CallRail Updates to Google Ads, GMB, and Google Data Studio Integrations

by Katherine Hosmer  May 5, 2020

Did you know that CallRail has recently made some significant improvements to our popular Google integrations? As always, CallRail and Google work together wonderfully, and we’re always looking for ways we can make our users’ lives easier. Here’s some catching up on what we’ve added in lately.

Google Ads

Within our Google Ads integration, we now offer separate conversions for first-time and repeat callers. If your goal is to make every customer a repeat customer, being able to specifically see who’s making their first contact lets you make the first impression you need to keep them coming back.

Having these conversions registering separately means you can take advantage of Google’s Smart Bidding - their automated bidding strategies designed to simplify campaign design. Our integration triggers previously let you only send first time callers to Ads, but this Google Ads integration improvement means you don’t have to sacrifice the rest of your calls to stay focused on giving new customers extra attention.

Google My Business

Our Google My Business (GMB) integration has received some substantial upgrades to make setup easier. Instead of bouncing around between platforms and navigating multiple menus to make sure your lead activity is accurately tracked in CallRail, we’ve simplified some processes so you only have to adjust your integration settings and let us handle the rest.

For one, you’ll now be able to set one of your tracking phone numbers up as an Ads Location Extension directly from your GMB integration. If you don’t set an Ads Location Extension number in GMB, Google will use the primary business number from your GMB location data for this by default. This means that in your CallRail reporting, PPC calls from Google Ads will be lumped in with any organic calls that came from your GMB listing. The new enhancement to CallRail’s GMB integration will automate the setup of this number and ensure calls are attributed correctly.

We’ve also added the ability to have UTM parameters automatically attached to your site’s URL. This allows you to keep tabs on anyone coming to your GMB listing, whether they directly call through your listing or they click through to your website and place a call after. You’ll now see these calls correctly attributed to GMB instead of being lumped in with those attributed to organic search.

Google Data Studio

We’ve made a series of improvements with our Google Data Studio (GDS) integration by creating new connectors that pipe data into that platform.

  • We’ve made a Forms Summary connector so summary data on your form submission activity can be seen in GDS.
  • We also have a new Call Time Series connector that will enable usage of the Time series graph element within GDS for CallRail activity.

All of these additions and improvements will expand the options of what you can see within Google Data Studio. We’re always paying attention to our users’ needs, and we’re excited to show off improvements like these that address concerns we’ve seen and turn them into great new features.