Cross between Sales Lead Management system and an ROI Tracking system.

any ideas from across the world

[Shak]

Gotta a strange one, and wonder if anyone can help.

Been speaking to someone about click tracking and in particular ROI conversion rates.

The person in question operates a small'ish site which sells software. A high percentage of the actual sales occur off-line during follow-up telephone conversations. The requirement is to assess the ROI for the bids used to actually find the site when compared against the actual conversions, both on-line and off-line. Possible such a system might also be required to deliver prospect management.

To me this sounds like a cross between a Sales Lead Management system and an ROI Tracking system.

any ideas who may offer the kind of system that might fulfil the specification?

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Shak

[DerekJPreston]

Not exactly my speciality subject but how about the following:

Drop a cookie on the user when they arrive at the site which records the search engine and ppc keyword used.

If they convert online use the cookie to associate conversion with original search keyword and engine.

If they convert offline (eg by phone) then send them an email with a web page link to be clicked upon to validate their order details for example. The cookie should accompany the email link click, thus delivering the conversion information along with stored engine and keyword.

Either way, online or offline you'll get a web server log entry with the conversion details. Log analysers such as ClickTracks are probably able to deduce ROI consequently.

I know that some people turn off cookies etc but will the idea work in principle?

Regards,

Derek J. Preston
Head of Technology
Mirago plc

[Mark_A]

costing offline sales activity would be interesting to compare to costs of online conversion .. if this is not done then its apples verses pairs ..

[vibgyor79]

How about using SalesForce.com (personal edition - Free)in conjunction with your ROI tracking software?

But, does it really make sense to adjust the bids based on the offline followups to sale conversion ratio? Once the surfer has typed in a keyword, clicked on advertisement, looked around your client's site and contacted the sales team, it is upto them to close the sale.

The closure of sale does not depend on the keyword used, since the surfer has already checked the website and has called up the sales team. I'm assuming the surfer is equally interested in the product as other surfers who found the site by typing in another keyword.

Wrong assumption?

[jpjones]

If they convert offline (eg by phone) then send them an email with a web page link to be clicked upon to validate their order details for example. The cookie should accompany the email link click, thus delivering the conversion information along with stored engine and keyword

Works well in principle. Everything technology-wise is automated, there is a confirmation of order for the client (which is always useful), and ROI resulting in both off-line and on-line orders can be calculated.

The only thing which may get muddied here is orders resulting from natural type-ins / organic SEO would get mixed in with those who have no cookie support.

Also, make sure cookie-expiration is set sufficient so that if the off-line sales takes time to close, the information about which ad brought the lead in is still accessible.

[DerekJPreston]

I think the original point of tracking offline conversions is to determine relevance for PPC keywords. Only by tracking both online and offline conversions can you find out which PPC keywords are returning decent ROI.

Presumably the objective is to bid only for useful terms which actually lead to conversion. They should eliminate bids for non converting terms. Hence ROI improvement.

Derek

[DerekJPreston]

I suggested earlier a system using cookie and email links. As I said, non all conversions would produce cookie'd tracking information. However if you can get tracking information for the majority of conversions, you can extrapolate the rest. This is probably good enough to determine which PPC keywords are working for the site and which don't yield a worthwhile ROI.

How long can you set cookie expiry periods to?

Derek

[killroy]

Erm, Shak, if I get you right, you don't really want to track online VS offline conversion, you want to track which keyword brought in a lead that then ended up converting offline.

i.e. consumer clicks ad, on keyword xyz. Comes to site, reads info, notes down tel number. Tomorrow he calls and orders item. How do you know a bid on XYZ is a good investment because it converts, rather then falsly thinking a bid on xyz is a waste of cash as no conversion was noted online.

Am I getting this right?

SN

[shorebreak]

I've heard of some companies using dynamically-generated 800 numbers so they know what keyword someone's coming from.

Also have heard about assigning a value to particular onsite actions (signing up for email newsletter, downloading white paper, asking to be contacted, etc) and managing ROI to those measurable events.

[AussieWebmaster]

I am using DirectResponse's www.keywordmax.com and is a great ROI tracker for all online campaigns.
But to add the telephone sales angle you need to use a few of the ideas mentioned above.
1. Set up a phoneline/s dedicated to online advertising (if you are trying to track it to a specific engine each would need its own number).
2. Place the number on your site and then track the sales that come in via that phone.
3. Keep track of all unique calls like you would online and have more info to play with.
4. See which things sell better by phone...
5. If you intergrate an online datbase with a customer sign up page for your phone people then it will have a cookie placed and when a sale is ultimately made and recorded it will add to the overall numbers... all sales going through your online merchant etc.

Needs a little more work but there are a few ideas to add to the mix.