An oft-overlooked aspect of Click to Call and Call Tracking services is Reverse Lookup. Reverse Lookup delivers enhanced and actionable data for every call placed through Click to Call, or to a Call Tracking telephone number. 

Unlike standard caller ID information, Reverse Lookup offers more granularity and accuracy.  

What can Reverse Lookup do for you?

• Generate a list of self-selected prospects who have contacted your agents within the past month, quarter,or year.

• Follow up on lost leads.

• Supplement your corporate marketing database with interested prospects.

• Maximize the value of every call that has already come in, or capture enhanced data as calls continue to come in.

Last week while out at the Kelsey Group's ILM:07 conference, one of the recurring themes of the show seemed to be how publishers are delivering performance-based advertising solutions to advertisers that generate quality leads.  To do this, publishers must think about delivering much more than just clicks.  In many cases, they must be able to track consumer behavior across channels. 

To that effect, one major classifieds publisher is taking steps to provide a more holistic view of ROI for advertisers by implementing a suite of tools that offers much more than just reporting on clickthroughs.  Today we're announcing that Boat Trader, a classified-driven Web site linking boat buyers and sellers, will implement eStara Click to Call and Call Tracking technology across its website to help optimize advertiser listings, drive sales conversions and improve communication between buyers and sellers. The company will also be adding eStara Save & Send in the near future to extend the utility of its online listings to other electronic media, such as SMS and social bookmarks.

Blogging live from the Kelsey Group/SES ILM:07 conference, Andrew Shotland points to some predictions from Kelsey Group analyst Matt Booth about the future of yellow pages.  One prediction is that 2008 will see publishers expand their platforms across multiple channels -- IYP, directory assistance, search, etc. (we'd add mobile to that list too).  According to Booth, call tracking will be the glue that unifies those different platforms.

eMarketer post the results of a new survey that looks at how companies are targeting affluent shoppers online.  According to the study by Burst Media, "Nearly one-quarter of US adult Internet users earning $75,000 or more said they would spend more money during the 2007 holiday season than they did during the same period in 2006."

How are businesses looking to capture this influx of rich shoppers? Many are turning to click to call and call tracking to help deliver leads across channels.  Just yesterday, we announced a new partnership with Luxury Link to help them connect their hotel partners to affluent consumers over the phone.  As they find, these solutions are an excellent way to encourage more direct sales conversions, enhance the overall consumer experience and produce measurable results for clients.

By Robyn Rose, VP of Marketing, Superpages.com and John Federman, CEO, eStara

With the Yellow Pages print and online directories, local search and mobile local search converging, advertisers are now obtaining leads from multiple sources. More savvy consumers are adapting to the Internet, and the importance for marketers to integrate their online and offline information is clear.

It is critical for advertisers to begin advertising in the local search space, and delivering quality leads through local search is clearly a way to convince advertisers to do so. Many people identify local search as being associated with service-based businesses – plumbers, pizza places – but the reality is that it incorporates major product categories, including automobiles and jewelry.

For a local or national business, it is important to advertise at all stages of the consumer buying cycle. Also, advertisers must key-in on the advertising geography – especially at the stage when a consumer is deciding to contact the business or purchase a product and/or service. For example, national companies should focus on distributing leads to local franchise locations or retail outlets, and small- to medium-sized businesses should focus on the various products they carry or the services they offer.

For Superpages.com advertisers, exposure to consumers in various platforms is enabled through strategic partnerships, thus providing leads from consumers via online and mobile searches. Although money is being spent online, 97 percent of U.S. retail spending is still spent offline according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. Much of the transaction, especially in the local space, takes place offline.

Publishers and agencies are leveraging call tracking and monitoring programs to improve performance across local and national channels and close in on that “last mile” to conversion. Extending the utility of online ads through services like click to call and save & send allows consumers to connect with businesses immediately or save directory listings in their preferred format for later use. More importantly, these services provide granular ROI data for marketers to prove performance to their advertisers.

Consumers have buying power in the local search space, and compared to the average Internet buyer, the local search buyer has a higher buying power index according to comScore. The value of local search and the importance of measuring the quality of a lead are paramount for any online and offline advertising campaign to be successful.

Cross-posted at Local Search Guide.