For DIRECTV, the contact center isn’t a cost center — it’s a high-value conversion channel. “We strive to deliver a seamless omnichannel experience for our customers. While we lean into digital-first, that doesn’t mean we’re digital only,” said Nesby Ingram, Lead Marketing Technology Manager at DIRECTV. The company receives hundreds of thousands of calls a month, and many of its customers choose to complete their orders over the phone.
That makes the phone channel critical for closing sales, delivering personalized experiences, and informing marketing optimization. It also means DIRECTV has to connect data from every one of these touchpoints.
But there was a challenge: when prospective customers switched from online to a phone call, DIRECTV couldn’t see the complete buying journey. This data gap made it hard to attribute sales to the campaigns that drove them and to give customers a seamless digital-to-call experience. Together with their agency partner Starcom, DIRECTV identified the opportunity to close that gap and launch a high-impact test powered by Invoca and Tealium.
“Working side by side with DIRECTV, we set out to prove that connecting digital and call data would create measurable lift in both media efficiency and customer experience,” said Susan Niemczyk, SVP Director of Solutions Architects at Starcom. “By testing, learning, and scaling quickly, we were able to unlock a new level of performance.”
Watch the video below to see more on how DIRECTV is driving results.
Bridging Online and Offline With Invoca, Tealium, and Starcom
Starcom and DIRECTV’s marketing team saw the opportunity to connect rich digital customer profiles with offline call conversions. By integrating Invoca with Tealium—their customer data platform — they created a seamless, real-time feedback loop between digital and voice channels.
Here’s how it works:
- Invoca captures detailed session-level data when customers call from the website, including campaign source, digital journey, cart contents, and service availability.
- When a call results in a conversion, Invoca sends that data to Tealium, which enriches customer profiles with offline outcomes.
- Tealium pushes those enhanced profiles back into digital ad platforms like Meta and Snapchat, enabling algorithmic optimization based on true conversion data—even when the final sale happened offline.
“We built a repeatable model that lets us move fast and show value early. By focusing on education and agility, we were able to scale our use cases across multiple teams,” said Ingram.
The result: a smarter marketing ecosystem where digital campaigns are credited for offline sales, complete conversion data is delivered to ad platform algorithms to optimize more effectively, and customers get more personalized experiences.
Smarter Ad Spend and Better ROI
By connecting Invoca data into Tealium and then into digital media platforms, DIRECTV — with Starcom’s media expertise — dramatically improved campaign performance:
Meta
- 80% more internet streaming conversions
- 2x more call center conversions
- 75% higher paid unique reach
Snapchat
- 281% more internet streaming conversions
- 55% reduction in cost per stream (CPS)
“Invoca has become a critical part of our tech stack. It’s given us full visibility into the call channel and significantly reduced our cost per acquisition,” said Mark Loovis, Director of Marketing Technology at DIRECTV.
Improving Call Routing to Remove Barriers to Purchase
When DIRECTV started using Invoca data to analyze its call handling process, it uncovered routing issues that were costing conversions. In some cases, calls from paid search campaigns were going to a third-party vendor, which told existing customers to hang up and call a different number. Other calls were mistakenly routed to the parent company, AT&T, instead of a DIRECTV sales agent.
Using Invoca to connect the digital-to-call journey, the team identified and fixed these routing problems quickly. They also implemented dynamic toll-free number insertion, allowing each marketing channel to display a unique phone number. This ensures that callers are matched with the most relevant IVR and that high-value prospects are routed to top-performing sales agents more quickly.
“Originally, our IT team billed the dynamic toll-free number project as a million-dollar investment, because of all the infrastructure and IT support required,” Loovis said. “But with Invoca, we were able to quickly configure dynamic toll-free numbers at a small fraction of that cost.”
Empowering Agents With Digital Journey Data to Close More Deals
DIRECTV also uses Invoca PreSense to give agents critical digital journey context before they answer a call. PreSense sends a screenpop showing agents the caller’s digital journey — what pages they visited, what ads they clicked, their location, and whether they’ve called before — just seconds before the call connects.
This real-time insight means agents can skip generic questions and get straight to the caller’s specific needs. For example, if someone is calling from the DIRECTV STREAM page, the agent can immediately pull up relevant package information and even suggest bundle options.
The results speak for themselves: with PreSense, DIRECTV’s sales team has seen a 110% improvement in close rates and shorter call times, allowing agents to handle more sales inquiries in less time.
“Being able to get an omnichannel view of the customer experience is invaluable. With Invoca, we can quickly identify issues in the buyer journey and correct them. It’s had a huge impact on our conversion rate,” Loovis said.
