The DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO - DialogTech [PDF]

The DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO

VOICE-BASED MARKETING AUTOMATION

Table of Contents 3 Introduction 4 Section 1: What Is Voice-Based Marketing Automation? 11

Industry Spotlight: Marketing Agencies

12 Section 2: Trends Driving Voice-Based Marketing Automation 15

Media Spotlight: Mobile Marketing

16 Section 3: How Is Voice-Based Marketing Automation Different From… 20 Section 4: Voice-Based Marketing Automation Features 41

Success Story: Sotheby’s

42

Success Story: Go Configure7

43 Section 5: Business Case for Voice-Based Marketing Automation 52

Success Story: FundNET Systems

53

Success Story: Pel Hughes

54

Conclusion

Copyright © Ifbyphone, Inc. All rights reserved ISBN 978-0-615-79676-5

© 2013 Ifbyphone, Inc. | (855) 286-7684 | www.ifbyphone.com | twitter.com/Ifbyphone | Ifbyphone.com/blog

3

INTRODUCTION

Are Phone Calls an Important Part of Your Business? Few companies could survive without the phone. They generate leads and close business over the phone. They grow accounts and support customers over the phone. It’s the backbone of their entire organization. Voice-based marketing automation is the

This guide is designed to introduce you to voice-

Hopefully this guide will help you decide if voice-

technology that enables businesses to manage,

based marketing automation. It will explain what

based marketing automation is a good fit for your

measure, and automate sales and support

voice-based marketing automation is and how

business.

calls. Marketers, salespeople, and support

businesses are using it to generate revenue, improve

professionals use it to generate and track

efficiency, and cut costs. It provides tips for selecting

leads, close business faster, and provide better

the right system and answers questions such as:

customer service. • Why is voice-based marketing automation becoming so popular? • How is it different from traditional marketing automation? • What features make up a voice-based marketing automation system? • What value do businesses get from using voicebased marketing automation?


SECTION 1”:

WHAT IS VOICE-BASED MARKETING AUTOMATION?


5


Some Basic Questions If you’re unsure if voice-based marketing automation can help your business, let’s find out. To start, ask yourself a few questions. If you work in marketing, do you spend money

Now if you work in

sales, do you or your reps

on advertising to generate sales leads? Could be any

spend time fielding calls from leads that aren’t

benefit from a call center that didn’t require

type of ad: TV, radio, print, billboard, Google search,

interested in buying?

expensive hardware to run or programmers to

mobile, social media…even sky writing.

If you work in

support, would your company

update? Would your team be more effective if these calls were

If yes, is it valuable for you to know which ads drive

screened out so that only sales-ready leads were

Would you be more efficient if your support staff

calls to sales and which don’t? Would it be helpful to

passed to reps?

could answer calls on any device from anywhere,

reinvest only in strategies that work?

even at home? And would your team benefit if you could route calls

And what about being able to tell which ads

to the right rep, no matter where they were?

generated calls that turned into revenue?

Would your service levels improve if you had a system that could ask callers questions and provide

What about lead response time? Would being able to Would you benefit from being able to prove to execs

get hot web leads on the phone in seconds instead

or clients how your marketing is impacting their

of days make it easier to close business?

answers before sending them to an agent? Would being able to record support calls help you train agents to provide better service?

earnings? Could you increase sales if you had a system that called customers automatically to process reorders

Would your customers appreciate receiving a brief

and confirm appointments?

phone survey to rate the service they received from your support team?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, voice-based marketing automation may be for you. © 2013 Ifbyphone, Inc. | (855) 290-4190 | www.ifbyphone.com | twitter.com/Ifbyphone | Ifbyphone.com/blog

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Voice-Based Marketing Automation Defined Learn the what, how, why, and who of voice-based marketing automation.

What: Voice-based marketing automation is a type of cloudbased software.

Voice-based marketing automation facilitates and automates many activities, including:

How: It enables businesses to manage, measure, and automate sales and support calls.

•Lead generation •Call tracking & reporting •Call scoring & filtering •Lead nurturing •Call routing & recording •Phone surveys •Voice broadcasts

Why: So marketers, salespeople, and support professionals can generate and track leads, close business faster, and provide better customer service. Who: Voice-based marketing automation is used by companies of all sizes, from local businesses with less than 5 workers to Fortune 500 enterprises with large marketing, sales, and support teams. Early adopters were B2C organizations and marketing agencies, but today you will find businesses across all industries taking advantage of the technology.

Without voice-based marketing automation, these activities are either impossible to do manually or require a significant investment in time and employee resources.

If sales calls with prospects and voice conversations with customers are important to your business, you may benefit from voice-based marketing automation. © 2013 Ifbyphone, Inc. | (855) 290-4190 | www.ifbyphone.com | twitter.com/Ifbyphone | Ifbyphone.com/blog

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Voice-Based Marketing Automation Features One platform to better connect and align marketing, sales, and support.

FEATURES FOR MARKETERS Lead Generation • Voice broadcasting • Hosted IVR • SMS messaging • Web form calling

Lead Tracking • Call tracking

Lead Nurturing • Phone surveys • Voice broadcasting • SMS messaging

• CRM integration • Marketing Automation integration

Virtual Call Center

Virtual Call Center

• Virtual receptionist

• Virtual receptionist

• Intelligent call routing

• Intelligent call routing

• Store locator

• Call forwarding

• Agent panel • Manager dashboards • Call recording and transcription Upselling & Cross-Selling

• Inbound IVR

Analytics API Integration

Pass qualified phone leads to sales

Call Scoring

• Dynamic number insertion

• Voice broadcasting Monitor how leads progress through sales funnel

• Outbound IVR • SMS messaging

• Call tracking reports

• Over-the-phone payment processing

• Google AdWords, Google Analytics, & Universal Analytics integration

CRM Integration

• Call recording and transcription

FEATURES FOR SUPPORT

FEATURES FOR SALES

• Salesforce.com integration • API Integration

Better retain customers with first-rate support

• Agent panel • Manager dashboards • Phone surveys • Voice broadcasts Analytics • Call tracking reports

Share customer • CRM integration interaction data to improve • Call recording and upselling and transcription cross-selling Help Desk Integration • Zendesk integration • API integration

Connect and align marketing programs, sales efforts, and customer support services with shared call data and call automation functionality. © 2013 Ifbyphone, Inc. | (855) 290-4190 | www.ifbyphone.com | twitter.com/Ifbyphone | Ifbyphone.com/blog

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What Voice-Based Marketing Automation Does for You How does voice-based marketing automation enable businesses to generate more leads and revenue, cut costs, and improve operational efficiencies? Here are some of the ways.

Prove (and Improve) Marketing ROI with Call Tracking

Generate More Phone Leads (and Revenue)

Increase Efficiency by Filtering Sales and Support Calls

Using voice-based marketing automation, you can

By reinvesting only in marketing that generates leads

Voice-based marketing automation makes it easy to

track inbound calls back to their marketing source.

and revenue, you can grow your business without

filter sales and support calls automatically using an

You can attribute phone leads (and the pipeline and

increasing your spend. It’s a great benefit of call

IVR. For sales, IVRs can qualify callers upfront and

revenue they generate) to specific ads, campaigns,

tracking. Plus voice-based marketing automation

determine if they are truly ready to engage with a

keyword searches, referring web sites, or any

also provides tools like automated phone surveys,

rep. Now reps don’t have to waste time answering

other marketing source. This means you can prove

voice broadcasts, SMS texts, and web form call

calls that aren’t sales-ready. Instead they’re free to

conclusively to your execs or clients exactly how you

triggering to drive additional leads.

focus on closing business. For support, it means that

are impacting the business. Plus you can use call

customers have access to an auto-attendant 24/7

tracking data to pinpoint which activities are working

that can answer basic questions and enable self-

– and which aren’t – and make improvements.

service. Your business saves on personnel costs, and callers with complex issues won’t have to wait as long for a live agent.


9


What Voice-Based Marketing Automation Does for You Cut Costs with a Virtual Call Center

Improve Customer Loyalty with Voice Broadcasts

Connect and Align Marketing, Sales, and Support

Voice-based marketing automation makes it easy

The best customer service isn’t just reactive; it

You can see how voice-based marketing automation

for businesses to cost-effectively deploy a virtual

reaches out to customers proactively. Voice-based

helps marketing, sales, and support individually. But

call center for sales and support teams. There’s

marketing automation enables you to deliver

by integrating with your CRM, help desk, and other

no hardware to buy, no software to install, and no

automated phone messages (voice broadcasts)

systems, it also connects all three groups together

implementation or maintenance team to hire. It’s

to confirm appointments or deliveries, process

and helps keep them aligned. Marketing can pass

extremely flexible, so your agents can work from

payments, conduct satisfaction surveys, and more.

lead source data to sales when they get an inbound

home or an office location while still operating

It’s also an effective way to relay vital information,

call, sales can pass lead lifecycle data back to

seamlessly as one team. It’s also scalable, so you

such as changes to a customer’s account or travel

marketing to optimize programs, support can access

can easily accommodate extra agents during peak

itinerary. These services keep people up to date and

complete customers histories (including answers to

seasons. Plus you can even extend your hours of

make their lives easier, and that builds loyalty.

phone surveys) and sales call recordings to improve

availability without paying overtime by employing

service. All groups not only work better, but they

agents in multiple time zones.

work better together.


10


Is Voice-Based Marketing Automation Right for You?

Take this brief survey to see if you’re ready to benefit from voice-based marketing automation. Strongly Disagree

STATEMENT

Neutral

Strongly Agree

My company uses the phone to close business and provide customer support.

1

2

3

4

5

An important percentage of our customers required a phone conversation before purchasing.

1

2

3

4

5

My company allocates an important percentage of our marketing budget to advertising.

1

2

3

4

5

Our marketing team spends a significant amount of time on driving traffic to our web site using email, social media, and content marketing.

1

2

3

4

5

Not every call that comes in is ready to make a purchase from sales. Some require nurturing.

1

2

3

4

5

Our marketing team uses data to make decisions on programs.

1

2

3

4

5

It would be difficult for our staff to call every lead and customer in our database in a timely fashion.

1

2

3

4

5

It’s important that we understand how our advertising is impacting sales.

1

2

3

4

5

Sometimes hot leads call in but can’t reach a sales manager because they are travelling.

1

2

3

4

5

Our call center would benefit from having some agents work from home.

1

2

3

4

5

Our sales team assigns leads based on the caller’s geographic location, company type, or product interest.

1

2

3

4

5

Our marketing team has lead generation and revenue goals they must hit.

1

2

3

4

5

Total: If your total score adds up to more than 42, you’re so ready for voicebased marketing automation!

If you scored between 25 and 42, you’re definitely in the neighborhood. You would benefit from learning more about voicebased marketing automation.

If you scored less than 25, you might not be ready at this time. But perhaps as you read on it may change your mind!


INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT:

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MARKETING AGENCIES

Voice-based marketing automation helps marketing agencies prove their value to clients.

How Does Your Agency Drive Leads?

Get Credit (and Get Paid) for Every Lead

More than Call Tracking And agencies are finding value in voice-based

Marketing agencies use a wide range of tactics to

That’s why agencies are adding voice-based

marketing automation beyond the benefits of call

drive leads for clients. TV, radio, PPC, SEO, direct

marketing automation to their services. With voice-

tracking. Many are using voice-based marketing

mail, social media, mobile, print, email…you name it.

based marketing automation, you can track every

automation to do things like:

And it’s critical that you can show your clients your

inbound call you generate back to your specific

true worth. That means being able to track every

marketing source – and through to revenue. No

single lead you generate back to your marketing

longer can clients claim that a phone lead “wasn’t

efforts. It’s easy with web leads, but what about

one of yours” – you have concrete proof. So you can

phone leads? Can you get credit for every inbound

get credit (and get paid) for every lead you generate,

call you generate? Can you tell which Google paid

not matter how you generated it. Many agencies

search or SEO terms are driving leads?

even sell call tracking as part of their offering to generate extra revenue. It’s a win-win.

• Deliver interactive voice broadcasts for clients to generate leads and drive revenue. • Capture leads by incentivizing them to call you and take a custom IVR phone survey. • Qualify callers automatically using an IVR, then route only the high-scoring ones to your clients. • Use intelligent call routing to send callers from your campaigns to the right sales agent, or to the right store location, or to a custom voicemail box to hear a message and leave one of their own. To learn more about how marketing agencies are using voice-based marketing automation, you can visit the Ifbyphone web site and download the white paper “Manage and Track Phone Leads with Voice-Based Marketing Automation for Direct Marketers”.


SECTION 2”:

TRENDS DRIVING VOICEBASED MARKETING AUTOMATION


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TRENDS DRIVING VOICE-BASED MARKETING AUTOMATION

Why Has Voice-Based Marketing Automation Become Popular? A number of trends have made voice-based marketing automation an attractive solution for businesses.

Trend #1: Marketers Now Focus on Growing Revenue

Trend #2: The Importance of Phone Leads

Are Phone Calls so Why Important in Sales?

Gone are the days when marketing could focus

Not all leads are created equal. While white

solely on building brand equity. Today’s CEOs

paper downloads and webinar registrations

77%

aren’t concerned with building brand; they

are excellent vehicles for generating leads,

care about revenue. They want marketers to

those prospects are often just beginning their

demonstrate how campaigns will help generate

research. Inbound phone leads are different.

business, not brand awareness. Marketers must

Someone who calls you is usually further

now go beyond metrics that simply show opens

along the buying process. They have specific

and clicks by measuring leads, opportunities,

questions they need answered in order to make

pipeline, and earnings. To do so, they must be

their decision and need to engage with a sales

able to accurately measure the full business

rep (and usually won’t purchase without that

impact of their campaigns – and that includes

conversation). The high value of phone leads

inbound phone leads. Tools like voice-based

makes technology for generating and tracking

marketing automation now play an important

them very attractive.

role in measuring marketing ROI.

of online adults say they would be interested in getting help from a real person before making certain online purchases.

82% say there have been times when they have not been able to get help from a real person.

58% have a question that cannot be answered by information on the web site.

52% of those who have not always been able to get the help they needed from a real person say it has affected their decision to not purchase the product. Source: IMShopping and Harris Interactive Survey, August 2009


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TRENDS DRIVING VOICE-BASED MARKETING AUTOMATION

Why Has Voice-Based Marketing Automation Become Popular? A number of trends have made voice-based marketing automation an attractive solution for businesses.

Trend #3: The Popularity of Smartphones

Trend #4: The Benefits of Moving Software to the Cloud

There were over a billion smartphone users in 2012, and that number is expected to double

The software as a service (SaaS) or cloud

in the next three years. In the U.S. alone over

delivery model has changed the way businesses

135 million people have smartphones, and

purchase software. It is very easy for marketing

that figure is expected to grow 40% to reach

departments to purchase cloud-based software

192 million by 2016. The rising popularity of

like voice-based marketing automation and

smartphones has changed the way businesses

get it up and running. First, it doesn’t require

market and advertise. Because smartphone

IT support to deploy and maintain. Second,

users would rather call a business than fill

because SaaS software is licensed as a

out a web form, mobile marketing strategies

subscription with no hardware to purchase, it is

are focusing on how to generate, track, and

not a capital investment. Marketing departments

manage inbound calls. Voice-based marketing

can therefore charge it to their discretionary

automation has technology that is perfectly

operating budget, like they would a tradeshow

suited to assist.

or print ad. By making voice-based marketing automation both easily available and affordable to marketers, the SaaS model eliminated the largest impediments to adoption.

Projected U.S. Smartphone Adoption • • • • • • •

2010: 62.2 million users (20.2% of population) 2011: 93.1 million users (29.7%) 2012: 115.8 million users (36.6%) 2013: 137.5 million users (43.1%) 2014: 157.7 million users (48.9%) 2015: 176.3 million users (54.2%) 2016: 192.4 million users (58.5%) Source: eMarketer report, May 2012

2012 U.S. Smartphone Penetration by Age • • • • • •

18-23 years old: 64% have a smartphone 24-32 years old: 72% have a smartphone 33-46 years old: 61% have a smartphone 47-56 years old: 39% have a smartphone 57-67 years old: 28% have a smartphone 68-88 years old: 16% have a smartphone Source: Forrester report, May 2012


MEDIA SPOTLIGHT:

15

MOBILE MARKETING

Voice-based marketing automation helps business get the most value from their mobile marketing.

Why You Should Consider Mobile Marketing

rather than fill out a web form. It’s easier and more natural. And it’s also great news for marketers – inbound calls are usually more valuable to sales

These days, it seems like everyone has a smartphone. People spend a significant amount of time each day on their mobile devices, and that

managers than web downloads. So as you devise your mobile marketing strategy, be sure to focus on driving phone leads.

includes time searching for and calling businesses. If you aren’t making it easy for them to find and call you – and if you aren’t advertising your business on mobile – you are missing a potentially lucrative marketing opportunity.

How Mobile Differs from Other Marketing If you decide to build a mobile marketing strategy, keep this in mind: When people are searching for businesses on their smartphones, they often prefer to call the company

Some Tips for Driving Phone Leads from Mobile Marketing • Have a mobile-friendly version of your web site with a clickable phone number (a mobile click-to-call link) prominently displayed. When clicked, it will automatically trigger a call to your business from that smartphone. • Test out different Google mobile paid search ads. Include a clickable phone number for people to call your business straight from the ad. Be sure the mobile landing page for each ad also displays a clickable number prominently.

• Test out a few banner ads with a call to action of “Tap to Call”. You can run these with display networks targeting mobile sites and mobile apps. • Be sure all your emails are mobilefriendly. Chances are a good percentage of your audience is reading your email on their smartphones. Include a clickable phone number prominently in each one.

Some Ways VoiceBased Marketing Automation Can Help • Insert trackable phone numbers in your Google mobile paid search ads. Whether a lead calls you from the ad or from your landing page, you can track the call back to the originating ad source.

• Determine which mobile banner ads are either generating immediate phone calls (if the call to action is “Tap to Call”) or driving visitors to your mobile site who ultimately call you. • Deliver SMS text message blasts to smartphone users. Include a clickable (and trackable) phone number in the messages to drive inbound calls. • Send callers to an IVR to be initially qualified before going to sales. Or send them to a store locator to be routed automatically to the nearest store location. • Record sales calls to refine your marketing messages by hearing how prospects describe their pains and needs. To learn more about how voice-based marketing automation improves mobile marketing, you can visit the Ifbyphone web site and download the white paper “Marketing to Smartphone Users: New Mobile Strategies for Driving Sales Calls”.


SECTION 3”:

HOW IS VOICE-BASED MARKETING AUTOMATION DIFFERENT FROM…...


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HOW IS VOICE-BASED MARKETING AUTOMATION DIFFERENT FROM…

Traditional Marketing Automation How does voice-based marketing automation differ from traditional marketing automation tools? If you already have a marketing automation tool, why would you need a voice-based marketing automation solution? Marketing organizations today are gaining tremendous

But while traditional marketing automation tools can

That’s where voice-based marketing automation

value from traditional marketing automation. When

track leads from web forms, they simply don’t work if

comes in. Using voice-based marketing automation to

implemented and used correctly, these tools like Marketo,

a lead picks up the phone and calls you. Your web site,

complement your traditional marketing automation tool,

Eloqua, and HubSpot enable marketing teams to:

emails, and advertisements could be driving high-quality

you can create closed-loop marketing where every lead

sales calls, but how would you know? These phone

is captured, responded to properly, scored, nurtured, and

leads won’t show up in traditional marketing automation

tracked through the sales process. You get a complete

reports.

understanding of which campaigns are working and how

• Hand off more qualified leads to sales reps at a lower cost • Better understand which campaigns are working, so you can optimize spending

they are impacting pipeline and revenue.

• Get credit for the impact your campaigns have on pipeline

Activity

Traditional Marketing Automation

Voice-Based Marketing Automation

Lead Generation

Uses emails and web forms to generate web leads

Uses voice broadcasts, phone surveys, and SMS

Lead Tracking

Tracks email success, web downloads, and web site activity

Tracks voice broadcast success and inbound phone leads

texts to generate phone leads

Lead Scoring

Uses web forms to score web leads

Uses inbound IVR to score phone leads

Priority Lead Alerts

Sends sales an email when high-scoring web leads come in

Calls the right sales rep immediately when highscoring web leads come in and then calls the lead to connect the two in conversation

Lead Routing

Routes web leads to sales

Routes phone leads to sales

Lead Nurturing

Uses emails to nurture leads

Uses voice broadcasts, phone surveys, and SMS texts to nurture leads

Lead Reporting

Generates real-time reports on web leads

Generates real-time reports on phone leads

CRM Integration

Shares data with CRM tools like Salesforce.com

Shares data with CRM tools like Salesforce.com


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Ad Hoc Call Tracking Tools Some vendors only offer call tracking capability. How is that different than voice-based marketing automation? Some vendors only offer ad hoc call tracking capabilities without all the other abilities you get with voice-based marketing automation. And while call tracking is an important part of voice-based marketing automation, using it in a silo robs you of the value of integrating it with the other lead generation, scoring, routing, and nurturing tools.

Voice-based marketing automation delivers all the benefits of call tracking along with integrated capabilities that you would otherwise have to cobble together using different standalone technologies. This can be a problem for marketing teams trying to reduce complexity and streamline operations.

Activity

Call Tracking Only


Basic Call Tracking

Get unique phone numbers for use in your ads

Get unique phone numbers for use in your ads

Advanced Call Tracking

--

Dynamically generate phone numbers to track calls back to SEO keywords, Google paid search ads, social media, and other sites

Phone Lead Reporting

Generate basic reports on call quantity for each unique number

Generate basic reports plus advanced reports on call quality, which cities callers called from, which call sources are driving revenue, and much more

Lead Generation

--

Generate phone leads with voice broadcasts, phone surveys, and SMS texts

Lead Scoring

--

Automatically qualify and filter callers so only salesready leads get sent to sales

Lead Routing

--

Route sales-ready callers to the best rep no matter where they are

Appointment and Delivery Confirmation

--

Cut costs and improve customer service by using voice broadcasts to confirm appointments and deliveries

Reorder Notification and Processing

--

Send phone messages that prompt customers to order more products and process payment over the phone

Store Locator

--

Route calls to the nearest store location

Phone Surveys

--

Automatically deliver phone surveys to measure customer feedback on your marketing and customer service

Call Recording

--

Gather invaluable marketing data and improve customer service by recording your sales and support calls


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On-Premise IVR and Call Centers Some IVR and call center solutions are on-premise, which means they require hardware to be installed at your office. How does that differ from the hosted IVR and virtual call center options in voice-based marketing automation? Traditionally, IVR (interactive voice response) and call center solutions were all hosted on-premise. A business would have to purchase the equipment, deploy it at their own office, and maintain it throughout its lifecycle. That normally meant high setup, maintenance, and hardware costs, as well as lengthy deployment and update times. You would need to hire programmers skilled in IVR development and maintenance to keep things running and make improvements.

Activity Hardware Cost to Deploy Time to Deploy Difficulty of Updating Flexibility Supports Work-fromHome Agents Works with Any Phone

Voice-based marketing automation changed all that. Because it is a cloud-based solution, you don’t need to purchase and install expensive hardware. In fact, you don’t need any programmer assistance at all. Your IVR and call center can be up and running in minutes, and changes can be made on the fly by marketing, sales, and support personnel without any technical background.

On-Premise Solutions


Installed at your office Expensive Weeks or months Very – requires programmers Improvements can take weeks and require extensive coding No

No special hardware to install Inexpensive – pay for what you use Hours None – updates are installed automatically Improvements can be made on the fly by anyone

No

Yes, including landlines, mobile, softphones, and even Skype

Yes


SECTION 4:

VOICE-BASED MARKETING AUTOMATION FEATURES



Features Overview Voice-based marketing automation provides a wide range of functionality, including call tracking and reporting, hosted IVR, voice broadcasting, advanced call routing, virtual call centers, custom call forwarding, agent panels and manager dashboards, web form call triggering, SMS messaging, Salesforce.com and CRM integration, Zendesk and help desk integration, API integration, analytics, and more.


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Call Tracking and Reporting Track inbound calls back to their specific marketing source to prove and improve marketing ROI. Whether you do marketing for your company or generate leads for clients, you know how important it is to track every lead back to its source. Not just to understand what’s working, but also to get credit for every lead you generate. Most marketers can do this for web leads, but struggle when it comes to tracking the source of inbound sales calls. And phone calls are often the most valuable lead type. Using voice-based marketing automation, you can create closed-loop marketing where every phone lead is captured and tracked back to its source: your work. You no longer have to guess which campaigns are really driving sales calls – and you no longer have to bicker with sales or with clients about which phone leads you brought in. Instead, you get a complete, detailed understanding of which campaigns are generating phone leads and how those leads are impacting pipeline and revenue.

Track Calls from TV, Radio, Mobile, Billboards, Print, Direct Mail, and Other Advertising Voice-based marketing automation makes it easy to attribute phone leads (and the pipeline and revenue they generate) to specific marketing ads. Here’s how it works: the solution lets you insert unique trackable phone numbers (local, toll-free, or vanity) in your marketing material. When someone calls that number, the solution knows exactly what source they’re calling from. What’s more, if instead of calling you right away, the lead first visits your site and and then calls you after browsing around, the solution will attribute that call to the source that originally sent them there. You will still get credit for the lead.

“Call tracking is the critical next evolution of measurement. It gives businesses a better understanding of the overall attribution model, enabling marketers to truly understand where leads originate and budget accordingly.” - Brad Henry, Beacon Technologies


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Call Tracking and Reporting Track Calls from SEO, PPC ads, Social Media, and Referring Web Sites Voice-based marketing automation can also track phone leads back to specific keyword searches, pay-per-click ads, social media sites, or referring web domains. It will automatically display a unique phone number on your site based on where each visitor came from. If a visitor calls the number,

Imagine being able to understand what Google paid search ads generated the most phone leads and revenue, for example. It’s easy with voice-based marketing automation. To learn more about the benefits of call tracking, visit the Ifbyphone web site and download the white paper “Tracking Phone Leads: The Missing Piece of Marketing Automation”.

voice-based marketing automation will attribute the call to the proper source.

Inbound phone calls are considered by many marketers to be the most valuable lead type (data taken from 2013 Ifbyphone survey)


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Hosted IVR Build your own IVRs in minutes to route calls, qualify callers, process payments, and survey customers – no programmers needed. IVR stands for interactive voice response. It’s an automated phone menu that recognizes human interaction, either by telephone keypad or by speech recognition. Voice-based marketing automation enables marketers, salespeople, and support professionals to build and modify their own IVRs in minutes without having to hire a programmer.

Process Orders and Payments without a Live Operator PCI-compliant IVRs can also be used to automate order processing and payments securely without a live operator. For inbound callers, the IVR can answer the call, collect caller information, process the purchase or payment

Use an Inbound IVR as Your Auto-Attendant Build your own IVR to answer incoming calls with professionally recorded greetings and route callers using interactive phone menus. Auto-attendants can replace live receptionists, helping your business cut costs and increase efficiency by automating routine business functions, like providing account

via credit card, and provide customers with additional order information. And if you sell products that require reordering, automating the reminder process with an outbound IVR can be a real cost-saver. The IVR automates an otherwise manual process, taking the customer’s order and inputting it directly into your CRM. If the call goes to voicemail, the IVR can leave a customized message or put the number back in the queue to call later.

balances or relaying business hours. Auto-attendants are also available 24/7, giving your customer around-the-clock service. You can make changes to your auto-attendant anytime in minutes without any technical expertise.

IVR


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Hosted IVR Automatically Qualify Phone Leads before Passing to Sales

Transfer Callers to the Closest Store Location

Depending on the nature of your marketing

Does your business have multiple locations

campaigns, not every inbound call you generate will

or franchises? Using voice-based marketing

be ready to engage with a sales rep. Many might

automation, you can advertise one phone number for

not be. And you don’t want to waste a sales rep’s

your franchise and route calls to the nearest location

time by having them field incoming calls from leads

based on area code or zip code.

that aren’t sales-ready. Voice-based marketing automation makes it easy to filter your inbound calls automatically using an IVR. The IVR can answer calls and ask callers the questions you determine work best to qualify them. Leads that score high enough are passed from the IVR directly to sales for an immediate conversation. Others can hear a custom marketing message, be given the option of leaving a voicemail for sales, or even be sent to a second IVR.

For support professionals, phone surveys are an invaluable tool for measuring support effectiveness. Customers can be sent to a quick survey after speaking to a support agent, or you can have the IVR call them to take a survey right away or several days later. To learn more about how marketers are using IVR, you can visit the Ifbyphone web site and download the white paper “IVR for B2B Marketing: New

Conduct Phone Surveys for Lead Generation and Customer Service

IVR

For marketers, phone surveys are an excellent way to capture leads. You can create campaigns that drive people to take your phone survey for the chance to win a prize. You can also configure the survey to function as an ROI calculator or conduct a needs analysis, The survey will capture their contact information and give them the option of being transferred to a sales rep.

Strategies for Lead Generation, Scoring, and Nurturing”.

“I am really so blown away by the response we got on the IVR today. This blows email marketing right out of the water, results wise. My head is spinning with different ways to test this technology for other clients. I’m truly amazed.” -Tresa N. Veitia, inktank LLC


26


Voice Broadcasting Generate leads, grow revenue, and improve customer service cost-effectively with personalized, interactive voice broadcasts. Voice broadcasts are a way to deliver prerecorded phone messages or IVRs to thousands of people at once. They can be a powerful business tool to automate phone calls for appointment reminders, delivery confirmations, event promotions, reorders, accounts receivable collection, phone surveys, and much more. Many businesses today use voice broadcasting as an effective alternative to email. People may receive a hundred or more emails in a day, and having your message stand out can be difficult. Voice broadcasts cut through the email clutter by calling your audience directly. Voice-based marketing automation makes it easy for marketing, sales, and support to send out their own personalized, interactive voice broadcasts. You simply use the cloud-based software to create your message or IVR, upload a spreadsheet with the phone numbers you wish to target, and let the system to do the rest. It also brings together a wealth of features to make voice broadcasting easier and more effective,

• Message personalization with text-to-speech: Personalize your voice broadcasts for each recipient by having the text-to-speech feature insert their name, company, account balance, or any other information you want into their message. • Interaction with IVR: Use outbound IVR to add interactive functionality to your calls to collect information or tailor specific messages based on responses.

• Real-time reporting: Why wait to receive reports from an account manager? Access real-time broadcast reports on your voice broadcast campaigns online whenever you want. • API integration: Integrate voice broadcasting with your company’s software to trigger phone calls based on events in your database or to collect information and pass it back to your CRM system.

• Complete scheduling control:  Get complete control over when to schedule broadcasts, how quickly to send out messages, and when to pause your voice broadcast campaigns. • Live transfers: Give voice broadcast recipients the option to be transferred directly to a live agent to confirm or update an appointment, place an order, or any other activity. • Voicemail detection: Customize your broadcasts with two messages: one for when a live person answers the phone, and an alternative for when the call goes to voicemail. • Credit card processing: Process credit card payments over the phone without the need of a live agent.

including:


27


Voice Broadcasting There is a wealth of ways businesses use voice broadcasting to cost-effectively generate leads, grow revenue, and improve customer service: • Lead generation: Deliver your messaging straight to leads and enable them to register for an event, schedule a meeting with your business, connect directly with a live agent right away., and much more. • Upselling and cross-selling: Grow revenue from your accounts by delivering upselling and crossselling messages. • Promotions and discounts: Keep your contact base aware of your latest promotions and sales.

• Reminders and confirmations: Remind customers and patients of upcoming appointments, confirm or reschedule important deliveries before you send out your crew, and much more. • Reorders and collections: Proactively solicit and process customer reorders or due payments without the need of a live agent. • Alerts: Ensure customers are always aware of important changes to their accounts and itineraries or advise employees or community members of big news or emergency warnings. Businesses also use alerts internally to notify employees at home or in the field of important information.

• Fundraising: Deliver your political, charity, or other fundraising messages to a large audience and process donations over the phone. • Recalls: Keep customers in the loop on important product recalls. • Phone surveys: Gather valuable data on your customer base or measure their satisfaction with your products, services, or support. To learn more about the benefits of voice broadcasting, you can visit the Ifbyphone web site and download the white paper “New Ways to Integrate Intelligent Voice Broadcasting into Your Marketing and Sales Strategy”.

“We have been able to reach out to customers quickly and efficiently by using Ifbyphone. This improved customer responsiveness has lead to increased business and marketing ROI.” - Kevin P. Fitzgerald, iContact.com


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Advanced Call Routing Automatically route calls to the right person at the right time no matter where they are based on your business needs. Voice-based marketing automation has advanced call routing technology that enables your business to route calls based on your own customizable rules. Rules can be easily set up and updated on the fly as needed. Some call routing options include: • Route by schedule: Create custom routing based on your office hours, the time zones of your customers, weekends, holidays, and more. • Route by agent: Want your best agents to receive the highest call volume? Ensure that your best performing sales reps or customer service reps receive the most calls by routing a certain percentage to specific agents. • Route by geography: If your business has multiple locations in various geographical regions, set up incoming phone calls to be routed to the nearest location. By detecting the area code or zip code of the caller, the call can be routed to the closest location. • Route between multiple call centers: Set up multiple call centers and route call flow based on caller information, distribution schedules, and location. • Route by number: Screen incoming calls and set up custom routing and queuing rules for specific phone numbers.

• Route by marketing source: Because voicebased marketing automation can tell which ad, marketing campaign, or other source a person is calling from, you can set up rules to route those calls to the best place based on that source. That place may be a particular agent, store location, IVR, voicemail box, call group, or other option you feel works best.

• Specific ring order: Ring agent phones in a specific order, such as work phone first, cell phone second, home phone third, etc.

• Route based on IVR responses: Have callers answer qualifying questions and route them based on those responses.

• Office schedule: Forward calls to various agents

Reach Agents Anywhere on Any Phone

• Multi-agent ringing: Ring several agent phone numbers at the same time; the first agent who answers gets the call, even if they are working from home.

based on your office schedule. To learn more about the benefits of call routing for sales calls, you can visit the Ifbyphone web site and download the white paper “How Sales Teams Use Integrated Virtual Call Centers to Close More Business”.

Minimize the risk of important calls going unanswered by implementing conditional and selective call routing. Use this type of forwarding to route incoming calls to different types of phones (cell phone, work phone, home phone, Skype, etc.) and agents based on various schedules, including: • Simultaneous ringing: Ring an agent’s home, work, and cell phone simultaneously to ensure that the call is answered, whether the agent is working from home or travelling.

“Ifbyphone has enabled us to take control. We can now manage our complex routing needs along very specific parameters... And all the tools we use with Ifbyphone are hosted in one efficient platform. Our business and customer acquisition has increased now that we can track and respond to leads—we love this technology.” -Greg Smith Equipment Sales


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Virtual Call Centers Any sized business can rapidly deploy a flexible virtual call center for sales and support that cuts costs and improves operational efficiency. Voice-based marketing automation makes it easy for

You can also set up priority queuing to speed VIP

businesses of every size to cost-effectively deploy

customers to the front of the line.

Record and Transcribe Calls to Improve Marketing, Sales, and Support

Integrate with Your CRM and Help Desk Systems

Voice-based marketing automation can also record

a virtual call center for sales and support teams and help desks. There’s no hardware to buy, no software to install, and no implementation or maintenance team to hire. You can set up an IVR auto-attendant and your custom call routing rules in minutes, and you’re on your way.

Voice-based marketing automation integrates with CRM and held desk systems like Salesforce.com

It’s extremely flexible, so your agents can work from

and Zendesk. For sales leads, this means that every

home or any office location using any phone while still

incoming call gets logged automatically in your CRM

operating seamlessly as one team. It’s also scalable,

either as a new lead or as part of an existing record,

so you can easily accommodate extra agents during

along with data on the caller and the marketing

peak seasons.

source that lead them to call. For support calls, it means that every call gets automatically turned into

Control Your Call Queuing Experience

an actionable, organized help desk ticket, saving your agents time and enabling them to serve more

and transcribe every call for future review. Call recordings and transcription can provide a wealth of information from your leads and customers for marketing and sales to mine. What terminology do prospects use? How do they describe their pain points? What are the sticking points sales have to overcome? Use this knowledge to build more effective marketing campaigns and sales pitches. For support calls, you can also monitor the service levels of each agent to ensure your customers are getting first-class support.

customers.

When callers are placed on hold, you want full control over their experience. Voice-based marketing automation lets you select the music or promotional messages they hear, the maximum amount of time they’ll have to wait, the number of callers in your queue, and much more.


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Virtual Call Centers View Real-Time and Historical Call Reports

To learn more about the benefits of deploying a virtual call center, you can visit the Ifbyphone web site and

each agent spend on incoming calls, outbound calls,

“We’ve successfully eliminated our reliance on our physical call center by using Ifbyphone to dynamically route and record thousands of phone calls to staff working on their own schedule, with their own phone, from remote locations. The technology and cost savings has already helped us build a local presence in four new markets.”

and break? What time do agents first log in and last

- Steve Peris, AIM Attendance

Monitoring call center activity is easy using webbased real-time and historical reports. How many did each agent handle in a given time? How long did calls last? What was the average time a customer waited to speak with an agent? How many hours a day does

download the white paper “The Next Generation of Virtual Call Centers: Beyond the Cloud”.

log out? All this data is at your fingertips.


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Custom Call Forwarding Never miss an important customer or conference call with custom call forwarding.

Ensure that important calls to you or your agents are never missed, no matter where you are. Voice-based marketing automation has call forwarding technology that enables your hot leads and important customers to reach your sales and support agents wherever they

About Ifbyphone

are. It’s a great service if you have sales staff travelling in the field or support agents who work from home

• Screen calls before accepting:  Screen calls by listening to the caller’s announcement before choosing to accept. • Forward calls based on your office schedule:  Forward calls to different phones (office, cell, home, etc.) or a group of phones, based on your business hours.

• Forward calls in sequence or simultaneously:  or at client sites. Businesses also use it to proactively Ifbyphone manages, measures, and automates voicephones at once, in a specific order, or Ring several alert and connect groups for conference calls. a random order. conversations with your customers and in prospects. These conversations cannot be managed using marketing automation or CRM software alone. Without Ifbyphone’s voice-based marketing automation platform, catching

• Record calls: Keep a record of every conversation by recording phone calls. • Receive emails with transcribed voice messages:  Transfer missed or declined calls to voice mail and receive emails with both the voice recording and transcribed message. • Connect groups for conference calls: Schedule the system to call each attendee and instantly connect them to the conference call. No more dial-in numbers or access codes to remember. Attendees can be proactively connected from their office, home, car, airport, or anywhere else they may be.

these interactions is like fishing with a hole in the bottom of your net – leads and information fall out.

The Ifbyphone suite is a set of software-as-a-service applications including ad tracking, lead distribution, hosted IVR, and voice broadcasting. Companies of all sizes and across all industries use Ifbyphone, including direct response, health care, real estate, home services, and lead generation. Learn more at www.ifbyphone.com.

“As always . . . YOU’RE AWESOME!! Direct transfer of a client’s call to www.ifbyphone.com either our personal cell phone or Twitter: http://twitter.com/ifbyphone voice mail depending on the business Facebook: http://facebook.com/ifbyphone (855) 882-5441 hours has eliminated human errors in 300 West Adams routing Street, 9thcalls.” Floor Chicago, IL 60606

- Gary Millard, WoodenThumb.com


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Agent Panels and Manager Dashboards Arm your sales and support agents with valuable data on each inbound call before they answer the phone. Centrally monitor and communicate with them in real time.

Know Who Is Calling Before Taking the Call

Transfer Calls When You Are Working from Home

The more information sales and support agents have

This panel can display on any computer, no matter

upfront about inbound callers, the more successful

if the rep is working in your office or at home. If an

the call will be. So voice-based marketing automation

agent is working from home using their cell phone

provides a web-based agent panel that displays on

and wants to transfer a caller to someone in another

each rep’s computer screen. Before taking a call, the

location, the agent panel makes it easy.

sales rep can see who is calling and what ad, Google search term, referring web site, or other source led them to call. If the caller has a record in your CRM system, the panel provides one-click access to that record. If not, that same click can create a new record with pre-populated data.

Monitor and Message Your Agents Voice-based marketing automation also has manager dashboards that you can use to monitor agents. The

“Good technology and excellent customer service – this is the way software-as-a-service is supposed to work!” - Darren Kincaid, WSI Full Spectrum Web Solutions

dashboard displays all data for agents, including the open/busy/closed status, answered calls, outbound calls, average hold and talk times, and more. Additionally, managers can send messages to agents via the dashboard.

Agent panels arm reps with valuable data on incoming callers


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Web Form Call Triggering Convert more web visitors into instant phone calls and close more business. Prospects are browsing your web site all the time.

connections from any online form, including “contact

They may have specific questions that, if answered

us,” “call me now,” demo request, and content

right away, could be the difference between a sale

download forms.

and the visitor leaving for a competitor’s site. To get answers, they often fill out a web form to have

Here’s how it works: Whenever a prospect completes

someone in sales contact them, with that lead being

your form and clicks submit, the system will

emailed to a rep or logged in a CRM system.

immediately call your sales rep and “whisper” the lead’s information in their ear. This can include the

But how long will it take for a sales rep to respond

name of the form that was downloaded, the lead’s

and get the lead on the phone? If they don’t call right

name, and their phone number. If the rep decides

away, it could be hours, maybe even days. Research

to accept the call, the system will call the lead and

shows that a sale is 22 times more likely to happen

connect both parties over the phone. It can be a very

when you make contact within the first five minutes.

effective strategy for reducing web site abandonment,

Waiting even ten minutes dramatically decreases your

decreasing lead contact time, and increasing lead

chances of converting that lead to a sale.

conversion.

Recover Lost Revenue from Shopping Cart Abandonment If you have an online store, you probably worry about shoppers that abandon their carts before finalizing transactions. For some stores, it’s a big problem. But with voice-based marketing automation, you can trigger a call to an agent whenever a potential customer abandons their cart. The system will “whisper” to the agent the customer’s name and what is in their cart. With a simple voice command, the agent can have the system call the customer to see if they can save the sale.

Convert Web Leads to Instant Sales Calls Voice-based marketing automation has tools that make it easy for prospects on your site to talk to the right sales rep right away. Using voice-based marketing automation, you can generate immediate

Trigger calls to your sales agents whenever someone fills out a web form


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SMS Messaging Communicate effectively with your audience by delivering notifications, reminders, and promotional offers via SMS text message. Do you know anyone without a mobile phone? With

Here are a few ways to use SMS messaging to

the overwhelming popularity of cell phones today,

communication with your customers:

text messaging has become an effective way for businesses to communicate with a large audience. Text message open rates and read rates are extremely high, and studies have shown that most texts are read within 15 minutes of being received, making them an attractive delivery option for marketers. Voice-based marketing automation makes it easy to schedule and deliver SMS texts message blasts to your target audience. Of course, text messages should always be a permission-based vehicle, with recipients opting in to receive your messages.

• Appointment notifications and confirmations:  Text your clients appointment reminders 24 hours before an appointment, asking for a “yes,” “no,” or “reschedule” confirmation. • Phone number verification:  If a flight, truck, or bus is delayed, deliver a schedule notification to those affected by the delay, or provide a number your audience can text to request schedule updates. • Travel and inventory confirmations:  Your customers could text you asking, “when is my appointment?” or “where is the closest store to 60077?” or “is this product in stock?” and then you can automatically respond with the correct answer via text message.

Sending SMS messages with clickable phone numbers can trigger inbound sales calls

• Promotional offers:  Build your marketing database by inviting customers to text you to receive texts with discount codes. • Clickable phone numbers: Drive calls to your business by including clickable phone numbers in your text messages.


35


Google Analytics and Universal Analytics Integration Include phone call data alongside your other online and offline data to better understand what’s driving customer activity. For years businesses have been using Google

Universal Analytics users can view rich, context-

Analytics to better understand activity on their web

specific call tracking data alongside their other online

site. In 2013 Google took their analytics platform

and offline marketing analytics, so you can:

to the next level with the release of Universal Analytics, which gives businesses the ability to track and compare not just web activity, but also offline interactions like phone calls and in-store visits, mobile app traffic, and other sources – all in the same interface. Voice-based marketing automation integrates with Google Analytics and Universal Analytics to add the critical call tracking data piece to Google’s marketing analytics puzzle. Google Analytics users can view and analyze call data alongside web traffic data to better understand how web visitors and callers find your business and better measure campaign ROI.

• See which ads, search keywords, or social media platforms are driving web visits and phone calls to your business • Compare web visits and phone calls from organic vs. paid search on one screen • See which of your web pages or videos a person viewed before and after calling you

Including call tracking data in Universal Analytics helps marketers create meaningful customer profiles

• See which of your content they downloaded or items they purchased before and after calling you • Use phone call data in your web page A/B tests to help determine a winner • Access a color-coded map to see where people are calling you from


36


Salesforce.com and CRM Integration Track revenue from phone leads and improve sales team efficiency by integrating voice-based marketing automation with Salesforce.com and other CRM systems. Voice-based marketing automation is designed to be a standalone platform. But it also integrates easily with CRM systems like Salesforce.com, giving businesses additional value. CRM integration enables you to: • Have customer information at sales’ fingertips before every call:  When a call comes in from an existing customer or prospect, voice-based marketing automation instantly triggers a screenpop with information on the lead, contact, and organization. No time is wasted searching for the correct CRM record. • Boost agent productivity and reduce input errors:  When a new lead calls your business, voice-based marketing automation creates a lead record in your CRM and auto-populates the contact number, lead source, and other information. This keeps your agents productive and improves the quality of your data. • Track which activities generate phone leads and revenue:  Voice-based marketing automation tracks which ad, search term, referring domain, or other source drove the lead to call your business. It’s recorded in your CRM so you can generate reports detailing how your marketing is driving leads and how those leads are turning into revenue. • Never miss a phone lead:  If a call from a new

lead goes unanswered, voice-based marketing automation creates a new lead record for you with an open case to ensure proper follow up. If the number is associated with an existing CRM contact, a new case is automatically added to the record. • Gather extra demographic data for callers:  Oftentimes you want more data on a phone lead than you were able to capture initially. Using “reverse lookup” you can quickly retrieve the associated name, city, and state for a given phone number and populate it in your CRM lead record. • Trigger voice broadcasts based on CRM events: By integrating voice-based marketing automation and CRM systems, you can schedule voice broadcasts to occur automatically based on events in your database. For example, have the system call customers and offer them a discount on their birthday. Or call customers to remind them that their annual subscription will run out in 30 days. • Enable customers to access and update their records: Don’t waste an agent’s time answering routine questions from callers. Instead, callers can use your IVR to access account information from your CRM. Give them the power to access and reset passwords, look up their order status, view account balances, and much more.

• Record IVR responses in each lead record: Inbound and outbound IVR surveys collect a wealth of information that sales can use to close more business. Through CRM integration this data can be automatically added to each contact’s record.

DPS Uses IVR to Drive

Revenue for their Clients Dealer Product Services, Inc. is a provider of marketing solutions to over 1,600 automotive retail clients. DPS wanted to integrate voice broadcasting into its clients’ CRM systems to automate phone calls to advertise warranty renewals, oil changes, and other services.

“We chose Ifbyphone due to their flexibility and their programming expertise,” said Tim O’Neal, President and CEO of DPS. “They have helped us integrate our systems, streamline processes, and automate all of our call delivery.” Using Ifbyphone, DPS was able to generate more revenue to their clients while realizing a cost savings of 20%.


37


Zendesk and Help Desk Integration Improve customer support and help desk agent productivity by integrating voice-based marketing automation with help desk systems like Zendesk. Your business may handle hundreds or even thousands of support calls each week. But even if you only get a handful a day, each call is important. If your support team is taking too long to respond, customers get frustrated, their satisfaction level drops, and your churn rate goes up. By integrating voice-based marketing automation’s virtual call center technology with your customer support help desk system like Zendesk, you make customer support truly organized and efficient.

• Turn voice messages into support tickets: Ensure customer voicemails are automatically captured and acknowledged. When a customer leaves a voicemail, your agents will automatically receive an email with both the transcribed text message as well as the recorded file. The system will automatically open a support ticket for the caller in your help desk system, and the caller will receive an email acknowledging receipt of their ticket. • Enable your own virtual call center: Many help desk systems like Zendesk don’t include a phone component. By integrating them with voice-based marketing automation, you can implement a professional call center in minutes without any expensive hardware. • Manage calls and tickets on one platform: Agents simply sign in to their Zendesk account and they are automatically logged into the call center. They can then make and receive calls without leaving the Zendesk system. • Enable agents to work from anywhere: If you have agents that work remotely, now you can enable them to make and receive customer support calls on any phone, even Skype. All agent activity can still be monitored centrally by their manager.

“We’ve successfully helped ourselves and helped our clients through this automated integration. I highly recommend Zendesk customers consider Ifbyphone as their phone solution!” -Jonathan Hunt, FundNET Systems Inc.


38


API Integration Add voice-based marketing automation to your business applications quickly and easily using API integration. You want flexibility when running your business. The flexibility to choose the applications that work best for you and the flexibility to use those applications so they return the most value. That’s why voice-based marketing automation is designed to seamlessly integrate with your existing systems with a full suite of APIs, including:

• Call Initiation APIs: Establish conditions in your other applications that automatically trigger voice broadcasts. For example, send a delivery notification one day in advance and another the day of a service call with the option to reschedule if necessary. • Account Management APIs: Forward calls in real time based on responses to automated questions. For example, a customer that needs a taxi can be automatically routed to the right dispatcher based on answers to simple questions such as location and destination.

• Reporting APIs: Take all the real-time reports from the voice-based marketing automation platform and integrate them into your other reporting applications. • The NetGet APIs: Enable call data to be pushed into your other systems in real time as a call progresses. The data can be stored in your own database, used to look up info in your database, and then sent back as a simple XML-formatted response. • Post-Call Action APIs: Send data to your web server as soon as a call is completed. The data can include such things as the date and time of the call, call duration, caller ID, actions taken, and more. Voice-based marketing automation platforms are also compatible with white label, co-branded, or reseller solutions that wish to manage multiple client campaigns through one reseller portal.

“I had a critical need to add voice services to some internal tools. With very little effort, (less than an hour start to finish,) I was able to tie together our phone list with our groupware’s calendaring system and have a powerful and dynamic system that’s been 100% reliable.” -Joshua Barratt, CTO, Media Temple


39


Analytics Use real-time web-based reports to understand and improve marketing ROI, monitor call center activity, measure voice broadcast success, and much more. Reporting and analytics play an essential role in helping businesses measure, monitor, and improve their processes. Voice-based marketing automation has a wide range of reports you can view and customize to access real-time and historical data on your business’s inbound and outbound calls. This detailed data can be used to better understand how marketing is generating leads, how sales is closing business, and how support is helping customers. Reports can be viewed in real-time via the online portal. Alternatively, you can schedule ad hoc or

Marketing Analytics

Lead Funnel Analytics

To make better decisions, it’s important to constantly

Tracking the marketing source of phone leads is only

measure your marketing effectiveness. Voice-based

the first step. Voice-based marketing automation also

marketing automation analytics enable you to

enables you to generate reports that follow phone

determine which activities – online, offline, and mobile

leads through each stage of your lead funnel. For

– are generating phone leads, so you can adjust your

example, you can generate reports on which ads

strategy and increase marketing ROI. And because

converted phone leads to opportunities and revenue

voice-based marketing automation integrates with

at the highest rate. Or which ad sources generate the

your CRM system, you can see which activities are

best ROI.

not just driving phone leads, but revenue as well.

daily/weekly/monthly reports to be emailed to key stakeholders or clients automatically. Plus, you can integrate call report data into you existing applications (such as Salesforce.com, Google Analytics and Universal Analytics, Google AdWords, or other business software) using API integration.

SEO and Paid Search Analytics

Call Geography Analytics Understanding which geographic areas generate the most leads helps marketers better plan their local

Tying a phone lead to a search keyword gives you

programs. Voice-based marketing can generate

unique insight into how leads are finding you, what

graphic reports showing you exactly which area

they care about, and the phrases they are using.

codes, cities, and states are calling you the most.

Voice-based automation reports show you exactly which search terms are driving inbound calls. Also, if a lead called you after clicking on a paid search ad, you can include that data as part of your Google AdWords reports to fully understand ad conversion rates.


40


Analytics Call Center Analytics

Voice Broadcast Analytics

Inbound IVR Analytics

How many calls did each sales or support agent

Access detailed reports on the success of each

Businesses use inbound IVRs to route callers to

handle in a given time? How long did each call last?

broadcast. Data is updated in real-time so you

the right agent, qualify and score leads, survey

What was the average time a customer spent on hold?

can pause campaigns mid-broadcast to make

customers after interacting with an agent, and much

How many hours a day does each agent spend on

adjustments. If your voice broadcast is an IVR that

more. You can generate reports showing the number

calls? What time do agents first log in and last log

requests and collects data, you can view reports on

of callers to each IVR, their answers to IVR questions,

out? You can monitor activity in real-time via the online

each recipient’s responses and pass that data to your

where they sent based on their responses, and other

portal or generate historical reports to understand

CRM system or other business applications.

data.

each agent’s effectiveness.

“As a marketing firm, we are committed to providing transparency to our clients. Ifbyphone allows us to present a call detail report that shows the effectiveness of our campaigns.” -Bobby Vickers, VRB Analytics


SUCCESS STORY:

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Sotheby’s Luxury realtor uses voice-based marketing automation to reinvest 30% of budget in better-performing ads and boost sales by 25%.

Challenge

Solution

Result 

Sotheby’s International Realty

1. First, using Ifbyphone’s call tracking, Sotheby’s was able to understand exactly which ads were driving phone calls.

Using Ifbyphone’s call tracking,

specializes in selling luxury properties. They were spending millions of dollars on print advertising without having a clear understanding of its effectiveness. They needed a way to measure what ad programs were really working.

2. Second, by setting up call routing, they directed every phone lead from their ads directly to the listing agent’s primary phone. If the agent didn’t answer, Ifbyphone “finds” them by calling a progression of their other numbers (desk phone, mobile phone, home phone, etc.). 3. When the agent answers, Ifbyphone “whispers” the phone number and the newspaper in which the ad appeared. For example, a whisper from a Connecticut ad would say, “Call from The New York Times for 120 Peacock Rd.”

Sotheby’s reduced their newspaper advertising spend by 30% without affecting lead flow. In some cases, they were able to use Ifbyphone data to renegotiate advertising rates. “We used Ifbyphone to get print ads in line with where they should be,” said Brad Nelson, VP of Marketing of Sotheby’s.

the opportunity to see what calls they missed and call those leads back.” “Our agents also get excited about the ‘whisper.’ When agents know where the call is coming from, they immediately know the quality of that lead,” said Nelson. “I believe these added benefits keep our agents happy and productive, which ultimately helps retention.”

“We reinvested these dollars into other advertising mediums that increased our listing’s total exposure.” Not only did Ifbyphone help measure ad effectiveness, but it also helped Sotheby’s office in Sarasota increase sales by 25 percent. Agents were now missing fewer calls: “We realized our agents were missing calls because of poor cell reception,” said Nelson. “Ifbyphone call reports gave our agents


“We used Ifbyphone to get print ads in line with where they should be. We reinvested these dollars into other advertising mediums that increased our listing’s total exposure.” -Brad Nelson, Sotheby’s

SUCCESS STORY:

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Go Configure Voice-based marketing automation saves delivery company $70,000 per year.

Challenge

Solution

Result 

Go Configure, Inc. is an outdoor

Using Ifbyphone’s outbound IVR

Overall, Ifbyphone provided an easy

products delivery and installation

technology, Go Configure was able

and reliable outbound IVR service that

company with over $14 million in sales.

to automate voice broadcast calls

positively impacted Go Configure’s

While the company sought growth

to suppliers, drivers, and customers

daily business operations, while saving

opportunities, they were constrained by

regarding each delivery. As a result of

the company over $70,000 per year.

staffing expenses. Go Configure saw

using voice broadcasting to automate

an opportunity to increase efficiency

the notification and confirmation

while also reducing expenses by

process, “we have had the opportunity

automating the five phone calls their

to grow our business without

in-house staff was making for each

increasing our staffing expense,” said

delivery.

Dawn Rivera, Director of Operations for Go Configure.

“We have been able to double the efficiency of our staff and reduced the cost of staff and overtime by 60%. Without this technology, we would not have had the opportunity to grow our business without increasing our staffing expense.” - Dawn Rivera, Go Configure, Inc.


SECTION 5”:

BUSINESS CASE FOR VOICE-BASED MARKETING AUTOMATION


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Voice-Based Marketing Automation Benefits There are three main benefits to using voice-based marketing automation:

1. Measure and optimize marketing spend 2. Grow revenue faster 3. Save time and money

1.

Measure and Optimize Marketing Spend

John Wanamaker has a famous quote: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted…the trouble is, I don’t know which half.” It’s never been more critical for marketing teams to track the full ROI of every dollar you spend. That means knowing exactly how many leads – and revenue – each program generates.

• Track phone leads back to your marketing: Most businesses find that inbound calls are the best type of lead, yet few have the ability to track where they came from. Voice-based marketing automation enables you to understand exactly which marketing programs are driving phone leads. It lets you generate truly closed-loop reporting where every lead is captured, tracked, and reported on. • Prove to execs and clients how you are impacting revenue: Get credit for every lead – and revenue dollar – your marketing helps generate. Be able to

stand in front of your executive team with concrete proof of how your programs are driving revenue. Or if you do lead gen for clients, get paid for every single call you generate. • Renew campaigns that work, cancel those that don’t: Make intelligent campaign decisions based on what’s really working. You can stop wasting money on advertising that isn’t generating leads and instead funnel that money into proven performers. It’s an easy way to grow lead volumes without extra budget.

“Call tracking has really opened our eyes and helped us close a big loop in providing marketing optimization tactics in a multichannel manner.” -Paul Stackpole, Pel Hughes


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Voice-Based Marketing Automation Benefits 2.

Grow Revenue Faster

At the end of the day, growing revenue is really what matters. Voice-based marketing automation helps businesses grow revenue by improving lead generation, converting more web leads into phone leads, and delivering automated voice broadcasts.

3.

Save time and money

• Better leads = more revenue: Voice-based marketing automation helps marketers pinpoint what campaigns are really bringing in revenue. You can then reinvest in the most successful programs and give sales the high-quality leads they need to close more business. • Faster lead response = more revenue: Research shows that a sale is 22 times more likely to happen when you make contact within the first five minutes. Voice-based marketing automation has tools that make it easy for prospects on your web site who fill out a form to get a sales call in seconds. It also has intelligent call routing that gets inbound calls to the right sales agent faster – and no phone leads gets missed.

• Automate upselling /cross-selling calls and reorder reminders: Maximize the revenue you receive from every customer with automated voice broadcasts. They are an effective way to promote the value of upgrading to a higher-tiered product or purchasing additional services. They also help remind customers when it time to reorder or renew.

Beacon Technologies Sees Over 400% Higher ROI with Call Tracking Beacon Technologies is a web technology and marketing agency. Beacon uses Ifbyphone as the critical link between online marketing spend and offline phone call conversions. For one client, Beacon used unique phone numbers from Ifbyphone to track call activity from sites like Lawyers.com, FindLaw.com, Google Local, and social media outlets. They now understood which channels were working and adjusted spending accordingly. The end result was a significant increase in ROI. “A lot of companies don’t just get leads that take place on the web. Consumers often pick up the phone and call,” said Brad Henry, Director of Web Marketing at Beacon. “It’s important to know where that lead originated, particularly if the web is involved, in order to optimize marketing initiatives moving forward.”


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Voice-Based Marketing Automation Benefits 3. Save Time and Money Making your business more efficient while reducing costs are two benefits near and dear to your CFO’s heart. Here’s how voice-based marketing automation does it:

3.

Save time and money

• Cut staffing costs: Voice-based marketing automation has technology that handles tasks previously requiring head count. For example, you can use an IVR as your business’s virtual receptionist to answer phones, provide information, and qualify and route callers 24/7. Or you can deliver thousands of voice broadcasts, IVR surveys, and SMS messaging blasts to large groups in minutes – something that would take a team of agents days to accomplish. • Make staff more efficient: Each time a sales rep answers a call from a customer who isn’t ready to buy, it costs you money. Each time a support agent has to spend time helping a customer locate their password or account balance, it costs you money. By filtering out these calls and automating manual processes, voice-based marketing automation frees your sales and support teams to focus on what really matters: closing business and better servicing customers.

• Cut equipment costs: Installing and maintaining call center equipment is extremely expensive. By using voice-based marketing automation to deploy a virtual call center, you can eliminate your hardware and maintenance costs while enabling your agents to work from anywhere. • Reduce no-shows: Customer no-shows can be costly. If your business relies on customers keeping their appointments or being present for deliveries, voice-based marketing automation can handle the reminding, confirming, and rescheduling for you automatically.

“I love the flexibility and wide range of features offered by Ifbyphone. We’ve only been using it a few months so far, but have designed all sorts of backend programming that allows us to reduce our dependence on live inbound call centers. What a money saver!”

- Kirsti Hegg, Gorilla Marketing


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Investment and Costs Once you decide that voice-based marketing automation is a good fit for your business, you should understand what factors influence pricing. Unlike on-premise solutions that are sold as software licenses or per-user “seats,”

• Customer support: Some voice-based marketing automation providers have

voice-based marketing automation is delivered via the cloud and sold as a recurring subscription. Most subscriptions are monthly and can be cancelled at any time, though some larger deals can be sold as an annual contract with many builtin discounts. Subscriptions can start as low as $49.95 a month and scale up based on your call volume.

free customer support, but others will charge you extra. No matter what package you choose, most voice-based marketing automation users find tremendous value in the solution. For sample pricing, please visit the Ifbyphone web site at http://public.ifbyphone.com/pricing.

The main factors determining the cost of a subscription are: • The functionality you require: Not all the features discussed in this guide are available in the basic editions of voice-based marketing automation. For some advanced functionality, you must select a higher product tier. • Phone numbers and usage minutes: Most packages include a certain number of phone numbers and calling minutes per month and then charge extra when you exceed that amount. • Extras: Some functionality, like SMS text messages and call recording, are extra charges each month based on usage.


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Selecting the Right Vendor So you’ve decided you’re ready for voice-based marketing automation. How do you select the right vendor? We won’t lie – we think Ifbyphone is the best voice-based marketing automation

Not every vendor can do everything you will want to do, so be sure to determine

solution provider. But here are a few things to consider when selecting the right

your goals and priorities upfront so you aren’t having to select multiple ad hoc

vendor for you:

vendors later.

1.

Determine Your Goals

What are you looking to achieve by implementing voice-based marketing

automation? Establishing your goals upfront will help you select the vendor that best fits your needs. For example: • Are you looking to track phone leads back to your marketing activities? • Are you looking to deliver voice broadcasts? • Are you looking to conduct phone surveys? • Are you looking to establish a virtual call center?


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Selecting the Right Vendor 2. Ask the Right Questions Once you know what you want to accomplish, first be sure to ask prospective vendors the most important question: can you do them? Some will be able to, and some won’t. If that question helps you narrow the field, you can then ask some other goal-specific questions.

• Do you offer both toll-free and local phone numbers? Do I own these numbers? 

For voice broadcasting, you can

Finally, if you are interested in

inquire about the following:

implementing a virtual call center,

• What tools are available for an agency managing call tracking for multiple clients?

• Does the provider have an on-time delivery guarantee?

• Do you have a phone number cleansing process to make sure the ones you give weren’t recently used and aren’t already receiving calls? When evaluating IVR technology, you may wish to ask each vendor if they

If you are interest in call tracking, for example, you may wish to ask: • Do you specialize in mobile or online call tracking?  • Can you integrate with Google Analytics and Universal Analytics?  • Do you have Google-certified specialist on staff to assist?

provide: • Online configuration with no programming needed? • Speech recognition? • Real-time analytics? • The ability to update IVRs in realtime? • Voice-to-text transcription services?

• Do you offer “whisper” messages to announce each caller to agents? 

• Intelligent call routing?

• Do you offer a call recording option?

• Answering machine and human detection?

• Do you offer custom call routing options?

• The ability to integrate with your CRM and servers?

you can ask:

• Can you manage and schedule your own broadcasts, or will you need to rely on a middleman? • Do they charge extra for a transfer? • What are their extra or hidden fees? • Do they offer your customers an “unsubscribe” or “opt-out” option? • Can you pause a campaign midblast?

• Can I customize the on-hold experience? • Can my agents receive calls at any location on any type of phone? Even softphones and Skype? • Can I set up schedules based on my individual agents? • How can my agents receive caller information before answering? • Can I access call reports and records online?

• Can they detect whether a live person or voicemail answers your call?

• Does your service offer call recording and transcription?

• Do they support IVR capabilities?

• Are there any setup fees or contracts?

• Can they route customers back to you during the call? To the nearest store? To an available sales agent? To your office, cell, and home phone simultaneously? • Can they record calls that get transferred to an agent?

• Am I able to transfer callers to another agent, department, or IVR? • Do you charge per-agent or per-seat fees? • Does it integrate with applications like Salesforce and Zendesk?

• Do you get instant access to reports? Can you download them into multiple formats?


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Selecting the Right Vendor 3. Consider a Few Non-Technical Factors

• Do they have references? What other businesses in your industry are using their solution? How are they using it? What results have they experienced? Are there tips you can use to help maximize ROI?

After looking at the technology, you may wish to consider a few other things before making your final decision. • What kind of support do they offer? Will you be able to get them on the phone and get help when you need it? Does support cost extra? Are the people you talk to pleasant to deal with and helpful?

• Will they help you get started? If you decide to go with a vendor, do they have programs in place to help you get started? How long will it take to get up and running?

“I have never worked with a company that gave so much value for the money. Our requirements from Ifbyphone were not standard. These guys took the extra mile and made sure that whatever I needed I received the same day. And that’s really what impressed me. I work with a lot of people and I don’t see this type of commitment and service.”

- Leo Nov, RestorationSOS



Why Ifbyphone What Makes Ifbyphone Different?

A Complete Solution

Easy to Get Started, Easy to Use

Ifbyphone is the only vendor with a truly complete voice-based marketing

Ifbyphone is cloud-based, so there is no hardware to buy or software to install

automation solution. Others may be able to help with a piece here and a piece

and maintain. And our platform was built for marketers, salespeople, and

there, but only Ifbyphone offers a comprehensive suite of applications that

support professionals, so you know it is easy to use. You don’t need to hire

covers everything in a single platform.

developers or programmers to assist you.

Connects with Your Business

Our People

Voice-based marketing automation works best when it is integrated with your

Ifbyphone has great technology, but our customers tell us our greatest asset

business applications. Ifbyphone comes with pre-built integrations for a wide

is our people. We have helpful experts to get you up and running quickly and

variety of applications, like Salesforce.com, HubSpot, Google Analytics and

to answer your phone calls whenever you have questions down the road.

Universal Analytics, and Zendesk. It also has a full suite of APIs for you to easily integrate Ifbyphone with your existing applications.

Ifbyphone’s Integrated Platform


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SUCCESS STORY:

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FundNET Systems Software provider uses voice-based marketing automation to cut support costs and better serve customers.

Challenge

Solution

Result 

FundNET Systems provides web-

Ifbyphone helped FundNET setup the

By using Ifbyphone, FundNET reduced

us to automate support, keep clients

based communication software for

following solution:

their phone costs by almost 80% while

informed, save administrative time, and

adding substantial functionality to their

reduce telco costs.”

financial services professionals. They wanted an automated way to increase support for FundNET’s advisor clients. They also needed to ensure that all support requests received via phone were automatically entered and tracked in Zendesk, the company’s help desk ticketing software. At the time, their existing phone company charged FundNET high rates for basic phone, voicemail and toll-free services – which did little to help either the company

1. When financial advisors call FundNET for support, their support question is recorded and transcribed. 2. The transcription, along with an attachment of the audio recording, is then automatically entered as a support ticket in Zendesk. 3. The advisor then receives an email confirming their support request that includes the transcription and a link to the audio recording.

system. Now, all of FundNET’s phone support requests are automatically logged in Zendesk. Because Zendesk is also integrated with Solve360, the CRM system FundNET uses, they now have end-to-end visibility of client requests. “Before Ifbyphone, a client would leave a voicemail and we’d have to listen to the whole message, then

or its clients. FundNET knew there

open Zendesk and enter the request

had to be a better, more cost-effective

manually,” said FundNET President

solution.

Jonathan Hunt. “Plus, the client didn’t know the voice message was received nor did they have any tracking on it. This integration of Ifbyphone, Zendesk, and Solve360 has enabled


“The Ifbyphone-Zendesk integration reduces our firm’s phone costs by 80%, ensures our clients receive high-quality customer service, and saves our support team time by aggregating all support inquiries, via phone, email, and web, in one place.” -Jonathan Hunt, FundNET Systems Inc.

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CONCLUSION

Next Steps We hope you found this guide helpful as you explore whether voice-based marketing automation is right for your business. If the phone plays an important role in how you acquire and support customers, voice-based marketing automation has a lot to offer you.

Voice-based marketing automation is an exciting technology that continues to evolve. If you wish to stay on top of the latest news and best practices, you can visit the Ifbyphone blog and resource section of our web site at www.ifbyphone.com. And please give us a call at 855-290-4190 if you wish to speak to an Ifbyphone representative or schedule a demo.


About Ifbyphone Ifbyphone manages, measures, and automates voice conversations with your customers and prospects. These conversations cannot be managed using marketing automation or CRM software alone. Without Ifbyphone’s voice-based marketing automation platform, catching these interactions is like fishing with a hole in the bottom of your net – leads and information fall out.

The Ifbyphone suite is a set of software-as-a-service applications including ad tracking, lead distribution, hosted IVR, and voice broadcasting. Companies of all sizes and across all industries use Ifbyphone, including direct response, health care, real estate, home services, and lead generation. Learn more at www.ifbyphone.com.

www.ifbyphone.com Twitter: http://twitter.com/ifbyphone Facebook: http://facebook.com/ifbyphone (855) 290-4190 300 West Adams Street, 9th Floor Chicago, IL 60606