LeadSmart created new opportunities and reduced the cost of ownership by switching to Ringba.
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Background
Lead Smart is a performance marketing company that specializes in generating inbound phone calls for business to consumer verticals. Based in Vernon Hills, Illinois, Lead Smart has generated more than two million leads and inbound phone calls for their clients since opening their doors in 2008.
With clients like HomeAdvisor, Angie’s List, ADT Home Security, and more, Lead Smart has access to some of the biggest brands in the home services category, and supplies them quality inbound phone calls through Lead Smart’s media buying team, partner network, and direct publishers.
Challenge
For almost ten years, Lead Smart relied on their own proprietary call tracking platform. With rapid technical innovations in the marketplace and a high cost of ownership, Lead Smart needed to decide whether to keep investing in their proprietary call tracking platform, or find a managed solution.
“We specifically didn’t use other call tracking solutions because of their limitations, so we built our own affiliate dashboard and tracking system that was engineered specifically for Lead Smart,” says CEO Matthew Zivkovic.
As Lead Smart struggled to keep up with the needs of clients, consumers, and affiliates, Zivkovic realized that their proprietary technology was limiting the scalability of their business.
“Our custom-built system did not have the functionality to track a duration-based pay per call campaign. We didn’t want to bog down our engineers with building new features into our tracking system.”
Zivkovic was initially hesitant to adopt third party software after years of building and supporting his proprietary software, until a close colleague highly recommended Ringba. Through research, he identified Ringba as a leader in the pay per call industry and ultimately decided to run a test campaign.
“One of our affiliates said to me, straight up, ‘You should move everything over to Ringba,’ so I reached out to Ringba and decided to run a test campaign on their platform. Now this campaign is crushing it for me.”
Solution
Lead Smart’s first experience with Ringba came about as a result of a duration-based offer they received. Zivkovic recognized that their proprietary software was designed for revenue-sharing and could not support duration-based campaigns. Zivkovic decided to run the campaign on Ringba and was immediately impressed with the platform’s flexibility.
“If we wanted to change one number in my old system, we had to talk to a developer. Now we can do it all by ourselves,” says Zivkovic. “We can change my white label theme, we can modify our offers, we can do anything we want without having to worry about managing the technology. A decision to recognize sunk costs became an obvious one for us. Ringba does everything way better than our own system.”
Improving Productivity and Branding
After seeing profitability from their first campaign with Ringba, Lead Smart decided to switch all of their campaigns over. Transitioning to Ringba allowed Lead Smart to create a better client experience without significant investment, and without sacrificing their already established brand.
With a personalized URL and customized user interface, Lead Smart was able to leverage Ringba’s Whitelabel features to brand their entire customer experience. Ringba also allowed the Lead Smart team to better manage their affiliate partners and publishers, who can now be onboarded in a fraction of the time.
Ringba Delivers Unparalleled Customer Support
“I was really reluctant at first to unravel the whole thing. We had been utilizing our system for over 10 years. It was proprietary, we built it from the ground up, we were used to it. Honestly, I was scared to switch,” says Zivkovic. “Forget the cold feet I had before; we’re jumping in with both feet.”
Ringba’s best-in-class customer service did not just improve Lead Smart’s operational productivity and overall profitability. It also assisted in making their transition to Ringba’s software a smooth one.
“Ringba is constantly hooking me up with people that I’m making money with. My schedule is full of meetings and phone calls with new potential partnerships. Those connections have already yielded money in my pocket and that’s amazing,” says Zivkovic. “It’s more than customer service, it’s almost like a concierge service.”
Results
Ringba Enhances the Customer Experience While Increasing Operational Efficiency
“Before Ringba our platform was cluttered, inefficient, and restrictive. Now that we’ve left our proprietary platform behind, our workflow is streamlined, we’re saving time, and are more profitable,” says Zivkovic.
“Doing things like setting up publishers or campaigns now takes seconds versus 20-35 minutes of manual setup like it did before. I can change everything I need to on the fly without the cost of a developer.”
Streamlining campaigns through Ringba didn’t just improve Lead Smart’s systems. It also delivered valuable data and insights that allowed them to better understand campaign performance.
“I love all the data and metrics that Ringba provides, rather than me having to take all that data and have to figure it out for myself,” says Zivkovic. “That’s what I had to do before and I hated it.”
Ringba Helps Lead Smart Become Scalable
Zivkovic has noticed that Ringba’s competitors offer a product that is not tailor-made to the pay per call industry and tend to fall behind when it comes to managing affiliate partners.
“Ringba has clearly been engineered for the pay per call industry and they have the best technology for networks and affiliates to run their businesses on,” says Zivkovic. “Ringba is better than any other system. They are light years ahead of their competitors.”
However, technology is only as good as the people behind it. Zivkovic remarks that
“Ringba’s service is the best in the business. Working with their team is incredible.”
Future
Zivkovic is optimistic about Lead Smart’s future performance thanks to the improved profitability and efficiency Ringba has afforded the organization.
“Everything we’re doing with Ringba is awesome. We’ve been working with their development team very closely and it’s been fantastic. I can’t wait to see how we’re going to grow with Ringba,” says Zivkovic. “We are going to process millions of dollars worth of profit through the platform.”
Zivkovic owes the growth and scalability of Lead Smart to Ringba, particularly in onboarding a wave of new publishers to the platform.
“If you are a network and you’ve used other platforms, Ringba is far superior; they are next-level. If you are an affiliate, I hope you are lucky enough to work with a network that runs on Ringba.”