• MarTech Today
  • Sections
    • Ads
    • Marketing
    • Content
    • Sales
    • Analytics
    • Management
    • Resources
    • More
    • Home
  • Follow Us
    • Follow
  • MarTech Today
  • Ads
  • Marketing
  • Content
  • Sales
  • Analytics
  • Mgmt
  • Resources
  • More
  • Events
    • Follow
  • SUBSCRIBE

MarTech Today

MarTech Today
  • Ads
  • Marketing
  • Content
  • Sales
  • Analytics
  • Management
  • Resources
  • More
  • Events
  • Newsletters
  • Home
Martech: Advertising

Robocallers Are Not Going To Like DialogTech’s New SpamSentry, But Marketers Might

The new technology for the phone attribution/conversion platform claims to block more than 99% of robocalls that pollute attribution stats.

Barry Levine on November 12, 2015 at 3:01 am
  • More
oldphone_ss_1920

You would probably rate a robocall during dinner as annoying.

Now let’s suppose you’ve got a large marketing operation set up to field phone calls from an online ad campaign. Robocalls to those phone numbers are more than annoying.

They can throw your attribution analytics off and take up the time of the answering human operators.

That’s the situation addressed today by phone attribution/conversion provider DialogTech, with the release of SpamSentry technology for its Voice360 platform.

CEO Irv Shapiro told me his company has found that an average of 26 percent of calls to marketing operations are recorded, computerized robocalls.

The marketer behind an ad campaign might want to know which calls came from which ads. Perhaps the brand is paying the marketer by the number of calls that are leads, plus the marketer wants to know which ads worked best to drive calls.

As other such phone attribution companies do, DialogTech can generate unique phone numbers — up to three million — for each instance of an online ad. So, regardless of the phone used, it knows which ad drove you by the number you called. If you follow a click-to-call link on a mobile ad following a search, there’s also a direct link trail.

If an incoming phone call cannot be automatically attributed to an ad, as with a robocall, it has to be attributed manually — which, of course, costs time and money. It could be a recorded voice in a robocall, or it could be someone calling a number that a friend gave them.

To keep the data clean, Shapiro said, his company used to do as his competitors do. They tried to track caller IDs, although robocallers have begun to change the constituent numbers randomly for new calls.

They also set up an interactive voice response, a road block that stops automated robocalls. At this stage in their development, automated robocalls can’t deal with “press number one to proceed.”

The bad news: phone menus also annoy human callers and can cut down on the number of people who remain on the line.

To reduce the instance of robocalls, SpamSentry utilizes a variety of tactics.

For instance, it sends a telecommunications signal to the robocall before a human picks up, which triggers a premature playback of the recording. It also identifies a variety of characteristics that Shapiro said constitutes a “fingerprint,” like the sequence of calls from that caller ID (robocalls tends to dial numbers in sequence), the audio characteristics of the first few seconds of the outgoing recording, and other info.

The idea is that, as robocall marketers change their tactics, SpamSentry’s machine learning should be able to learn and thus block the new approaches.

And, if a robocall is detected, SpamSentry puts up a “press number one” gate as a safety net, just to be sure.

DialogTech claims that, using all of these techniques, its unique SpamSentry is able to block more than 99 percent of automated robocalls coming into a call center.

However, it only blocks recorded calls. Those live-person calls looking to sell you life insurance can still get through.



About The Author

Barry Levine
Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.

Related Topics

Channel: Martech: AdvertisingDisplay Advertising & MartechMarketing ToolsMarketing Tools: Analytics

Subscribe to receive daily martech news and expert insights. See terms.


We're listening.

Have something to say about this article? Share it with us on Facebook and Twitter.

Get the daily newsletter digital marketers rely on.
See terms.

ATTEND OUR EVENTS

MarTech 2021: March 16-17

MarTech 2021: Sept. 14-15

MarTech 2020: Watch On-Demand

×

Attend MarTech - Click Here


Learn More About Our MarTech Events

White Papers

  • The State of Local Marketing Report 2020-2021
  • Quality CRM Data: The Key to Delivering Great Customer Experiences
  • How the Microsoft Search Network Can Maximize Your Search Campaigns
  • The Marketer’s Playbook for Customer Acquisition
  • How To Optimize SEO With UGC
See More Whitepapers

Webinars

  • How to Avoid the Digital Transformation Trap
  • How to Build a Marketing System of Record
  • Meet BIMI: The brand-boosting email security marketers must have for 2021
See More Webinars

Research Reports

  • Local Marketing Solutions for Multi-Location Businesses
  • Enterprise Digital Asset Management Platforms
  • Identity Resolution Platforms
  • Customer Data Platforms
  • B2B Marketing Automation Platforms
  • Call Analytics Platforms
See More Research

Receive daily martech news and analysis.
Martech Today
Download the Martech Today app on iTunes
Download the Martech Today App on Google Play

Channels

  • Advertising
  • Marketing
  • Content
  • Social
  • Commerce
  • Sales
  • Analytics
  • Management
  • Home

Our Events

  • MarTech
  • SMX

Resources

  • White Papers
  • Research
  • Webinars
  • MarTech Conference

About

  • About Us
  • Contact
  • Privacy
  • Marketing Opportunities
  • Staff
  • Connect With Us

Follow Us

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Newsletters
  • Instagram
  • RSS
  • iOS App
  • Google Play

© 2021 Third Door Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

Your privacy means the world to us. We share your personal information only when you give us explicit permission to do so, and confirm we have your permission each time. Learn more by viewing our privacy policy.Ok