven employees to lead successful tech careers. Carolyn Lyden commutes more than an hour each way…