The Greystone.Net Blog

A recent article in Website Magazine talked about a new mashup from a company called Ifbyphone (http://public.ifbyphone.com/). This firm offers a telephone application that can integrate direct-response call data with Web-based advertising information through Google Analytics, which could ultimately offer us, as marketers, the possibility of gauging the overall effectiveness of a marketing campaign.

From what I understand, Ifbyphone blends the call-detail data with Google Analytics Web-site statistics, enabling marketers to measure the success of how well the Web-ad generated responses as part of an integrated marketing campaign. The resulting information can help us evaluate inbound telephone calls similar to the way Web-site log files and click-stream data are viewed with online campaigns.

The application creates a pseudo-Web page that is dynamically-linked to a phone number assigned to an Ifbyphone customer’s account. Each time the phone rings, a page view is automatically counted by Google. In addition to page views, each telephone number may also be associated with a Google tracking value for source, content, campaign, term and medium.

I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know much about the specifics of this particular company, the application or its capabilities, but I’m intrigued by the possibilities — especially given my deep interest in both integrated marketing campaigns and call center and Web integration.

I’m not aware of any healthcare or hospital Web site that uses an application like this to measure lead generation from the Web. Do you know of organization using something similar? Are you contemplating something similar?  Should we consider developing a pilot to see how it might work?  If you know more about this topic … share your experiences and thoughts. If you are interested in the topic too, let me know what you think and I’ll be sure to share what I learn about it in coming months. Let me hear from you.