double POSITIVE Marketing Group, Inc.

Responsibilities

• Manage Paid Search and Display campaigns within budget and to hit client dictated performance metrics using doublePOSITIVE’s proprietary optimization tools
• Interact with publisher account teams on a regular basis
• Model out campaign objectives and benchmarking analysis reports to present to clients
• Interact with clients on a regular basis presenting performance reporting, optimization reports, and data mining experiments
• Analyze outputs of bid optimization and provide manual support where necessary to achieve clients’ marketing metrics
• Analyze creative and user engagement process and consult clients on how to increase click thru rate and conversion rate to hit marketing goals
• Present case studies/campaign findings to clients and internal groups for training purposes

Qualifications and Experience

• 5+ years of online marketing at an ad network, ad agency, or in a marketing department
• Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing, Economics, Finance, or related
• MBA a plus
• Familiarity in communicating with executive-level clients
• Comfortable in a start-up environment
• Passionately Analytical
• Ability to work on multiple projects simultaneously

Position has full company paid benefits including:

• Family Health
• Family Dental
• Family Vision
• Life Insurance
• Disability Insurance
• Partial Gym Membership

Responsibilities

• Manage Paid Search and Display campaigns within budget and to hit client dictated performance metrics using DoublePositive’s proprietary optimization tools.
• Analyze outputs of bid optimization and provide manual support where necessary to achieve client’s marketing metrics.
• Analyze creative and user engagement process to consult clients on how to increase click thru rate and conversion rate to hit marketing goals.
• Model out campaign objectives and benchmarking analysis reports to present to clients
• Interact with clients on a regular basis presenting performance reporting, optimization reports, and data mining experiments.

Qualifications and Experience

• Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing, Economics, Finance, or related experience
• Comfortable in a start-up environment
• Passionately Analytical
• Ability to work on multiple projects simultaneously

Position has full company paid benefits including:

• Family Health
• Family Dental
• Family Vision
• Life Insurance
• Disability Insurance
• Partial Gym Membership

Post By
Sean Fenlon

Wow.

Jodi’s post is a tough act to follow, but I did promise her that would provide a recap of the marquee LeadsCon panel of LeadsCon Las Vegas 2012.  The panel was presented by Doug Valenti, CEO of QuinStreet, and Tom Evans, CEO of Bankrate – the top two publicly-traded companies in the LeadsCon ecosystem.  The panel discussion was moderated by Stewart Barry, a partner with Investment Banking firm Union Square Advisors.  Stewart has represented several buy-side and sell-side clients in the LeadsCon ecosystem, and was a natural fit for the role of moderator between these two high-octane CEOs. 

In the spirit of full-disclosure, I have met Doug Valenti several times and consider him a friend.  I met Stewart Barry after the panel and found him to be incredibly knowledgeable of the LeadsCon ecosystem and also a wonderful person.  However, I have not yet had the opportunity to meet Tom Evans.

Arguably, the premier session of LeadsCon LV 2012, I characterized this as a “must see” to DoublePositive folks and it did not disappoint.  The discussion almost immediately gravitated to the role of mobile in Lead Gen.  Several oft-cited statistics were presented about the rising tidal wave of mobile usage.  Both CEOs acknowledged that they have observed a recent surge in visits to their owned and operated sites via mobile devices.

As a quick sidebar note on the role of mobile, the only other session I was able to attend was presented by Jeff Lawson, CEO of Twilio.  Jeff is an excellent and engaging presenter and really provided a wakeup call particularly to the mobile marketers and media buyers regarding how to adapt and evolve their call-to-actions to better fit the many different mobile environments.  One screen shot was particularly compelling – a screenshot of how most iPad users are typically leaning back or lying down while using their devices, then followed by a screenshot of a typical web-based long-form with several page-steps and dozens of fields right above an iPad touchscreen keyboard (which doesn’t even include a tab key for the user to move between capture fields).  Good luck getting those forms to convert with iPad users. :-S

Tom Evans segued out of the mobile discussion by making the point that it’s just another way to deliver media.  Tom surprised many in the audience by reminding them that Bankrate is a 28-year-old media company and that he joined the company in 2004 with a strong media background.  Bankrate has been positioned and perceived as a media company more so than a media buyer.  Much of Bankrate’s traffic through the years has been organic search traffic to their owned and operated properties including www.bankrate.com proper.  Organic search traffic tends to leave some in the industry unsettled because of the dominant influence that Google plays with its ranking algorithms for valuable search queries.  However, Tom pointed out that the recent Google updates (aka “Panda 1” and “Panda 2”) were ultimately net traffic gains to Bankrate’s sites.

The conversation naturally flowed to online consumer privacy issues after the mention of Google (given the recent uproar regarding Google tracking online consumers across all of their properties).  I believe Doug Valenti echoed the sentiments of all the white hat players in the audience that greater scrutiny and a better developed policy is needed around this topic of privacy.  The challenge here will be educating the policy-makers around how consumer privacy/tracking works in general and then to translate that into what is good and what is bad for consumers.  Most online marketers fear a brute-force Patriot-Act-style legislation that could severely impact many online marketing business models while providing very little additional privacy or control for consumers.  My personal philosophy is that the key is consumer freedom and consumer transparency.  Make what is being tracked very transparent to consumers while describing the benefits, while also providing the freedom to opt-out and otherwise control their own personal tracking settings.

The conversation then led to a conversation regarding online media in general.  Both Doug and Tom consider their respective businesses to be media companies (i.e. sellers of media, albeit most of it on a performance-basis), even though both businesses are also very active media buyers as well.  In that regard, it was refreshing to hear them speak of the consumers that visit their owned and operated sites as their “customers” and they both care deeply about the engagement and experience of those users.  Too often in the world of online performance-based marketing, the consumers are viewed by marketers as clicks and zeroes/ones on a traffic log rather than humans. 

Tom Evans described an interesting challenge for the whole online media ecosystem.  Traffic to online media is dominated by the big portals and players (e.g. Google, MSN, AOL, Yahoo, etc.).  They are all working hard to command the same rates for their premium inventory as offline premium TV could command.  I believe Tom stated the range to be $8-$15 CPMs.  In contrast to that, Tom identifies the massive amounts of non-premium inventory from these same players and other smaller publishers that are being auctioned off through real-time bidding exchanges in the sub-$1 CPM and often even sub-$0.50 CPM range.  On the other end of the spectrum are performance-based media sellers such as Google or Bankrate selling clicks that net an effective $60-$70 eCPM to the publisher.  Thus, Tom identified the big media companies to be stuck in a strange spot in the middle.  I personally view the continuum of eCPM’s as a simple reconciliation of supply and demand, and the continuum becomes more rational as the market gradually becomes more efficient through value-based pricing and real-time bidding.

Both Bankrate and QuinStreet have been highly acquisitive in the LeadsCon ecosystem as a supplement to their organic growth.  Both CEOs agreed that owning the media (as opposed to buying the media – perhaps “renting” the media is a better term here) is a key consideration of value in their M&A strategies.  Doug Valenti used his recent acquisitions of two B2B media companies (Ziff Davis Enterprise and IT Business Edge) as examples.  If the business that is the acquisition target is not a media company, but rather a network or technology company, the key criteria they use to evaluate the strategic fit is whether or not there could be growth “acceleratation” post-acquisition as a result of the larger platform.  Doug Valenti used the acquisition of SureHits as an excellent example of successfully using this approach.  Both CEOs agreed that as publicly-traded businesses, they had a responsibility to obsess about scalability of acquisition targets, but also to enforce best-practices in the industry and accelerate the transition from the Wild West to well-organized and well-governed business practices.  In other words, there seemed to be very little appetite for businesses that utilized incentives or promotions (or good forbid spyware/malware) as part of their interactions with consumers.  My takeaway was that Wall Street tends to reward businesses that are perceived more as media-owners and platforms more so than media-buyers/renters or intermediaries.

The discussion then shifted to the topic of vertical markets.  This has always been a fun topic since 2007 when hundreds of millions of mortgage lead gen dollars simply vanished as a result of the mortgage meltdown.  Many lead gen businesses then began going to great lengths to identify the characteristics and attributes of the best verticals to enter.  Tom and Doug confirmed a few of the most basic desirable attributes – high-value “considered” consumer purchases, sometimes referred to as “chunky.”  It is interesting to note that both QuinStreet and Bankrate share several vertical markets (e.g. Mortgage, Insurance, Credit Cards) but Bankrate does not operate in several other vertical market that QuinStreet does (e.g. Education, Home Services, and B2B).  Verticals that also reflect desirable attributes that I do not believe QuinStreet or Bankrate have entered – at least not yet in a big or meaningful way – include Health, Auto, and Travel.

The topic of the Home Services vertical invoked some interesting disagreements amongst the panelists.  While QuinStreet has a strong presence in Home Services, Tom Evans was sharply skeptical of the opportunity, citing the lack of “any big business in Home Services.”  When the moderator Stewart Barry politely reminded Tom of ServiceMagic as a very big Home Services lead gen company, Tom acknowledged the example but continued to be skeptical of the opportunity because of the noisy/messy long-tail characteristics of the service providers and contractors (who are also the lead buyers).

The conversation then shifted gears away from vertical markets per se and into various pricing models (e.g. clicks vs. leads vs. calls, etc.).  I was thrilled to hear the position of both Tom and Doug on this topic to the extent that it matches the long-held DoublePositive philosophy.  They both held the position that we are all in the customer acquisition business, and that our function is to deliver net new customers at scale and at target cost.  Thus, clicks, leads, calls (and I’ll self-servingly add Hot Transfers to this list), are just various performance-based pricing models at different stages of the funnel, but are designed to achieve the exact same ultimate outcome. 

Amen. 

I will only add one additional observation from the market that I suspect both Tom and Doug would agree with, that the deeper in the funnel that the pricing is determined yields an inverse relationship to scale/volume vs. risk/challenge.  In other words, the challenge/risk of buying clicks and converting them into sales is greater than that of buying leads, calls, or Hot Transfers, but there is a much greater volume of clicks available to buy in market for those that can manage that risk/challenge.

Tom Evans described the evolution of pricing models at Bankrate.  When he arrived in 2004, they sold mostly display ad inventory on a CPM basis.  Their online rate table product allowed them to evolve into a CPC pricing model that sold clicks.  The insurance vertical acquisitions of InsureMe, NetQuote, and InsWeb pushed them into selling leads on a CPA/CPL pricing model.  DoublePositive is happy to be working closely with Bankrate Insurance which allows Hot Transfers as one of the delivery model options, thus a CPT or Cost-per-Transfer may soon follow.  Tom seemed to suggest a bias for the higher pricing models with his colorful comment during the panel that “We’re still asking people to swim through a lot of swamp water to get to the jet fuel… We charge a lot more for the jet fuel.”

The “jet fuel” metaphor is a good one.  Tom mentioned that a $1,500 total marketing cost-per-funded-loan is still the market average in the mortgage industry.  Most buyers would gladly spend $1,500 for a single click, a single lead, or a single call/transfer provided that they had a 100% conversion to funded loan rate, but that is only hypothetical.  It is the “swamp water” that requires lower blended price points.  In Baltimore, we refer to this as crab-cake filler. :-)

As an extension of this principle, both Doug and Tom agreed that it is still difficult to get end-of-funnel sale or transaction feedback from lead buyers.  This has been a common meme at every LeadsCon, and a common frustration of lead sellers for over a decade.  The buy/sell market will never be as efficient as it can be as long as the feedback loop of true value is broken.  Bridging the gap of this broken feedback loop is a key pillar to the DoublePositive media buying and right-pricing strategy.

At the end of the panel discussion, the moderator allowed a few questions from the audience.  An interesting question from an audience member was regarding the roll of affiliates within their supply channels, especially with respect of both CEOs passion to eliminate bad actors.  Tom Evans responded by stating that his affiliate channel was Bankrate’s least-profitable channel.  The most profitable channel was of course organic traffic from owned and operated sites.  However, direct media buying (where there is no fear of bad affiliate behavior) yielded higher margins than the affiliate channel, thus challenging the myth that businesses utilize an affiliate channel (and the noisy risk of bad affiliate behavior) merely for higher margins. 

The next question was a nice segue.  A representative from Progressive Insurance asked “who pays the cost of these bad affiliate actors?”  The answer shared by both CEOs is that both the lead buyer and the lead seller share the cost.  The lead seller bears the cost by having their performance diluted thereby preventing from securing higher rates in market for the rest of their inventory.  The lead buyer bears the cost by working to a lower blended price per lead (thereby reducing their overall volume) but also wasting operating time/money and emotional bank accounts of their sales force.

The final question from the audience was about International expansion opportunities.  Doug Valenti took the lead on the answer and first set the table by stating that the vast majority of the opportunity for lead gen businesses is still in the USA.  He went on to describe QuinStreet’s international strategy and how it fit into Western Europe and Latin America.  Doug confessed that China is a tough nut to crack given the highly-localized and highly-personalized idiosyncrasies of the culture and the market there.  DoublePositive board member Stein Kretsinger has made several investments into online advertising businesses in China and agreed with Doug 100%.

Overall, I found this panel discussion to be one of the most memorable and enjoyable in LeadsCon history.  I’m hoping that Jay is able to make this inspiring State-of-the-Union style panel an annual affair.  Bravo to Doug, Tom, and Stewart, and Cheers to Jay.

 SPF

Post By
Jodi Swartz

LeadsCon ’12 is just days away!  With more great speakers and topics than we could cover in one – or even two – posts, we welcome you back for Part III of DoublePostive’s “Top Picks.  (If you missed them, check out “Top Picks, Part I” and “Top Picks, Part II”)

As we said previously, speakers and topics make our list solely based on the fact that we are interested in them.  If we left them off, it doesn’t mean they aren’t interesting–just means they are not AS interesting to US.  But as we also said before, feel free to get our attention using the comments below if you think there’s a “don’t miss”session that’s not on our list.

So open your calendar once again, and get ready make note.  Here’s our third and last batch of Top Picks for LeadsCon ‘12, and why we like them:

WEDNESDAY, 9:30-10:00AM
Case Studies Track, “Secrets of Click to Call”

DoublePositive is proud to be partners with Leads360 and RingRevenue.  We’re looking forward to hearing Nick Hedges (President & CEO of Leads360) and Jason Spievak (CEO of RingRevenue) dial up a lot of timely information about mobile advertising.

WEDNESDAY, 11:30AM-12:00PM
Case Studies Track, “Data Driven Lead Purchasing”

Michael Betz, Chief Marketing Officer of Strayer University, is a great client, great thinker and an all-around great guy.  His talk is about taking a multi-dimensional approach to lead buying in the EDU space.  Should be an education!

WEDNESDAY, 2:00PM-2:45PM
Sponsored Workshop, “The Lead Engine in Our Post-PC Future (Presented by: Twilio)”

DoublePositive is a customer and big fan of Jeff Lawson and his company, Twilio.  We’re looking forward to hearing about how new computing interfaces like touch and voice will revolutionize the way the leads industry does business.

WEDNESDAY, 3:00PM-3:45PM
Sponsored Workshop, “Higher Ed Compliance Survey Results: What Are Schools Really Doing? (Presented by: CUnet)”

Presenters Jeff Herz and Steve Smith of CUnet will educate us on how schools are responding to government regulations.  Plus they’ll share emerging best practices, and give tips on how schools can stay ahead of the compliance curve.

So that’s it!  We hope you enjoyed DoublePositive’s Top Picks for LeadsCon ‘12.  We’ll see you in Vegas!

Post By
Rich Dent

Hey, everybody, it’s been a while, but I have a good reason for my absence.  I’m a new dad!  Wife and baby are doing just fine.  Thanks for all the nice notes we got.

Back to reality

Unfortunately, I came back to the reality of even more frustration for the mortgage industry.  As a former loan officer, I know a little bit about what those guys are going through.  That’s why I want to share the news that DoublePositive’s hot lead transfer service can help.

You guys know me – I’m not trying to sell anything.  But situations change.  Maybe more people may be able to hear me now.

Here’s the deal

There is still a struggle out there – what’s more important?  Having someone like DoublePositive call your Internet leads, or having your own reps call them?

In our economy, there aren’t a ton of interested, qualified consumers out there.  There are some, but not a lot.  By volume, there are far more uninterested, unqualified Internet leads to call on.

This leaves you with a decision.  Do you call the big pool of low quality leads, or receive calls from the small pool of high quality leads?

Does it really matter?

The impact of making a mistake is huge.  Companies are finding it more and more expensive to grow.  Hiring new sales professionals is a long process.  It requires a substantial investment in planning and training as well as employment costs before you can acquire a single new customer.

DoublePositive can get you that customer without all the time and expense.

How it works

Let’s say you want to 500 more leads per day, starting tomorrow.  Most organizations don’t have the ability to call on 500 potential new clients tomorrow.  For example, who will call?  It could take months and months to hire the people and get them up to speed to handle a surge like that.

Instead, DoublePostive will do the work for you.  We’ll send your sales force more consumers on the phone who are interested in talking to them.  Like a sports car running on high octane, your currently successful salespeople will only get better with higher quality leads.

This approach allows you to grow faster, without investing the money and time to hire and train people.  And you don’t have to wait until 3-6 months later if your new people are valuable to the organization.

Victory lap

That’s all I wanted to tell you guys today.  Don’t be afraid to trust a new source to transfer the calls to your existing sales team.  You can double your customers with the same amount of salespeople.  It happens every day.

Post By
Joey Liner

Given the sorry state of the mortgage industry, the big question is: What can we do?

The attitude out there is keep your head down, fight through it, be a tough guy. There’s no other way to survive. You have lived through hell the last five years, and you’re used to pessimism and the negative nature of the economy. You know you don’t have the answers. Your peers in the industry don’t have the answers. They are going to see if they can merge, roll up or fight through it and continue to operate on their own. But margins keep dropping, and it’s not a fun time. Not fun at all.

On the other hand, you talk to some big investors, and they see an opportunity, as the market continues to shrink, they want to get in and buy low. So there are some companies that are growing.

Lead quality drops

You guys know, I like to say I’m one of the most optimistic people out there. But this one of the most frustrating time in my mortgage leads lifetime.

At DoublePostive, we are seeing lead quality drop. This is happening because the re-fi market is drying up and the lead providers are beginning to be desperate to fulfill their client quotas. I can see lead providers dipping into affiliate marketplace leads, and this plays out in lower quality leads.

Quality has gone down over all. In response, we’re trying to optimize transfer rates as best as we can, via our normal process. Also we’ve added a lot of innovative tools to enhance speed-to-lead, features like call-backs, the ability to put our client’s name on the caller ID and email follow-ups on each lead.

Tightening the chin strap

My goal, assuming things continue to get worse before they get better, is to work with the folks who will survive, and partner up with the lead providers who are going to make it through it. I will continue to be a good service provider, and help the people that need to be helped.

For example, the big banks don’t have an outbound dialing culture. They don’t have the high-commissioned loan officers who are banking on a big commission, so they are not aggressive outbound dialers. This favors DoublePositive, in the long run. These big banks are paying low-level, inexperienced people, who are not aggressive outbound dialers, and that works for us. But what we really want to see is a period of healing for the smaller lenders.

The best medicine

Sometimes, when the stress is really, really bad, all you can do is laugh. That’s probably why I am reminded of Woody Allen as I wrap this series of updates. He said, “I want to leave you with a positive thought, but I can’t think of one. Would you take two negative thoughts?”

Here’s a positive thought. Just stay true to your vision, guys. Embrace the pain for the opportunities it offers. Do what you must do. Keep fighting, sell, roll up – but don’t give up. The adjustments you make now will build your company, and strengthen you to face whatever is coming next. I hope, in the long run, those who stuck it out will be rewarded.

So that’s my take on the state of the industry. My next update comes next quarter. Meantime, feel free to get in touch, or leave comments in the fields below.

Post By
Joey Liner

In my last post, I gave the Internet leads perspective on where mortgage is as an industry today. Interest rates are low, but consumers can’t qualify for purchase or re-fi loans. Loan officers’ compensation rules have caused mortgage shops to change focus, and a huge pool of consumers for loan amounts under $250K is being ignored. The comparison lead product, which came onto the scene with such great promise, has been unable to provide enough volume. Margins are thin. Doors are closing. In short, there is a lot of stress and anxiety in the market.

Other than that, you might say, everything’s great.

No boom for comparison ads

Three months ago, I predicted that comparison lead buying would scale quickly. Since then, the comparison ad market has stayed flat. The LendingTree product Loan Explorer has been put on hold. I haven’t seen much from LeadPoint, either. They were supposed to have a major comparison lead product as well.

There are still four that dominate the comparison ad market (BankRate, Zillow, Informa, and Google). Their clients are doing well with the comparison leads. Unfortunately, they are complaining that they can’t get enough volume. (See my State of the Union – Part II http://bit.ly/iiltBZ to understand the factors that impact the volume of comparison leads available.) As a result in my estimation, it now looks like comparison ads will make up closer to 25-30% of the total next year, no more.

The state of the sales floor

Something else I predicted has not yet taken effect – but this time, I don’t think I’m wrong. I’m talking about my advice to lenders to divide their sales floor in order to scale.

Right now, I’m seeing shops go one way or the other. I’ve seen a complete reversal with two of the major players in buying lead aggregator leads. Until recently, they were heavy buyers of regular internet leads. Then they shut it off and went 100% comparison ads.

Why? Their conversion rates were dropping on traditional leads. I think they took a good look at the profile of their sales force and felt that, on the out-bound, aggressive side of the sales floor, they were not competitive with Quicken and big internet lead buyers. They lost out. So, to continue to operate in the Internet channel at all, they felt the only way to compete was to move to a low-margin / high volume business. So they publicized their rates, and completely switched over to comparison ads, where their “sales” folks just have to honor the published rates on the ad. BTW, I took some criticism for calling that order taking from some loan officers and managers in my last post. I was not trying to offend anyone on the front lines, just making a point that it is a completely different sale then the aggregator model.

This shift has been successful for both companies. But again, what I keep hearing is that lead buyers can’t get enough volume to meet their demand.

Opportunities in the confusion

So I stand by what I said at the start of Q2. In the long term, mortgage shops will buy both traditional and comparison leads online. To scale the company and hit revenue goals, you simply will have to do both. You’ll divide your sales floor, because you understand that you are dealing with two different types of sales, requiring two different types of sales people.

But you’ll still need to be smart about navigating these changes. A whole lot can still go wrong. I’ll talk about that in my next post probably mid-week.

Post By
Brian Ocheltree

How to identify value while diversifying and increasing lead supply

Summary

• The value of aggregator leads – both shared and exclusive ­­– has changed
• After self-generated leads, the best option might be aggregator leads, not paid search
• Shared leads are often a better value than if the same leads were exclusive
• Lead-Buyers should also test exclusive leads to determine whether they convert better
• New quick connections allow Buyers to add more lead supply, from more diverse sources, without adding IT integration costs

A New Mix of Business Drivers

When planning the integration of Internet leads into the company’s sales and marketing efforts, Lead-Buyers need to check their assumptions about shared versus exclusive leads.  The market has changed.  Optimized properly, both lead types can be significant growth drivers.

The Problem of Shared versus Exclusive

There’s a misunderstanding about the value of the different types of leads today.  Because exclusive leads can be 2-3x the cost of shared leads, some Lead-Buyers think they are too expensive.  But are they?  Others think that because shared leads are shared, they are not worth the price.  Is that correct?  Could both be right?

Rather than guess at answers, DoublePositive recommends taking a step back and considering the facts.

Your Most Valuable Leads

First, a word about your most valuable type of online lead, the self-generated branded lead.  These are the leads generated from your own website typically.  Generally, these leads are the highest quality because they are from highly motivated, proactive consumers who tend to be “in market” and are therefore the consumers most likely to convert.  In addition, self-generated leads are often very inexpensive since many come from free organic search traffic.

So, if self-generated branded leads are the best, and usually the cheapest, why do anything else?

In most cases, the volume of self-generated leads is not sufficient to hit required sales goals.  Increasing the volume is a slow process, and Lead-Buyers can’t simply “step on the gas” to generate more self-generated leads overnight.  You can use paid search to increase the volume quickly, but in most markets, this becomes cost prohibitive quickly due to brand advertisers bidding up the primary keywords to unrealistic prices.   Think of trying to compete with Geico and Progressive for the key phrase “Auto Insurance” to drive traffic to your website.  It doesn’t work.  So, to fill the gap between self-generated leads and sales goals, aggregator leads are one of your best options.  Both shared and exclusive should be considered and ideally tested since everyone’s situation is different.

Are Shared Leads a “Necessary Evil”?

Some Lead-Buyers have always believed that shared leads are bad.  We hear it all the time.  Shared leads are “a necessary evil”.

DoublePositive challenges our clients to look deeper before deciding whether that statement is true.  Some shared leads are bad, no doubt.  Perhaps most are.  But we have found that if a shared lead is bad, it probably isn’t because it’s shared, but rather more likely due to other reasons.  For example:

• The lead was generated from a low quality source
• The lead was sold too many times, or is aged
• A Lead-Buyer has abused the lead with unscrupulous dialing methods

Are Shared Leads Any Good?

A complaint I hear every day from our lead buying customers is that shared leads are no good because they are shared.  There is too much competition fighting over the consumer’s attention, they complain.

While it may be true that these leads would be better if they were not shared, they become less attractive when the price is adjusted appropriately.  Suppliers would have to charge 2-3x the price of a shared lead to make their economics work.  And I do not believe these leads would convert 2-3x higher if they were exclusive, which would be required to justify the higher price.  Keep in mind that if a consumer is truly “in-market” and motivated to buy, it is likely that they visited multiple supplier sites and submitted multiple forms, so even though you got an exclusive lead from one supplier, you probably aren’t the only sales organization calling that lead.

During a recent client visit, my client asked “How do the lead suppliers do it?  They only charge me $7 a lead, and it costs me $50 per lead to generate on my own through paid search.”  I was speechless.  This was the first time I had ever been asked that question, and usually it’s the opposite.  In my opinion, sharing the leads is a big reason the economics work for all of us.

What about Exclusive Leads?

If all else is equal (lead type, lead source, speed to lead, etc.), then an exclusive lead should convert higher than a shared lead simply because there are fewer companies pursuing the sale.  However, all else is rarely equal, and these other attributes contribute more to the likelihood to convert than the exclusivity attribute, I believe.

Just as with shared leads, some exclusive leads are good, and some are bad.  We believe the best plan is to include them in your testing and optimization process along with shared leads so that you can see which type and sources convert the best for your particular situation.  As long as all lead sources are optimized for Cost Per Sale Per Supply Source (see DoublePositive white paper “Tapping the Value of Supplier Leads” at http://bit.ly/lnjmaz), the more supply sources you have, the better.  For the clients whose lead supply we manage, we rarely see the cheapest lead source being the lowest cost per sale, or the highest priced lead source being the highest cost per sale.  It is different in almost every case, and it changes over time as each supply source adds new affiliates, and other lead sources to their offering.

Access to More Suppliers

As we have shown in previous white papers, there are compelling financial reasons for having as many supply sources as possible.

A supplier offering exclusive leads generated from search is just one example of the multiple lead sources available.  In our opinion, every Lead-Buyer should try out as many lead sellers as they can.  Especially since the greatest obstacles to connecting with these suppliers has been eliminated.

Utilizing Third-Party Connectivity

In the past, the technical integration to connect to more suppliers was difficult and time consuming.  For many clients, getting connected to new suppliers could take months, if not a year or more, due to the technical and testing requirements with each data feed.  This level of complexity and cost prevented most companies from engaging with any but the largest of suppliers, at least initially, thus limiting their supply diversification.  It has been difficult to justify the effort for a small set of new suppliers.

Third-party connectivity platforms have eliminated this problem.  DoublePositive’s Lead Funnel, for example, facilitates and automates the physical connection to many lead sources automatically.  Lead-Buyers simply build one physical connection that is already connected to multiple supply sources.  This allows them to maintain a direct relationship with the supplier, without incurring technology integration costs.

Lead-Buyers with a Lead Funnel can turn the lead flow on and off for new suppliers, without any expense, and pay only for leads.  Let’s take another look at how it works:

In the above illustration, “You” are using a DoublePositive Lead Funnel to make a single data connection to multiple, diverse suppliers.  Our proprietary Translation Engine handles the entire custom data mapping per supply source.  By building one connection to the Lead Funnel, the company can be connected to virtually every supplier, large and small, quickly and efficiently.

Once the necessary connections are in place, Lead-Buyers can add and test new sources at the same time, filling the gap between self-generated leads and sales goals.

Review

What options are available for companies looking to leverage diversified lead types and drive growth?  Let’s review the facts.

1. Misconceptions about the value of shared versus exclusive leads can cause missed opportunities for today’s Lead-Buyer
2. A shared lead can be good or bad, depending on factors such as speed-to-lead, quality of lead, lead type, source, etc.
3. The best exclusive leads often are not exclusive, because a motivated buyer is likely to visit multiple “exclusive” supplier sites and submit multiple forms
4. Connecting to a Lead Funnel allows companies add more suppliers and test more shared and exclusive leads, without adding IT costs
5. Companies that pay only for the lead, and optimize their supply sources, can successfully use both shared and exclusive leads to reach sales goals

Post By
Rich Dent

Back in February, in my post How to Strengthen Contact Rates , I told you guys about the new inbound-outbound service DoublePositive had recently launched.

As I mentioned at the time, our contact rate is historically about 50% – but early this year, we saw that rate dipping.  We knew the problem had to do with smart phones and the personal firewall they create.  According to the most recent Nielsen report, as of December 2010, 31% of cell phone users in the United States are smartphone users.

Show of hands.  If I called you on your smart phone right now, and you didn’t recognize the number, would you answer?

Probably not.  Over 90% of consumers would ignore an unknown number, according to an informal survey I ran on Facebook.  But those same consumers said they probably would call back if the caller tried to reach them more than once.  Wouldn’t you?

Our new inbound call-back service was born.

So, are they calling us back?

It’s still very early, and so far, we’ve limited our test to mortgage leads.  But I can tell you definitively that we’ve seen a lot of call-backs.  And when they call, one of two things is happening.  Either they hang up right away (“Oh, it’s ABC Mortgage.  I don’t feel like talking to them right now”), or they stay on the phone because they are interested in speaking with a representative.  Those in the second category are transferring at 70%, a very high rate.

What does that mean to lead buyers and lead sellers?

It means we are improving the performance of your leads.  Keep in mind, those call-backs are consumers we previously never would have been able to contact.

As a result of this early success, we decided to roll out our call-back service across all verticals.  Our new test group is 80% of all the leads we are dialing on, and we are holding 20% back as a control group.  I will share the results as soon as comparative data becomes available.

Meantime, we’re still asking ourselves, what else can we do to get people to call us back?

Local versus 800

At LeadsCon in Vegas last month, DoublePositive partner Joey Liner spoke on a panel with Ken Krogue, President of InsideSales.com, a dialer manufacturer.  Ken confirmed what DoublePositive had long suspected.  He said that InsideSales.com had seen a nice uplift in performance by displaying local numbers to consumers, instead of 800 numbers.

In our experience, this seemed true.  Prior the conference, we had conducted another informal survey on Facebook.  We asked, would you be more likely to answer the phone if the caller was a local number versus an 800 number?  Again, over 90% of consumers told us they would be more likely to answer a local number, because it might be someone they know.

DoublePositive decided to test this theory.  We reached out to one of our key clients in the mortgage industry, and will perform a test on the leads we dial on their behalf.  The expectation is that using local numbers will increase our contact and transfer rates.  We’ll let you know how it goes.

Needs evolve.  Buying habits change.  The important thing for all of us is to keep innovating.  Stay ahead of the curve, and you’ll be ready for where the market takes you next.

Your turn.  What are you doing to get consumers to call you back?