Ad fraud is the silent thief of the digital age, silently syphoning away profits and damaging brand reputations. As the battle against ad fraud rages on, lead generation businesses are losing billions of dollars annually to malicious actors.

To shed light on the path toward a more profitable and secure future in lead generation, ad fraud solutions provider Anura and Phonexa recently co-hosted a webinar titled, “Source to Success: How Clean Lead Management Drives a More Profitable Outcome.”

Hosted by Anura CEO and Co-Founder Rich Kahn and Phonexa COO Jeff Schaffer the webinar delved deep into the art of creating a clean foundation for lead generation and management to mitigate fraud.

You can watch webinar on demand here.

Phonexa recently partnered with Anura to release an integration for clients and prospects to eliminate ad fraud and reduce spend on fraudulent campaigns. This innovative partnership equips lead generators, advertisers, and affiliate networks with the tools needed to effectively combat ad fraud and curtail wasteful spending on deceptive campaigns.

The following statistics underscore the magnitude of the ad fraud epidemic:

• Advertisers are projected to lose a staggering $100 billion to ad fraud this year alone.
• A quarter of all paid traffic is fraudulent, infiltrating marketing campaigns and diluting their effectiveness.
• Programmatic campaigns, a cornerstone of modern digital advertising, suffer from fraud rates averaging a startling 50%.

It’s a daunting reality, but Kahn and Schaffer’s captivating conversation offered a beacon of hope.

Let’s dive into the actionable insights and strategies shared by the two industry experts.

To help you gauge the effectiveness of your fraud prevention measures, we’ve introduced a brand-new tool: the Marketing Fraud Prevention Proficiency Quiz.

Take the Quiz

The Need for Operational Excellence and Focus To Ensure Clean, Fraud-Free Lead Intake

The webinar started with a conversation centred around making sure marketing efforts are efficient and effective in light of rampant ad fraud. Schaffer noted that experienced marketers utilise available technologies to analyse data and make business decisions in real-time.

“Clean and profitable lead management is not a ‘set it and forget it’ process,” said Schaffer. “Even a small percentage of unclean or fraudulent leads can not just drastically impact business economics in the near-term but it can completely torpedo established relationships, create compliance exposures, and more.”

Schaffer stressed that the ability to have real-time decisioning and having the tooling to be able to, at times, dynamically change and modify the customer journey is just as important as capturing clean data. Modifications made to the customer journey can be based on:

• Whatever first-party data the consumer may have voluntarily provided
• The behaviour of that consumer
• Any third-party data sources that can give you a more holistic view of that consumer
• Historical data derived from other sources

”Being able to have all of those touchpoints and all of the information about the consumer journey, motivations, other third-party [data] consolidated in one place is crucial,” said Schaffer.

“It’s a constant battle. Every week we’re seeing one or two new types of threats that are coming through that need some type of adjustment, some type of correction, or just some type of update to our machine learning to understand we’re already protecting against that type of attack,” said Kahn. “We’re very big on making sure we’re listening to the voice of the customer just like we expect lead generators to listen to the voice of their customers.”

Mitigating the Risk of Non-Compliance

The webinar then shifted to a discussion on regulatory compliance, particularly as it relates to spam calls from fraudulent sources.

“What the TCPA set out to do didn’t solve the problem. [Robocalls have] just gotten worse and worse because people are finding ways around it or just totally ignoring it,” said Kahn. “We believe that you do not have consent to call somebody if it’s a fraudulent lead that’s being filled out. The question is can you identify that fraudulent lead before it gets to the call centre? That’s where we step in.”

Schaffer then warned about the legal consequences of living in a “sue first, ask questions later” world.

“Anybody that’s ever been involved in a TCPA lawsuit or anything related to that knows it’s not fun,” said Schaffer. “What we’ve done is build out an ecosystem of partnerships where we’re able in real-time to integrate with not just companies like Anura [and others] to ensure that those leads never enter the ecosystem.”

“That’s where our relationship with Phonexa comes into play because if you’re in the lead space, you need a management system — you’re not going to do it with paper, you’re not going to do it with index cards,” said Kahn. “You need some type of [platform] to handle the volume and scale that a lot of these [your] clients have, and you have to have enough decisioning power before passing it on to a call centre to feel 100% confident that [you have] a real lead.”

Improving Overall Lead Quality To Boost ROI

Kahn then focused on the importance of filtering out fraudulent paid traffic to improve overall lead quality and, ultimately, increase ROI.

“If you’re selling those leads down to another client (a buyer) and 25% of those leads are fake and they’re not going to generate any return, that automatically waters down the ROI that they’re getting,” said Kahn. “It also [drains] their call centre resources because now it takes longer to reach somebody who’s not expecting their call, they’ve got the risk of TCPA violations, there’s a lot that goes on with that.”

With regard to affiliate marketers, Kahn then reiterated how buying and selling fake leads have a domino effect, resulting in dwindling ROI.

“When the ROI is lowered based on the source that they’re buying from, they’re going to want to smart-price what they’re paying per lead and reduce what they pay per lead because of that water down effect,” said Kahn. “Flip the switch — eliminate that 25% so that everything coming in has the potential to convert. You’re going to see a lift in ROI which means a higher demand for your traffic, and the worst [case scenario] is your customers are demanding more than you have because then supply and demand kick in and you can start raising prices again.”

For Kahn, it all comes down to developing high-quality traffic by using a variety of tools to ensure you’re delivering the best quality of leads possible, which will ultimately help grow your business.

In the affiliate marketing space, emphasising quality leads over high volume is the key to sustained growth.

Nurturing Leads and Guiding Them Through the Sales Funnel

The conversation concluded with Schaffer sharing strategies on how to support clients when nurturing high-quality leads. According to Schaffer, the more insight marketers have regarding a customer’s lifecycle — their intent, what led them down their path into your ecosystem, etc. — the better equipped you’ll be to optimise their journey, increase conversions and profitability, and provide a better overall customer experience.

“There’s no ceiling or limitation to the extent to which a business can A/B test various lead nurturing methods and work to optimise to a desired end result,” said Schaffer. “But, you can’t really do that until you trim the fat. You have to be able to make decisions based on data that is clean … and is as close to fraud-free as possible.

“Once you can confidently say that you’re operating with a truly clean dataset and you have the mechanisms in place to keep it that way, then you can make better decisions,” said Schaffer. “Giving the consumers the ability to interact in the way in which they want to is key as far as lead nurturing [as well as] having a singular system where you track all of that.”

By joining forces with Anura, Phonexa enables businesses to take a proactive stance against the threats of bots, malware, and human fraud in their lead processing operations.

Cheque out our latest blog to learn more about how Anura and Phonexa’s fraud-detecting integration works, and be sure to also review Phonexa’s go-to list of anti-fraud features and integrations.

To continue the conversation with Schaffer, connect with him on LinkedIn.

Impactful networking and valuable learning materialise every time the email and omnichannel marketing community gathers at MailCon, and that’s exactly what happened at this year’s Phonexa-owned-and-operated event, hosted at the Caesars Forum in Las Vegas from April 17 to 19.

The three-day conference featured numerous networking opportunities, highlighted by the inaugural SaaS pitchfest, the kickoff party at Topgolf and the afterparty at Brooklyn Bowl – all of which further cultivated the collective mission of the ever-growing MailCon community.

With nearly 600 attendees and over two dozen sessions, the 2023 event covered tracks across all email and omnichannel marketing areas – from compliance, behavioural science, deliverability, and everything in between.

Here are some of the highlights from the conference.

1. Keynote: Navigating Consumer Behaviour Changes — 3 Components to Drive Email Engagement

Olivia Balicki, Senior Manager at Deloitte Digital (Moderator)

Umberto Castaldo, Head of Strategy at Deloitte (Keynote)

Sitha Ngy, Group Creative Director at Deloitte (Keynote)

Nick Ingham, MarTech Leader at Deloitte Digital (Keynote)

As noted in the 2022 Deloitte Experience Management Personalisation Survey, some 79% of brands rate themselves as delivering great personalised experiences. However, they don’t know that there is a disconnect with the consumer – with only 37% saying that brands are doing this well.

What does this tell you about email and its importance in the customer conversion journey?

1. Email is an increasingly important part of the marketing mix
2. Brands are falling behind customers’ expectations

The above-mentioned facts drive a rather sobering conclusion – marketing teams cannot keep evolving in silos; instead, they need cohesiveness to drive a different type of change that keeps up with customer demand.

For these Deloitte and Deloitte Digital execs, it all boiled down to the following three approaches:

1. Have a human conversation: For too long, marketing messaging has been one-way and often irrelevant. With the deprecation of third-party cookies, it’s more important than ever for brands to get to know their prospects and customers better using zero and first-party datasets. Use that insight quickly and consistently to optimise your messaging across channels and be human.
2. Strike a balance between creative freedom and production scalability: As messaging becomes more data-driven and personalised, marketers must build efficient production processes that incorporate the creativity and human element customers expect from one-to-one channels while efficiently delivering at scale.
3. Don’t get stuck in first gear: You are likely never done with investing in technology; your marketing automation platforms and datasets constantly evolve. Experience strategy, creative, and production teams must work closely with capability development teams to push the experience boundaries that drive growth. Think about lifecycle-based marketing and AMP for email, which has brought interactivity possibilities to drive engagement.

2. Keynote: Add Some BS to Increase Your Email Response Rate

Nancy Harhut, Co-Founder & Chief Creative Officer at HBT Marketing

You increase your response rates when you write emails using behavioural science – or, as Harhut says – “BS.”

Why? Because behavioural science allows you to take advantage of the scientifically-proven decision-making shortcuts people use when determining which emails to open and read. These hardwired behaviours result in automatic, reflexive responses, which means you can prompt people to engage with your email without giving it a second thought.

And how’s that achieved? Through the use of the following science-backed behavioural tactics that bring more eyeballs to your email in their saturated emails. Here’s how Harhut described it.

1. “Eye magnet” words: When it comes to subject lines, frontloading terms like – free, new, you, trends, top, because, instantly, sale, now, and offer – will naturally attract the human eye, prompting better open rates across the board.
2. Position your message for fast response: Tap into the principle of scarcity by making them feel special through exclusivity and time-pressed through urgency.
3. Remember the consistency principle: Once people commit to a service or product, they remain consistent. When creating emails, remember that the first small yes will lead to many subsequent larger ones, so the more relevant your content and offerings remain, the better your outcomes will be. To get this under your scope, remind people of their earlier “yes” while also escalating your asks.
4. Use social proof: We do what other people do, especially if they’re like us. So show your target audience that others have already done what you want them to do. This creates a sense of trust and relevancy, so your offering sticks with these targets far longer.
5. Loss aversion: Negative can deliver positive results for consumers because they are twice as motivated to avoid pain than to achieve results. Speak to your customer’s pain points and help them avoid “making mistakes.”
6. Availability bias: This is the human tendency to rely on information that comes readily to mind when evaluating situations or making decisions. Reversing this back to marketing and emails, think about personal relevance. If it can be recalled or imagined, it’s more likely to allow it to happen, turning doubters into buyers. To be effective at this, stir people’s memories or imaginations before you ask them to respond.
7. The authority principle: Always think about what can immediately make you look better than your competitors and make a play on that without bashing them. When done right, people will recognise and respect the authority you instill in your offerings and positioning.
8. The journalist’s rule: Use the 5Ws and 1H (who, what, when, where, why, how) in question format to generate curiosity and offer to fill an information gap.

3. Debate: What is the Best Channel for Lead Conversion?

Kassandra Urias, COO of Channel Automation (Moderator)

Vic Sun, CEO of Channel Automation (#TeamText)

Lisa Jones, CEO of EyeMail (#TeamEmail)

Teddy Liaw, CEO of NexRep (#TeamVoice)

During this unique debate and interactive session, the panel actively involved the audience in their discussion to help them determine the best marketing channel for conversions. Is it calls? Email? SMS?

As each panelist took sides in the discussion, they uncovered critical data and insights about each channel. Sun represented team SMS and discussed the immediate benefits SMS yields for brands.

When it came to SMS versus email, it was uncovered that text messages generate a whopping 98% open rate, with only 10% of them being reported as spam.

Regarding click-through rates, SMS generated 45-to-98% open rates, as opposed to 2.78% with emails. Response time with SMS is only 90 seconds as compared to the 90-minute window with emails.

Ultimately, SMS yields ease for users and nearly instant results for marketers. A suggested way to accomplish better SMS activity is by following these tricks:

• Use Instagram Stories to opt-in for SMS
• Send content with promo codes to your email list to get mobile numbers
• Use QR codes or hashtags for CTA
• Upsell with a discount code
• Get reviews and UGCs
• Provide instant gratification to users on tasks
• Engage conversations via auto and manual

As a contact centre solutions provider, Teddy Liaw put all his bets on voice and calls being the most conversion tools. Liaw dove deeper into the intimacy and personal connection that direct phone calls with prospects and clients allow that sometimes SMS or email can lack.

Then there was the debate around email. Jones spoke on interactive or AMP for email and video-in-email experiences that have elevated the traditional concept, making emails a simple and instant channel to send and receive messages, information, and files, creating a trustable paper trail.

The audience then participated in an online poll, where 64% of voters said email was the most effective channel for lead conversion, while text messages were second with 27%, and voice or calls took the least favoured position with 9%.

A Bright, Omnichannel Future for the MailCon Community

On day two of the event, MailCon CEO Kristen Haines headlined a panel keynote with Phonexa Chief Creative Officer Armen Karaoghlanian and Chief Marketing Officer Talar Malakian as the trio unveiled the future vision and plans for the email marketing conference.

With new programming, tracks, topics, and workshops, MailCon’s operations will focus on offering more value and opportunities to keep the Community engaged and learning throughout the year with carefully-curated events, each unique to a distinct marketing specification.

“The MailCon Community is in for a great surprise in the coming months and years as we expand our event operations and focus on new event programming, tracks, topics, and more. The 3.0 version will offer more value and opportunities to keep our community engaged throughout the year with carefully curated events, each unique to an area of focus, with MailCon being the tentpole event,” said Haines. “Email marketing will remain the essence of MailCon, but now at a larger scale, with an expanded event programme covering more marketing channels and customer interactions; and Phonexa’s growth and resources fuelling it.”

More announcements about new event programming will be made in the coming months.

Stay tuned and connected with MailCon to stay in the loop.

The transition from Universal Analytics to GA4 isn’t just an upgrade – it’s a complete shift in how Google Analytics works.

GA4 offers advanced analytics insights and various features designed to help website owners make data-driven decisions and better understand their customers by providing a complete picture of user behaviour across multiple platforms. The insight is crucial because it allows website owners to leverage collected data with GA4 to enhance the user experience and drive more conversions. GA4’s new features also help those in the marketing and advertising industry, as they’ll have access to better insights into the efficacy of their campaigns.

Gain a complete understanding of GA4 with the comprehensive content we’ve prepared.

Everything You Need To Know About Google’s Transition to GA4

To keep pace with the ever-evolving demand for data analytics, Google is replacing Universal Analytics (UA) with its next-generation measurement solution, Google Analytics 4 (GA4), effective beginning July 1, 2023.

Standard UA properties will no longer measure website traffic and create reports when the change takes effect, leaving UA users that don’t migrate their property settings to GA4 at risk of losing critical data.

The implementation of GA4 represents a significant leap forward in the world of data analytics by giving marketers and analysts more control over the data they collect. With this shift comes many changes, but planning ahead will help ensure a seamless transition.

This guide clearly defines GA4 terminology, outlines the differences between Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4, and provides details on how to make the switch to GA4.

Also, be sure to cheque out the resources Google has shared around the migration, as well as what to expect.

Glossary of Terms

In order to effectively navigate and utilise GA4, it’s important to familiarise yourself with the new terminology introduced in this next-generation solution. The following are some of the key terms you need to know.

Events

In GA4, events play a central role. They are user interactions with your website or app, such as page views, button clicks, form submissions, and video plays. Events can be used to track specific actions and behaviours of your users.

Conversions

Conversions refer to the completion of specific goals or desired actions on your website or app, such as a purchase, form submission, or newsletter sign-up. GA4 provides enhanced tracking and reporting capabilities for conversions.

User Properties

User properties are attributes or characteristics associated with individual users. They can include demographic information, user preferences, device information, or any custom data you choose to collect. User properties help segment and analyse user behaviour.

Streams

GA4 introduces the concept of streams, which are data sources that contain user interactions and events from your website or app. You can have multiple streams for different platforms or apps, allowing you to track and analyse data separately.

BigQuery

BigQuery is a powerful data warehouse solution by Google. GA4 offers integration with BigQuery, allowing you to export your GA4 data for advanced analysis and custom reporting outside of the GA4 interface.

By understanding and utilising these key terms, you’ll be better equipped to navigate GA4 and leverage its advanced measurement capabilities effectively.

Enhanced Utility of Events

GA4 has adopted an all-events model designed to enhance the utility of Events.

Instead of the Event structure used by UA users — Event category, Event action, and Event label — GA4 provides 25 slots for users to add event parameters, making managing Events easier.

The 25 slots, also known as custom Event parameters, refer to the available slots or spaces where users can add custom parameters to their Events. These custom Event parameters allow users to attach additional information or context to their Events, providing more flexibility and granularity in tracking and analysing user interactions.

GA4’s Event-driven model allows you to capture a wide range of user interactions beyond traditional page views.

Types of Events

The following types of Events are featured in GA4. The first two are collected automatically, while the latter two must be implemented in order to see them in GA4.

1. Automatically Collected Events
   1. Page view: Represents the loading of a web page or screen in a mobile app, automatically captured by GA4 when the page or screen is displayed.
   2. Scroll: Captures user scrolling behaviour on a webpage, providing insights into how far users scroll through the content.
   3. Session start and end: Marks the beginning and end of a user’s session on your website or app.
2. Enhanced Measurement Events: GA4 includes a set of enhanced measurement events that can be enabled with minimal code changes. These events provide additional insights into user interactions. Some examples include:
   1. File download: Tracks when users download a file from your website.
   2. External link click: Captures clicks on links that lead users to external websites.
   3. Site search: Records when users perform searches on your website’s search bar.
   4. Video engagement: Measures user interactions with videos, such as play, pause, seek, and complete.
   5. Social interaction: Tracks social media interactions, such as shares and likes.
3. Recommended Events: GA4 provides a set of recommended Events that cover common user interactions. These Events are predefined and can be used without additional customisation. Some examples include:
   1. Add to cart: Tracks when users add items to their cart or basket.
   2. Begin checkout: Captures the initiation of the checkout process.
   3. Purchase: Records successful purchases made by users.
   4. Generate lead: Tracks lead generation actions, such as form submissions.
   5. Complete registration: Marks the completion of user registrations.
4. Custom Events: GA4 allows you to define custom Events to track specific user interactions unique to your website or app. Custom Events provide flexibility in capturing and analysing actions important to your business goals. You can define Event names and parameters based on your requirements.

By leveraging the Event-driven model in GA4, you can gain deeper insights into user behaviour, analyse user journeys, and optimise your website or app based on specific actions and interactions.

Configurations and Features

A new GA4 property will automatically be created for current UA users. Although UA configurations will be copied to the newly created GA4 property, not all UA configurations have a GA4 equivalent. Thus, all your UA settings may not carry over to the new GA4 property.

Review the following to clear up any misinterpretations regarding GA4 configurations and features.

Similar Configurations and Features Between UA and GA4

Although UA and GA4 each have their own unique set of configurations and features, some similarities do exist between the two, including the following:

• Basic Tracking: Both UA and GA4 offer basic tracking capabilities, allowing users to track page views, Events, and conversions.
• Custom Dimensions: Users can define and use custom dimensions in UA and GA4 to track additional data specific to their website or app.
• Custom Metrics: Similar to custom dimensions, users can define and track custom metrics in both UA and GA4.
• Filters: UA and GA4 both allow users to apply filters to their data to include or exclude specific traffic or modify it based on certain criteria.
• Goals: Users can set up goals in UA and GA4 to track specific actions or conversions on their website or app.
• User-ID Tracking: Both versions support tracking users across multiple sessions using a unique User-ID, enabling you to analyse user behaviour across different devices and sessions.

GA4 Configurations and Features

While GA4 aims to provide a more comprehensive and advanced analytics solution, there are some differences in configurations and features compared to UA.

• Enhanced Event Tracking: GA4 introduces automatic event tracking, which captures more events by default, reducing the need for manual Event tracking implementation.
• Data Stream: Instead of the traditional property structure, GA4 uses the concept of data streams, which allows you to collect data from different platforms (web, apps) within a single property.
• Machine Learning and Insights: GA4 incorporates machine learning capabilities to provide advanced insights, such as automated insights, predictive analytics, and anomaly detection.
• User-Centric Analytics: GA4 focuses on user-centric analytics, providing a more holistic view of user behaviour across devices and platforms.
• Funnel Analysis: GA4 offers a more streamlined and powerful funnel analysis, allowing you to visualise and analyse user paths and conversions in a more intuitive way.
• Event-Based Model: GA4 moves away from the traditional session-based model of UA and adopts an Event-based data model, providing more flexibility in analysing user interactions.

Current UA users who want to migrate on their own have the option to opt out of having a GA4 property automatically created. In lieu of automatically created GA4 properties, legacy UA users can use the GA4 Setup Assistant to make the transition.

UA Metrics vs. GA4 Metrics

The key differences in user metrics between UA and GA4 are as follows:

1. Users vs. Unique Users
   1. UA: UA measures the number of unique users who have visited your website or app within a specific time period. It relies on a combination of cookies, client IDs, and user identifiers to track and identify unique users.
   2. GA4: GA4 uses an Event-based model and measures unique users with a more refined approach. It assigns a unique User-ID to track individual users across different devices and sessions, providing a more accurate representation of user engagement.
2. Sessions vs. Engagement
   1. UA: UA tracks sessions, which represent the time frame when a user is actively engaged on your website or app. Tracking starts with the first interaction and concludes after a period of inactivity (typically 30 minutes).
   2. GA4: GA4 focuses on user engagement rather than sessions. It tracks user engagement in terms of active users interacting with your website or app within a given time frame, regardless of session boundaries. This allows for a more continuous view of user activity.
3. Bounce Rate vs. Engagement Rate
   1. UA: UA calculates the bounce rate, the percentage of single-page sessions where a user exits your website after viewing only one page.
   2. GA4: GA4 introduces the concept of engagement rate, which measures the percentage of sessions with at least one engagement event. It considers any meaningful interaction (e.g., clicks, video plays, file downloads) as an engagement event, providing a broader perspective of user interaction.
4. New vs. Returning Users
   1. UA: UA provides a breakdown of new and returning users, categorising users based on their first-time visit or return visits to your website or app.
   2. GA4: GA4 also distinguishes between new and returning users. However, with the implementation of the User-ID feature, GA4 can track returning users more accurately across different devices and sessions, leading to improved user identification and reporting.
5. Cross-Device Tracking
   1. UA: UA offers limited cross-device tracking capabilities. It relies on probabilistic methods and client IDs to associate user behaviour across different devices, resulting in potential limitations and inaccuracies.
   2. GA4: GA4 emphasises cross-device tracking through the User-ID feature. By assigning a unique User-ID to users who log in or provide their information, GA4 can connect user activity across devices more accurately, enabling a better understanding of user behaviour and customer journeys.

Making the Switch Manually

To transition from UA to GA4, follow these step-by-step instructions:

1. Create a New GA4 Property: Start by creating a new GA4 property in your Google Analytics account. This enables users to track and collect data specifically for GA4.
2. Set Up Data Streams: Once your GA4 property is created, set up data streams to capture user interactions from your website or app. You can create different data streams for different platforms or apps if needed.
3. Implement GA4 Tracking Code: Install the GA4 tracking code on your website or app to begin collecting data. The code should be placed on all relevant pages to track events and user interactions accurately.
4. Import Historical Data (Optional): If you want to have historical data available in GA4, you can import it from your existing Universal Analytics property. GA4 provides options to import data, but note that not all historical data may be transferable.
5. Configure Goals and Conversions: Define your goals and conversions in GA4, such as purchases, form submissions, or other desired actions. This allows GA4 to track and report on these key metrics.
6. Set Up Enhanced Measurement: GA4 offers enhanced measurement capabilities for certain events and interactions. Enable enhanced measurement to automatically track additional events, such as outbound clicks and scroll depth.
7. Customise and Explore Reports: Once data collection is underway, familiarise yourself with the GA4 reporting interface. Explore the various reports and features available to gain valuable insights into user behaviour and performance.

By following these steps, you’ll be able to smoothly transition from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4, enabling you to leverage the advanced measurement capabilities of GA4 for your website or app.

Moving Forward

By understanding the differences between Universal Analytics and GA4, familiarising yourself with GA4 terminology, and following our step-by-step guide, you’ll be well-prepared to embrace the next generation of measurement with Google Analytics 4. Get ready to propel your marketing efforts to new heights.

We just released a new integration to track call and lead events in Google Analytics 4.

We also have a FREE, open-sourced checklist to upgrade to GA4 manually. Follow us on LinkedIn and leave a comment for a copy.

Phonexa’s tech team has been working hard, innovating and building custom solutions across our products to optimise and power your performance marketing automation campaigns.

Here are just some of the new features and improvements for the month of July across our suite of products.

And make sure to watch the library of instructional step-by-step videos produced by Phonexa’s Technical Onboarding Director, Tori Hester, on how to implement recent updates.

LMS Sync & Call Logic Updates

Campaigns: Cap on Ping for Ping Post Products

Exciting update! Ping post products now come with a cap on pings, providing you with better control and enhanced data processing.

On the Schedule tab of the Campaign, there is a new field for “Daily Ping Leads Limit” and another section in Restrictions to limit the number of pings in minutes if you need more granularity.

Product Builder: New ‘Manage Filters’ Tab

If you build custom products within your instance, after adding many fields, you might be wondering if you remembered to add the filters to the necessary fields. We added a new tab for “Manage Filters” so you can easily see all extra fields that have filters available.

Prepaid Buyers: Cap for Auto Recharge

For Prepaid Buyers, we added two new fields to the Auto Recharge tab – “Recharge Cap” and “Cap Period” in order to have more control over funds replenishment.

Prepaid Buyers: New ‘Billing Activity’ Tab

More love for prepaid buyers! Now we have a “Billing Activity” tab located on the buyer where you can see all activity for lead purchases and balance replenishment.

Form Builder: Third-Party Validations

We added third-party services to our Form Builder!

You can now add validations for 10 different third-party services such as phone, email, and zip code. To enable it, go to your form, edit the desired field, then click on “Third Party Validation Settings” and choose the applicable third-party service.

Lead Details and Call Details Reports: Pin to Left

So … you’re in “Lead Details,” and you are scrolling to the right to see more columns and really wish you could still see the lead ID on the left – we got you! We have a new functionality for “Pin to Left” that allows you to pin a column to keep it visible while scrolling to the right. This feature works for all columns in “Lead Details” and “Call Details.”

Tracking Log Improvement

The Tracking Log shows results for webhooks and other tracking events you have configured in your Instance. We’ve added new tabs for “LMS Events” and “Call Logic Events” to help you focus on specific events.

Phone Number Pool Routing

New report! If you have ping post calls set up, you most likely use a Tracking Pool to route calls. We created a new report to give more visibility into numbers that were issued from the Tracking Pool.

Simply go to Analytics and Optimisation > Phone Number Pool Routing and choose the desired date range.

Tracking Pool Enhancement

One purpose of the Tracking Pool is to issue a phone number to track the call.

In cases where the publisher sends the real consumer phone number, you can use a default number from the pool rather than reserving a new number. Go to the Tracking Pool, then click on Call Settings and change “Optimise pool numbers usage” to Yes.

Phonexa is a performance marketing software that specialises in providing comprehensive solutions for marketing, lead tracking, analytics, and performance optimisation.

The Phonexa Suite is designed to assist businesses in managing their marketing campaigns, analysing data, and maximising their return on investment through a suite of integrated tools.

With eight different solutions across calls, leads, clicks, email, SMS, accounting, and more, Phonexa gives performance marketers total visibility into their lead generation campaigns.

Phonexa recently partnered with ad fraud solutions provider Anura to release an integration for clients and prospects alike to better eliminate ad fraud and reduce spend on fraudulent campaigns. Together with Anura and Phonexa, lead generators, advertisers, and affiliate networks can now ban bots, malware, and human fraud when processing leads.

Boasting an exceptional accuracy rate of 99.999%, Anura is a company that stands at the forefront of the fraud detection landscape. The level of high precision is instrumental in mitigating the diverse spectrum of fraudulent activities.

Leveraging the formidable capabilities of Anura, users are empowered to discern between bots, malware, and human-driven fraud, engineering a shield of protection against malicious threats.

In addition to Anura, Phonexa offers other anti-fraud solutions for IP, email and phone to help you get the whole picture of your fraudscape. Not only can fraud hurt your bottom line, it can also hurt your reputation. Layering Phonexa’s sophisticated iClear fraud solution in tandem with Anura can help you reduce spend on fraudulent leads, protect your brand, and increase your profits in three easy steps:

1. Utilise Phonexa to eliminate duplicates, reject leads based on lists, and screen out fraudulent leads with our fraud detection tools
2. Leverage Anura to obliterate bots, malware, and human fraud
3. Regularly monitor reports in Phonexa and Anura to adjust your strategy as necessary

Phonexa orchestrates a seamless integration of this cutting-edge service, augmenting its operational repertoire.

Within the Phonexa ecosystem, the discerning operator can wield the power of Anura to meticulously scrutinise their product landscape, effectively sieving out enigmatic leads that bear the hallmark of suspicion.

This filtration process not only safeguards valuable resources but also orchestrates a strategic defence mechanism against the encroachment of fraudulent leads, thereby fortifying the economic and operational resilience of the enterprise.

If you’re on the fence, you can leverage the free 15-day trial from Anura to investigate your current fraud landscape.

Anura can assist you in all manners of onboarding their fraud solution – and of course – the Phonexa team is always available to help you with questions on how to incorporate Anura with Phonexa’s extensive fraud remedies.

Incorporating Anura within the Phonexa framework is more than a mere merger of technologies – it is a harmonious symphony of innovation and prudence, directed toward the purveyance of a secure and prosperous business trajectory.

Are you wondering how much ad fraud is costing you? Use the calculator to find out.

For questions, or to learn more about Phonexa’s all-in-one marketing automation solution for calls, leads, clicks, email, SMS, accounting, and more, schedule a consultation, email info@phonexa.com, or call (818) 800-0000.

Important: this article is a part of our affiliate martech stack series, where we shed light on the most effective tools for affiliate marketing.

In the ever-evolving affiliate marketing world, paid media tools are extremely effective in generating and converting referrals at scale, especially if you are an affiliate or affiliate network. Advanced paid media tools can turn your marketing campaigns on a dime, paving the way to increased reach and profits.

In affiliate marketing, you can’t only advertise using earned media because you don’t own enough to reach all potential customers. And even if your media stack is truly powerful, you will always look for expansion, won’t you?

Paid media tools can help you plan, execute, and evaluate your paid advertising campaigns, whether you promote through social media, programmatic, or native advertising.

We’ve compiled a list of the best paid media tools for affiliate marketing, but before digging into it, let’s categorise and explain paid media advertising types so you can understand what opportunities you have when it comes to affiliate marketing paid media.

Paid Media Types

And now to the paid media tools themselves!

TOP 14 Best Paid Media Tools for Affiliate Marketers

Google Ads

For anyone familiar with paid media tools, Google Ads needs no introduction. Drawing billions and billions of revenues from their ads in the United States alone, Google provides auction-based paid advertising opportunities on Google Display Network, YouTube, and countless partners.

Google’s Paid Media Tools

You can ensure the most comprehensive targeting by combining different advertising media and the right set of paid media tools. For example, you can target proactive users with Search Network while leveraging demographic or behaviour-based targeting with  Display Network.

Meta Ads

Uniting Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger under one roof, Meta offers limitless cross-platform advertising opportunities through Ads Manager.  The Android- and iOS-compatible media toolkit allows you to create and track ads on the go, knowing which ads fulfill your marketing objectives and why they perform better.

Meta Paid Ad Tools

With around 3.88 billion people using Meta products, Meta paid media tools are an extremely effective marketing weapon, spanning popular social media and messengers. Unlimited reach and targeting variations allow you to hit the right referral with the right ad at the right time while staying cost-effective.

LinkedIn Ads

LinkedIn Ads connect you to almost a billion professionals, including those looking for job opportunities and possessing unparallelled skills. With twice the buying power of regular web leads, the LinkedIn audience is one of the best referrals to tap into.

Kicking things off with LinkedIn ads involves four simple steps:

1. Choosing your campaign objectives: increasing awareness, drawing referrals to a website, boosting engagement, generating leads, and more.
2. Selecting your target criteria: the audience you want to display your ads to. For the selected target audience, you will see the total audience size, the expected CTR rate, the 30-day spend for the ads you run, and the number of clicks you are expected to get.
3. Choosing one of the four ad formats: Text Ads, Messages Ads, Dynamic Ads, Sponsored Content, or you can mix several ad formats.
4. Select your budget and display schedule: your daily ad budget, campaign timeline, and bidding strategy.

Once your LinkedIn advertising campaign is up, you can access one of the best paid media analytics tools to measure impressions, clicks, social actions, spending, and more success metrics.

LinkedIn Ad Types

One big advantage of LinkedIn paid media tools is that they enable company targeting alongside contact targeting and retargeting, allowing you to reach the B2B referrals you seek. Likewise, the diverse targeting options can easily cover your affiliate marketing needs.

Twitter Ads (now X Ads)

With over 1.7 million monthly visits, Twitter Ads can help you achieve multiple affiliate campaign goals, such as driving traffic to a website, promoting by certain keywords or a specific social media account, and more.

Twitter Ad Types

Twitter ads are quite diverse and complex to understand, but there’s an X Ads Manager to help you set up and run your advertising campaigns. The Manager describes everything you need to know, including ad campaign structure, metrics, filters, activity, audience details, etc.

SEMrush

The all-in-one digital marketing software suite is mostly regarded as SEO-focused, but it provides quite a few paid media tools to reckon with (note, however, that SEMrush isn’t an ad placement tool):

• Display advertising tools for competitor research
• PPC keyword tool to optimise your keyword placement, including AdWords campaigns
• Ad builder to drag-and-drop or create compelling ads

Among many other things, the advertising toolkit from SEMrush allows you to monitor competitor ads, analyse Google Shopping ad campaigns, optimise your ad spend, and leverage your social media presence through content scheduling and ad performance tracking.

WordStream

WordStream is an absolutely stunning suite of paid media tracking tools for evaluating and improving your PPC campaigns across popular platforms like Facebook Ads, Google Ads, Bing Ads, and more.

The platform’s paid media toolkit includes Google Ads Performance Grader, Website Grader, Free Keyword Tool, Facebook Ads Performance Grader, and Free Business Listings Grader, all designed for tracking and optimising your paid ad campaigns. The paid social media analytics tools from WordStream are among the strongest on the market.

WordStream is a comprehensive yet very intuitive paid media tool that can revolutionise your marketing campaigns. Moreover, some functionality is free, so you can get the hang of this paid monitoring tool without premature financial commitment.

Keyhole

Keyhole is a paid social media marketing tool that helps analyse and improve your social media presence in real-time and strategically, including influencer campaigns. With Keyhole, you can optimise post times, visualise your social media strategy, and improve the collaboration between your marketing team members.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a social media management platform with paid social media tools to unfold, track, and analyze paid posts from one place. The service works with Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram paid ads, helping you to manage heterogeneous paid social media campaigns from a single user-friendly dashboard.

With Hootsuite, you can:

• Target ads based on location and demographics
• Optimise ad spend
• Increase engagement on social media
• Synergise your paid and organic social media campaigns
• Integrate other paid media tools and platforms like HubSpot, MailChimp, or Salesforce

Above all, Hootsuite makes it easier to reach and engage social media audiences by allowing you to turn your best social media posts into ads, displaying them to more high-intent customers.

Optmyzr

Optmyzr is a comprehensive PPC management software with paid media tools for creating, tracking, and optimising your paid marketing campaigns. From performance insights to strategic gaps to expansion opportunities, Optmyzr covers it all with three proprietary products for paid media: Optmyzr Core, Campaign Automator, and Optmyzr for Amazon Ads.

Optmyzr Paid Media Tools

Acquisio

One of the best suites of paid media tools for affiliate marketing, Acquisio runs AI-powered PPC management software and Acquisio Turing software for paid search ad campaigns:

• Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Software: SEM software and tools for paid search ad campaigns can help you set up, track, and analyse your campaigns across Google and Bing while optimising your spending and effectively replacing manual work.
  • Campaign automation based on product feeds
  • Customisable marketing templates
  • Instant campaign copying from Google Ads to Bing Ads
  • Built-in KPI tracker and cross-channel reporting
  • Self-improving AI for real-time and strategic campaign optimisation

• Acquisio Turing: Powered by Machine Learning (ML), Acquisio Turing software can improve your bid and budget management to draw and convert more quality referrals at a lower cost.

You can scale your affiliate campaigns without losing quality and safely predict outcomes to choose the best marketing strategy for specific business objectives. Likewise, you can track your campaigns in real-time and update them on the fly as new referral data arrives in the system.

Taboola

As an affiliate marketer, you might know where some of the sponsored content at the bottom of articles comes from — Taboola. The world’s leading native advertising platform effectively connects affiliates and advertisers, allowing you to draw referrals to merchants through promoted and sponsored content.

Taboola offers the following paid media tools:

• Taboola Feed – a scrolling content feed at the end of articles
• Taboola Pixel – referral and affiliate tracking functionality
• Creative Insights – insights into content performance like engagement and conversions

Taboola also allows exchanging traffic with third-party websites and using its content marketplace. Whether you are an affiliate, advertiser, or affiliate network, Taboola can give you a head start in the fight for referral attention.

HubSpot

While HubSpot isn’t particularly known for its paid media tools, it does provide some for managing paid media campaigns, including:

• Ads software to create personalised advertising campaigns
• Ad tracking software to auto-track paid ads on social media

With HubSpot, you can choose what happens after a referral clicks on your ad. You can auto-save contacts of users who have interacted with your ads, send an internal notification to your sales team, or add potential customers to a specific contact list based on their interaction.

That said, committing to HubSpot for paid media tools alone might not be as good a choice as if you’re already using the platform. Speaking of which, if you already use HubSpot CRM, you can use it to create audiences for your paid ad campaigns.

StackAdapt

StackAdapt is a self-programmatic advertising platform that provides programmatic ad solutions for B2B, finance, government, healthcare, retail, and travel. The unique suite of paid media tools spans from digital to traditional advertising, covering your affiliate marketing from A to Z.

Programmatic Paid Media Tools with StackAdapt

TheTradeDesk

TheTradeDesk is a media buying platform where advertisers can run digital ad campaigns, including programmatic ad campaigns. Among the paid media tools you can get are tools for real-time bidding, advanced data management, cross-device campaign tracking, and reporting.

Overall, TheTradeDesk is designed for big market players who manage complex campaigns across multiple marketing avenues, channels, and locations. However, even smaller affiliates may use the media buying opportunities to generate and sell traffic to merchants.

One Software Suite To Rule Them All

Whether you are an affiliate, advertiser, or affiliate network, you can close the loop between leads, clicks, and revenues with a unique marketing software suite from Phonexa. Uniting eight proprietary partner and performance marketing solutions, including paid media tools for affiliate marketing, Phonexa unlocks actionable referral insights, issues payouts, and so much more.

Phonexa’s software package includes (everything at only $100 a month):

• Lynx – affiliate marketing and click tracking software
• HitMetrix – user behaviour recording and analytics software
• LMS Sync – lead tracking and distribution software
• Call Logic – call tracking and distribution software
• E-Delivery – email and SMS marketing software
• Cloud PBX – cloud phone system
• Opt-Intel – suppression list management software
• Books360 – automated accounting software

Explore the subscription plans now, or schedule a free consultation to learn more about how Phonexa can elevate your affiliate marketing.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are paid media tools?

Paid media tools are software, platforms, and services that help marketers – including affiliates, advertisers, and affiliate networks – automate and improve paid advertising campaigns.

There are around a dozen types of paid media tools for various aspects of marketing. For example, paid social media monitoring tools – or paid media tracking tools – are used to track and improve ad performance on social media platforms; reporting tools for paid media provide real-time and historical social media ad performance reports; and so on.

The good news is that some platforms provide a comprehensive suite of paid media tools, so you don’t have to juggle around. Explore the top media tools on this webpage to make up your winning paid media toolkit.

What are paid social media tools?

Paid social media tools are software, platforms, and services that help marketers manage their social media marketing campaigns, including affiliate campaigns. With the right paid social media tools, you can draw more referrals from social media while tracking the customer journey for unmistakable attribution and constant campaign improvement.

Among the best paid social media tools are Emplifi, Keyhole, and Hootsuite. Likewise, you can set up paid media campaigns on social media through Google Ads and Meta Ads.

True or False: Paid social media monitoring tools are not any more effective than free tools?

False. Paid social media monitoring tools are more effective than free tools because they provide advanced tracking and analytics features. However, free social media tracking tools can also be helpful for smaller campaigns or less demanding marketers.

Staying ahead of the lead generation curve is pivotal to ongoing success and scalability.

Phonexa CMO Talar Malakian recently joined digital marketing entrepreneur Alex Oliveira on the LeadGen HQ podcast to unravel the intricacies of lead generation strategies, trends, and challenges.

The LeadGen HQ podcast aims to provide listeners with actionable insights and practical tips for harnessing the potential of different lead generation channels.

Let’s revisit the highlights of this enlightening dialogue exploring the diverse channels and practices that power the leadgen industry’s growth.

AI + Marketing = Enhanced Productivity

AI-powered tools are becoming increasingly popular, particularly among marketers. According to Malakian, enhanced productivity is the strongest AI use case for marketing teams.

“We’re talking about the marketing use cases, but if you take a step further than that, there’s also all the internal efficiencies that you gain by even just using AI for internal knowledge management,” said Malakian. “For example, we started using a platform that helps us generate, through AI, internal training videos. Now we have an internal repository of those videos, and it’s allowed us to really have knowledge sharing be a little bit more accessible.”

This type of flexibility is invaluable, especially for growing businesses.

“When you’re growing, and you’re bringing more people on board, how do you get more productive by using the tools at your disposal?” said Malakian. “There are multiple quadrants that are a part of the overall value proposition — there’s the content generation piece, data analysis, knowledge sharing. There are multiple quadrants that you can find yourself in depending on how you’re comfortable using these tools.“

Decision-Making Still Needs To Be Human

Malakian emphasized that the decision-making process, regardless of how productive you are, still needs to be human. She said that Google’s algorithm, for example, isn’t going to recognize that you used AI to create content, thereby tasking marketers with making engaging content that doesn’t look like an AI-generated article put out by a competitor.

“It’s always been about engagement with algorithms — how long somebody stays on a page, how valuable the content is to them,” said Malakian. “So, keep in mind that you can maximize productivity, you can maximize the number of things you do, but POV perspective and human decision-making should always be the thing that differentiates you.”

Beyond that, Malakian stressed that the narrative of what a brand stands for still needs to convey how productive they are and how much it can produce, thus necessitating the human touch.

Pivoting Marketing Strategies Based on Customer Feedback

Malakian also highlighted the importance of using customer feedback as a barometer for future campaign performance.

“In the past, I would say that we were running really product-focused campaigns. It was ‘how do you do call tracking and distribution’ or ‘how do you track your clicks’ — very functional, feature-specific guides,” said Malakian. “We pivoted a little, mainly because our customer feedback was, ‘hey, I really need intros to other publishers … I’m stuck in a place where I’m kind of growing, but I don’t know how to onboard more publishers and more brands and maintain all of those relationships, especially with a slim team.’”

Malakian explained that this direct customer feedback resulted in her team pivoting their content marketing strategy, as they produced “How to Scale ROI Across Publishers & Partners: An Affiliate Network’s Guide” to address the target audience’s pain points.

The distribution plan Malakian and her team put together involved:

• Paid media
• SEO
• Thought leaders who helped promote and share the guide

After creating multiple distribution paths for the affiliate network guide, Malakian’s team built a relationship with a publisher catering to affiliate marketers to further promote the content.

“We created all these distribution channels, and then we looked at all the data and said, ‘What is working here on this one specific campaign?’” said Malakian. “And it was probably one of our most downloaded lead magnets.”

According to Malakian, the key to the campaign’s success was to first pinpoint the ideal customer profile in order to identify and solve the problems plaguing that specific audience. The second step was determining how to distribute the guide effectively.

Malakian suggests asking these questions when putting together a distribution plan:

• Am I getting people to vouch for the content?
• Do I have thought leaders surrounding this piece?
• Do I have enough channels?
• Am I giving it enough time to see what is actually working for us?
• Am I giving it enough time to see where my users are at?

“It comes down to customer discovery,” said Malakian. “If you know what the pain points are and you truly understand how you can solve them, don’t tell [your audience] what you do, tell them how you can help them.”

To continue the conversation with Malakian, connect with her on LinkedIn.

In the fast-paced world of affiliate marketing, adaptation is the key to success. Traditional affiliate partnerships – once the bedrock of the industry – are evolving, and embracing this transformation is crucial for staying ahead.

Phonexa UK CEO David Pickard recently joined Affiverse founder Lee-Ann Johnstone on the Affiliate Marketing Podcast to discuss lead generation and offer valuable insights into the vital role lead generation plays in the affiliate marketing ecosystem, approaches to affiliate management, and embracing the entire affiliate partnership economy.

Let’s delve into the highlights of the captivating dialogue from the Affiliate Marketing Podcast episode, “How to Embrace the Whole Affiliate Partnership Economy: Non-Traditional Affiliates Can Make Great Partners Too.”

Shaping Success by Looking At Lead Generation on a Performance Basis

The conversation kicked off with Pickard providing affiliate programme managers advice on how to build momentum by relying on concrete statistics and performance metrics.

“Start at the [beginning]…look at what the problem is, which is typically acquisition is not transparent,” said Pickard. “Attribution is complex and difficult and not all sources along the funnel generate the same quality – performance differs.”

Pickard’s advice boils down to having a clear vision of success from the outset and being open to course correction based on real-world results.

“You have to have a good idaea of what success would look like for you prior to launch,” said Pickard. “And most importantly, and I say this from experience, [prepare] to be wrong.”

Pickard suggests starting with a clear plan by outlining what you believe would constitute a favourable result. However, he warns affiliate programme managers to be prepared to set aside any preconceived notions if the data reveals a different performance reality. In such cases, they must be humble and open to exploring new directions for improvement.

“If you’re using true end-to-end tracking – which is another no-brainer by the way, so make sure you are – you’ll likely have an idaea of what conversions need to look like along the way in order to achieve what you need,” said Pickard. “But if and when they don’t, be ready to make changes and adapting to ensure that you’re not just hoping things will change when you’ve done nothing to help that change happen.”

Why Cookie-Cutter Approaches to Affiliate Management Are Ineffective

With regard to approaches to affiliate management, Johnstone and Pickard acknowledged that affiliate managers often abandon strategies too quickly when they don’t see immediate results.

Pickard advises affiliate programme managers to embrace a mindset of continuous learning and improvement.

“They’ve heard what someone else tried and think, ‘I’m going to give it a go.’ That’s not good enough,” said Pickard. “Have an idaea of what success looks like for you, first. And that has to be based on your internal requirements, not just what someone else has done and they’ve had positive effects because you will never understand someone else’s campaign as well as them.”

No one understands your campaign better than you do. Therefore, Pickard stressed the importance of defining success based on internal goals rather than blindly following what others have done.

“They haven’t told you the optimisation processes that they’ve been through to get there, and you haven’t seen them, so you need to be prepared and have a more realistic approach.”

Tips for Embracing Non-Traditional Affiliate Partnerships

The chat then shifted to a discussion on how programme managers can adapt to the evolving affiliate marketing landscape. Pickard emphasised the importance of engaging with non-traditional forms of affiliate partnerships to make affiliate programmes run more efficiently.

“We need to stop looking at [affiliate partnerships] as traditional versus non-traditional. If you’re letting the numbers do the talking, what difference does it make if it’s traditional or non-traditional?” said Pickard. “You’ve got to do what works. Carry out the due diligence on your partners to ensure that you’re starting with a level playing field and then track the journey from start to finish.”

By embracing data, staying adaptable, and setting clear objectives, affiliate programme managers can navigate the changing landscape and build long-lasting partnerships with affiliates, no matter their scope or size.

“Get used to putting yourself in those advertiser’s and, most importantly, the consumer’s shoes and use the analytics to deliver an experience that will encourage the outcomes you’re looking for,” said Pickard. “Nowadays, with all the tools we’ve got, we have no excuse not to [optimise] every single call in that [customer] journey.”

Pickard’s insights on the Affiliate Marketing Podcast remind us that in the ever-evolving world of affiliate marketing, success is not a one-size-fits-all formula.

To continue the conversation with Pickard, connect with him on LinkedIn.

In our recent Amplify webinar with Google Cloud, we discussed the importance of data hygiene, aggregation, and cleanliness.

Staying ahead in the lead generation space requires a keen focus on data-driven insights and actionable analytics.

This is where Phonexa’s reporting features take centre stage, offering lead generation companies a powerful suite of tools designed to unlock attribution and key data behind all of their campaigns and publisher sources.

In this blog post, we’re going to dive into Phonexa’s lead tracking and distribution product LMS Sync’s reporting capabilities. It’s built for networks, pay-per-lead companies, and publishers, exploring how these reports not only provide a comprehensive view of campaign performance but also empower businesses to make informed decisions, optimise strategies, and achieve growth through a mix of attribution reporting, comparisons over time, and deep analysis into audience parameters and demographics that are moving the needle.

The Comparison Report

The Comparison Report compares Buyer and Publisher performances between four periods of time, side-by-side. You can select from multiple types of date ranges, and better understand your traffic flow and performance by Buyer, Buyer State, Publisher, Publisher State, Channel, Day, and Hour. You should be using this report to assess traffic volume and quality over time comparisons and ranges.

Learn more about the Comparison Report.

Buyer and Publisher Performance Summary

The Buyer and Publisher Performance Summary allows you to track performance and revenue for your publishers and buyers. You can view each report grouped by all kinds of criteria.

Consider this your home base for publisher and buyer performance, where you can see pings, posts, rejected, accepted, sold, and many more KPIs associated with each publisher generating traffic, and each buyer purchasing leads. You can see the following columns per buyer, campaign and product.

Learn more about Buyer and Publisher performance reports.

Lead Details Report

The Lead Details Report allows you to view detailed information about all leads in your system such as Lead ID, post status, quality, post price, state, IP, and more. If you use Phonexa’s call tracking and distribution product Call Logic, this is similar to the Call Details Report. You get insight into each individual lead based on lead ID, the status of the lead, and whether it posted properly to a buyer, quality of the lead based on duplicative information, as well as revenue data associated with that particular submission. The lead is also mapped to its respective source and campaign so you can see more granular data about this particular submission.

Learn more about the Lead Details Report.

Lead Parameters Report

This Lead Parameters Report allows you to compare parameters across a lead’s status, including all leads, as well as sold leads versus rejected leads. Which publisher is sending traffic with a higher quality range? What’s the percentage ratio of all Publishers and sources according to required parameters for qualification? … These are just some of the questions the Lead Parameters Report will help you answer.

For example, if you wanted to determine the age, geography, or income range for accepted leads from a specific campaign or source, you could view that data via pie charts and graphical representations to better understand the demographics between higher quality and lower quality leads. You would use this report to inform your marketing campaigns and target audiences based on historical data.

The Waves Report

The Waves report displays lead data in a graphical representation for specific products. For example, if you wanted to see all your leads by product and better understand the number of leads that had specific qualities or parameters per product, you could view the specific counts in charts with Waves.

Learn More about the Waves.

Scheduling Reports

The Scheduling Reports export feature allows you to set a schedule for reports you’d like to see in your inbox. Make sure you’re getting these reports in your inbox regularly to improve your performance with added visibility into your campaign, product, and buyer performance.

Want to chat more about the reporting features available to you? Drop a note to our Customer Success team here.

In the ever-evolving lead generation industry, marketers continue strategising ways to keep pace with competitors as inflation and rising interest rates affect the spending habits of cost-conscious consumers and businesses. We’re all seeing the aftershocks unfold in all financial areas of our lives and professional endeavours.

And with an 8.5% inflation rate, Quarter 3 has brought a shift in trends and strategies to counteract changes in consumer spending, with marketers looking to take a quantum leap in the quality of their initiatives to capitalise on new market opportunities.

Recent topics making headway for discussion revolve around mortgages, credit card debt, auto insurance, merchant cash advance, real estate, and solar energy.

As Director of Business Development, I always eye the trends shaping the marketing industry and the pain points experienced by marketers trying to generate high-intent leads. Here are some of my thoughts.

New Options for Mortgage, Auto Insurance, and Credit Card Subprime Borrowers

Credit card balances showed significant increases during Q2, according to a recent report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Mortgage and auto loans also went up during that time, reflecting consumer struggles to keep pace with inflation.

Source: The Fed – Consumer Credit Outstanding

More than ever, subprime borrowers need options to navigate the current economic downturn. They must also make their money work for them, and credit repair is a pivotal first step towards achieving this goal in today’s financial state.

Of course, increasing credit scores is key, but so is looking into secure credit cards. After maintaining a good standing with a secure card, a borrower can switch to no balance transfer credit, allowing them to move all of their debt(s) from one card to another at no interest cost for a year.

Raising credit scores can also help consumers decrease car insurance rates, creating an additional avenue to save. This also creates robust marketing opportunities for those in finance, insurance, and other industries.

How does this affect lead generators in financial firms?

If your thought process is anything like mine, you’d agree that your financial firm cannot achieve half its potential sales without high-intent sales-qualified leads. And where do you find these leads? Wherever they are — searching for companies like yours to provide them with the most beneficial solutions to their pain points.

Considering the vulnerable situation, financial institutions catering to the general consumer must increase their online presence, offer exclusive deals, and tie these deals to the current state of the economy. Only then will you be able to attract and retain a decent pool of new prospects to go after for your financial firm.

Refinancing Homes as Mortgage Rates Spike

Lenders are having difficulty finding new clients interested in refinancing their homes. Forget about buying new homes, as interest rates continue to spike into Q3.

Freddie Mac’s rates averaged 5.89% last week, the highest that rates have reached since the last recession in 2008.

Source: Freddie Mac

Where does this leave mortgage lenders, and how much room do they have to market to a seemingly uninterested audience?

One opportunity for mortgage borrowers to cut costs is to borrow against the inflation rate. For instance, if the inflation rate is 6 to 10 percent and a consumer can secure a loan for 3 to 4 percent, they can essentially borrow for free.

So this is the type of consumer borrower base that mortgage lenders must target at this stage of rising interest rates. With today’s volatile economic climate, lenders must weave aspects of these current events into their lead generation marketing materials.

While this strategy may target a tiny and specific segment of the targeted consumer market, it will likely yield more high-intent and already-engaged borrowers for business.

The Dilemma of Buying vs. Renting

Another topic of interest is the rental market, as the cost of renting property has skyrocketed throughout the nation, making the cost of rent in some markets comparable to home mortgages. For those capable of footing the cost of a mortgage-like rent, now is the time to consider owning a home.

With the average one-bedroom apartment price looking like this, it doesn’t take much from young renters to commit to a long-term solution, like purchasing a property.

Source: Zumper

Marketing Opportunities for Real Estate AgentsWith growing rent prices in mind, young professionals have begun building equity and assets through home ownership. This should be a key talking point for all real estate agents as they launch new initiatives to attract young home buyers.

How can this be achieved? Through social media and search engine ad campaigns targeted at first-time home buyers. If you’re a real estate agent, you can even take it up a notch by partnering with a mortgage lender to provide an all-encompassing and guided process for these prospects.

Solar Goes Local

Moving into home ownership and the many ways that owners look to save on their monthly expenses, we come across possibly the most expensive utility — electricity. Homeowners are no longer just looking to get refinanced and create equity — they’re also looking for ways to slash their energy bills.

And in this day and age, there’s nothing cooler than adopting a self-sufficient solar plan.

What does this mean for solar companies?

Earlier this year, I wrote about the best automation strategies for solar companies. This time, I’m going to get granular into how solar companies turn to digital initiatives to attract new customers.

There are two schools of thought when solar companies decide whether to use organic or paid ads to generate solar lead inquiries. Today, many marketers use paid traffic because it can be presented directly to prospects instead of having them search for the offer in a sea of competitors.

To make the most of paid ad traffic, many marketers set geo-specific targets and offers to supply clients in different climates and geographic characteristics, like weather, natural hazards, and more.

Supplying these campaigns with education about financing or tax breaks associated with solar panel installation is also an excellent strategy to push prospects further down the sales pipeline.

Whatever marketing strategy you deploy for your solar business, remember that filtering your traffic based on location will go a long way in attracting high-intent solar leads.

Final Thoughts

2022 has brought a shift in trends and strategies to counteract changes in consumer spending resulting from high inflation and the concept of a possible recession, with marketers looking to take a quantum leap in the quality of their leadgen initiatives.

Regardless of the industry you operate in, your demand or lead generation efforts must be adaptable to today’s economic climate while aligning with the needs of an increasingly frugal consumer base.

Remember, many of these trends will carry over into the fourth quarter of 2023. Plan your marketing efforts accordingly by backing up your operations with technology that will help you automate your marketing strategies and increase your revenue.

Schedule a consultation to learn more about how Phonexa can power your marketing and lead generation efforts for finance, home services, mortgage, real estate, and other industries.

Like any business, insurance carriers heavily rely on generating leads, driving conversions, and motivating interested shoppers to get in direct contact.

Insurance marketers often focus on traditional channels for lead generation, forgetting about one of the first channels to offer personalisation to clients – phone calls. That explains why carriers often focus on landing page tips to increase conversion and underestimate the impact of calls and phone intelligence.

Today, one out of three customers discovers insurance services online. However, most of them resort to firing up a phone call to talk things further and consult with an agent.

Insurance marketing is all about understanding and knowing your clients down to the zip code. But how can carriers ensure that they make the most out of all the calls and spur high conversion rates?

As Director of Business Development of Financial Services for Phonexa, my daily mission is to make sure clients stay dialled in on the value a phone call presents them.

Turning phone calls into leads and possibly into conversions remains a difficult task. It becomes even more complicated when prospective clients have to wait on the line to get relevant information.

Let’s explore how implementing an insurance lead management system can help agents and carriers pinpoint the most cost-effective channels, leverage inbound calls, and generate more insurance leads.

Why Insurance Providers Need Call Tracking

It’s no secret that marketers need granular reports and customer data to make more educated decisions, optimize active campaigns, and create even more effective campaigns in the future. Data is the name of the game, regardless of the industry or vertical they operate in.

While often undervalued, calls are the lifeblood of the insurance industry. That’s the channel that can help carriers drive customer acquisition, establish top-of-mind awareness, and strengthen relationships with policyholders.

Agencies and carriers often have call centres that deal with all kinds of insurance-related questions and issues. However, one of the biggest problems these call centres and insurance providers face is that they lack proper analytics and tracking solutions.

Interested shoppers often want to speak to a real person when looking for a suitable policy. These shoppers tend to have a significantly higher conversion rate (CR) than web leads. This, among other reasons, explains why carriers need to use phone intelligence and other insurance marketing tools.

The Power of Instant Insights

What’s considered a conversion in the insurance industry? It can be a quote, a written policy, consulting services, and so much more. Some, if not all, can occur over the phone.

That’s why companies that are not utilising insurance tracking software can miss out on crucial call data and fail to take advantage of every step of the customer journey.

Agencies and carriers can’t afford to ignore the impact phone calls can have on their CR, ROI, and bottom line. So what insurance marketing experts need is to gain insights into customer conversations and instant access to phone intelligence.

With the right call tracking solution – like Phonexa’s Call Logic paired with Cloud PBX as part of an all-in-one marketing solution for calls, leads, clicks, email, SMS, and accounting – providers can rest assured that their insurance advertising will yield great results.

Let’s look at how Phonexa’s call tracking and distribution platform helps insurance providers, agents, and agencies reach their full business potential.

• Daily briefing: Call Logic’s analytics feature can be a real game-changer if you’re looking to boost CR and revenue. Every insurance marketer needs data-analyzing resources to fuel insurance campaigns and simplify the interpretation of call data throughout the leadgen process.

• Control and insights: The IVR feature helps insurance marketers create an efficient and customizable journey. Voice logic is what agencies and carriers need to collect critical data, speed up conversations, boost their call capacity, and engage shoppers.

• Integration: Phonexa’s system allows effortless integration with your current tech stack, making it possible for insurance marketers to bring in more dream traffic, spend less, and write more policies.

• Targeted campaigns: Phonexa’s predictive modelling feature empowers insurance marketing experts looking to create more targeted campaigns. Apart from data sets, predictive logic offers critical information on past consumer interactions and allows marketers to advocate for new approaches and strategies. Once you pair that with a game-changing feature like Ping Post Calls 2.0, the options are limitless.

• Data visibility: There’s no denying that caller demographics and traffic quality matter. Providers and agencies can bring together all the data points they deem critical, filter lead settings by zip codes and states, run per-state comparisons, and spot opportunities.

Ultimately, Phonexa’s insurance marketing tools are designed to dramatically improve your lead distribution efforts, identify important trends, boost CR, and get the best return on your marketing spend.

Final Thoughts

Today’s landscape makes it challenging to prove your credibility to prospective clients and reach new insurance customers. That’s why it’s crucial to understand why and how customers interact with your brand, and which sources lead to the three important C’s – clicks, calls, and conversions.

Implementing an insurance tracking software is a surefire way to kickstart more intelligent insurance marketing, improved customer experience, and work your way to market dominance.

Schedule a consultation to learn how Phonexa can give you more insight and control over your insurance marketing efforts.

As inflation and increasing interest rates continue to take a toll on the revenue streams of insurance businesses worldwide, non-traditional sellers are entering the space to gain a competitive edge by offering embedded insurance to their existing customer base.

Today, major financial institutions, including banks and credit unions, are leveraging third-party embedded insurance programs — or “insurance-in-a-box” solutions — to supplement their traditional revenue-generating activities from lending and other core business efforts.

And, as flagged in One Inc’s 12 Insurance Industry Trends in 2022 report, embedded insurance continues to move into broader partnership ecosystems, driving more insurer growth through new distribution channels.

But what does that mean for these new non-traditional insurance marketers?

With these programs, insurance is positioned alongside existing trusted offerings and wrapped in the larger relationship which already exists between the institution and the consumer, rather than being a separate commodity provided by a different entity. Doing so dramatically increases the likelihood of consumers accepting these offers due to the inherent trust that already exists in an existing relationship.

This is particularly relevant now, during the time of a growing insurance trust deficit amongst consumers.

Source: IBM

What’s one thing that can make insurance buying a better experience for consumers? Buying it from institutions they already have trusting relationships with.

The growing implementation of embedded insurance programs highlights the need for non-traditional insurance sellers to utilise robust marketing solutions that don’t require substantial operational investment or infrastructure.

Let’s take a closer look at how automation technology can arm institutions new to the insurance space with the necessary marketing tools to scale their embedded insurance offerings.

What Is Embedded Insurance?

Embedded insurance allows consumers to bundle and purchase coverage as an add-on feature when buying a product or service. Financial institutions achieve this by partnering with insurance agencies that offer policies for a given transaction. For example, real estate agencies and mortgage lenders can embed homeowner insurance offers into real estate transactions.

Unwrapping the Gift of ‘Insurance-In-A-Box’

Embedded insurance programs serve as an “insurance-in-a-box” solution, allowing non-traditional sellers to embed insurance offers into their transactions at the point of sale. This solution provides these institutions with additional revenue streams while enabling consumers to mitigate gaps in insurance coverage.

Consumers tend to purchase insurance in haste, often forgoing the time and research needed to make a sound purchase based on their budgetary and coverage needs. This results in gaps in coverage and customer dissatisfaction — two pain points consumers face when rushing to find coverage.

On the flip side, these provide a chance for insurers and the institutions they partner with to engage with a captive, already-engaged, and high-intent audience, improve the customer experience for that consumer base, and tap into new market opportunities.

This results in a win-win situation for insurance carriers, the institutions they partner with, and, most importantly, their customers, who will ultimately reward these efforts with their continued business and brand loyalty.

Taking It a Step Further With Omnichannel Outreach Strategies

Now imagine if your financial firm — say, a mortgage company — has a requirement and a fresh contract with an agency that offers private mortgage insurance or PMI coverage. You need to market the offerings to first-time homebuyers with lower down payments.

You can have your agents offer these solutions straight up, or if you’re aiming for a more organic conversion on this front, you can launch an omnichannel drip campaign that ensures your clients understand the need and benefits of a PMI offering from the firm of your choosing.

Creating relevant informational touchpoints through calls, email, and other campaigns will ensure that your clients understand and value your solution. But how do you get there? Through a singular marketing automation solution.

Embedded Insurance Programs Need a Singular Tech Solution

Thinking of embarking on the embedded insurance space? You’ll need a tracking solution for your marketing channels, even if you think you don’t.

Any organisation that offers an embedded insurance solution — or wants to enter the space — cannot afford to put forth a half-hearted effort simply because this revenue stream is considered easy money. Embedded insurance is a new revenue stream, so capitalise on it.

This is where newcomers to this unchartered territory can count on the all-in-one element of Phonexa’s performance marketing software to pay huge dividends. The enterprise-grade solution is built for companies with complex use cases, and the platform is one that no institution will outgrow.

Here are some of Phonexa’s turnkey marketing solutions that can help you sell more insurance policies:

Call Logic and LMS Sync to Simplify Call and Web Lead Management

Financial institutions can create speedy interactions with call representatives by using trackable phone numbers to acquire detailed attribution on all inbound call traffic. Outbound calls can also be managed to expand offerings and re-engagement strategies.

With this dynamic duo, call and web leads can be tracked and distributed quickly, building a more efficient workflow and expediting speed-to-contact with customers interested in embedded insurance.

Identifying efficient marketing channels can be tricky with embedded insurance since most organisations are not buying traffic from multiple locations, but they may be running different types of marketing to their existing client base.

For instance, a credit union with 20,000 account holders may launch email campaigns and use Facebook ads to entice prospects. With Phonexa’s Call Logic and LMS Sync, you can centralise outcomes from various campaigns to determine the best marketing channels for conversions.

E-Delivery for Client Engagement and Re-Engagement

Financial institutions offering embedded insurance can leverage ESP integrations to build campaigns that reach customers and prospects on their mobile phones and email inboxes.

Phonexa’s E-Delivery is the perfect bridge between initial communication and eventual conversion, as it helps clients send automated emails and email chains to re-engage audiences.

HitMetrix & Lynx for Conversion Rate Optimization

In the insurance marketing ecosystem, HitMetrix monitors which personalisation tactics trigger conversions. When working together, the duo provides actionable data insights for conversion rate optimisation if you’re experimenting with different offerings and deals across various landing pages.

Moving the Industry Forward with Embedded Insurance

When looking for a comprehensive solution to streamline your embedded insurance initiatives, pick one you will not have to change in two or three years, just as your needs change.

Phonexa’s all-in-one marketing automation solution for calls, leads, clicks, email, SMS, accounting, and more, has carried the industry toward a more synchronised omnichannel direction across different verticals and initiatives, including embedded insurance.

Are you going to InsureTech Connect in Las Vegas from September 20 to 22?

Let’s connect on LinkedIn to start the conversation around embedded insurance initiatives ahead of the world’s largest gathering of insurance leaders and innovators.

Interested in learning more about Phonexa’s all-in-one offerings? Schedule a consultation with one of our UK agents to discover how we can power your embedded insurance marketing strategy.