Ashleigh Horrobin, LeadPoint UK’s Marketing Executive, discusses invalid leads.

If I had a pound for every time somebody asked what counts as an invalid lead, I would soon be joining Bill Gates on the Forbes list! Having said that it is probably one of the most important questions for lead buyers to know the answer to as the percentage of invalid leads can be the difference between success and failure.

So what exactly are invalid leads?

The exact definition of an invalid lead will vary depending on who you ask but in general it is a lead that includes information provided by consumers that cannot be used to contact them or disqualifies them from the offer or product they are applying for. This includes things like incorrect contact numbers, disconnected phones, wrong person on the lead form, consumer requested contact for a different product etc.

Why do lead buyers receive invalid leads?

While lead suppliers can put in lots of measures to reduce the number of invalid leads that get passed on to lead buyers, no system is perfect and every lead buyer will receive invalid leads in their overall mix. But why do invalid leads even exist in the first place?

In many cases, consumers simply make mistakes while they are submitting their information such as a missing a digit on their phone number or misspelling an email address. In other cases the leads are a deliberate hoax where someone (or something in the case of a lot of spam) has filled in fake names, numbers or email addresses with no intention to be contacted.
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The following article was written by Justin Rees for myintroducer. To read the original, click here

The Olympics are rapidly approaching and with the excitement comes the explosion of marketing activity.
It seems every branded product and company is jumping on the Olympic bandwagon finding the most tenuous links to connect themselves with the big event. So we thought if McDonalds can claim, “you don’t have to be an Olympic athlete to eat like one” we too can find an association between the Olympics and lead generation!

The athlete

So let’s start with the athletes who are obviously the lead buyers in our Olympic analogy! Imagine two athletes both training for the 100m sprint. One athlete creates a training program, working hard in the gym and on the track everyday until the event. Each week his strength and speed improves continuously increasing his chance of success.

The other athlete has no race strategy and hardly trains. Who is going to win?
The athlete who follows up on their commitment with a series of planned activities or the one who has no strategy and dedication?
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The following article was written by Justin Rees for myintroducer. To read the original, click here

The conventional wisdom is that real-time internet leads have the highest conversion rates and are therefore the most expensive while aged leads are significantly cheaper with lower performance.
With this in mind, should prospective lead buyers only consider real-time leads?

The first thing to point out is that both real-time and aged leads are generated through the exact same process, the difference lying in the time frame in which the lead is sold. Real-time leads are sold immediately after the consumer has filled out a form online whereas aged leads can be anything from a few hours old to weeks old.

It is also important to clarify that leads that do not find a buyer in real-time are not necessarily any less desirable in terms of their criteria.
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Ashleigh Horrobin, LeadPoint UK’s Marketing Executive, discusses budgeting for success .

Thinking about budgets is often put at the bottom of the list of priorities for lead buyers but setting the correct budget is vital to your campaigns and can often be the difference between success and failure. It should come right at the top of the list and should be an integral part of planning your lead buying campaign.

As a general rule you need to set a budget to enable you to get a large enough sample of leads to give you the maximum likelihood of the outcome of your first campaign to be determined by true performance rather than pot luck. For lead buyers with smaller or limited budgets, this means making sure you get as many leads as you possible can for that spend.
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The following article was written by Justin Rees for myintroducer. To read the original,
click here

Do you feel like your lead generation strategy is under performing and in need of some attention?
Or maybe you are new to the industry and need a helping hand? Either way we have come up with some useful tips to help you get the most out of your lead generation campaigns.

Don’t forget to filter

One of the most important aspects of marketing is the ability to target the right consumers, allowing you to focus your energy and attention on prospects that are best suited to your offering. Luckily for lead buyers most lead providers offer filtering options allowing you to specify what kind of customers you want. For example, most mortgage lead providers enable you to filter by geography, loan value, credit grade and even maximum LTV.

It is important however to remember that the more filters you use, the fewer leads there will be available that meet your criteria which often means you might have to pay a bit more to get them. It is therefore essential to find a balance between the filtering and lead price.
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