Balihoo automates local marketing campaigns using Twilio

The failure to connect with local markets costs American businesses as much as $50 billion a year. That’s a big number, but it gets much smaller when national brands use Balihoo’s local marketing automation technology—including a call tracking application powered by Twilio that makes it easier for local shoppers to buy what they need, when they need it.

National brands need local footholds

National brands are missing the mark with local advertising, and they know it.

According to a survey of nearly 300 brand marketing executives, only 7% said they offered effective campaigns to activate local consumers.

Balihoo’s mission is to help brand advertising be more effective by automating local marketing campaigns. As part of its platform, Balihoo wanted to offer brands local phone numbers in any geography, along with the ability to do call tracking, which makes it possible to determine if calls to those numbers turned into sales.

Local numbers boost conversions

To provide reliable call tracking on a national scale, Balihoo turned to the Twilio communications API platform. “The Twilio platform provided the reliability, scalability and flexibility we needed to incorporate call tracking into local marketing automation,” said Shane Vaughan, Balihoo’s CMO.

By integrating with Twilio, Balihoo expanded the capabilities of its platform without making any additional investments in hardware or software. Customers can now create targeted local websites with unique call tracking numbers and lead forms that automatically push both phone and web leads to sales agents.

For example, when a leading national insurer wanted to connect with potential customers on a more personal, local level, it turned to Balihoo to ensure a consistent brand experience. Balihoo helped the insurer deploy 3,400 geo-targeted websites complete with on-demand call tracking numbers. The numbers could be provisioned as needed to keep costs down.

Vaughan said that in general a brand’s local affiliates and channel partners prefer calls to clicks by a ratio of 3:1. In the case of the insurer, however, 11 calls were received for every web form submission.

“Trackable phone numbers have become a really important component of what we do,” Vaughan said. In Balihoo’s experience, approximately 70% of conversions happen over the phone. “Balihoo customers are enjoying a higher conversion rate thanks to our Twilio-powered call tracking solution,” he added. “The numbers tell it all. Phone calls convert at a five times greater rate than clicks and drive higher revenue value.”