I’ve got a bigger question for in regards to inbound call attribution tracking. I have been struggling with this for a longer while now, also tested different software options (callrail in the past) and so far wildjar has generated the “best” results but still a major challenge. I'm braking down the situation below:
Inbound Call Attribution Tracking Problem
Situation
Companies running marketing campaigns across various paid and organic channels such as Google Ads, Meta Ads, LinkedIn Ads (one first pain point: Bing Ads is not supported in Hubspot Ads) to attract leads/enquiries.
These campaigns drive traffic to the website. Then, the user can perform one of two conversion actions, a) submitting a contact form (Hubspot form) or b) make a phone call.
Using Hubspot’s native capabilities to track ad interactions and attribution (UTM data: Source/Medium/Campaign/Term mapped into HS default properties: Original Source/Original Source Drill-down 1/Original Source Drill-down 2) this works well for any new contact who’s conversion action was a Hubspot Form submission.
For phone calls however, attribution is not successful.
Case 1: Hubspot Number and Inbound Calls through Hubspot
Pain 1 (biggest pain point): when the User creates a new contact through the inbound calls UI while on the call, original source and drill down 1 and 2 will show: Offline sources, CRM UI, Sales Rep name -> This means, all call attribution data is being lost from any Paid Ad source (but also organic sources). However, it’s crucial to understand attribution (source/medium/campaign/kw) data precisely for all conversion actions in order to optimise campaigns and media spend.
Pain 2: The user answering the call through Hubspot can only answer the call from the web browser and only if the calling tab is open, but not the Hubspot mobile app
Pain 3: Existing contacts with the same phone number aren’t being picked up automatically (HS also struggling with the same number formatted with and without country code at the beginning)
Case 2: Wildjar Call Tracking Software HS Integration (tried different other software options, but all with the same end result of not working)
Pain 1 (biggest pain point): Wildjar HS native integration does not pass any attribution information into Hubspot. Even though Wildjar does have all this information stored. Instead a new contact is being saved as:
First Name: Inbound Call from Google Ads from [phone number]
Original Source: Offline Sources
Drill Down 1: Integration
Drill Down 2: WildJar
Again, this does not help with reporting and optimisation of campaigns at all.
Pain 2: Contact records only being created at the end of the call - This means, to capture any information from the call during the call in HS - there is no contact record existing to do that. And any manual contact creation, same as mentioned above, would have this information for source properties: Offline sources, CRM UI, user name.
Case 3: Wildjar + Zapier
Using Zapier to pass correct attribution information (source/medium/campaign/kw) into Hubspot.
The way it’s set up: User performs google search > user clicks paid result > user makes phone call > call ends > new call contact being created in Hubspot after call ends
Pain 1 (biggest pain point): Hubspot automatically sets attribution information automatically as:
Original source: Offline Sources
Drill down 1: Integration
Drill down 2: Zapier
which is incorrect as we need to track the actual attribution (organic/paid and then campaign and kw or audience information)
Pain 2: In order to pass the correct information (Source: Paid Search, Drilldown 1: Campaign Name, Drilldown 2: Paid Keyword), I need to manually create new custom properties and map attribution information in these. This then however leaves the HS default properties untouched and with false information. Then, I need to create separate reporting for Call contacts and Form Contacts due to different properties used for reporting.
Pain 3: Contacts only get created when the call ends, which means, if I want to directly add information from the call into HS, I would need to manually create a contact and then afterwards merge with the Wildjar/Zapier Contact which is tedious.
Pain 4: Related to the merging is, that due to HS only using Email Address as unique identifier, call and manual/form contacts don’t get updated automatically with one existing prior to the other.
Solution Required:
When creating a new contact from a call within HS using the inbound call UI - obtaining the correct attribution information for both paid and organic sources.
Receiving calls directly in Hubspot on both browser & mobile App.
Automatically pulling up existing contact record if phone number is recognised in the database (secondary)
At the moment, the most viable option is Case 3, and there, the recipient would make notes with pen and paper, and once the call is completed and created in HS, the user would transfer the notes from paper into Hubspot and update that contact manually (name, email, etc.)
In saying all of the above - it is still a big struggle and not efficient nor effective.
Thanks for considering.
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