double POSITIVE Marketing Group, Inc.

Post By
Joey Liner

DoublePositive Chief Revenue Officer Casey Cook will be speaking on a panel titled “Fish Where the Fishing is Good – Scoring to Provide Visibility into the “Right” Leads for Buyers and Sellers.” at 3:00pm on Wednesday March 2nd.  Come by for this exciting panel.  Joining Casey will be Walid Kakoush, VP of Marketing and Admissions for EDMC OHE, and Vince Lewis, Managing Director of ClassesUSA. Hosting the panel will be Chris McArdle Executive Director, Interactive Markets, TARGUSinfo.

Post By
Joey Liner

With LeadsCon Las Vegas 2011 kicking off next week, everybody’s talking about speed-to-lead.  Even the Harvard Business Review has an opinion: “The Short Life of Online Sales Leads.”

The report comes out at the perfect time.  On Tuesday at 2:40PM, I will be representing DoublePositive in a panel discussion, “All About The Call – From Speed to Lead to Call Center Effectiveness”.  The topic is sure to create some sparks.

So come hear good, in-depth, healthy conversation between four companies that champion the process of speed-to-lead.

And let us know your take on the HBR report in the comments below.

Post By
Rich Dent

Last month I wrote about the “perfect storm” for lead buyers. Like most storms, it didn’t last long.

Here we are, about a month later, and the refi market is shrinking fast. There are fewer and fewer people looking to refinance or able to refinance. As a result, the few leads that are available are sold more times.

Some of our clients and partners here at DoublePositive were seeing their transfer rates dip. They called us to say, “What’s going on?”

Rather than blame the economy (where does that get you?), we turned the question on ourselves. Are we doing everything we can to get as many new transfers over to our clients as possible? We already knew the leads were being sold the maximum amount of times, and speed-to-lead was no longer the secret sauce. We needed a new recipe that would allow us to contact more people.

Today I’ll share with you the first part of our answer, which we’re very excited about: our new inbound call-back service.

“You say outbound, I say inbound.”

Historically, when we call the consumer, they answer the phone 50% of the time – but lately that contact rate is dipping. Part of the problem now is, more consumers are using their cell phones as their primary phone number. They hide behind a personal firewall, screening their calls, especially numbers they don’t recognize. We had to find another way to reach them.

And so we followed a hunch. We assumed that consumers, if they saw the same number flashing in their caller ID a couple times, would wonder who is trying to reach them, and call the number back. To test this theory, and prove that we could get more consumers to answer their phones or call us back, we developed inbound call-back technology.

Here’s how it works:

1. DoublePositive (Call Center A) outbound dials on an online inquiry
2. Consumer does not answer the phone
3. Consumer calls back phone number on their Caller ID (phone number provided by RingRevenue)
4. Consumer routed to an IVR (also provided to us by RingRevenue)
5. Consumer can either choose to speak with our client or can be added to our DNC
6. Consumer chooses to speak to our client. Call routed to DoublePositive Inbound Call Center (Call Center B)
7. DoublePositive agent answers call, confirms interest and transfers call to client
8. Call Center B sends disposition in real time through DoublePositive to Call Center A and the lead is immediately marked as transfer and removed from the queue

To learn more about RingRevenue, our partner in providing inbound call-back services, check out the press release.

Lead buyers benefit from this solution, because not only are we the first to reach their leads with our outbound calling, but we’ve also found a way to capture those who are screening their calls and get them to call us back, improving transfer rates.

Lead sellers benefit because this service ultimately improves the performance of their leads. In a perfect world, we will contact more leads and transfer more borrowers to the lender. Ideally, lenders will convert more of those leads to loans, and will buy more leads. Win-win-win.

Statistically speaking, it’s still early, but the initial data indicates a slight rise in contact rates. It appears to be working. Week over week, more and more people are calling us back.

The cool part, to me, is how synchronized our two call center operations are. Though they are in different parts of the country, our centers are talking to the consumer and communicating with each other seamlessly, in real time. As a result, we are poised to contact more people and transfer more calls.

Check back soon because we have more to come. DoublePositive is rolling out a suite of innovative products in the coming weeks. In the meantime, please let us know what you think of our inbound call-back concept, in the comments below.

Post By
Brian Tomasette

Press release on RingRevenue’s site

Partnership allows lead buyers to generate more voice leads, minimize consumer contact time, maximize consumer contact, and improve ROI.

Santa Barbara, CA (February 15, 2011) – Today, RingRevenue, the leader in call performance marketing and DoublePositive Marketing Group, specializing in LIVE Hot Transfers, formally announced their partnership to deliver high-quality, live voice leads to national lead buyers in higher education, insurance and financial services. Since launching a series of call performance marketing campaigns with selected customers in late 2010, the partnership has already generated thousands of inbound live voice leads.

“We know the most valuable scenario is having the consumer on the phone from the start when their interest level is the highest and they are the most likely to convert to a paying customer,” says Brian Tomasette, Vice President of Media Products for DoublePositive. “Our partnership with RingRevenue allows us to deliver even more value to our customers by increasing the return on their advertising spend. Using RingRevenue, we’re able to include unique phone numbers in every advertisement. By doing so we are able to more accurately measure the effectiveness of those ad placements and we consistently see contact and conversion rate improvements on those ads and lead forms that include phone numbers.”

While marketers pay millions of dollars each year for leads and lead generation form completions, what they really want is customers. “The inherent challenge with lead forms is that consumers are at their peak interest level when they fill out the form, but the minute they hit the submit button they are on to something else and their interest level begins to decline,” adds Tomasette. The combination of inbound and outbound hot transfers allows a lead buyer to drastically minimize consumer contact time and maximize contact percentage, one of top metrics in lead value.

With RingRevenue’s call performance marketing solution, DoublePositive leverages strategic media placements and partnerships with publishers to drive inbound phone calls to unique toll-free phone numbers that connect consumers to agents in DoublePositive’s call center. The combination of RingRevenue’s call quality filtering technology and DoublePositive’s live agents qualifies the caller, confirms their interest and connects them live to the advertiser’s sales representatives.

“DoublePositive, like RingRevenue, is built on the premise that having the consumer directly on the phone is of great value to the advertiser,” says Jason Spievak, CEO of RingRevenue. “The combination of our technology and their call center’s qualification and live transfer process ensures that advertisers are delivered a high volume of quality voice leads that are ready to become customers.”

“We looked at a lot of call tracking vendors in our search to find the right partner. RingRevenue has a leadership team with a proven track record in both telephony and performance marketing, which is very important to us,” says Tomasette. “Off the shelf, the RingRevenue platform comes fully equipped with all of the lead generation tools we need: call ROI by keyword search tracking, instant access to promotional phone numbers, advanced call routing, creative services, great real time reporting and more. We knew we could easily get up and running right away and stay focused on delivering value to our clients. Our advertisers are already seeing the benefit in the form of new customers, increases in quality leads and expanded distribution.”

Both companies will be attending LeadsCon Las Vegas 2011 March 1-2, the premier conference for the online lead generation industry. DoublePositive is a Gold Sponsor of the event and can be heard talking about the power of phone calls in the panel session: All About The Call – From Speed to Lead to Call Center Effectiveness, on March 1.

About RingRevenue

RingRevenue improves every marketing campaign with better quality leads, higher conversions and increased ROI. By tapping the power of the phone, RingRevenue’s patent-pending call performance marketing platform captures and converts more high-value customers. RingRevenue’s comprehensive tracking and analytics consistently increase revenues from mobile, print and other “offline” media while also improving the performance of online campaigns such as search, email and display. RingRevenue powers many of the leading performance marketing networks and agencies. To learn more about RingRevenue or to request a demo, please visit ringrevenue.com or call 866-943-6426.

About DoublePositive

DoublePositive Marketing Group, Inc. bridges the “last mile” of converting traditional (data-only) leads into sales. DoublePositive has evolved the model of lead generation to provide sales professionals with a live, qualified, and interested consumer, along with the consumer’s data, all in real time. DoublePositive primarily serves clients and lead providers in the mortgage leads, online education enrollment leads, and insurance leads industries. To learn more visit: www.doublepositive.com.

Post By
Brian Ocheltree

How to Use the Supplier Lead Funnel to Optimize Supply and Maximize Sales Volume

Summary

• Supplier leads should be used appropriately to help optimize your growth
• Lead-Buyers can improve overall lead performance by connecting to more suppliers
• Lead-Buyers can overcome the typical technology integration hurdles with new Quick-Connect options
• A broad source of suppliers optimized on cost-per-sale-per-supplier creates aligned incentives for buyers and sellers

Understanding the Role of Supplier Leads

No one would question that supplier leads are almost always lower quality than branded leads. Branded leads are typically highly motivated and proactive consumers who are “in market”. They are usually exclusive, as well. The combination makes these the highest quality leads possible, and most likely to convert.

So why, then, would Lead-Buyers EVER want a lead from a lead supplier?

The reason is usually scale required to hit sales goals. Companies are limited in how many branded leads they can create cost-effectively. Once this point is reached, the cost-per-lead can sky rocket, making the ultimate cost-per-sale much too high. If a company has maximized its volume of cost-effective branded leads, wherever that point may be, and yet still needs sales growth, supplier leads are usually the next best option, by far. The quality may be lower, but the price is usually low, relatively speaking, and the available volume very high, if not unlimited for most buyers. If a buyer can make the economics work with supplier leads, meaning they can convert enough of them to obtain a reasonable cost-per-sale, then the injection of supplier leads into a sales floor can help a buyer attain almost any desired sales growth.

In our opinion, it is this combination of branded leads first, then supplier leads to fill the gap, that all Lead Buyers should consider when planning the best method of integrating supplier leads into their sales and marketing efforts.

The Power of Connecting to Many

Another simple fact: Lead-Buyers can lower their cost-per-lead and improve their ability to optimize lead flow by connecting to many suppliers.

There are several reasons to diversify supply sources as much as possible. First, having multiple supply sources creates more potential lead volume. Having more volume allows you to extract the performance of each supplier, and optimize towards the best performers.

Second, being connected to more suppliers increases the number of original lead generators, as opposed to lead aggregators or wholesalers, who buy from lead generators and resell to customers like you. This shift creates transparency that can help in your efforts to find the best performing leads sources. If all leads are purchased through an aggregator, you loose transparency to the original lead source, and then are dependent upon the aggregator for your supply source optimization. It is hard to know what an aggregator’s criteria might be when optimizing their supply sources.

Physically Connecting with New Suppliers Overnight – Third Party Connectivity Services

Despite the benefit of doing so, it can be challenging for Lead Buyers to connect with multiple Lead Supply sources and optimize lead flow to the top performers. We have seen firsthand from many clients that getting connected to new suppliers can take months, if not a year or more, due to the technical and testing requirements with each data feed. This level of complexity and cost prevents most companies from engaging with any but the largest of Lead Suppliers, at least initially, thus limiting their supply diversification.

One solution to this problem is to utilize a third-party connectivity platform. For example, DoublePositive’s Lead Funnel facilitates and automates the physical connection to many lead sources automatically, allowing Lead-Buyers to build one physical connection that is already connected to multiple supply sources, while allowing them to maintain a direct relationship with the supplier.

Lead Funnels are basically platforms that have already built XML connections to the suppliers. They can handle the connectivity and translation issues required, typically much more quickly and cost effectively. Here’s how it works:

In the above illustration, a Lead-Buyer in the Auto Insurance sector is using a DoublePositive Lead Funnel to solve this exact problem. The Lead Funnel consists of robust physical connections to all Lead Suppliers, combined with a proprietary Translation Engine that handles the entire custom data mapping per supply source. By building one connection to the DoublePositive Lead Funnel, the company can be connected to virtually every supplier, large and small, very quickly and efficiently.

In addition to reducing the time and cost of connecting to new supply sources, this type of third-party platform allows large Lead-Buyers to justify building connections to smaller suppliers, thus increasing the pool of available supply sources.

Using the Supplier Lead Funnel to Reduce Cost-Per-Sale-Per-Supplier

The Supplier Lead Funnel model overcomes the typical technology integration hurdle for Lead-Buyers looking to add new suppliers. Now that you are connected, how do you optimize for top performance?

The most effective way to optimize for top performance is to track conversions, or sales, and run cost-per-sale-per-suppler models. Incremental metrics – such as cost-per-contact, cost-per-transfer, transfer ratio, or cost-per-lead – can also be used as lower value, but real-time optimization metrics.

Understandably, that’s easier to do in some verticals than others, because of varying sales cycles. For example, in the auto insurance sector, a two-week sales cycle should be enough to give a feel for the quality of a lead source. In the mortgage sector, the sales cycle is a bit longer, whereas for-profit education has the longest sales cycle.

Services exist, such as DoublePositive, that will track conversion metrics for you. Companies can do it on their own, as well. Lead-Buyers with the ability to track can match conversions against leads and calculate the cost-per-sale-per-supplier on a monthly basis. They can then optimize by giving the bulk of the volume to their best performer.

When Conversion Data Is Not Available

What to do if your company cannot get conversion data? One option is to use performance data gathered through a process such as the DoublePositive Hot Transfer process, that provide real time metrics that are highly correlated to lead quality.

For example, you could use metrics such as “Contact” percentage, “Not Interested” percentage, or “Invalid Phone Number” percentage as an indicator of lead quality to compare multiple leads sources.

The Value of Transfer Ratio

The next best metric to optimize against, after conversion data, is the transfer ratio. The transfer ratio gives the strongest indication of lead quality, because it indicates the strength of leads relative to four key hurdles:

1) Consumers have been physically contacted

2) Consumer interest is confirmed

3) Consumers are qualified

4) Consumers are willing to hold on and be successfully transferred to the lead buyer by phone.

If any of those hurdles fail, the call is not transferred. But if all those hurdles are cleared, and the call is transferred, that is probably a very good lead.

Another benefit to transfer data: It is usually available within a second of the transaction, allowing you to optimize your lead sources in real-time, without spending more money on underperformers.

How to Optimize Toward Top Suppliers

As stated above, Lead-Buyers who have sufficient lead volume, along with the ability to track their conversion ratios, can match conversions against leads and calculate the cost-per-sale-per-supplier on a monthly basis. They can then optimize by giving the bulk of the volume to their best performer.

Why Let Suppliers Know You Are Optimizing

Another useful strategy is letting your suppliers know that you are optimizing your lead sources, and that the best performers will get the bulk of the volume. This allows you to create a Champion/Challenger environment where the top performer puts pressure on the weaker performers, and the incentives of the suppliers are aligned with yours: Namely, finding and optimizing their best sources of leads.

We have found suppliers to be very receptive to receiving data on their performance (cost per sale, for example), as long as they are given some conversion data to help them optimize on their end. This is especially true if they know that doing so could raise the lead volume that you are willing to purchase from them.

This is a productive and healthy win-win environment.

The Ability to Control Capacity Variability

In this light, the primary role of the supplier lead, tied to the Lead Funnel, is to improve the most important growth metric: cost-per-sale-per-supplier. More lead volume from more supply sources, with whom you are more transparent, equates to a lower cost-per-sale.

There is another benefit to using the Supplier Lead Funnel: increased control.

Companies striving to hit a growth goal will, at some point, need to hire more salespeople. The problem is that salespeople are fixed costs that don’t go away, whereas organic lead flow is variable.

Having variable control over volume allows companies to handle the inevitable ebb and flow or self-generated leads. The Supplier Lead Model provides this level of control. Lead-Buyers have almost complete control over volume, up or down, which they use to level out the accumulative lead flow on top of their organic lead flow. This gives companies control over capacity variability, and allows them to grow.

Review

What options are available for companies looking to grow beyond the capacity of their self-generated leads? Let’s review the facts.

1. Every company should maximum their high quality branded leads first
2. Supplier leads play a key role in growing the company as well. Putting plans in place to connect to multiple supply sources allows Lead-Buyers to lower the cost-per-sale and optimize for top performance
3. Though building connections to new supply sources is costly and difficult, new options are becoming available all the time to help, such as the DoublePositive Lead Funnel. Therefore, we recommend that all large Lead Buyers continuously search for new supply sources
4. Using a Supplier Lead Funnel significantly improves the most important growth metric: cost-per-sale-per-supplier
5. Companies that have control over cost-per-sale-per-supplier, and have control over capacity variability, are poised to grow

Post By
Joey Liner

Our friends at Leads360 have just released a terrific new product suite called Dial-IQ^TM. The intelligent dialer adds an outbound marketing layer to complement the inbound marketing results that high volume Lead Buyers are getting with their HOT Lead Transfer service. In this post, I want to show you why the two solutions work so well together.

First, consider the problem: All companies want to grow, but not all salespeople can get them there. In fact, if you were to grade them on a bell curve, insurance salespeople, loan officers and enrollment advisors would fall into the following categories:

Without changing the way they are asked to handle leads, most salespeople will continue doing what they have always done. The low end performers will stay low until they lose their jobs. The average folks will stay average, and the top performers will continue to shine. This is not a growth model for most companies.

On the other hand, pairing solutions like Leads360’s Dial-IQ and DoublePositive’s HOT Lead Transfer service can make the entire bell curve more productive.

What’s the difference between the two? With dialers, the phone rings, and the first available salesperson picks up, with a contact on the other end who may or may not be qualified or interested in talking. With transfers, the phone rings through to only your top performers. On the line is a live, interested consumer who has been screened and is ready to have a meaningful conversation.

DoublePositive has always preached that Lead Buyers should be doing inbound and outbound marketing simultaneously. You don’t want salespeople sitting there staring at the phone all day, waiting for inbound marketing to deliver. Neither do you want them making outbound calls all day without ever having a meaningful conversation. Both scenarios are bad for morale and have a negative impact on productivity.

Instead, you want a mixture of automatic outbound calling and automatic inbound transfers. The math bears this out. Because we call leads all day, every day, we at DoublePositive know that, out of 100 leads, only 50 are contactable. This means that Dial-IQ will help you get in contact with only 50% of your leads. We have also found that fewer than half of those contacts are ready to have a meaningful conversation. In the end, only 20 of the 100 leads will transfer – therefore it is a tremendous waste of the salesperson’s time to call all 100.

Dial-IQ is great for making contact. The solution is 100 times better than simply giving leads to loan officers to dial themselves. You need a technology solution to get the most out of your outbound marketing. But the numbers show that making contact does not correlate to having a meaningful conversation. That’s why we encourage companies to use a service like DoublePositive to generate inbound calls from consumers who are ready to have a meaningful conversation. And use a product suite like Dial-IQ to automate the follow-up with those contacts who are interested and qualified but not ready to buy on the first call.

As I said, all companies want to grow. But not all salespeople will have the discipline to religiously contact leads the first time, let alone the second time, third time, fourth time, etc. And yet, in an ultra-competitive market, where leads are being sold multiple times, they must. Companies must find a way to deliver HOT leads to their top performers, and automate follow-ups to boost the performance of the entire sales force. Coupling a dialer with a hot transfer service gives you the technology to do what humans can’t consistently do.

I’d love to hear from some folks out there who are doing this. What have you found in terms of productivity? Please leave a comment below.