DialogTech is the leading provider of actionable marketing analytics for phone calls. We empower marketers with call attribution and conversion technology to increase calls.
With virtualization - and its fellow travelers: on-demand functionality and free form mashups -- as the belles of the tech ball these days, it's surprising how little buzz there is about these subjects in the telephony space. There the prevailing model remains a fixed suite of functionality from a single vendor.
It's a mistake to see the mobile Web as just a "smaller" version of the desktop Web. That mobile Web is really a whole new animal with completely different dynamics. Nothing makes that clearer than this post, Get Clickthrough Rates Through the Roof, by Mike Baker, CEO of Nokia mobile Web marketing subsidiary Enpocket. Baker reports that mobile Web clickthrough rates average 2-6 percent -- and gives one example where CTR was an exceptional 8 percent.
Customer service is an often overlooked opportunity to turn browsers into buyers and buyers into return customers. In How to Mine Your Customer Service Department for Nuggets of Marketing Gold, Marketing Sherpa provides detailed guidance on how to do -- including the value of click-to-call to make your company easily accessible, and to give agents a leg up on caller information.
In a recent post, Mike Moran at Small Business Answers says that the dynamics of the Web favor small businesses. Not only because the Web levels the playing field, but also because small businesses don't have the time, money or resources to get tied up in the analysis paralysis that plagues big companies.
My son just finished a term paper on the history of computers. One of the more interesting details he unearthed in the course of his research is this 1980 remark by an anonymous IBM employee:
"Why on earth would you care about the personal computer? It has nothing at all to do with office automation. It isn't a product for big companies who use 'real' computers."
Even shopping cart businesses can benefit from adding rich voice applications like click-to-call to e-commerce sites.
The ifbyphone success story continues... "Popcorn retailer finds ingredients to success".
Here is an excerpt from today's San Antonio Business Journal:
Click-to-Call isn't just for business. With the ubiquitous mobile handset morphing into an on-the-go media center, click-to-call offers a simple and elegant user-interface for any mobile Web application.
National Public Radio apparently sees it that way.
The recently debuted NPR Mobile Web is a partnership with ten local stations that delivers specially formatted text, pictures and audio - including streaming audio -- to Web-enabled mobile phones.
To listen to news stories, or play the interactive version of NPR's popular quiz game, "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me," simply click on the "call' icon and start listening. The free service is carrier- and device-independent.
Think of how useful this could be for GPS navigation or any other service people look for when they're on the move. We keep saying this: keyboards are for typing - phones are for talking.
"Who you gonna call?" World & Web Marketing called ifbyphone to rescue Papa Dean's Popcorn from drowning in its own success.
Like Cracker Jack and baseball, peanut butter and jelly, or the proverbial horse and carriage, some things just go together. Like the mobile Web and click-to-call.
When people are searching on the mobile Web, it's a good bet they're looking for something they want right now. So it's just plain smart to make it easy for them to get in touch - especially for businesses like restaurants where reservations are important.
Jessica Dolcourt at Download.com has highlighted three mobile applications that incorporate click-to-call: Golf.com, Find It! For Blackberry and Zagat To Go (which has added click-to-call since Dolcourt's post). Expect to see more smartphone and PDA applications incorporating click-to-call as the mobile Web extends its reach.
Here's news to make online marketers salivate: A majority of mobile Internet users (three in five) "are more inclined" to buy in response to relevant opt-in ads on their phones, according to a 2008 study conducted by UK-based mobile ad agency Aerodeon. And it's not just impulse shopping like songs from iTunes. Almost half of regular mobile Internet users reported using the mobile Web to research big ticket purchases like vacations and cars.
Only a handful of e-marketers include customer satisfaction in their Web marketing metrics, according to Antone Gonsalves at Intelligent Enterprise. This data, from a recent eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit survey, shows just how far Web marketing can detour around the reality-based world.
It doesn't take a rocket to understand that customer satisfaction drives that all-important metric, conversion rate â or that without it, conversion rates nose-dive.
While online surveys are useful for gauging customer satisfaction, they force answers into predetermined boxes â they're black and white. Adding voice to the online marketing mix adds the Technicolor of inflection, phrasing and context to build a full color picture of customer satisfaction.
For example, "I'm working on my car and I need to remove a bolt from the carburetor. I had to look all over for the right wrench and then when I finally found the automotive wrenches, there was hardly any information," supplies insight about how customers expect to navigate your store or site -- and why they might abandon before buying. Plus, it delivers context information for keyword optimization and ad buys.
The familiar click-to-call supplies the mechanism for smoothly incorporating voice into the online mix. Here's how:
Ask customers to participate in a brief survey by simply clicking on a phone icon on the page or in an email. This connects them directly to a voice-directed survey that includes multiple choice as well as open-ended questions. While you have them on the phone, you can even immediately route unhappy customers to a service representative, pre-briefed from the survey results.
You can also reuse the results to add customer comments to your website for a more compelling testimonial. Let's face it, hearing and talking is our natural communication medium, not reading and writing.
This week DialogTech is exhibiting at ISPCON, where we announced the launch of a new API solution called Verify-Me-Now. Basically, Verify-Me-Now enables ISPs and any e-commerce or SAAS site to slash fraud rates by combining the power of the Web with the telephone. More specifically, here is how Verify-Me-Now can reduce credit card fraud:
While DialogTech's hosted suite of voice applications serves many of our clients through out-of-the-box solutions, sometimes it's necessary to go a little bit further. The DialogTech API is fully capable of integrating with nearly any other system or database on the Web. For instance, using several different SurVo's and a couple of NetGets, you can easily have DialogTech "talk" to a database hosted on your external site. Here's how it would work:
Remember the old slogan, Things go better with Coke? It didn't say that all you need is Coke just that things were better, more fun with a Coca-Cola in hand.
Voice works the same way, as Thomas Howe Company points out in a recent post, Voice is Spice.
DialogTech and the do-it-yourself web site design and hosting company, SiteKreator, have announced a strategic partnership that allows clients to integrate an DialogTech Click-to-Call directly into a SiteKreator web site.
Read about it here at Website Magazine.
It's a tough row to hoe for small businesses competing with big companies. But one big reason small businesses may never even get to first base with prospective customers is an un-friendly, un-professional "second class" phone system, according to InfoWorld's Mike Heck. If anything, small companies need smarter, more sophisticated systems to do the work big companies have big staffs to do.
The mantra of mobility is in everyone's mouth these days, regardless of whether they're talking about advertising, business applications or shopping. Oracle is gearing up a new line of applications designed from the ground up for mobility while SugarCRM has announced plans to support the iPhone and the BlackBerry.
The PhoneBoy Blog had a piece about DialogTech today. They highlighted the "smart" functionality of the DialogTech platform, which allows customers to route people based on specific needs they state when answering questions. Voice Broadcast was also mentioned as a savvy way to keep in touch with warm leads.
Read the blog article here.
Just like your mother used to tell you: You only have one chance to make a first impression and first impressions count. On the Web, that first impression is your landing page.
What a Difference a Click-to-Call Makes
Click-to-call on retail checkout pages can help you keep down cart abandon rates. But in online retailing, click-to-call isn't just for websites. I recently had an experience illustrating the difference a click-to-call can make in an email. In this case, the absence of one meant a lost sale.
We've not been shy of discussing the ways DialogTech's smart analytics can help you know more about the way your business works and how customers interact with you and your web site. In an article posted to SmallBizTechnology, DialogTech is mentioned as one new company that finds a way to comfortably add a Web presence to your telephony needs. The use of Phone Mashups and the integration of the Web with the old-fashioned telephone can provide a healthy boost to any small or medium-sized business. Read more here on the blog about how DialogTech can work for you.
How many times have you picked up the phone today? And how many times did you click on "get more information" or "buy now" today? The answer to the first question is probably 10, 15, or 20 times the answer to the first.
Yet the online marketing universe is so busy studying abstruse statistics about clicks and creating the perfect algorithm for keyword distribution, we've overlooked the "old media" paradigm: the telephone.
Imagine you went to a hair salon that was running a glitzy advertising campaign and the owner handed you a pair of scissors to cut your own hair. Ridiculous?
But that's just the case with many business websites. They spare no cost or effort in creating trendy graphics and keyword advertising to attract visitors. But once customers find their way to the site they're on their own.
It's the familiar human tendency to strain out gnats and swallow camels.
A few days ago the UK-based Retail Bulletin took a look at luxury retail sites and found many lacking in exactly the personal attention that is one of high-end retailers' central value propositions.
It's not just high end retailers who miss the importance of the interaction with customers in their website designs. Few of the millions of business websites out there give it much more than a standard "contact us" link.Â
But when site visitors get to the point of clicking on that link, they probably want an answer now â I know I do. And instead of sending an email or navigating a voicemail menu, they'll probably just drop it or click over to the competition â like I do.
Click-to-call keeps those visitors connected and engaged by bringing back the personal touch. Connecting the phone call is just the first step. A click-to-call can also provide a lot of information for delivering calls efficiently â instead of to voice menu purgatory.
For example, IfByPhone click-to-calls and 800 numbers can be routed based on the webpage and even the keyword customers are calling from. And before the call is connected, IfByPhone can 'whisper' information about it to the service representative, like: "You have a call about the Mothers Day promotion offer."
Someone once said, "Systems work best when they roll down hill." That goes for online business as well. When you make it effortless for customers to connect personally with you and get the help they need, conversions and return visits will snowball as well -- instead of your search advertising budget.