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Performance marketing is a form of marketing where advertisers pay third-party individuals, companies, or networks for specific qualified leads. It’s called “performance marketing” because the advertisers only pay their partners when a consumer performs a desired action. Some common types of performance marketing leads include pay-per-click pageviews, affiliate link views, closed sales, and – you guessed it – calls.

Pay-per-call marketing is a form of marketing where advertisers partner with affiliates or pay-per-call networks to receive calls that meet their duration, location, and category requirements.

Different mediums of performance marketing yield different results. This is because the consumer is at a
different stage in their buying journey when they use different mediums, making them more or less likely
to convert into a sale based on the medium of the lead. When thinking about choosing a performance
marketing medium, it’s important to note that the lead becomes more valuable the more likely it is to
convert, but high-value leads come at a higher cost per lead (CPL).

When considering different forms of performance marketing, imagine a scale where the left-most point
represents the lowest CPL and lowest conversion rate, and the right-most point represents the highest
CPL and conversion rate. Cost-per-click marketing would be at the lower end of the scale whereas buying
closed sales would be at the top. Pay-per-call gives you a good balance between CPL and high conversion
rate, and also gives you a higher ROAS.

CallThread makes it easy to buy qualified, compliant call-based leads. Here’s how it works:

1. Your dedicated account manager will help you build your campaign and set your business hours, call pacing, geographies, category, and bid price. Your account manager will know what a competitive offer in your category looks like and will make sure your offer will perform against your competition.

2. Calls in your category are generated by our network of approved publishers, in-house digital marketing team, and carrier traffic.

3. Soleo matching algorithms and IVR filters will identify the time of day, search intent, and geography of the call and connect it to the offer in our network that matches the call best in real time.

4. The consumer is seamlessly connected directly to you.

5. You only pay if the call reaches your duration requirement and becomes billable.

When you partner with CallThread, your calls come from three main sources: our network of approved publishers, Soleo’s in-house digital marketing team, and carrier traffic. We assign each call source a tracking number for each campaign category, so we can determine where specific calls originate and conduct regular quality assurance checks across all call sources. Call sources then advertise the tracking number through a variety of channels to reach your target consumers and persuade them to call.

Publishers use a variety of channels to advertise the campaign tracking number including online channels such as SEM, social media, display, and SEO as well as offline channels such as print, radio, TV, billboard, and direct mail.

Soleo’s experienced in-house digital marketing team uses paid search and other online channels to generate call traffic to our advertiser campaigns.

Carrier traffic comes from disconnected numbers of related businesses, directory assistance calls, and voice search.

When you create a pay-per-call offer, you set your bid price, required call duration, and desired category, hours, and geography. Your bid price is the price you are willing to pay for a call that lasts your specified duration (a typical call duration bid is usually between 90-120 seconds but varies by category).

When a call comes into our network, Soleo’s API and IVR filters identify the time of day, category, and geography of the call and will connect you with the calls that match your offer.

A call is considered qualified once it fulfills its duration requirement, and then the advertiser is billed their bid price for that call.

Using our carrier-grade platform for call tracking and compliance, the CallThread team regularly conducts quality assurance checks across all call sources. We use call tracking, call recording (if the consumer is first notified the call will be recorded), and call scoring to monitor the call traffic our publishers send.

All publishers in our network go through a rigorous vetting process to ensure they comply to consumer protection laws. To ensure your pay-per-call campaign complements your internal lead-gen efforts, all CallThread publishers must also adhere to our strict network restrictions that include:

• No branded bidding or common misspellings

• No use of advertiser trademarks

• No outbound traffic – all traffic must be inbound (transfers are available on request only)