We’re back with new features, updates, and integrations to help you market with confidence in 2023. Check out the latest CallRail product updates below.
New Desktop Homepage Dashboard
Your CallRail homepage has gotten a whole new look. We gathered all our most-popular data into one place so you can immediately see an overview of the state of your marketing, or quickly drill down to the data that matters to you, from the moment you log in.
What's included:
- Total Calls, Total First-Time Callers, and Unanswered Calls
- Account Alerts, Feature Spotlights & Recent Activity
- Call Status, Calls by Number, Call Attribution by Source.
See more in-depth details on each feature in our support article, or join us on Wednesday, March 8th at 2pm EST where our product team will give you a tour and answer any questions!
Lead Center Updates
Stop/Unsubscribe
To help businesses stay compliant with texting regulations, we now display some reminder text on the compose SMS screen in Lead Center. This text lets agents know about their responsibility to inform the number that they are texting that they can stop receiving texts at any time by using an approved keyword - STOP, CANCEL, UNSUBSCRIBE, and END.
This prevents CallRail customers from receiving fines for sending unsolicited text messages. When a keyword is texted our system will automatically stop the flow of texts to that number. If the agent tries to text that number again, we will display an inline error message letting them know the message could not be delivered. For more details, check out this support article.
Message Alert
Dismissable 3rd Panel
Did you know that about half of our Lead Center customers resize their screen to hide the third panel? We've just made it easier for those users to decide what takes up the most real estate on their screen by adding the ability to collapse (and expand!) the third panel. This will improve your workflow and allow your team to see the details you need to do your job more efficiently.
Interaction Skim-ability
To make it easier for you to find what you’re looking for, we have updated the interaction history list to be more skim-able! When an agent is in the two-panel view, notes, and tags are now displayed to the right of the interaction. Additionally, in the three-panel view, notes and tags are now visible in the tooltip on hover. With these changes, we hope to allow users to skim the content of all interactions and get a sense of “where they are at” in the timeline without having to click into each interaction.
This allows you and your team to quickly assign interactions to agents and get the gist of a conversation for quick follow-up.
Two-Panel View
Three-Panel View and Hover Tool Tips
Integration Updates
Google Call Details Forwarding
In October 2021, we launched our Google Call Details Forwarding integration. It allows you to track keywords associated with your customer's mobile searches and view calls as conversions in Google Ads. This gives you insight into the keywords associated with calls to your call-only ads and your campaigns with call extensions.
Our Call Details Forwarding (CDF) integration is an improvement over our legacy Mobile Click-to-Call (MCTC) integration. We discontinued the MCTC integration on February 21, 2023, in favor of our better integration capabilities through CDF. The MCTC integration is no longer available, and if you haven’t already made the switch to CDF, we encourage you to do that as soon as possible. When you make the switch, you’ll see the following benefits with CDF:
- It's more timely. CallRail receives the Google Click ID (GCLID) and campaign data 15 seconds after the call connects. This means we can send these GCLIDs in integrations like Webhooks, Salesforce, Zapier, and Hubspot.
- It's more reliable. CallRail receives the data directly from Google for 100% of CDF calls.
- It's a simpler setup. You only need to place your tracking number wherever you want to track calls (extensions at any level and/or call ads) and turn on a single account-level setting in Google Ads.
- It's more comprehensive. CDF can track more types of calls from Ads, including those served on desktop, than MCTC.
Get the Guide → We’ve put together a guide on switching from Mobile Click-to-Call to Call Details Forwarding. We encourage you to make the transition as soon as possible since the MCTC integration is no longer functional.
Google Analytics 4 FAQ
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) officially replaces Universal Analytics (UA) on July 1, 2023. CallRail's GA4 integration is now available to activate within your CallRail account.
Google Analytics gives you insight into how your website visitors find and interact with your website. GA4 now makes it easier to precisely measure a customer’s journey across platforms by combining a user’s web and mobile app data. GA4’s data collection also considers the increasing concerns consumers have around privacy and, in particular, cookie tracking.
Many of you have already started to use the integration, so let’s cover some frequently asked questions:
Can I use GA4 & Universal at the same time?
Yes, absolutely! As a matter of fact, we recommend doing so until you’re fully set up and comfortable with your data in GA4. Universal Analytics & Google Analytics 4 are set up as separate integrations in CallRail, so you can activate GA4 without impacting your Universal Analytics setup. Since the GA4 and UA properties are reported separately inside of Google Analytics, you don’t have to worry about duplicate data.
How do I set up a custom event for first-time callers or calls with a certain tag?
Customers are supposed to make their own custom events from the events we send through the integration by following these instructions from Google Analytics. For example, you could use those steps to create a new custom event for first-time phone calls with a tag of “opportunity” with a setup like this:
Unfortunately, due to a bug in Google Analytics, this is not currently working. We have submitted a ticket to Google Analytics 4 developer support, and they have acknowledged that it is an issue they are looking into. We do not have any further details or an ETA for resolution from them. We will do our best to push for a resolution from Google on this.
If we're not able to get traction with Google support, our next best option is to give customers the option in the GA4 integration setup to send separate events for first-time vs. repeat callers since that is the most frequently-requested use case. It was our intention to provide customers with a wide variety of data and the flexibility to create their own custom events based on any combination of the data we are sending, so we'd really like to know first if Google plans to address this bug before implementing a workaround.
In the meantime, you can set up integration triggers in CallRail to only send first-time calls to GA4. Then when you select the phone call event in GA4 to mark as a conversion, all of those phone call events will be first-time callers only.
Stay in the know → Follow this post on CallRail Community, where we’ll keep you up to date on any developments on this issue.
How do I set up custom events & metrics (and why do I have to do this)?
GA4 considers any event data (called “parameters”) that they’re not natively tracking to be “custom.” We’re sending a variety of call, form, sms, and chat-specific data with our events like first-time caller, tracking number, call duration, qualified status, and tags. GA4 considers all of that to be custom data. If you want to report on any of that data, you’ll have to create Custom Dimensions (or Metrics) to use the data from our custom parameters in your Google Analytics reports.
Custom Dimensions are for qualitative data, and Custom Metrics are for quantitative data. Together, Google Analytics calls them “custom definitions.” You do not have to complete the custom definition setup for every parameter we send! You only need to complete this step for the data you want to use in your GA4 reports. Note: custom definition setup in GA4 is not retroactive, so if you activate the integration and decide to complete the custom definition setup later, you’ll only see the custom definition data for events that happened after you completed the setup. Data from any events that occurred before the custom definition setup will not be available or shown in your reports.
Our integration support article outlines the steps for custom definition setup. You can (and should) define whatever Dimension name & Description makes the most sense for you and your business. This defines how the data will appear in your reports, and will not impact our ability to send the custom parameter data. What matters most is choosing a Scope of “Event” and selecting the right “Event parameter” from the drop-down menu.
You may have noticed that some of our custom parameter data is related to the attribution of the event - fields like source, medium, campaign, gclid, and landing page. Unfortunately, while we could post attribution data to “standard” reporting fields in Universal Analytics, Google did not make that functionality available to events posted in Google Analytics 4. While we’d much rather send it to GA4 standard fields, our best available workaround was to send this data as custom parameters. We highly recommend customers set up these attribution fields as custom dimensions, so they can include the attribution data we’re tracking in their GA4 reports.
Once you’ve completed the custom definition setup for the data you want to report on, you’ll need to create a custom report in GA4 or customize existing standard reports to include your custom dimensions and metrics. Remember, you must receive at least one event through the integration before using your custom definitions in reports.
Why do my events show as “(not set)” for source/medium, “Unassigned” default channel group, and why are my calls from Ads not populating in my Google Ads traffic reports in GA4?
Google did not make the standard attribution fields available to us in GA4. As a result, we cannot send our source and medium data to their default fields like we were able to in Universal Analytics. This means you will not see source, medium, campaign, or landing page data for events posted through the GA4 integration in standard fields and reports. Instead, we will send attribution data like source, medium, and campaign as a custom parameter. For this reason, we strongly recommend that customers complete the custom definition setup described above.
Additionally, because we cannot report data to the standard gclid (Google Click ID) field, our events will not show in any connected Google Ads reporting within GA4. This also means that the conversion import from GA4 to Google Ads will not include our events. If you were using the Universal Analytics to Google Ads import to track your phone calls as conversions in Google Ads, you will need to migrate to our direct integration with Google Ads.
Upcoming Webinar → Join us on Wednesday, March 8th at 2pm EST where we’ll walk through how to set up GA4 with CallRail, including a live Q&A alongside our most frequently asked questions. Register here!
Integration Spotlight: CallRail + ActiveCampaign
The integration between ActiveCampaign and CallRail allows customers to optimize and automate their marketing efforts to streamline their omnichannel engagement through valuable insights from inbound phone calls. CallRail is the first call analytics provider in Active Campaigns’ application ecosystem.
If you use ActiveCampaign, this integration immediately accesses CallRail’s real-time lead intelligence, equipping you with insight into each lead’s journey and which ads, keywords, and campaigns generate your best leads. Tracking inbound calls was previously a manual process for ActiveCampaign customers. What once was a manual process is now instant: automate workflows, react to real-time consumer behavior, manage sales processes, and create personalized follow-ups with ease.
Have ActiveCampaign? Try out the integration today.
Track with Apple My Business Connect
Apple Business Connect is Apple's answer to Google My Business. If you’ve been wondering how you could track calls on things like Apple Maps, Safari, or Siri, now you can! Use a CallRail tracking number in your Apple Business Connect listing to get the same insights and analytics you receive from calls to your other tracking numbers, now displayed to the over 120 million iPhone users in the US.
Track your leads using Apple Business Connect today (it’s free!) - here’s step-by-step instructions to get started.
