What is Phonewagon?
Phonewagon is a call tracking software created by our friend Ryan Shank, to help businesses track where their calls are coming from. One of the biggest problems with businesses is that when they want to see where they should invest their marketing budget, they don’t know where their calls are coming from.
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Sure, there are tools like Google Analytics or even data from Facebook ads to tell you where your clicks and form submissions are, but it’s still very limited, especially for businesses that rely on in-coming calls as leads.
Real estate agents. Plumbers. Electricians. Car dealerships. Locksmiths. Technical Support Services.
The list is endless.
Basically any business that deals with clients with any sort of urgency will want to know where their calls are coming from.
Phonewagon helps these businesses by generating multiple trackable numbers, so they can use one number for all their printed flyers, another number for their Facebook ads and another for their billboard on the side of the road.
You can even go a step further and use a different number for different locations or different ads.
By doing so, you will be able to pinpoint where your calls are coming from and invest more into the channels of marketing that work.
What Features Does PhoneWagon Have?
Phonewagon has a plethora of features to help with your call tracking.
When used to its full potential, it can bring strides to your marketing campaigns.
For Call Directing: Custom Call Flows
You know when calling up customer support and they always have those step by step questions to see where to direct your call?
Press 1 for support. Press 2 to pay your bill. Press 3 to make a booking.
Not only does this divert the calls correctly (you can divert the customer support or ‘complaint’ calls to an automated message asking them to send an email through, so you or you staff don’t get stuck with that one dreadful call with an angry customer.
From my experience, this feature was extremely useful to implement, helping direct the leads properly for a retailer with over 30 stores. Plus, at a fraction of the cost of what an institutional software would do.
For a heads up: Whister Messages
Whisper messages are an incredibly useful feature when used right. Let’s say if you had multiple shops or businesses running all at once, but you still wanted the calls to come to the same person. If you didn’t have a call whisper function, you would need to ask a few awkward questions, where are you calling from, which business is this for… Not exactly a strong start to a sales call.
Trust me, I had this problem, and I had to deal with it… the hard way.
Running home renovation websites + tutoring math on the side + a bit of consulting made my phone life a mess.
However, with whisper messages, I can easily give myself a heads up when different numbers are called, so I know exactly what that call is about before I pick up that call.
For The Call Shy ones: Texting Features
It’s no secret text messaging marketing is a big deal these days. Just check your SMS inbox if you want to see why. With a near 100% open rate (because who doesn’t check their texts), SMS is the new email when used right.
With Phonewagon’s SMS features, not only are you able to send out bulk SMS campaigns, but you can respond to the replies as they come in.
This is perfect if you’re selling to those who don’t want to jump on a call with you (or are shopping around while they’re at work) but still want to ask a few questions.
Other features
Other than the ones we explained, Phonewagon has a bunch more features at your disposal. Here’s the full list below:
Instant number setup
International phone numbers
Local numbers
Toll-free numbers
Port your numbers in
Call recording
Whisper messages
Greeting messages
Custom call-tagging
Simultaneous ring
Unlimited user accounts
Client accounts
Email summaries
Email call alerts
Advanced reporting
Dynamic phone numbers
Visitor & Keyword-level tracking
Google Analytics Integration
Google AdWords Integration
Automated text replies
Phonewagon Pricing and Plans
Phonewagon is actually extremely affordable for the amount of value it provides.
For most businesses, the Starter Plan will be sufficient, providing 5 numbers and up to 500 minutes in call time.
The 5 numbers will cover most marketing mediums:
Facebook, Instagram, Google My Business, signage around the area, leaflets (yes yes, we’re all about digital marketing here, but don’t write off old school marketing tactics just yet, for certain industries and depending on the demographic, strategies such as letterbox drops can work better than social media ads).
The Pro plan is for the businesses with more locations, or if you want to break your campaigns down even more, so you can really pinpoint your data and incoming leads.
If you’re doign marketing work for others, then the Agency Plan would be a strong fit for you.
Call Tracking For Marketing Agencies
For those doing client marketing work or if you run an agency of sorts, you probably know that the only metric that really matters is measuring the number of leads that come through.
Clicks and views are cool and all, but they’re just vanity metrics.
Clients only care about the bottom line.
As a result, you want to report back as many leads as possible, to consistently prove their marketing fee is generating an ROI.
Facebook leads - easy to track.
Website leads - easy to track.
Calls?
So many marketers spend hours optimizing their landing pages to get more contact form submissions coming in but easily forget about the calls too.
As I mentioned earlier, when the service or product they’re selling is urgent, usually people like to call up.
So I hope you’re never in a position when you think your campaign isn’t doping well, because your not getting any website leads coming through, but in the background, you’re generating hundreds of calls from your efforts.
The agency package will be perfect for you, with 50 numbers and up to 6000 minutes of call time, that’s plenty of numbers for you to track your clients leads.
Phonewagon Provides Powerful Businesses Analytics
Data is king…
… when the right pair of eyes are reading it anyways.
That said, the information that you can pick up from the calls can potentially take your campaign to the next level. Numbers telling you the duration of calls, where they’re calling from, and even functions allowing you to listen to the calls, will give you an indication on where to increase or drop your marketing spend.
With the custom dashboard function, you will be able to create a dashboard with only the essential information, so you can make decisions faster without diving deep into the vanity metrics (numbers that don’t matter).
Final Thoughts
To wrap it up, Phonewagon is an incredible piece of software that can offer your business so much value for a fair price. I’ve been following Ryan Shank’s journey from his early days of building out the platform to seeing what Phonewagon is capable of doing now is amazing to see.