This is a guest post by Anthony Krolczyk, Brand Director at LumenAd. As one of CallRail’s Agency Partners, LumenAd specializes in organizing CallRail conversion data for a holistic view of all digital investments. Built within a proven framework for unifying programmatic, direct, search and social data, LumenAd consolidates all your advertising functions into one intuitive workspace.

How did I get here?

I’ve executed hundreds of digital advertising campaigns. From my early days as a Red Bull student brand manager, to launching a sports nutrition company that relied heavily on online customer acquisition, I appreciate firsthand the pressure and scrutiny of executing advertising budgets. When it’s all said and done, what matters most is demonstrating the return on investment.  

Those experiences led me to join LumenAd, an advertising management software company in Missoula, MT. I started on the media services team as their second account manager and gravitated towards clients that faced the same hurdles I had experienced when attributing return on ad spend. 

This is when I noticed a pattern. No matter the industry, company size or budget — chasing the latest industry trends was distracting teams from solving for desired business outcomes. This is not to say testing new opportunities shouldn’t be a core pillar of your digital strategy, but you need to keep business results at the center of your decision making. 

From this came my mission as a marketer: I want to be looked at as a contributor to revenue and growth. Not a cost center. 

With that in mind, constructing the right media mix can be a daunting task and no matter how savvy or comfortable you get, the advertising ecosystem is evolving as fast as you can digest it. There will always be a hot new inventory offering, targeting strategy, or audience tactic with an exciting abbreviation for you to remember. 

I’ve learned staying focused on attribution is not only the best way to guide conversations in this ever evolving ecosystem, but also a recipe for success. As you dive into the best way to demonstrate return on ad spend in your own organization, here are five tips to keep top of mind when using call attribution.

Pro Tip #1: Prioritize Data Organization

If you’re a marketing or media professional, you know the pain of pulling together data from dozens of sources to stitch together a complete picture of campaign performance. However, most try to solve reporting headaches with reporting solutions. This leads me to my first pro tip:

Reporting isn’t the problem — it’s how you organize your data before you ever launch a campaign. 

Think about it. Most of us wait until the end of a campaign to decide what story to tell with the pile of data at our disposal. But if you flip this way of thinking on its head and start with the ideal story that provides you with the desired business outcomes, you now have a structure and home for every data source before you begin. 

This is essential to managing sophisticated media campaigns because if you’re not properly organized from the start, you’ll never be able to optimize to the supply paths providing the greatest return on investment. And consequently, reports that leave you with more questions than answers. 

Pro Tip #2: Unique Tracking Numbers

If you have a diverse media mix, I can’t stress enough how critical it is to generate unique tracking numbers for each channel, platform or ad group. This allows you to attribute which strategies and messaging are resonating most across your entire media mix.

For example, if you have Instagram and Spotify ads that direct people to the same landing page with the same phone number, build out that number twice in CallRail and label them appropriately. This will help you make optimizations based on phone call volume by tactic.

Pro Tip #3: UTM Tagging Standards

Strategically build your UTM tags to allow CallRail to change numbers based on the platform that sent the traffic.

1. Make sure your query string (everything after the “?”) is fewer than 120 characters as some platforms will reject lengths longer than that.
2. At a minimum, use utm_campaign, utm_medium and utm_source. 
   • utm_content is an optional field that can be used to differentiate between creative sets or campaigns. 
   • utm_term can be used as well, but is often overwritten by Google and Bing search campaigns.
3. Do not use spaces or special characters.

What is a UTM?

Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) are five variants of URL parameters used by marketers to track the effectiveness of online marketing campaigns across traffic sources and publishing media.

The UTM parameters in a URL identify the campaign that refers traffic to a specific website and attributes it to the browser’s website session along with all the sessions after that until the campaign attribution window expires. UTM parameters are part of the “query string,” and come after the “?” in a URL. These values allow for web traffic to be analyzed and for CallRail to change numbers based on the ad buying platform that sent the traffic.  

Required fields include:

• Utm_campaign: Name of the campaign.
• Utm_medium: Name of the channel or strategy of a campaign (e.g., Social, Display, Retargeting, Audio, Search).
• Utm_source: Name of the platform (e.g.,Facebook, Instagram, The Trade Desk, Spotify, Google). 
• Utm_content: Name of the creative asset or message being shared.
• Destination: The website URL. 

Pro Tip #4: Tag Management

Use a tag management system to implement and manage tags, such as Google’s Tag Manager.

CallRail’s script fires off two triggers and allows marketers to get very specific about number swapping. This allows you to tie calls back to multiple variables within the UTM string. However, most use UTM_campaign and UTM_source.

Pro Tip #5: Quality Assurance

Always ensure the dynamic number insertion is working properly. Navigate to CallRail’s “Test Dynamic Number Insertion” page. Enter the campaign URL in CallRail with UTM parameters attached (this is the same place you grabbed the snippet). This auto-test confirms that dynamic number insertion is correctly installed and working on your webpage. 

The test has two parts. First, it validates that your code snippet has been installed in the correct location before the </body> tag. Second, it checks that your tracking numbers are swapping on your site.

Resource

LumenAd’s Campaign UTM Builder allows you to easily add UTM parameters to URLs for quick tracking and UTM management. Simply make a copy of this Google sheet and follow the provided example to generate a unique campaign URL. 

Setup

Reference CallRail’s documentation to install dynamic number insertion with Google Tag Manager (GTM).

The post 5 pro tips for cross-channel call attribution appeared first on CallRail.

SEED SPOT is launching an Impact Entrepreneur Meet-Up, a free monthly education program for impact entrepreneurs, tech leaders, and future founders. Designed to increase access to resources, networks, leading investors, and service providers for entrepreneurs in Phoenix and Washington, DC, the Impact Entrepreneur Meet-Up is a 90-minute meet-up and workshop hosted on the third Friday morning of every month. SEED SPOT incorporates intentionally-crafted curriculum that guides conversation and provides innovators with the building blocks needed to grow sustainably.

The Impact Entrepreneur Meet-Up provides an open and free forum for founders to access top-tier lessons from SEED SPOT and leaders in entrepreneurship. To provide optimal support for entrepreneurs, SEED SPOT is partnering with a number of organizations, including the Arizona Founders Fund, WeWork, Verizon 5G Labs, Amazon Web Services, Impact Engine, Booz Allen Hamilton, and others. 

The first Meet-Ups will take place in both Phoenix and Washington, DC on Friday, September 20 from 8:30am – 10:00am. In Phoenix, Kirk Morales, SEED SPOT Mentor and Co-Founder / CTO of Persosa, will be leading a session on how to launch an application without a technical co-founder. In Washington, DC, Elizabeth McCluskey, Principal at Impact Engine, will be teaching attendees how to form, nurture, and leverage meaningful relationships with impact investors. 

“In order to impact the entrepreneurship ecosystems in Phoenix and Washington, DC and ensure each entrepreneur has the opportunity and space to launch, develop, and cultivate their dream, we are excited to introduce the Impact Entrepreneur Meet-Up,” said C’pher Gresham, CEO of SEED SPOT. “Through our partners and experts, each founder with an idea or a growing startup can have access to top rated support and a community of like-minded founders.”

The Impact Entrepreneur Meet-Up complements SEED SPOT’s other program offerings – the 2-Day Launch Camp and 8-Week Impact Accelerator. While all three were developed to support impact-driven entrepreneurs, the Impact Entrepreneur Meet-Up provides an ongoing opportunity to form valuable relationships, leverage the expertise of industry leaders, and learn new skills.

Limited space is available for the first Impact Entrepreneur Meet-Ups on September 20. To attend the Phoenix Meet-Up at WeWork Camelback (2425 E Camelback Rd), register HERE. To attend the Washington, DC Meet-Up at the Booz Allen Hamilton Innovation Center (901 15th St NW), register HERE.

To explore launching an Impact Entrepreneur Meet-Up in your community, please express interest HERE.

The post SEED SPOT Launches Meet-Up to Provide Ongoing Support for Impact Entrepreneurs appeared first on SEED SPOT.

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 motivates some of our most driven employees to lead successful tech careers.

With one look at Janan Barge, you might never guess that she leads a fearless team of software engineers taking the Atlanta tech scene by storm. For one, she’s a woman — and a woman of color, at that. But why? Why do we, as a society, see Janan’s accomplishments as an anomaly rather than the norm? Why aren’t there more women of color in tech? Well, it’s a complicated answer. 

But a huge part of that answer is access — and Janan is proof of the power of access. 

A 2016 report from Google found that black and Hispanic students were 1.5 and 1.7 times more likely to have an interest in learning computer science. And while there have been initiatives to increase computer science offerings in K-12 education, black and Hispanic students are still less likely to have access to those resources. Furthermore, more than two-thirds of white students report using computers at home, whereas only half of black and Hispanic students do. 

Janan detailed her first impactful experience: Being mentored by her middle school computer teacher.  

“She knows now that she was my mentor, but then — she didn’t. She was just my computer teacher. And by ‘just’ I mean that she wasn’t someone that was assigned to me or told to work with me in any way. But she saw my strengths, and instead of me taking my own elective, she allowed me to work with her other classes and be her assistant. So, instead of going to gym, or art, or home ec, I’d just go back to the computer room and work with the other classes. And by doing that, she simply gave me the opportunity to touch a computer more often.”

Having that access is something Janan never takes for granted, and continues to hold with her in her life’s work. She earned her degree in Science Technology & Society at Stanford, with a focus in Computer Science. “So, I took your traditional computer science courses, communication courses, plus courses in things like sociology, identity and race. My honors thesis was actually on the multiracial representation of students in educational software. That’s just a nice way of saying, ‘Do students see themselves in the games that they’re playing everyday?’ For example, in software that’s teaching them how to read, do they see someone that looks like them?”

She folds that line of thinking into her everyday work here at CallRail, challenging her team to think beyond themselves as they build. “These dialogues about who is going to use our technology — whether that be someone of a different ethnic background than yourself or a different gender, a different sexual identity, and so on — are so important. It’s really imperative that our technology can reach all of those different spaces, and we must take a hard look at how that technology can impact these spaces.”

She also explained how joining the INROADS program helped her start opening the doors of her career. “After my freshman year, I started working with General Electric in their franchise finance division. It was interesting, but it wasn’t for me. Then the following summer, they asked me if I wanted to go back to GE but I asked them if I could find my own internship. I wanted to do something more computer science-based. So I ended up interning at Google in Phoenix, and then again the following summer in Silicon Valley, Mountain View. 

After I graduated, Google allows you, if they offer you a job, to go work for AmeriCorps and just delay your offer. I ended up doing Teach For America for two years in D.C., teaching 8th graders math. After that, I went back to Google and worked as a software engineer, predominantly front-end. And that’s how I ended up finding my love for project management.”  

It wasn’t all rainbows and butterflies at first. Finding out what you don’t like doing is just as important as finding out what you do like doing.

“It actually wasn’t that good in the beginning. I was very young and I didn’t take criticism very well and it was hard for me. One of the things that my manager told me was that I didn’t take failure very well either. Which is true — I’m a perfectionist at heart. So he told me that I would only put myself in spaces where I could be successful. And by doing that, I was limiting myself.

So he encouraged me to get into the project management space. He gave me a project to manage while I was on the agile scrum team and I didn’t know anything about it or anything about how to manage projects. It failed. It failed horribly. So much so that he had to come in and take over and get the team back on track. 

But through that, I learned how to fail. I learned that things don’t go well every single time. And despite that, I learned that software development at its purest form isn’t really for me. I don’t like to sit in front of a computer all day. I love to chat with people and collaborate.” It was extremely pivotal to her career.

But like most women, Janan was afraid to make the jump into new spaces. In her case: Engineering management.

“I did not have any direct management experience before I started at CallRail. I had worked with huge project management teams and was responsible for very large budgets. I worked for AT&T, managing some of their major launches for things like the iPhone and internet service for almost 5 years. The last project I had at AT&T was a $10 million budget. I say all of that just because I had been in these spaces with a lot of responsibility. But for me, taking on the responsibility of directly managing, even if it was just one person and their career, and having them look to me with that pressure was huge.”

“My friend told me to just apply and go all the way through, no matter what I thought. I actually almost delayed and almost said ‘no’ to the full interview process because I was so afraid and scared. I didn’t feel like I had the experience I needed to be a manager. And it’d be my first time in the startup space, I’ve always worked for large companies. So I just felt like all eyes were going to be on me, especially since I’d be one of CallRail’s first engineering managers ever.” 

Which brings us to another answer to the question of ‘why aren’t more women in tech?’ — perception. 

While everyone’s bound to fail at some point in their career, when women fail in the public eye, it’s viewed as a harder fall. In fact, a study of GitHub users found that code written by women was accepted 78.6 percent of the time, which is 4 percent more than code written by men. But that was only when the coder’s gender was kept secret. (Even J.K. Rowling chose to use her initials as her pen name because of perceived bias!)

But fear didn’t hold Janan back. She leaned on her parents’ advice: Be fearless. 

Now, Janan is thriving as an engineering manager. When she started at CallRail, she became very passionate about optimizing the engineer onboarding process. She championed our initiative of doing all that we can to remove bias in the engineering application process, and works to break down the perceived barriers to application altogether.   

“Depending on how you word your job descriptions, you can unintentionally filter out a lot of women and minorities across the board. So we actually reworked our job descriptions to do things like have less bullet points. It’s known that if you have say, 5 bullet points, most women will believe that they have to hit at least 4 of those 5 in order to even feel comfortable applying. Whereas a male might feel comfortable applying as long as he hits 1 or 2 of those bullet points.” 

Janan is also passionate about helping her team find their way, just like her manager at Google did. “When I have new engineers come in, I tell them that the reason why I love engineering management is because my engineering manager actually helped me find out that I love project management. I think that engineering managers are extremely important in helping folks find out their passions and where they fit in. I always encourage my engineers to go into spaces that they will fail in. And failure is not seen as a negative thing — it’s seen as a growth opportunity.”

“I am just really interested in people in general, and so that carries over into me asking my engineers what they’re passionate about. One of the questions I actually ask engineers when they’re interviewing here is what they’re passionate about. And many times, they start out on the tech side, naming what languages they like to learn and what they’re currently coding. But I really like to hear about what they do in their free time — just so that there’s a possibility we can bring that passion into the work they’d be doing here everyday.” 

Outside of work, Janan is an avid cook and baker. “It actually allows me to do what I love from an engineering perspective all the time. I love the structure, particularly of baking, the measurement and combined science behind it.” But the nurturing spirit she embodies with her engineers spills over into her life outside of work, too.  

“I’m passionate about getting students of any background, but predominantly students that have parents that aren’t super knowledgeable about the college application process, into schools that really fit what they want to do in life.

I help with SAT prep and college placement interviews.” She also mentors several young women that are studying computer science and looking to get into STEM careers. She does what she can to pay it back, offering a lift and access where she can for young women early in their careers. 

“Women are very underrepresented in tech spaces. So that means that the software and hardware that’s being created is not including that perspective. In general, there’s a huge talent pool that just isn’t being tapped into. One of the reasons I’m extremely passionate about mentoring is that I know that if I didn’t have the computer teacher that I had, I wouldn’t be here.”

She likened it to how when a kid is good at arguing, we tell them they should be a lawyer. “Why aren’t we doing the same thing for STEM?

There are young girls waiting out there that have extremely bright minds that are just not being shown that the STEM world can be for them. It’s extremely important that we have that perspective and that we bring in that talent.” 

Janan’s helping pave the way for more women like herself. And getting women of all identities involved in tech is not just about ticking the boxes — it’s the only way we can ensure technology works for all of us.

The post Women in Tech: Janan Barge, Engineering Manager appeared first on CallRail.

Organizing your call analytics in an impactful way that’s also easy to understand is an extensive undertaking even for seasoned marketers. When reporting on lead generation and marketing attribution for your business or a client, the breadth and depth of information at your fingertips can be overwhelming.

Still, understanding the full picture of a campaign’s performance — and using the right tools to strengthen your marketing strategy — is an important part of your job. Studying your data should be an empowering experience, not an unpleasant one.  

One of our main missions here at CallRail is to help our users be as confident as possible when they analyzing their reports. Our custom reporting engine (available on the Advanced plan or higher) is a great way to gain clarity when you dig into your data.

Here are a few tips on how to put CallRail’s Custom Reports to work for you. 

Save filter sets, save time

Save valuable time, and never worry about recreating a report.

With Custom Reports, you can save filter sets that give you the most insightful discoveries about your data. In addition, you can provide a name for each saved report for easy access later:

Say you’ve found the perfect filters and date range to help tell your campaign’s story — you can preserve those settings for future use, and also have peace of mind that you won’t waste precious time retracing your steps. 

Edit table columns for maximum flexibility

Take full advantage of how your data is presented. Use the ‘Edit Columns’ button within each Custom Report to determine the metrics that appear within the report’s table. 

The table will load with a default group of insights, each offering details about your calls and forms. But those items can be changed by checking or unchecking the boxes inside the ‘Edit Columns’ pop-up, giving you a fully customizable reporting experience that puts you in control. 

Your data within the selected column items can be exported as an Excel file or saved as a PDF document at any time.

Easily compare data via the Call Log Custom Report

Interested in comparing your call data between date ranges? Enjoy the flexibility available to you in the Call Log Custom Report:

Perhaps you want to compare your call volume over the past week with your volume over a week from a year ago — with a few clicks, that information will be delivered to you, illuminating key lessons about your campaign’s performance.

We’ve made customization easy for you. Choose a date range provided, or create a custom date range that best fits your needs. A chart will appear that breaks down the data between the selected date ranges, and it will include a percentage change for each day or week compared. (Your table will also show a total percentage increase or decrease for your selected date range.)

Go deeper in your custom reporting with call tags

Include call tags in your Custom Reports for deeper knowledge about your numbers, by categorizing your calls with tags that can be created, edited, and color-coded. Using the ‘Edit Columns’ button, feature your tags as a column item in your call reporting.

We recommend creating account-level call tags so you can apply them to each company in your CallRail account. Then, use those tags in your Custom Reports to help sort your data faster and streamline your workflow.

The post An in-depth look at CallRail’s reporting features appeared first on CallRail.