Call Mining Adds Color to Call Tracking
Tomorrow I will participate in a webinar sponsored by Search Marketing Now on the topic of “call mining” along with John Busby, VP of advertising platforms at Marchex Call Analytics.
The whole idea is to take the content of calls (obtained through recording and transcription) and “mine” them for information that allows advertisers to better understand the quality of the leads they are receiving through various media channels. This is done in a number of ways, including scanning for keywords that are associated with conversion. With a hotel company, for example, these keywords might include “reservation,” “credit card” and so on.
Call mining is the next logical progression for call tracking. Initially call tracking only counted a raw number of phone calls. Increasingly, calls were segmented by day part, duration, whether they were repeat calls and so on, in order to sift out lower quality calls. Now call mining offers the opportunity to bridge from pay per call to pay per action by discerning conversion from keywords.
Marchex (via its $20 million 2007 Voice Star acquisition) is one of a growing number of companies pushing into this arena. Yext is another. It uses call mining to evaluate conversion rates for its small-business pay-per-call advertisers. Yext CEO Howard Lerman touched on call mining in his keynote address at our Directional Media Strategies event last month in Dallas.
Telmetrics, a longtime call measurement leader in the Yellow Pages and local media space, is another company moving aggressively into call mining. In September, Telmetrics launched its speech to text analytics solution, VoiceTrends.
“As the local search ecosystem continues to evolve, agencies, publishers and SEM firms are shifting their focus from lead quantity to lead quality as it is key to advertiser retention,” said Bill Dinan, president of Telmetrics. “The automated post-call analytics that VoiceTrends delivers offers visibility into the cumulative caller insights needed to optimize media channels, distribution partners and keyword buys.”
The CMR firm Wahlstrom is among the VoiceTrends early adopters. Wahlstrom is one of the top five CMRs (Yellow Pages agencies).
“Our clients want details on the leads that our ad programs are delivering,” said Kathleen DeCaire-Aden, CEO, Wahlstrom. “Having the ability to identify a caller’s intent is crucial for optimizing ad campaigns and also shows additional proof of ROI.”
Century Interactive out of Dallas recently launched a human review call categorization service called Humanatic, which employs an army of human-reviewers to cost-efficiently evaluate calls by only making one determination – was this an opportunity for new business.
I think it’s worth noting to the BIA/Kelsey audience that there are alternatives to a machine-only solution since what advertisers want more than anything is to simply determine the caller’s intent. That way the sales team knows how best to spend its time.
Thanks for pointing this out to us Stephen. There is an interesting discussion to be had on the pros and cons of speech to text vs. using live reviewers.
At the core, Marchex is a company whose culture cultivates critical thinking, execution and professionalism, teamwork, support and ingenuity. Marchex has positioned itself in a unique position to capitalize against some huge emerging opportunities as it relates to connecting businesses, both large and small, with consumers in a variety of meaningful and relevant ways.
Oral Motor and Speech Products
Thanks for pointing this out to us Stephen. There is an interesting discussion to be had on the pros and cons of speech to text vs. using live reviewers.