Justin Reese, Director of Marketing for LeadPoint UK, writes in an article for iMedia Connection on the benefits of using a lead platform along with other lead gen trends within the UK.

The upcoming publication of the IAB’s Online Lead Generation Buyers Guide is a watershed moment for the fledgling UK online lead generation industry and will give advertisers a handy reference guide to help get their lead generation campaigns off the ground. The guide covers everything a prospective lead buyer needs to know right now, but what does the future hold for online lead generation in the UK?  The market is growing and evolving at breakneck speed with new developments occurring on an almost monthly basis.  The following are a few of the central trends.

The platform play

You buy leads, you supply leads but how do you manage multiple campaigns across multiple verticals simultaneously? Easy — you need an online lead generation platform.

Whether you are a lead buyer, a lead seller or an agency, the increasing need for transparency, efficiency and tracking are making the lead generation platform an increasingly attractive proposition. From digital insertion orders, real-time reporting or just the ability to manage multiple suppliers and buyers in one place, a platform can add real value to all the stakeholders in the lead generation value chain.

By making the whole lead generation process more efficient a platform has the potential to deliver huge cost savings. Imagine a life insurance company buying 1,000 leads per week for £40 per lead from 20 suppliers. With these volumes there will always be an element of duplication as consumers fill in multiple forms online. Most advertisers end up paying for everything, which means paying for the same lead more than once. Even with a duplication rate as low as 5 per cent that’s still over £2,000 wasted per week, which is over £100,000 per year. Loading these 20 suppliers into a platform that can de-dupe in real-time can be very cost effective so it’s no wonder that many advertisers see these types of platforms as the future of online lead generation.

The Americans are coming

They invented it, they perfected it and they even have LeadsCon, an annual conference in Las Vegas dedicated to it, but up until now American involvement in the UK online lead generation industry has been limited. In many verticals, they have been more casual observers rather than major players. But over the last year or so, there has been an increasing interest from the American lead gen companies in bringing their knowledge and experience over to the UK market and showing us a few tricks. From increasingly sophisticated methods that generate leads from social media sites to the use of online video to help improve form conversions, expect to see more of these types of developments make their way across the Atlantic along with a few of the companies that perfected them.

If you thought data leads were good…

For high value verticals like financial services, many advertisers buy leads to put into a call centre to try to convert into a sale over the phone. Even if you work with the best suppliers in the world with the best technology, there will always be some degree of wastage — perhaps the consumer just doesn’t pick up the phone or they didn’t read clearly enough that somebody would call them if they submitted their details so were just looking for an online quote.

Either way, it can cost a significant sum to process these types of leads. For many of these high value lead products there is an increasing demand to buy voice leads as well as or instead of data leads where you pay a premium but have a guaranteed contact.

Up until now, this market has been filled by call centres cold calling old data and then hot-keying interested consumers through to the advertiser’s own call centre. The downside is that often the consumers are pushed through without really having much interest in the product and the end results are more contacts but also more wastage. And finally, the next big thing in terms of voice leads is where the consumer is initiating the contact — i.e., they are responding to marketing and instead of filling in a form to be contacted, they dial a number and their call is then routed to the relevant advertiser with each valid call paid for on a cost per call basis. Again, this is big business in the US — expect to see this execution making waves on this side of the pond over the coming months.

We at LeadPoint work extremely hard to create a marketplace that successfully delivers quality leads to our buyers.  The basis for this is that happy buyers increase their orders which in turn reward the marketing sources who submit the leads into the market.

You are able to tell that your work is paying off as revenues for your company grow as a result of buyers increasing their lead purchases and sellers increasing the volume of leads they submit into the market.  It is also nice, however, to be recognized from time to time by a neutral third party.  This was the case of a recent article by Michael Ferree in his popular lead gen blog LeadCritic.  In an article called “Quality Companies do Rise to the Top,” Michael writes:

“I surveyed 4 significant lead buyers (in the mortgage space) which constantly mentioned receiving excellent quality leads from LeadPoint, QuinStreet, MortgageLoan.com  and Adchemy. I know first hand that these companies employ leaders in the space that care about the consumers’ experience, lead quality and the lead buyer. If you are in the mortgage space you should take a look at these companies for leads.”

While it was great for LeadPoint to be individually singled out, it was also exciting that one of our top lead providers, MortgageLoan.com, was recognized as well.

Up until recently, lead buyers have traditionally only been able to purchase a market blend of leads through the LeadPoint exchange.  With a market blend, if a buyer creates an order for 2,000 leads, he/she might receive 250 from Source A, 100 from Source B, 25 from Source C and so on.  LeadPoint carefully measures the quality of each lead and the quality of each of our sellers to ensure that the overall performance of the market blend meets our high standards.

Based on interest from both buyers and sellers, we have added functionality that offers greater transparency providing buyers with the ability to purchase leads directly from specific lead sources.  MortgageLoan.com is one of these sources.  They submit leads into our market blend, but we also enable buyers to purchase leads directly from MortgageLoan.com from within their LeadPoint account.  Thus, of the four sources that Michael mentioned, two of them involved LeadPoint.

Offering the ability of purchasing leads directly from specific sources is an important innovation of the LeadPoint marketplace.  It supports LeadPoint’s goal of providing greater transparency and of being a single destination for all of one’s lead buying needs.

As a single market that offers numerous lead sources, we greatly simplify the lead buyers’ efforts to test new lead sources and optimize orders based on the sources that work best for them.  Having strong partners like MortgageLoan.com who are developing strong brand recognition for their quality is important in this endeavor and we look forward to more of our strong sellers getting the recognition they deserve as they develop their own brand identity within our marketplace.

A recent posting on Craigslist has provided an opportunity for LeadPoint to clarify our company payment policies, the benefit of our new Digital Ordering System, and the overall benefit of purchasing leads within our exchange.

The Craigslist post is from an individual who claims to have created an account to purchase mortgage leads over our exchange, but has subsequently elected to leave the mortgage business.  The poster asserts to have provided a deposit to fund their account which still has a balance of $1,800. They go on to say that because LeadPoint does not offer refunds, they are willing to transfer this deposit at a significant savings to another party.  To accomplish this they will work with the other party to create a new LeadPoint account and then transfer the remaining funds to it.

This post has inaccuracies which LeadPoint would like to clear up.  First, LeadPoint does refund deposits made by buyers.  Upon request, we return unspent monies less a small processing fee.  Consequently, it would never be in the interest of this individual to transfer his/her deposit to another company at a “big discount.”

LeadPoint’s focus is to provide a neutral environment (akin to eBay’s exchange) where buyers and sellers of leads conduct lead transactions that generate value for both parties.  We work diligently to create best-in-class technology and processes that support this effort.  A recent accomplishment which dramatically improves the exchange is our Digital Ordering System, a first of its kind in the lead gen industry.

The Digital Ordering System provides buyers with tremendous flexibility in how they purchase leads.  With its introduction LeadPoint no longer requires deposits on new accounts.  Now, buyers simply set up payments for specific lead orders.  A buyer is still able to pre-fund an order, however, there is now an auto pay feature which charges a buyer’s credit card once his or her account balance falls below a minimum balance threshold that the buyer sets.  Thus, it is no longer necessary to pre-fund with a large sum.

When buyers create new orders, LeadPoint encourages that these test campaigns include a minimum of 100 leads.  This volume level is recommended in order to provide an accurate understanding of the performance of the leads.  Orders that are less than 100 leads simply do not provide a large enough sampling.

To assist buyers in accurately tracking and optimizing their campaigns, LeadPoint provides a rich suite of reports.  For buyers to benefit fully from these reports they need to provide LeadPoint with feedback on their leads.  Another benefit of providing feedback is that LeadPoint uses it to carefully monitor the quality of leads that sellers submit to the exchange. Based on buyer feedback, LeadPoint increases lead flow from quality sources and removes from the exchange poor performing sources.

LeadPoint also uses buyer feedback in our LeadClass Quality Scoring program (currently rolled out in our Credit Card Debt and Tax Debt products). The more customer feedback LeadPoint receives, the greater our ability to improve lead quality which ultimately has a direct impact on the performance of the leads that our buyers receive.

LeadPoint is confident that our policies contribute to one of the best lead buying experiences available.  Because of this we continue to attract to our exchange serious lead buyers and high quality lead sellers.  We encourage anyone interested in purchasing leads to click here to open an account or contact us directly at 866-832-8161 to speak with a sales person who can help you set up a lead campaign to meet your individual needs. We believe you will enjoy your lead buying experience and become one of our numerous satisfied customers.