Last weekend we reached an awesome milestone – the Freespee voice platform has mediated 1 000 000 calls!

What does this actually mean? It may not be a big number compared to all voice calls made in the world, but consider this:

• Many of those calls would have not been made without Freespee. Our partners, such as Blocket.se, are building web-based voice apps, which allow consumers to sell products online more efficiently: In the past over 50% of calls were missed. Using Freespee Numbers on ads, the sellers can easily filter out other unknown callers and answer only to the people who want to buy their product.

• Advertisers can measure calls to Freespee Numbers as easily as clicks. Now you know, where the calls come from and you can optimize your advertising budget accordingly. Login to Freespee Analytics and see when you receive calls, from which sources and how many calls are missed. If you like, you can also integrate your existing CRM, web analytics or ad serving platform using our API to fully automate your call tracking.

That’s it – a voice call is now as simple as an e-mail or a click.

Next milestone: One Billion calls.

This week the Freespee team is excited to introduce two new professionals – Daniel Johansson and Tobias Karlsson. Tobias, who has background in enterprise software, will be leading our immediate expansion to Germany, whereas Daniel, an IP telecom professional, will take responsibility of overall sales in Europe. Welcome guys!

We are also welcoming you to join our team of happy troopers! These two new positions just opened up – feel free to spread the word and if interested in applying yourself, please do so as soon as possible.

Lead Developer – Location: Uppsala *NEW!*
Web Developer – Location: Uppsala
Commercial Manager – Location: Uppsala, Cologne, Helsinki or London
Product Marketing Manager – Location: Uppsala

Why are new marketing tools and techniques spreading like wildfire? Because if they are truly revolutionary, they provide companies a strong competitive edge which anyone simply cannot afford to miss.

Today we are announcing our latest major deal in Sweden – with a Schibsted company Hitta.se, a local search engine or business directory service, if you will. This means, that in addition to Eniro, Lokaldelen and DinDel, also Hitta.se advertisers can benefit from our call tracking solution Freespee Analytics.

For more information, please read our Hitta.se announcement. If you’d like to know how to get started with call tracking, register here and we will get back to you soon!

Lately we have received increasing number of requests from search advertising firms and ad networks to provide a call tracking solution for sponsored link and performance campaigns. Last year according IAB, search advertising spend in Europe totalled 6,7 Billion euros, or 45,8% of total internet ad spend.

In most cases, the advertisers only paid for the actual clicks, which is great. The problem is, that the ad displays and clicks to the landing pages also generated millions of calls to the advertisers – calls that nobody got accounted for.

Actually, not even the advertisers knew, where the calls came from. Many advertisers who live or die for the incoming calls (think about auto, real estate, telecom, medical, banking, finance, insurance, professional services, etc.), probably spent much less in search advertising than they should have, as they didn’t know how many calls those campaigns generated.

Freespee Analytics will change all that. Using virtual numbers on each advertising campaign and landing page, advertisers can now see exactly, where the calls originate from, and how much each lead cost them.

To make this as simple as possible, we have decided to partner with ad networks and search platform providers. We are proud to announce our first partner – adX Search – whose platform enables advertisers to have a single point of entry to all major search engines.

For more information, please read our partnership announcement.

Interested in adding Call Tracking to your platform or ad network? There’s an API for that. Please contact us to get started.

We are proud to let you know that we provide Swedens largest classified site blocket.se with temporary ad phone numbers.

The advertisers at blocket.se can use a temporary phone number in their ad, which is perfect for those who would have chosen to completely hide their phone number.
By showing a temporary phone number in the ad the advertisers chances of getting the item sold increases, but the real numbers still remain hidden. Calls are connected to the advertisers regular home or mobile phone, and no calls are connected between 11 pm to 7 am.

» Learn more about the Blocket.se case!

Today we our announcing the launch of Freespee Analytics in Finland with two pilot partners, media agency Dagmar and online analytics specialist Snoobi.

This is also an important milestone for Freespee, as our new Freespee Analytics application is now available for a wider advertiser and marketer audience through media agency and analytics partners.

During the trials Freespee Analytics was used for example by a major telecom operator for their B2B marketing campaign: A Freespee Number was attached to print ads in a dozen of the leading business magazines and newspapers, which enabled both the media agency and the advertiser to measure the incoming calls received from these ads.

Going forward they can optimize the campaigns by selecting the medias that work the best, page numbers, call-to-action wording and number placements in the ads – information that is extremely valuable for any advertiser!

You can read our full press release on CisionWire in English or in Finnish. The story was already picked up by the leading advertising industry publication in Finland, Markkinointi & Mainonta.

Since yesterday we have one more guru in smart coding among us, Villu Türnpuu. If there is something Villu does not know about handling extreme amounts of transactions, it’s not worth knowing.

He used to manage the transaction platform of one of the largest Online financial brokers in the Nordics. But since yesterday he’s with us!

No, we didn’t enter into US yet, but I got a call from Voyces professional Larry Lisser the other day.  With Larry’s track record and industry insight from the city of innovation, San Francisco, it was a pleasure talking to him and learn from what’s happening in the Bay area. Our strategy to offer ready to go Applications with API support, instead of a low end APIs without front ends, was confirmed as the winning strategy in US as well.

The best confirmation we can get is that our customer base is growing incredibly fast for the time being, Q2 has been fantastic. As late as yesterday we entered into a collaboration with another Schibsted company, the local search engine Hitta.se. This means that we have become the defacto standard in the Swedish media industry for call statistics and detailed traffic insight. 4 out of the 4 largest directory brands use Freespee Analytics.

…Can be quite fun. We are just preparing a spontaneous Monday evening party for our friends and families. Why?

One of the largest and most successful Classified media publishers, Blocket.se, went live with a Voice application driven by the Freespee Voice API the other day.

From now on, any Blocket customer can use the built in Voice application to set the rules for incoming calls for their Advert (press release). In addition, their privacy is protected.

Freespee makes Voice as simple and comfortable as email.

I am happy to announce that Freespee will bring our next generation Call Analytics solution to European directory publishers at the EADP conference in Palma de Mallorca.

We have successfully expanded our reach in Europe and we are currently working with four of the leading directory groups, in eight!! different countries.

Being at Palma de Mallorca (lovely conditions for Swedes…) enables us to meet with our European customers and introduce our next generation Call Analytics solution. Freespee Analytics 1.5 is the result of our experience in running large scale traffic visualization solutions for some of the biggest directory publishers for two years, with 0 minutes downtime.

We plan to launch in at least two additional European countries over the next two months, offering Call Analytics solutions to directory publishers, B2C classifieds and media agencies that all work with phone savvy business.