Ross Weinstein, formerly of Ingenio, and now head of biz dev at Yext, has been bugging gently encouraging me to post something about the company and since they just convinced some smart people to give them $25MM I thought it was high time to pontificate on where Yext fits in my unified theory of the local search universe.
So the interesting thing about Yext is that they are selling “Pay Per Action” calls. What this means is that they generate phone leads to advertisers via trackable phone numbers, but instead of charging the advertiser on a per call basis, which is how Ingenio started, they only charge them when they deem the call to be a qualified lead.
I worked on a pretty big pay per call program at InsiderPages and I can tell you the amount of garbage calls we got through these numbers was painful, both for us and the client. A number of services have taken different approaches to solving these problems, but Yext has focused on an approach that seems pretty novel. They transcribe the audio of the calls into text and analyze the text for keywords. Only when the call contains “qualifying” keywords they charge the client.
Here’s a sample transcribed call:
According to Ross, Yext scrubs out 44% of all calls that come through their system. So Yext believes that almost half the calls that they provision are junk. Yext gets most of its call volume from search engine advertising and distribution via local search directories, which is not too different than how other agencies that sell calls operate. So if Yext’s algorithms are accurate then that means 44% of pay per call leads are junk. Attention pay per call advertisers - you may want to renegotiate your rates.
Of course the price that an advertiser would be willing to pay for a call in theory should be based on the conversion rate of those calls so the junk calls should be built into the price. Of course that probably doesn’t account for the time the advertiser spends answering the phone.
When you talk to local salespeople all they ever say is that advertisers really just want to pay when the phone rings. Yext thinks that they really just want to pay when the phone rings and it’s not a robocall from a carpet cleaner or misdialed porn line.
If that is the case, Yext seems like it could be the Yext big thing (sorry had to work that in somewhere).
17 responses so far ↓
1 Twitter Trackbacks for Yext - Are Half Your Phone Leads Junk? | Local SEO Guide [localseoguide.com] on Topsy.com // Oct 2, 2009 at 11:19 am
[...] Yext - Are Half Your Phone Leads Junk? | Local SEO Guide http://www.localseoguide.com/yext-are-half-your-phone-leads-junk – view page – cached Ross Weinstein, formerly of Ingenio, and now head of biz dev at Yext, has been bugging me to post something about the company and since they just convinced some — From the page [...]
2 Jeremy Jennings // Oct 2, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Looks like a good service. Too bad their demo for advertisers is very small, barely readable, and the button that says connect now isn’t clickable to a contact form. I don’t have the time right now to call them but I am interested in costs. Hmmm maybe this little tiny contact link at the very bottom of the page leads to a form….nope. Guess I’ll just email them…
3 Stever // Oct 3, 2009 at 10:41 am
I’m not overly surprised by their estimate of 44% junk calls. But reading through the transcript of that sample call, either those 2 people are from another planet, or the voice to text software is missing and mistaking lots of words. So a keyword based quality filter has some margin of error there. But I like their idea here.
@Jeremy, they want you to phone so their robots can filter your call and inspect your junk.
4 Andrew Shotland // Oct 3, 2009 at 9:14 pm
While the transcription is a bit freaky, it’s not that hard to figure out what they are talking about in general terms. That said the transcription software could be used for a band name generator, my fave extract from the conversation - “natural gas injector soul spray”
5 Jeremy Jennings // Oct 5, 2009 at 12:09 pm
@ steve LOL!
6 James Stratford @JRStratford on Twitter // Oct 15, 2009 at 3:49 pm
That model certainly seems more viable than the predecessors do. It’s like the difference between safelist (junk) and organic traffic (Valuable). With one having no target and being broad based (hoping something will stick) yet the other is targeted and sticky.
The way they decide if something is contextual and therefore a paid lead is well thought out. This should work out very well for many businesses.
7 Elliot Leiboff // Oct 23, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Yext is really on to something.
In addition to tracking responses to all forms of marketing for our clients, our company, CallSource, also records and reviews calls to filter leads from non-prospects. Although we also have speech analytics software, we use live analysts.
We then review and score how well the client’s employees handle calls from actual prospects — then offer phone skills training to correct specific weaknesses.
After reviewing hundreds of thousands of calls across multiple industries, I’d say 44% junk is actually a conservative figure.
More than half of our clients’ calls to toll-free or local marketing numbers are actually solicitations from vendors, repeat calls from existing customers, personal calls or mis-dials.
8 Chris Reilly // Nov 7, 2009 at 2:27 pm
“Used by over 20,000 businesses nationwide, Yext Calls™ is the most affordable and relevant local advertising service ever created.” -from Yext’s site.
Are they selling this service through white label arrangements or something? I couldn’t find any reviews by business owners who use the service on the web so far…
Other industry players like Yodle and Local Marketers have plenty of reviews out there, mostly negative. Perchance Yext clients are so satisfied with their results they are keeping it a secret?
I am inclined to believe that Pay Per Call is the future, but there has been a lot of hype about it since 2004-5 not much action since then- perhaps Yext technology is the future.
9 heather // Nov 9, 2009 at 3:40 pm
I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news. But our company is highly unsatisfied with YEXT. We have been working with them for a few months now. The first month we received 6 phone calls. All of which were placed in our “qualified” inbox, but were either sales calls or junk calls. I was not told upon signing up for Yext that I needed to personally monitor each call received through Yext each month. $150 was debited from our credit card on the first. We paid $150 for soliciation and wrong numbers calling our office.
Upon calling to correct and receive a refund for the $150, I was told that they do NOT give refunds but can credit the amount towards future calls. We had decided to cancel the service because it did NOT generate any new leads. They will not issue refunds so we are forced to continue with Yext until our $150 credit runs out. Was told “You’ll just have $150 sitting here whenver you decide to come back to us”. They informed me that in order to avoid the same thing happening again, I needed to call or email each month before the first of the month to tell them which calls were junk. On top of that, they still debtied $10 the first of the next month for the service instead of using our credit. We did not realize upon signing up that we’d have to monitor closely this service.
Please note this before making the same mistake we did. I just checked our calls for this month. We paid for 2 existing patients that looked up our name and wanted to reschedule their appointments. Something that shouldn’t cost us $25 per phone call.
Highly dissatisfied that the customer service could offer no way to fix the problem.
10 Chris Reilly // Nov 9, 2009 at 5:07 pm
Heather, that is really disappointing to hear. The hidden cost of bad pay per call leads is wasted time of the advertiser… you could have kept recycling the dollars and asking for more calls, but if they continued to be junk it would be more wasted time.
I’m not certain how Yext generates calls, but as with any lead generation, high quality contextual marketing is the only way to drive usable leads.
11 Clive Clifford // Dec 7, 2009 at 9:23 pm
Interesting. The only real benefit here is the automatic classification of the call as either a valid lead or a junk one.
The article states “Of course that probably doesn’t account for the time the advertiser spends answering the phone.” - this still happens with Yext as the business owner still takes the call - be it a junk call or not.
Interesting technology I will be interested to see how well it does and how it is marketed.
Dis a saerch and
12 Dave // Dec 9, 2009 at 10:02 pm
We used the Yext Service for a two months and we got a total of 12 calls out of the 12 call 2 where legit calls. Yext ( AutoGlassSearch.com) billed us for all calls and refused to give us credit or a refund for these calls.
We paused our service with them and less than a week later our Yext number was rerouted to a Sears Auto Care dept. where this particular Sears refers its auto glass jobs to a large auto glass chain. The real problem with this is that Yext still has our advertisement with our information posted all over the web but with the number going to Sears our potential customers are being tricked into using a national chain . So we loose even more money on the deal.
Yext has since blocked us from logging into our account so we can’t change our profile to inform our customers that they are being mislead.
$165 is all Yext would have had to refund us or credit us and they refused.
What Yext is doing is robbing our industry and getting rich one call at at time . Yext,Sears and the National Chain Auto Glass company all are making money off my company and ruining my reputation one call at a time.
This service is a rip off and needs to be shut down.
13 Heather // Dec 17, 2009 at 1:51 pm
I would like to follow up and report that I received a very nice email from Yext saying they were changing their policies to include refunds on unwanted calls (to be deposited back within 3 business days). They also gave us a refund on past calls. I appreciate the effort to correct this and it has greatly improved my opinion of Yext.
Thank you.
14 nathan // Dec 18, 2009 at 8:57 pm
I just signed up today and anxious to see how it works for my 2 BMW repair shops, will post my results
15 Mark // Jan 21, 2010 at 12:38 am
I just signed up for Yext three days ago. I’ve received 6 calls. Only one was a legitimate call, and it did end up being a job.
The others were for a service I DO NOT OFFER. But after asking for a manual review, Yext determined these were potential customers. Not only that, when I signed up I was told I would be charged a low rate per call, but I’m getting charged twice as much.
I even got a call from a lady who called the 800# on the back of her insurance card and got me! She asked me about her hospital bill. I told her I was a windshield repair service. And yep, I got charged twice as much. Their software doesn’t work.
I was not told about the monthly charge until AFTER I gave the salesman my credit card number.
I am afraid to cancel until I get my bill straightened out, but it doesn’t look promising from what I’ve read here. I plan to file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and the Texas State Attorney General’s office if these bogus charges aren’t removed from my bill.
The worst part? This has been a ton of stress. All I wanted was some referrals, what I got was a nightmare.
16 Bryan // Jan 28, 2010 at 9:56 am
I’m so glad I found this site. I signed up for the site but haven’t yet agreed to the Terms Of Service yet so I don’t get billed (I know smart move). I wanted to see what other business owners felt w/ about their experience.
Upon on reading them I don’t think I’m going to roll the dice on this one (especially since they want to charge me up to $45 per call) Seems like I get more qualified leads through google local business listing and city search vs Yext .
Thanks for all the input everybody!
17 Mark // Jan 31, 2010 at 11:24 am
This is a follow-up to my previous post.
After working with an account manager, I was able to get the bogus calls removed from my bill. So I was only charged for one call at the originally agreed upon price when I canceled the service.
Now I have a new nightmare…Yext aggressively markets your business name with THEIR phone number in all of the internet directories. (They issue you one of their phone numbers so they can record the phone calls.)
Even directories that we were listed in months ago, long before I signed up for Yext, are now showing the Yext phone number instead of mine!!! I can’t tell for sure, but it looks like they have already issued the number I had to some other glass shop in my area. In other words, my competition is getting my phone calls.
Now my webmaster has to write to all of those directories to get our phone number straightened out. I’m glad I didn’t keep Yext for more than a week…I may have never gotten this fixed. It may take awhile to recover as is.
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