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CallRail: App spotlight

How this app helps you understand where your best leads come from

By Elena Alston · December 7, 2022

If you own a business or work in marketing, you probably use a mix of digital and out-of-home advertising to reach new prospects. Or maybe you rely on paid search, print ads, or social campaigns to generate leads. 

Whatever strategies you employ, understanding how prospects find you and which tactics are working is key to your marketing strategy—and your spending budget. 

Having the right tracking data in place is absolutely essential in today's advertising world. It can help you save money, get a better return on investment, and attract the right leads at the right time. 

That's exactly where the call tracking tool, CallRail, comes in. 

CallRail analyzes all of your inbound calls, texts, forms, and chats. This helps you determine which campaigns are the most successful, so you can adjust those that aren't working and make better business decisions to convert leads into returning customers. 

CallRail origins: From BMW repairs to effective call tracking

In 2005, Andy Powell built an online directory of BMW repair shops to help customers across the U.S. find nearby specialists. The only problem was that he couldn't prove his site was the source driving leads to call the repair shops, so charging for listings was difficult to justify.

Andy realized that an easy-to-use call-tracking tool could solve his problem and help other small businesses understand which marketing efforts were influencing customers to call. 

Andy joined forces with fellow Georgia Tech grad and software developer, Kevin Mann, to build a call tracking tool that proved that business owners were acquiring quality leads and customers through his directory. 

Did you know? In 2011, the duo launched the first version of CallRail in Atlanta. In just ten years, they've grown to serve over 200,000 businesses that struggled with tracking calls—just like Andy once did.

CallRail today: Qualifying leads and converting better customers 

Today, CallRail is used by small and medium-sized businesses across the globe to pinpoint which marketing tactics are driving prospects and conversions. CallRail's Call Tracking gathers the data and statistics to see where your best leads are coming from, and its AI-powered add-on Conversation Intelligence analyzes calls to discover trends and identify customers' key questions and concerns.

In 2020, CallRail added a business communication system to its platform. Lead Center lets you take, make, and manage calls, SMS, and live chats from a shared team inbox, so you never miss an opportunity to convert. Insights from your unified inbox can flow back into the same CallRail dashboard, bridging the attribution gap from digital marketing to offline conversations.

Fave feature: You can automate lead categorization with Automation Rules, allowing you to tag, score, and prioritize high value leads using the key phrases identified by Conversation Intelligence.

Automate your call tracking: Popular CallRail workflows

You can unlock even more value from your call-tracking tasks by connecting CallRail with Zapier. Doing so allows you to automate even more workflows across all the tools in your techstack. Here are a few popular workflows to get you started:

Send new completed CallRail call data to Google Sheets

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CallRail + Google Sheets
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    If you spend a lot of time on the phone, you know that it's valuable, yet hard to track results. Did the call yield anything tangible for you to report to your boss or client? One simple automation can take the guessing game out of that equation, and automatically send completed phone call data over to Google Sheets for safe keeping and archiving. Use that data to easily create reports and quantify your work.

    Add completed CallRail calls as items on Podio

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    CallRail + Podio
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      Log completed phone calls on Podio to spur further action. This Zapier automation will add an item on Podio for every call that has been marked as completed on CallRail. Improve your customer service delivery by integrating your call tracking tool with your task management app!

      Add Podio items for new calls on CallRail

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      • Podio logo
      CallRail + Podio
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        Need your Podio workflow to keep up with all those calls on CallRail? We'll kick things off for each one automatically if you set up this CallRail Podio integration. It'll then watch for new received CallRail calls, creating a new item on Podio according to your specifications every time.

        Track the number of new CallRail phone calls over time in Cyfe

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        • Cyfe logo
        CallRail + Cyfe
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          CallRail already tracks phone calls for your marketing campaigns, but if you also want to track call volume in an easy-to-analyze graph, try connecting it to Cyfe. With Zapier, you can automatically push a value to your Cyfe dashboard each time you receive a new call in CallRail.

          Add leads to Salesforce for new CallRail calls

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          • Salesforce logo
          CallRail + Salesforce
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            Don't slow down your sales pipeline with manual updates. Activate this CallRail Salesforce integration and the automation will take care of those leads for you. From that point on a new lead will be created on Salesforce for every new call you receive on CallRail, bringing with it all the information you need to land those deals.

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