Note: If you are new to conversational AI, pay-per-call affiliate marketing, and affiliate networks, I highly encourage you to familiarise yourself with the concepts before you start reading. If you already know the ropes, just continue.
Who could have imagined that, within such a short time, one wouldn’t even need to engage a customer verbally to drive them to a purchase? I bet not many, but here we are: embracing the future and facing the fact that conversational voice AI has changed businesses once and for all.
Only those who adapt will survive, but those living in the past, clinging to old strategies – perish.
But fear not, I’m about to share with you the winning formula that works for both big and small affiliates and advertisers:
Pay Per Call + Conversational AI + Affiliate Networks = Profits
That is it – meeting adjourned. Make use of it and fill your coffers with cash.
Jokes apart, I have witnessed real success in generating and selling calls, and I am pleased to elaborate on what you need to do to repeat Phonexa’s success and, hopefully, even do better.
Farewell and godspeed – I am now leaving you with condensed insights that would successfully guide you through the nuances of pay-per-call marketing powered by conversational AI, all within three closely packed chapters:
For the novices among you, let me start with an explanation of how pay-per-call affiliate marketing works.
Source: Pay-Per-Call: What It Is and How It Works
Now that you are in the context, I’m quite sure you’ll find it obvious that the combination of (1) well-implemented chatbots, voice assistants, and an AI-powered IVR system, along with (2) the appropriate affiliate network, can automate customer acquisition from top to bottom – both phone calls and web leads.
What this means for advertisers is semi-automatic lead conversion, stepping in only at its climax. You will not have to be so committed to marketing or nurturing the lead; all you do is set up your AI system to qualify the traffic you will buy.
Alright, let’s move from the theoretical to the practical.
Suppose you need more phone calls from potential customers.
Here are the five major steps to acquire them:
First, you configure your needs and price per lead – then sign with an affiliate network that provides your offering to large pools of affiliates. For example, you may want to reach only men of a specific solvent category staying in London, aged between 30 and 45 years only.
Although all affiliate networks offer attribution, only a few provide advanced affiliate management software so that you can closely analyse your traffic. Such cloud-based suites of affiliate management software have relatively affordable solutions too.
Once your affiliate program is fully running, affiliates can refer customers via a phone call using the unique phone number assigned to the affiliate. These numbers will route your inbound phone traffic and attribute it to the correct affiliate.
Also, make sure to read: Your Guide to Getting a Pay-Per-Call Number in 2025
You can also make life easier for the affiliates by sharing marketable customer insights and branded creative material, so content creators are in a position to advertise your products organically. That way, you will be able to control the first impression and make a smooth transition between touchpoints.
After calling your number, the customer will be forwarded to your conversational voice AI, which will further ask questions and bridge the customer with a matching live operator or solve the request independently in case of simpler requests, such as regular payments or subscription renewals.
On the caller’s side, nothing goes out of the ordinary: they go through smoothly, the sales funnels, until the call is connected with an operator. Meanwhile, you receive some really valuable marketing information that may be used further in your conversation.
Here’s how it might look in real life:
The system routes such callers who are willing to speak with an agent to the right agent. This here depends on your routing criteria. Of course, the better you distribute your calls, the more you are likely to convert them—and it’s not easy.
If the call is qualified, then it’s paid to the affiliate. For “qualified,” I mean that the call fits your conditions according to length, quality, source, etc., for unqualified calls, you’re not paying at all.
Finally, the live operator in charge would try to convert a call.
Finito.
For the caller, at least. For you, the race isn’t over quite yet.
As the client hangs up, analytics begin.
Serious advertisers use more sophisticated call analytics software—usually more advanced than most affiliate networks offer—dissecting business calls on the fly and strategically to have their marketing system continually update itself with all the new information.
One last thing:
It’s critical to use a system that – apart from being part of the fancy “AI” acronym – actually does what it’s supposed to do: self-learn. Only self-learning AI systems can continuously keep improving call routing without manual interference.
Otherwise, your call distribution will never be optimal, and some leads will always fall in the wrong places. In any case, you still set the initial criteria manually.
Here are some of the key initial call distribution parameters:
Having this kind of comprehensive pay-per-call marketing system at your fingertips, I am pretty certain that you will achieve the utmost from maximising your sales and appointments and enhancing customer satisfaction and retention.
Build your plan now, or take a product tour to learn more about Phonexa.
From a technical point of view, conversational AI definitely works the same when used by affiliates. However, there are some non-standard strategies beyond segmentation and personalisation that you can use.
Here are a few of them*:
What differentiates regular and S-tier affiliates is the selective call routing. It is highly possible that your lead’s intent will be met when they reach the right operator and connect to him or her, especially at this point when your conversational voice AI should really take over.
Here are two moves you could make:
With advanced conversational voice AI, the more data is built up, the smarter your routing will be. In that respect, today’s conversational voice AI systems not only recognise speech but also deduce a caller’s intent based on the speaker’s language and tone. Such a system might route calls to, for example, a supervisor after recognising signs of irritation.
Conversational AI does not just encompass conversational voice AI but encompasses all those channels of traffic coming in from websites, social media, email, SMS, and paid advertising. Even if you focus strictly on pay-per-call marketing, ensure that you utilise all sources of calls.
| Website | A website chatbot can even optimise your lead distribution, answer some requests yourself, and then push the rest to a customer support agent or sales operator. |
| Social media | Social media chatbots can send personalised messages powered by data, handle RSVPs, and reminders, while allowing users to get in touch quickly with a customer agent or request a call. |
| With conversational AI, you will be able to automate follow-up emails depending on the response the user makes. In fact, over time, it will learn responses to certain types of emails in order to create maximum engagement and conversions. | |
| SMS | AI-driven SMS marketing works just like AI-driven SMM. The more data you have, the better your SMS campaigns will perform. |
| Paid Advertising | Another good feature of conversational AI is that users can make purchases right in the chat with an advertisement. For instance, an ad may give several questions and recommend the best product based on the answers. |
Interconnecting these different marketing channels into one overarching lead generation strategy will help you make the most of your traffic, making sure not to let callers go before conversion, and doing this without being intrusive. What human marketers have done for decades, conversational AI can do much quicker and more accurately.
Everything from call scripts to qualification questions, CTAs, and routing logic can be tested with different variations of responses so conversational voice AI can choose the winners for all future calls. Plus, it can pick up on complex patterns – keywords, tone of speech, etc. – that usually stay elusive.
Here’s how you can test your AI scripts to see which is pulling better:
Present these options to your different audiences, and your AI system will automatically find the best-performing script for each specific advertiser. For example, Version A could work with a regular audience while Version B would be offered to customers on a budget – if you have that information.
*These strategies work under the assumption that one runs advanced software affiliate management. Not all pay-per-call affiliate networks offer quality lead routing and analytics, so you might have to resort to third-party software to fill this gap.
Those affiliate networks using robust conversational voice AI are already one step ahead of the competition. It’s much easier for affiliates and advertisers to join a network that will provide them with the necessary software than trying to find solutions on their own.
Here’s how affiliate network managers can increase profits using conversational voice AI:
| Lead Qualification | For an affiliate network, it is of utmost importance that all leads are routed to the best-matching advertisers while passing their qualification criteria. In affiliate networks that have failproof call qualification systems, growth happens very fast due to the fact that affiliates and advertisers notice their leads being used in the best ways possible – even those that are not sold or are sold at lower prices. |
| Personalised Engagement | What consumers don’t need to know is which marketing strategy was behind it, call redirects, and possible twists; they want an immediate connection to a sales or customer support representative answering their query without asking too many questions. In other words, what affiliate networks need to offer is software and creative materials that actually put their affiliates and advertisers on the same page: affiliates match the branding of the advertiser when promoting, while customers receive the best service. |
| Unlimited Scalability | With a larger affiliate network, it’s only possible to handle the workload if the calls are transferred automatically. Voice conversational AI is able to process dozens and hundreds of calls simultaneously without compromising the quality of the service provided. In the meantime, only those calls that need a human touch will be routed to the live operators, something extremely cost-effective. |
| 24/7 Availability | Conversational voice AI operates 24/7, rerouting calls to available businesses or any other custom distribution model you specify. In such a case, this will enable operation around the clock and achieve the best coverage for your calls. |
| Live Cross-Selling | Auto insurance, for example, might go hand in hand with buying a car. Most customers are into some sort of protection when they buy smartphones. Conversational AI can cross-sell with respect to the intention of the customer and hence increases the value of a sale. |
Last but not least, voice AI in conversation is amazingly good at the detection and prevention of affiliate fraud. Smaller affiliates and advertisers that do not operate their own software are always looking for secure affiliate networks, filtering their traffic and ensuring due payouts.
| Example: Conversational voice AI receives a call for refinancing a mortgage and asks basic qualifying questions, screening its duration, origin, and intent.In analysis, the AI identifies that the call actually came from an area known for fraud calls, answers were scripted, and the words used by this caller were keyword identifiers used by spammers and fraudsters alike. Outcome: The call gets disqualified because it may be fraudulent. |
Fraud detection systems can be quite complex: for instance, an AI conversation software may use voice biometrics – a unique print of the caller’s voice. In such a case, should the caller make the call with a fake ID, the fraud would most likely be detected and the call blocked.
Take this fraud prevention quiz to see how secure you are.
Similarly, an AI is able to detect low-intent and even fraudulent leads. For example, if several calls come from the same location and give the same responses, the system will likely block such calls from going through to the advertiser.
To have total control over pay-per-campaigns, one needs a robust software suite that can route, track, and analyse inbound and outbound phone calls AND – a rare feature – coordinate over-the-phone marketing with your other marketing avenues.
I’m talking about Call Logic, the underlying product of Phonexa that has worked out brilliantly for purchasing and selling the phone calls:
From dynamic phone numbers to IVR, call analytics, and more, Call Logic combines best-in-class products, synergising with seven other performance marketing solutions from Phonexa.
Here’s how Call Logic looks from the inside:
You can toggle through the tabs and see performances in leads, clicks, emails, and many more, all on one big dashboard. It may take some time to get used to, but rest assured, such granular insights bear fruit.
Build your plan now, or book a demo to learn about Phonexa and see the platform in more detail.
But that’s not all: you can take that one step further, especially in high-ticket niches such as insurance, finance, solar, and home services.
Introducing Phonexa’s Cloud PBX: your dedicated cloud-based phone system, putting you in full command of both your incoming and outgoing calls. For the minimum setup fees, make sure your service is never disrupted for business, never runs offline during peak hours, and score your calls and agent performance.
And last but not least, there is an absolute beast of analytics: Phonexa’s predictive modelling. Because you can foresee which affiliate campaigns are more likely to succeed, the path to success shouldn’t be thorny anymore.
That is how predictive modelling does its thing:
Wondering about A/B testing? What about simulating these without any risk with predictive modelling software? The betterment of marketing was never so safe – just run virtual campaigns and recreate the winners.
Whether you rely on conversational AI or more simplistic technologies, driving and converting leads is much easier when your affiliate and traditional marketing are on the same wavelength.
Phonexa offers complete performance marketing coverage of affiliate, email, SMS, and social media campaigns. Free-flowing data means you fully tap into your potential and optimise every lead’s conversion path.
Get access to eight proprietary solutions at a single price (online price calculator):
| LMS Sync | Lead tracking & distribution software |
| Call Logic | Call tracking & distribution software |
| E-Delivery | Bulk email & SMS marketing software |
| Cloud PBX | Cloud phone system |
| Lynx | Click tracking software |
| Opt-Intel | Suppression list management solution |
| HitMetrix | User behaviour recording & CRO software |
| Books360 | Automated accounting software |
Experience your all-in-one performance marketing software suite, or book a demo to learn more about Phonexa.
Pay-per-call affiliate marketing is a business model wherein affiliates generate phone calls for businesses and earn commissions for qualified calls. Meanwhile, the advertiser sets the qualification rules: the lengths, source, etc., of the calls.
For instance, if a call is 90 seconds and the qualification minimum is 120 seconds, the affiliate will not be paid for this call. Similarly, when accepting calls only from London, calls from all the other cities are not paid for.
First and foremost, to start a pay-per-call business, you need either to join one of the pay-per-call affiliate programs if you are an affiliate, or to create one if you happen to be an advertiser. To accelerate this process, take advantage of one of the affiliate networks operating different pay-per-call affiliate programs, along with the accompanying affiliate software.
Conversational voice AI involves using artificial intelligence so that computers may converse with human beings as naturally as possible: voice assistants, chatbots, IVR systems, or even conversational agents – just to name a few examples. Even though AI doesn’t understand, as a human, what it talks about, conversations usually look quite organic and are helpful.
No single pay-per-call program can be called the best, as everything depends on your business objectives, niche, scale, and priorities. At least a few relevant pay-per-call affiliate programs are worth researching before taking action.
We can’t vouch for any other software besides Phonexa’s eight-in-one performance marketing software suite, which covers pay-per-call affiliate campaigns from top to bottom.
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