Using Invoca to Optimise Media Spend, Enhance Audience Targeting, and Improve the Call Experience

The results with Invoca have been phenomenal, to say the least. The benefits are constantly compounding with such minimal lift for the returns. I’ve never had a product where I spend more time selling people on the results than doing the work to get it going.

Charlie Farrell

Senior Manager of Search Engine Marketing at Rogers

The Mission

‍Founded in 1960, Rogers is Canada’s largest telecom company, serving over 10.8 million subscribers. Rogers’ mission is to provide the very best in wireless, residential, and media to Canadians and Canadian businesses.

Since telecommunications plans are complex purchases, the phone call is an integral part of the journey for Rogers’ customers. Many people prefer to speak to a live agent to ask questions about plans and get reassurance. Therefore, Rogers’ marketing team invests heavily in paid search campaigns aimed to drive phone leads to its 9,000-plus contact centre agents.

The Challenge

‍Despite the importance of the phone call in the telecommunications customer journey, Rogers didn’t have visibility into the full digital-to-call experience. They were manually listening to phone calls to spot-check them for quality. This was prone to human error and was not scalable for the thousands of monthly phone calls Rogers was receiving. They knew they needed a solution that would allow them to get insights from all of their calls and feed that information into their martech stack.

Far and away from all the platforms and agencies I work with, I always look forward to my calls with Invoca the most. The service has been exceptional and we’ve had the same support team since we were onboarded 3 years ago. We’ve never had an issue that wasn’t addressed on the same day.

Charlie Farrell, Senior Manager of Search Engine Marketing at Rogers

When evaluating call tracking providers, Rogers was impressed with how simple it was to set up Invoca. “All I had to do to get Invoca running was add javascript to my website pages. I kept repeating the same questions to my customer success manager because I couldn’t believe there weren’t more steps,” said Charlie Farrell, Senior Manager of Search Engine Marketing at Rogers. “It’s a bulletproof product.”

Rogers was also impressed with Invoca’s team and its level of customer service. “Far and away from all the platforms and agencies I work with, I always look forward to my calls with Invoca the most,” Farrell said. “The service has been exceptional and we’ve had the same support team since we were onboarded three years ago. We’ve never had an issue that wasn’t addressed on the same day.”

The Resolution

Using Invoca Call Data to Inform Google Ads Smart Bidding
‍The majority of Rogers’ marketing budget goes to Google paid search. However, before using Invoca, Rogers didn’t have visibility into the phone call conversions each campaign, ad, and keyword was driving. Since many of their customers buy over the phone, this was making it difficult for them to understand which campaigns were truly giving them the best ROI.

Rogers used Invoca’s AI to understand not just which customers converted over the phone, but the average value of the conversion for each customer type. With this data, they were able to understand the revenue that each paid search campaign, ad, and keyword was driving — both online and over the phone. They could then feed this revenue data into Google Ads to inform Smart Bidding. Smart Bidding weighs their bids in proportion to their returns, decreasing their cost per acquisition by 82% in a two-year period. They also achieved an 18% lift in net revenue from paid search.

The results with Invoca have been phenomenal, to say the least. The benefits are constantly compounding with such minimal lift for the returns. I’ve never had a product where I spend more time selling people on the results than doing the work to get it going.

Charlie Farrell, Senior Manager of Search Engine Marketing at Rogers

Invoca also helped Rogers identify keywords that they previously thought were promising, but were driving the wrong types of calls. Before using Invoca, Rogers could see the Google data showing that an ad had driven a call — but they were left in the dark about the outcome. This led them to prioritise certain ads that were driving billing questions and customer support calls, rather than sales calls. With Invoca, Rogers was able to cut spend on ads that were driving non- sales-related calls and instead allocate that budget to higher-performing campaigns.

“The results with Invoca have been phenomenal, to say the least,” said Farrell. “The benefits are constantly compounding with such minimal lift for the returns. I’ve never had a product where I spend more time selling people on the results than doing the work to get it going.”

Improving Ad Targeting and Lookalike Audiences With Invoca Data
‍Though Google paid search ads account for the majority of Rogers’ conversions, they also use a variety of other ad types throughout the sales funnel. They serve Facebook ads, Bing paid search ads, and display ads to educate prospects and create brand awareness for those who are not yet ready to make a purchase. With Invoca, they can see each ad placement that ultimately contributes to a phone call conversion. They can also use Invoca’s call conversion data to inform lookalike targeting and suppression across their entire martech stack, so the right prospects get the right ads at the right time.

To replicate and scale their results, Rogers uses Invoca to build lookalike audiences. Invoca’s AI automatically identifies the most valuable callers who made a purchase — Rogers then feeds these audience members back into their martech stack to find similar people who have a high probability of purchasing. This has been a valuable tool to help them expand their reach.

Rogers also uses information about callers who didn’t make a purchase to make ad suppression and retargeting more precise. For example, if someone calls from an ad that’s meant to drive sales and they mention a tech support issue, billing, or cancellation, they’re then suppressed from seeing future ads. Or, if Rogers does choose to serve them another ad in the future, they’re able to target them with something more relevant to their last interaction. This has reduced wasted spend serving ads to uninterested and unqualified callers.

“There’s nothing I’ve used that’s improved my return on ad spend so quickly, so efficiently, and so quantifiably,” said Farrell. “I’m no longer shooting in the dark.”

‍Connecting Callers to the Right Agent and Decreasing Abandonment
‍Rogers also improved the call experience for its prospects and customers with Invoca’s IVRs. IVRs, or interactive voice responses, read a series of prompts to the caller which they can respond to using the keypad, giving them the ability to self-route to the most relevant department to assist them.

Invoca’s IVRs are different from traditional IVRs, since they can be easily configured via the cloud. “In a traditional organisation, reconfiguring an IVR is like pulling teeth. There are simply too many team members involved in the process,” Farrell said. “But with Invoca, one person can do it in five minutes.”

Invoca’s IVRs can also capture data about how frequently each keypress is used. Rogers used this data to fine-tune their IVRs, moving the most frequently used prompts to the front of the queue to minimise wait times. As a result, Rogers reduced abandonment and achieved a 10% reduction in sales-to-customer-care transfer rates.

In the future, Rogers plans to further enhance the call experience by upgrading from Invoca’s IVR to its intelligent routing. With this capability, Rogers will be able to route each caller based on the marketing source that drove their call. For instance, Invoca can automatically route someone calling from a paid search ad about internet service to a relevant sales agent. Or, if someone calls from its webpage about billing, Invoca can route them to customer care. This feature removes the need for each caller to self-route using their keypad, saving them effort and making them feel more valued.