When leads go offline

One of the main focuses of the guide is to help advertisers think about what is required from them once they have received the leads. There is a whole range of things that can be done to ensure that leads have the highest chance of converting into business from the marketing language used on landing pages to real-time validation of lead data but ultimately the performance of a lead generation campaign comes down to what the advertiser does with the leads and their ability to measure the results.

Lead processing can broadly be divided into leads processed online (i.e. through email newsletters etc.) and leads processed offline (often through outbound call centres). In both cases the lead supplier must rely on the advertiser’s own processes to turn these
leads into revenue. In addition, for each method of follow up, once the leads are delivered to the advertiser there is a break in the chain and the flow of information and there is a resulting reliance on the advertiser to somehow feed data back into this chain.

For leads processed online, the performance of the campaign will often be determined by the robustness and execution of the advertisers’ remarketing programme. If the advertiser is collecting email newsletter sign up leads and initial lead performance is being measured by open rates, click through rates and ultimately sales – although these things are fairly easy to measure there are a lot of variables out of the lead suppliers control that will effect campaign performance. For example, the creatives, call to action, email programme used, email subject lines etc. will all impact upon the eventual ROI of the campaign and if these are out of the lead suppliers control to some extent they have to just cross their fingers and hope the advertiser knows what they are doing!

Where it gets even trickier for lead suppliers is when leads go offline. Not only is it harder to track and measure the results which puts an even greater reliance on the advertiser, but the leads are often much more expensive so every lead really does count.

For example, for high value finance leads that can cost £50 or more and where the value of a conversion can be thousands of pounds, then just a few percentage points can make the difference between an average campaign and a successful one. When the margin for error is so small, if the advertiser doesn’t have the systems and processes in place to follow best practice recommendation then you could easily have a situation where an advertiser might cancel a lead generation campaign because of how they have processed leads or even because they can’t measure the results accurately rather than whether the leads are actually any good. This exposes lead suppliers to a great deal of risk and why up until now a lot of agencies has shied away giving their clients a lead generation offering.

In a world where big advertiser budgets are controlled by agencies, it is up to the lead providers to help the agencies educate their clients about lead generation. While lead generation can be a very effective method of customer acquisition, it has to be pitched as a more strategic opportunity rather than just allocating a budget to buying leads as the success of this channel is so determined by the technology and processes of the advertiser.

Justin Rees is Director of Marketing and Partnerships for LeadPoint, the world’s first online lead exchange marketplace. LeadPoint provides over 3,000 real-time leads a day to over 2,500 customers across a range of verticals. Justin is a regular commentator in the marketing and trade press as well as being part of the IAB’s Online Lead Generation Taskforce.