One of the fastest growing departments within LeadPoint is our United Kingdom division. One of the benefits that our UK cousins have is the fact that lead generation is still in its infancy in the UK compared with the US. This can be both a benefit and an obstacle.

As in the United States, the lead generation pitch makes a lot of sense – reach prospective customers, buy the results of somebody else’s marketing spend, and speak to prospective customers within moments of their requesting to be contacted.

Our UK office felt marketing such a concept to a new market would be a slam dunk and that prospective partners would be lining up around the corner to buy leads.

As evidenced by their 300% growth in 2008, the reception of lead gen in the UK has been strong. However, as is generally the case, success does not come without challenges. Despite our UK team’s best efforts, they were not always able to communicate the value of how lead generation and technology are interlinked.

In the US where work shuts down if the Internet should happen to go down and many of us cannot fathom life without a Blackberry, it appears that the need for technology in the UK (at least in some business sectors) is not as pervasive as in the US.

In one instance our UK office was contacted by a prospective buyer who read in the press about the merits of lead generation and was excited at the prospect of buying them. Unfortunately, the gentleman did not have an email address to receive leads, nor a computer for that matter.

When trying to explain how online lead generation and owning a computer go together like the British summer and rain, he promptly told our sales person that he didn’t like typing so he would not be changing his working practices any time soon.

Our UK office assumed that this was just an isolated incident. Apparently this wasn’t the case. Not long afterwards, another prospective customer contacted them who also did not have a computer. However, this gentleman did not see the lack of a computer as an obstruction to buying Internet generated leads. Instead, he came up with the solution that our UK office should just call him every time he received a lead and read him the lead detail over the phone. He could then just copy the information down himself.

Despite such setbacks, lead generation is continuing to grow in popularity in the UK as it has in the US as word of its value spreads. We congratulate our UK office for their 2008 success and look forward to a successful 2009.

It is rare, these days, to turn on a news program and not hear a story related to the housing crisis. Just think about events since 2007: the collapse of Bear Stearns and the Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy, snowballing Fed rate cuts, the government take over of Fannie and Freddie, not to mention countless other bailouts…all due to homeowner inability to make mortgage payments. In an environment where financial institutions scramble to prevent more mortgage write downs, a new industry is gaining momentum, that of Loan Modification.

A “loan mod,” in common parlance, is a series of negotiations between a mortgagee (or their representative) and the holder of the mortgage note. The goal is to create repayment terms that allow the homeowner to continue to afford their mortgage payments. Modifications to the mortgage note may change the interest rate, the term of the loan, or even provide a principal reduction.

A representative with insight into the loan mod process can often make a real difference to the homeowner and substantial profits. Consequently, demand for the ideal consumer has gained traction in the lead generation space. To address this growing demand, LeadPoint launched our own Loan Modification products.

By leveraging the LeadPoint trading platform technology we are simultaneously releasing both a Voice product as well as a Voice Verified Data product.

The Voice product delivers calls initiated by homeowners who respond to Loan Modification TV and radio spots. In these commercials homeowners are informed that they may avoid foreclosure if they are qualified for a low fixed interest rate and reduced monthly payments.

Data leads are generated from the same advertising, but are screened by an on shore call representative at a LeadPoint call center and converted into data format and sent in real-time to up to two buyers.

Tough economic times provide opportunities for innovative companies. LeadPoint’s Loan Modification Leads are another example of our continuous promise to such innovation.

For those of you unfamiliar with Kaizen 改善, it’s a Japanese philosophy focused on continuous improvement. It’s a philosophy that LeadPoint embraces as part of a continued effort to enhance the quality of leads that flow through our market. In keeping with this philosophy, over the last few months we have been improving the measurement protocols used to evaluate each lead that lead sellers submit to each LeadPoint market.  Our efforts were rewarded with some eye opening results.

Online lead generation is inherently a numbers game. Visitors click on an ad. Some of them fill out the form. Others leave. Some visitors convert to actual sales and others don’t provide their real phone numbers. This disparity is the backbone of lead gen.

Some sources have always provided better results than others. We’ve worked diligently to improve our ability to grade leads and sellers effectively.  We’ve learned a lot, some of which we suspected all along and some of which surprised us greatly.  The most shocking discovery was the level of energy some companies will exert to commit what is best described as nothing other than egregious fraud. Our new market monitoring processes have allowed us to quickly identify and remove these bad actors and to refund affected lead buyer funds in a timely fashion.

As a by-product of our efforts and innovations, we have been able to ensure that both valued constituents of our marketplaces can continue to thrive. Our lead buyers can buy with the assurance that they are purchasing a “top shelf” product that yields industry leading conversion metrics. This renewal of confidence in the market resulted in our trusted, quality marketing partners once again capturing top returns on their marketing dollars.

Standing at the doorstep of an exciting 2009, LeadPoint reaffirms its pledge to practice a quality focused Kaizen in our pursuit of attaining market Nirvana, a trading platform where both sides of the model achieve a state of blissful return on investment.