In today's ever-changing marketing landscape, it takes more than a well-timed call or a click on a PPC ad to drive customer conversions. These days, customers expect hyper-personalized experiences, which is why marketers need to get to know their customers inside out. The good news is that’s exactly what you can do with call intelligence, which means you can massively power up your conversion rate optimization strategy.
So, before we dive in – let’s start by reminding ourselves what a conversion is. Then, we’ll go on to explain what call intelligence is, and the impact it has on lead generation.
What is a conversion?
A conversion is when a consumer receives a marketing message and performs a desired action. It’s important to note that a conversion will be different from business to business and campaign to campaign.
For instance, if you’re a B2C brand that sells a product, a conversion will likely be when someone makes a purchase. But it could also be someone signing up for your newsletter to bulk out your owned contacts. Similarly, for B2B, this could be getting someone to fill in a contact form, download a whitepaper, or register for an event.
How to calculate conversion rates?
A conversion rate is typically expressed as a percentage and follows a simple formula. To calculate conversion, you need to know how many conversions you’ve had over a set period and the total number of interactions or leads.
If your conversion metric is linked to calls, then you’d use the following formula:
Conversion rate = (Total number of conversions / Calls made to your business) x 100
Now we’ve defined what a conversion is and how to calculate it, let’s do the same for call intelligence.
What is call intelligence?
Call intelligence is the key to unlocking the potential hidden within your inbound and outbound calls. Essentially, it's the process of measuring, collecting, and unlocking invaluable customer insights trapped in your call data. This includes key details like the caller's name, phone number, the marketing source, and the journey they took before picking up the phone.
The importance of conversion rate optimization (CRO)
Every business benefits from having a solid conversion rate optimization (CRO) strategy. CRO tools have been shown to deliver an impressive average ROI of 223%. All in all, conversion strategies will help you steer your lead generation in the right direction and deliver other key benefits such as:
- Campaign optimization to make sure you consistently generate better results.
- Refining sales scripts to make sure agents deliver exceptional service on all outbound and inbound calls.
- Understanding sentiment fluctuations and preventing negative outcomes.
- Enhancing communication across the entire buyer journey.
How to use call intelligence to drive customer conversions
In a consumer landscape filled with fleeting and anonymous digital touchpoints, and multi-channel marketing campaigns bringing in leads from all directions, calls are one of the most direct engagements you can have with your customer. Not to mention, inbound calls are 10-15 times more likely to convert than online leads.
So, if you want to positively impact your conversion metrics, you need to start by getting to grips with what prompts customers to take the actions you want them to. Tools like call tracking offer a deep dive into customer behavior. For example, it shines a light on which marketing activities, keywords, or channels are driving phone call conversions. This enables you to map the end-to-end customer journey and use that intel to inform your sales strategies and optimize your campaigns.
Take customer conversions a step further with Conversation Analytics and get answers to questions you’ve never been able to ask. What is it about our product or service that has our customers on the fence? How are our best agents converting leads? How can we turn that make-or-break moment into a win? You can pinpoint the moment when sentiment dips and use clever sales scripts to turn unhappy customers into loyal advocates.
Tapping into the unfiltered truth of what resonates with your audience is a game changer for driving customer conversions. Why? Because optimizing messaging and incorporating personalization with real-time customer insights is one of the most impactful CRO tactics you can adopt.
Moreover, Infinity’s call tracking software offers comprehensive tracking between online clicks and offline calls for your PPC campaigns. With tools like Smart Match, you can link those invaluable calls directly to campaigns. As a result, you can lower acquisition costs, identify underperforming activities and, of course, increase your Average Order Value (AOV).
Real-world examples of using call intelligence to drive customer conversions
To show the real impact of call intelligence, let's look at how some of our customers have been using it to drive customer conversions:
NFU Mutual
For NFU Mutual to establish customer fit and provide the best solution, they need to understand a customer’s unique situation and insurance requirements. Calls were an essential part of the quote process. They used call tracking to measure campaign performance, but they had no idea what type of calls were being generated.
To prevent wasting time and marketing budget, and frustrating customers who wouldn’t convert, NFU Mutual needed to identify which campaigns were getting the right customers to pick up the phone. From there, they could optimize their marketing spend and keep phone lines free for the enquiries that had the highest chance of converting to a sale.
They used Smart Match to assign outcomes to all calls where an estimated value per call could be calculated. This helped match 100% of their marketing-driven calls to outcomes, feeding reliable data directly into their Martech stack. This meant they could make informed decisions about which activities and campaigns they should sustain.
Smart Match helped NFU Mutual:
- Optimize web journeys to improve call quality.
- Reduce call volumes by 33% by lessening low-quality enquiries.
- Increase revenue per call by 31%.
Flight Centre
Flight Centre wanted to refresh their website to focus more on the promotion of tailor-made holidays for their customers. These products required in-depth discussions over the phone to tease out the customers’ needs and wants. Flight Centre needed to start identifying which marketing channels and campaigns, were generating high-value calls, and understand how to drive more.
Conversation Analytics enabled Flight Centre to set customizable goals, based on location, intent, airlines, and even specific brand words that they marked as having high or low value. Over 100 keywords were inputted to help them grade the quality of a call and to monitor if their callers aligned with their new website refreshment of luxury tailor-made escapes.
They identified pain points, trends, and high-value calls in their visitor and call volumes and adapted marketing campaigns and pages based on these invaluable insights. Infinity’s platform saved Flight Centre hours of manual filtering of their phone enquiries.
Flight Centre’s work with Infinity helped them achieve the following results:
- 46% year-on-year increase in online phone conversion rate for their tailor-made holidays section.
- Rate of visitors calling from PPC boosted by 9%.
- 44% of high-value enquiries now generate a booking.
In conclusion, call intelligence is the Swiss army knife you need to drive more customer conversions efficiently. By understanding your customer's behavior, optimizing your marketing campaigns, and refining your sales scripts, you can unlock the full potential of call intelligence to supercharge your marketing activities. Make data-driven decisions and watch your conversion rates soar.