When you run an agency, it seems like the only thing tougher than getting a client is keeping them around.

In CallRail’s 2023 digital marketing agency outlook, agencies reported a 44% client retention rate year over year – a decrease from the previous year’s 53%. When the economy feels shaky and the threat of recession looms in everyone's mind, that relentless revolving door feels like more of a threat to your business than ever.

So, what can your agency do? How can you encourage your clients to stick with you for the long haul?

The simple answer: marrying your CRM with Call Tracking.

4 ways integrating call tracking with your CRM helps you retain your agency's clients

Okay, so "call tracking plus CRM" might not be the first magic formula that pops into your mind when it comes to retaining your agency clients.

Integrating call tracking with an agency-focused CRM like HighLevel is one clear way to ensure your clients' marketing campaigns can go a long way in helping you make smarter decisions and demonstrate your value to your (let's face it, oftentimes skeptical) clients.

Still not convinced? Let's take a closer look at some of the most compelling ways integrating call tracking with your CRM can boost performance, prove ROI, and, as a result, improve your client retention.

1. Create more impactful client campaigns

You know by now that you don't have the luxury of throwing marketing messages out there and operating on hunches about what will resonate—not when you have clients who are depending on you to be the expert and want to see results now (or, you know, yesterday).

Gut feelings will only take you so far. Call tracking equips you with the data you need to produce far more effective campaigns for your clients. You'll know what's working (and what isn't), and that's information you can use to make more strategic decisions moving forward.

Call tracking will show you what campaigns and channels are generating the most calls. But, marketing isn't strictly a numbers game. Call tracking reports won't only show you call volume—you can also dig deeper into what efforts are delivering high-value leads as well as the cost of acquisition per channel.

Furthermore, when you integrate Call Tracking with a CRM like HighLevel, you can view an individual caller’s entire marketing journey (e.g, the keywords and ads that drove them to your site and the content they’ve interacted with) alongside their customer record.

From there, you can drill down further with Conversation Intelligence, which illuminates the patterns and needs of your clients' highest-value customers with automated conversation analysis and scoring – and make all this data available within the CRM.

When your clients see that your marketing efforts are leading to real results and big-ticket customers? They're far more likely to want to stick with you.

2. Optimize your client's campaign spend

Understanding what marketing efforts are working and what ones are underperforming is not only helpful for creating even more effective campaigns, but it also helps you and your agency clients make the most of every single dollar.

Does call tracking reveal that billboards are making a lot of impressions and driving conversions for your client? You might want to reallocate some budget from the direct mail campaign (which call tracking shows hasn't been generating as much interest) and double-down on purchasing more billboards.

Spending is bound to be a top concern of your agency's clients, so proving that you want to help them maximize their investment is a great way to earn their trust and prove that you're an invaluable partner. Also, ad reporting within a CRM makes it easy to monitor spend and conversion metrics right alongside all your other marketing activities.

3. Deliver a personal touch (at scale)

Recent McKinsey research shows that a whopping 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions. Your clients don't just expect personalized service from you—their customers expect it from them.

By implementing call tracking for your agency clients' campaigns, you can help them provide the highly-targeted experiences that their customers demand. Paired with CRM data from HighLevel, you can monitor and ensure every prospect receives that personal touch.

Call tracking allows your clients to tailor each lead's experience with personalized call routing, hold messaging, and other automations based on the campaign source.

That high-value lead? They can be put directly in touch with your client's most experienced sellers. That lead that saw that billboard? They can hear completely customized hold messaging that builds off that billboard campaign.

If you want to keep your agency clients, you can't stop at getting them in front of more potential customers—you need to help them convert those eyeballs into action. Call tracking is a tool that will show your agency clients that you're there to guide them from first impression to closing the sale.

4. Get real insights about how campaigns are performing

Sure, a lot of the campaigns you produce for clients rely on digital methods. But, you also know that more traditional, out of home marketing efforts—everything from bus wraps and billboards to brochures and direct mail pieces—still have plenty of pull.

Take direct mail as just one example. One study found that 58% of millennials and 62% of Generation X had made a purchase in the last 30 days because of direct mail advertising.

Those methods can be impactful, but they often present a problem: How can you actually measure their effectiveness and prove it to your clients?

Call tracking doesn't only work for online activity (although, it's great for that too). To put it simply, if you can put a phone number on something, you can track it.

Additionally, if you’re using a CRM, your agency can feed this data into custom Pipelines so nothing gets lost in the shuffle. That means you and your agency clients will know just how many calls and contacts your out of home marketing efforts are generating.

Keep your agency clients for the long haul

It's tough to land a new agency client—but sometimes it feels even tougher to keep the ones you already have.

You need to make strategic decisions, generate results, and prove your value, all while crafting top-notch campaigns. Plus, you need to do it all over and over and over again.

Fortunately, pairing call tracking with a CRM like HighLevel can be your secret sauce for easily accessing the data you need to refine your clients' efforts, maximize their investment, and prove that you're the marketing partner they can't live without. When you do all of that, how could they ever leave?

Ready to implement call tracking and keep your agency's clients? Get started with CallRail for free today.