double POSITIVE Marketing Group, Inc.

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

WOW!  What a conference.  What a city.  What an exhilarating (and exhausting!) experience.

As a LeadsCon newbie, I wasn’t sure what to expect.  I mean, I’ve been to what feels like one million tradeshows, and managed half as many as a marketing director…so I was curious to find out for myself what all the buzz was about.

As my previous posts indicated, LeadsCon West 2012 was held in Las Vegas, Nevada on February 28 and 29 (with a special buyers only event held on the 27^th).  Vegas is one of the best places to hold tradeshows, so that, by design, is a positive.  The leads ecosystem is forever evolving with new businesses and professionals entering the market all the time, so that’s a positive.  And, since I planned our exhibit (complete with photo booth) and party (with our partner Leads360) I knew those were going to be, if nothing else, fun!  So, positives there, too.

Thus, I came into the show with the following:

• Vegas?  Positive.Evolving industry? Positive.
• Fun booth? Positive.
• Cool parties? Positive.

Seemingly, the basics were covered.  But, what else would make THIS particular LeadsCon stand out?

Well, first, companies in attendance topped 1200 and total attendance topped 2600—a myriad of exhibitors welcomed booth visitors with hospitality and enthusiasm, speakers inspired and challenged audiences, the Mirage excited and delighted (just ask me about my final night’s stay in the penthouse suite),  and the networking was unstoppable.  So unstoppable, in fact, that it stymied my original plan of being a devout LeadsCon student—attending each and every seminar available, soaking up new industry knowledge, every minute completely rapt—graduating with my PhD in “the biz.”  Yeah…not so much.

My team was on FIRE this year!  Booth regulars like Joey Liner, Syed Zaidi, and Brian Ocheltree spent so much time meeting with clients, prospects, and partners that our “while you were out” notebook was nearly full.  At times us DP booth folks were outnumbered by a margin of at least 3:1 by those wanting to chat with us.

DoublePositive/LeadsCon360 party bracelets were so in demand they became near black market items.  And, I was about ready to hang a sandwich board sign on my back that said “To speak with JT Benton, please take a number.”

So, what WAS all the excitement about?  What made this year different?

Well, it started right before the show when we were honored with two LeadsCouncil LEADER™ awards— Best Hot Transfer:Lending and Best Hot Transfer:Technology.

Needless to say, we were thrilled and took that enthusiasm straight to Vegas.

On Monday at 2:30 (the day before the actual show began), the aforementioned Mr. Benton spoke at the first-ever LeadsCon Buyers Summit about performance mobile marketing.  JT, a long standing expert in the field, spoke about why (finally) the time is right for mobile click-to-call, how it impacts marketing and media plans, and strategies for implementing it successfully.  All of this good stuff was promoted well in advance via news releases and blog entries, and a terrific webinar produced by our partners at Ring Revenue.  At the close of the seminar, JT also unveiled DP’s first white paper on the subject.  (SPOILER ALERT: Look out for a webinar in the very near future where you can learn from the master himself and get your own copy of the whitepaper.)

Although I wasn’t able to see it live myself, I would have thought JT was one of the Beatles at the height of their popularity (thus the sandwich board dream).  A big shout out to @LeadsCouncil for their tweet “@DoublePositive JT Benton Doing an amazing job presenting on Mobile Marketing #LeadsCon.”  Thanks guys!

On Tuesday morning, as the team’s official “crazy marketing lady” it was my job to make sure that DoublePositive was ready for the crazy schedules that were ahead of them, that our booth was inviting and fun, and that our head “misfits,” company CEO and EVP, Sean Fenlon and Joey Liner, respectively, were prepped and ready to go for their welcoming address.  Sean and Joey had the priveledge of welcoming the entire conference immediately following the keynote.  The moment was certainly not lost on them as Joey (@joeyliner), so fittingly  tweeted: “This is 1 of those defining moments in life, about to speak to 2500+ in a welcome address for LeadsCon with my partner Sean #DoublePositive.”

Following the welcoming address, it was over to the tradeshow floor where our 10×20 booth was transformed into a comfortable lounge space complete with a photo booth (to capture folks in their tradeshow best)!  We brought our favorite DP website characters with us, we had Viking helmets, sunglasses, and signs promoting Joey for Mayor!

While people shed their inhibitions in the most PG ways possible in photo booth…

…others shed their shoes and kicked up their feet on our couches (including our very own John Nuclo, Stein Kretsinger, and Syed Zaidi—can you feel the love?).

The DoublePositive team was visible on the floor and off Tuesday—most notably with Joey “LeadsCon Mayor” Liner invited to speak during the “Is Lead Gen a Dirty Word?” panel.  He was joined by Jeremy Johnson, Co-Founder and CMO, 2tor, Inc., John Kobs, CEO & Co-Founder, ApartmentList.com, and moderated by Jeff Lawson, CEO & Co-Founder of Twilio. (That’s our guy, second from the left.)

All the while, attendees zoomed from booth to booth making friends and influencing people—and searching for the sacred bracelets for the DoublePositive/LeadsCon360 party later that night at Rhumbar.

So…later that night at Rhumbar…the atmosphere was sumptuous, the drinks were spirited and flowed freely , the staff at the club couldn’t have been more hospitable, the weather was beautiful (albeit a little on the windy side), and everyone relaxed…played some cards,  snapped some shots in the photo booth and all around had a great time.

Thank you to our friends at Leads360 for (once again!) making it a special night, and thank you to Steve Hall for the great photographs (below).

Up early again Wednesday morning…

Day two proved even more exciting as attendees and exhibitors alike knew they had just one final day to meet, greet, and eat.  Our booth was a flurry of folks looking to engage with our team members, learn about our products and services, and snap some shots in our photo booth.

Midway through the afternoon, our very own Rich Dent donned his favorite sombrero and participated in a video interview about the show with VigLink CEO, Oliver Roup.  Go Rich!

After a brief rest and bite to eat, it was off to the LeadsCon VIP after show party at newly opened 1Oak Night Club in the Mirage Hotel and Casino.  Attendees got decked in their show-stopping finest and partied in celebration of another spectacular LeadsCon.  Our team really got into the spirit of the event (thanks again to Steve Hall for the great pic on the left)!

So, let’s review.  Obviously, my expectations were pretty basic and I kept that that way as to not be disappointed:

• Vegas?  Positive.
• Evolving industry? Positive.
• Fun booth? Positive.

What I wasn’t expecting was EVERYTHING ELSE LeadsCon West had to offer.  Although I did not get to attend many seminars (because apparently I was preparing for some kind of cross-country marathon running from one end of the Mirage to the other all day long!) I heard from many teammates, associates, and those through the social networks (just look up #leadscon) how much they learned and enjoyed the material. Personally, I learned a heck of a lot about the industry, how deep my colleagues knowledge is (they fielded questions from every direction!), and how enthusiastic everyone remains about contributing to and shaping the leads ecosystem.    And the networking?  Let’s just say I am happy to have e-copies of all photographs from the booth so I can continue to match names with faces.

Obviously, my expectations were BLOWN AWAY.  We put a lot of work into preparing for LeadsCon, and LeadsCon clearly delivered back so much more.

• Amazing speakers? Positive.
• Super smart people?  Positive.
• Great networking? Positive.

Doing it all again at LeadsCon East? DOUBLE positive.

See y’all in New York City!

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
JT Benton

Hi all – just a quick note before LeadsCon.  If you’re a lead buyer, please come see me at the Buyers Forum on Monday!  I’ll be speaking at 2:30 PM on Mobile Marketing & Lead Gen.

As you know if you’ve been following DoublePositive’s blog, we rolled out our new MobilePositive offering last month.  So far, the results have been very meaningful to our advertisers.  If you missed that post, here are the high notes: our new platform connects Advertisers with Consumers on the mobile web and drives quality, net-new inbound calls on a daily basis.

Very often, folks want to know how this works.  If you’re curious, too, be sure to connect with me in Las Vegas next week.  A very common theme of discussion will be how Cost-per-Call strategies on the mobile web can positively affect media plans and drive high quality, net-new leads.

I am eager to share this with you – and hopeful to meet in person.  Again, if you are a lead buyer, please reach out to register for the Buyers’ Summit.  It is the first event of its kind for folks whose primary business is purchase and closing leads.

Learn more at http://leadscon.com/leadscon-las-vegas-2012/buyers-summit/.

See you in Vegas!

Post By
JT Benton

Hello again! Last week, we rolled out MobilePositive and gave a hint or two at what we’re up to. If you read that first post, you’d know that our new platform connects Advertisers with Consumers on the mobile web in a very meaningful and aligned way–driving heaps of quality inbound calls to our clients, daily. You would also know that I promised a follow up to that post explaining the timing of this rollout.

Thus, the title (or, question) of today’s contribution: Why mobile; why now?

Because it’s time. And, because before now, it wasn’t. Seriously.

If you’ve attended LeadsCon, Ad:Tech, Affiliate Summit or any other performance marketing event in the past four years, you’ve surely heard the hype on mobile. For years now, soapboxes at major industry shows have been occupied by folks signaling the ‘year of mobile.’ They blogged. They tweeted. They spammed us all on LinkedIn. Some of these zealots even went so far as to don QR-coded T-Shirts that were color coordinated to match their converse sneakers. Indeed, active were the hypesters.

And yet, despite all the hoopla, they were wrong. That’s right – flat wrong. At least in the context of the Cost-per-Lead media ecosystem. Mobile has been unworkable and unnecessaryuntil fairly recently. It’s taken Publishers, Advertisers, Networks and Consumers time to find the right way to play. We just weren’t ready, yet. Mostly, this was on the consumers and the publishers. It’s taken adoption rates skyrocketing, Apple’s stock booming, the Android market maturing, bandwidth levels rising and a whole host of other factors to get consumers ready for this at scale. For mobile publishers, the question has never been if – it’s been how and when. As in, ‘how and when can I make as much money selling leads as I do selling impressions and clicks.’ These groups needed to converge and align. It took help, muscle and risk. And, again, time. But now, it’s clear to me that it’s happening: mobile lead generation is alive and growing.

Ok. Before we get too far, I’m coming clean: I get the irony. In writing the above, one could argue that I’m now guilty of the same soapboxing I’ve just poked fun at. The argument is pretty linear, actually: I just said the people who announced the era of mobile lead-gen were wrong. And yet this post’s thesis is that the era of mobile lead-gen is, in fact, now here. Thin ice, right? Totally. Except I’ve got the in-house data to support this, and I see the interest on the advertiser side mounting: we introduce a new major advertiser to the mobile web weekly.

Last month, MobilePositive facilitated over 25,000 inbound phone calls to our early advertiser clients. These were direct, net-new customers, each happily dialing in. And, a considerably high number of them bought the services our clients were selling. These advertisers include leading brands in the Education, Mortgage, Insurance, Home Services and Identity Protection vertical markets. So far, the proof is the campaign performance. We see cost-per-sale figures that consistently perform on target and our budgets are growing. The publishers are happy, too. Both sides (buyers and sellers) see long-standing, steady campaign growth and an exciting new mix of partnerships as a big part of the upside to mobile.

So, why mobile? And, why now? Because – like I said, it’s time.

That’s all for today, gang. Thanks for reading. Next week, we’ll get more tactical with a piece on why publishers should love the pay-per-call format.

Post By
JT Benton

Hey, everybody – JT Benton here.  I oversee DoublePositive’s new mobile marketing division, which we’re calling MobilePositive.  While it’s true that I’m a rookie at DP, I’m certainly no stranger to the world of performance marketing.

I’ll be blogging here fairly frequently.  I’m excited to share with you a bit about our growing work in mobile, how we plan to add value and show first-hand how easily the mobile web can drive alignment in a performance marketing format.  I’ll also make it a consistent point to emphasize that this growth comes from a very solid foundation of connecting sales teams with live, interested customers on the phone.  Indeed, I think it’s fitting that game-changing mobile marketing developments would come from the industry leader in delivering LIVE Hot Transfers.

I’ll spend most of my ‘air time’ describing our mobile product offerings and musing on the industry on large.  The mobile web is quickly transforming the way advertisers connect with consumers, and MobilePositive is helping to lead the charge.  As such, we’re learning a lot – and I have every intention of sharing these learnings with the reader along the way.  With major Advertisers in the mortgage, EDU and insurance verticals already participating, our platform is driving tens of thousands of inbound calls monthly.  We see lots of data, and we talk about this stuff all day.  Just ask my wife.

So please, dig in.  Follow us, and share with others that there’s a new player in mobile.  And, don’t miss next Tuesday’s followup: Why mobile; why now?

Post By
Rich Dent

You guys know me – booth babe.

So last month at Leads-Con East, I am chatting with this guy who says he’s a big leads buyer.  He likes our LIVE Hot Transfer concept, and wants his enrollment officers to receive live, interested leads on the phone, but …

“Can’t you guys qualify them more?”

This comment shows how times have changed.  In the old days, companies were simply handing a fat pile of leads over to sales, and asking them to call them all.  It was like looking for a needle in a hay stack.

Then DoublePositive came along and found the needle in the hay stack.  We patented the LIVE Hot Transfer process, so that companies could receive phone calls from live consumers who were ready to talk with a salesperson.

Now this guy wanted to know if we could take it a step further and thread the needle for him.

“We do some simple qualifying,” I cautioned.  “But in my opinion, you should be careful what you ask for.  You might do yourself more harm than good.”

He said, “Why?  If I’m talking to people I can’t help, I want to filter those people out.”

“I understand,” I said.  “But you need to be careful who you filter out, or you will filter everybody out.”

“Not sure I follow,” he said.

I tried again.  “Think of it this way.  What if they have a family member you could help out? What if you discover there is another service or product you could provide?  You never know unless you talk to them.”

He shrugged.

“You are basically asking the call center agent to make that decision for you,” I said.  “That’s not wise.  What you should do is, let us eliminate those consumers who really had no interest of ever speaking to you about your product or service.  Let us take away that work for you.  And the rest?  Those who have raised their hand and said they want to talk to you?  You should take those calls as fast as I can transfer them to you.”

“I don’t know,” he said.  “There’s got to be an easier way.”

I gave him one of Sean’s great lines: “There’s nuggets of gold in the hills.  Finding them is the hard part – that’s our job.  It’s your job to work them.”

“Well, I need someone who will do all the work for me,” he said.

At this point I just had to laugh, shake his hand, and wish him luck.

So I’m writing this post to help folks understand.  There is a right way to use a LIVE hot transfer service and a wrong way.

If you want us to call your leads and transfer back only those that are ready to talk business, that’s the right way.

But you want us to call, qualify the lead, sell for you, close the deal and just send you the money …

Booth babe says, “Good luck.”

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
Rich Dent

When you’re hot, you’re hot, and DoublePositive is definitely hot.

First, we’re growing at a torrid pace.  That’s why we decided to bring both our DP East and DP West teams to LeadsCon East in New York last week.  Hopefully you got a chance to meet more of our talented people who are setting the industry on fire.

Second, we were happy to be in a position to underwrite LeadsCon East as Lead Sponsor this year.  DoublePositive has had a hot hand, and this is one small way we were able to give back to the community.

Third, to really spice things up, we brought our own hot sauce to the event.  It was a special fiery concoction that was brewed just for us.  We passed out 250 bottles in New York.  Yes, that’s me on the label.  Hot stuff, I know.

Are you tough enough to take the heat?  Can you handle all that Live Hot Transfers flavor?  If you were one of the fortunate (or unfortunate!) ones to pick up a bottle, let us know if your tongue survived.  And check back soon because I expect to have a few more posts about LeadsCon.