double POSITIVE Marketing Group, Inc.

You guys know me – booth babe.

So last month at Leads-Con East, I am chatting with this guy who says he’s a big leads buyer.  He likes our LIVE Hot Transfer concept, and wants his enrollment officers to receive live, interested leads on the phone, but …

“Can’t you guys qualify them more?”

This comment shows how times have changed.  In the old days, companies were simply handing a fat pile of leads over to sales, and asking them to call them all.  It was like looking for a needle in a hay stack.

Then DoublePositive came along and found the needle in the hay stack.  We patented the LIVE Hot Transfer process, so that companies could receive phone calls from live consumers who were ready to talk with a salesperson.

Now this guy wanted to know if we could take it a step further and thread the needle for him.

“We do some simple qualifying,” I cautioned.  “But in my opinion, you should be careful what you ask for.  You might do yourself more harm than good.”

He said, “Why?  If I’m talking to people I can’t help, I want to filter those people out.”

“I understand,” I said.  “But you need to be careful who you filter out, or you will filter everybody out.”

“Not sure I follow,” he said.

I tried again.  “Think of it this way.  What if they have a family member you could help out? What if you discover there is another service or product you could provide?  You never know unless you talk to them.”

He shrugged.

“You are basically asking the call center agent to make that decision for you,” I said.  “That’s not wise.  What you should do is, let us eliminate those consumers who really had no interest of ever speaking to you about your product or service.  Let us take away that work for you.  And the rest?  Those who have raised their hand and said they want to talk to you?  You should take those calls as fast as I can transfer them to you.”

“I don’t know,” he said.  “There’s got to be an easier way.”

I gave him one of Sean’s great lines: “There’s nuggets of gold in the hills.  Finding them is the hard part – that’s our job.  It’s your job to work them.”

“Well, I need someone who will do all the work for me,” he said.

At this point I just had to laugh, shake his hand, and wish him luck.

So I’m writing this post to help folks understand.  There is a right way to use a LIVE hot transfer service and a wrong way.

If you want us to call your leads and transfer back only those that are ready to talk business, that’s the right way.

But you want us to call, qualify the lead, sell for you, close the deal and just send you the money …

Booth babe says, “Good luck.”

When you’re hot, you’re hot, and DoublePositive is definitely hot.

First, we’re growing at a torrid pace.  That’s why we decided to bring both our DP East and DP West teams to LeadsCon East in New York last week.  Hopefully you got a chance to meet more of our talented people who are setting the industry on fire.

Second, we were happy to be in a position to underwrite LeadsCon East as Lead Sponsor this year.  DoublePositive has had a hot hand, and this is one small way we were able to give back to the community.

Third, to really spice things up, we brought our own hot sauce to the event.  It was a special fiery concoction that was brewed just for us.  We passed out 250 bottles in New York.  Yes, that’s me on the label.  Hot stuff, I know.

Are you tough enough to take the heat?  Can you handle all that Live Hot Transfers flavor?  If you were one of the fortunate (or unfortunate!) ones to pick up a bottle, let us know if your tongue survived.  And check back soon because I expect to have a few more posts about LeadsCon.

Back in February, in my post How to Strengthen Contact Rates , I told you guys about the new inbound-outbound service DoublePositive had recently launched.

As I mentioned at the time, our contact rate is historically about 50% – but early this year, we saw that rate dipping.  We knew the problem had to do with smart phones and the personal firewall they create.  According to the most recent Nielsen report, as of December 2010, 31% of cell phone users in the United States are smartphone users.

Show of hands.  If I called you on your smart phone right now, and you didn’t recognize the number, would you answer?

Probably not.  Over 90% of consumers would ignore an unknown number, according to an informal survey I ran on Facebook.  But those same consumers said they probably would call back if the caller tried to reach them more than once.  Wouldn’t you?

Our new inbound call-back service was born.

So, are they calling us back?

It’s still very early, and so far, we’ve limited our test to mortgage leads.  But I can tell you definitively that we’ve seen a lot of call-backs.  And when they call, one of two things is happening.  Either they hang up right away (“Oh, it’s ABC Mortgage.  I don’t feel like talking to them right now”), or they stay on the phone because they are interested in speaking with a representative.  Those in the second category are transferring at 70%, a very high rate.

What does that mean to lead buyers and lead sellers?

It means we are improving the performance of your leads.  Keep in mind, those call-backs are consumers we previously never would have been able to contact.

As a result of this early success, we decided to roll out our call-back service across all verticals.  Our new test group is 80% of all the leads we are dialing on, and we are holding 20% back as a control group.  I will share the results as soon as comparative data becomes available.

Meantime, we’re still asking ourselves, what else can we do to get people to call us back?

Local versus 800

At LeadsCon in Vegas last month, DoublePositive partner Joey Liner spoke on a panel with Ken Krogue, President of InsideSales.com, a dialer manufacturer.  Ken confirmed what DoublePositive had long suspected.  He said that InsideSales.com had seen a nice uplift in performance by displaying local numbers to consumers, instead of 800 numbers.

In our experience, this seemed true.  Prior the conference, we had conducted another informal survey on Facebook.  We asked, would you be more likely to answer the phone if the caller was a local number versus an 800 number?  Again, over 90% of consumers told us they would be more likely to answer a local number, because it might be someone they know.

DoublePositive decided to test this theory.  We reached out to one of our key clients in the mortgage industry, and will perform a test on the leads we dial on their behalf.  The expectation is that using local numbers will increase our contact and transfer rates.  We’ll let you know how it goes.

Needs evolve.  Buying habits change.  The important thing for all of us is to keep innovating.  Stay ahead of the curve, and you’ll be ready for where the market takes you next.

Your turn.  What are you doing to get consumers to call you back?

I have been silent for a few weeks, but for good reasons. March was just a crazy month for us at DoublePositive. We had our best month with respect to Hot transfers.  We had LeadsCon 2011, the Lending Tree Summit, March Madness and Opening Day for the Baltimore Orioles!  I am back and have some good stuff I want to share with everyone.

This year in Vegas was my 4^th LeadsCon, and I must say, the growth of this event has been nothing short of amazing.  At 2500 participants, word has clearly gotten out.  More lead buyers from more verticals are realizing how important it is to attend the pioneering conference for the online lead generation industry.  And why not?  They get a valuable take-away: Information that can revolutionize their sales function.

My role at LeadsCon this year was “booth babe” – I didn’t spend a lot of time in break-out sessions but stayed out on the floor where I could talk directly with hundreds of lead buyers and take a pulse on what’s really happening out there.  Here are some things I heard:

The pain is spreading

Problems that used to affect only the mortgage industry have spread other lead-buying sectors as well (for-profit education, insurance, home services, automotive, real estate, etc.).  I even met some great people from the 2^nd largest supplier of diabetic equipment in the country, who said they purchased thousands of leads per month.  They told me, “It may take us an hour or two to get back to a lead – and by then it’s too late.”  Sound familiar?

The pain is deepening

I also spoke with a lot of companies that were afraid to expand their businesses.  They knew that simply buying more leads wouldn’t work, because then they would have to invest heavily in recruiting, hiring, training to expand the sales floor – all of which could take months, whereas they needed results immediately.  Have you been there?

The solution is working

And then there were the dozens of folks I spoke with who were already fully aware of the value of LIVE hot transfers.  I got to spend quality time among friends who had successfully leveraged our process and grown their businesses.  Here are some of the success stories I heard:

• “I know I can start buying more leads tomorrow and send them to my top guys, increasing lead flow overnight without missing a beat.”
• “We are talking to interested consumers within minutes, not hours.”
• “We were able to ramp up without hiring.”
• “We love how flexible hot transfers are.  Now we can speed up or slow down the lead flow at a moment’s notice, unlike call centers, which put us on the hook for a certain amount of leads per month, even when we can’t handle them.”

One great thing about meeting people in new verticals is that our service is plug-and-play.  It makes no difference to us if they are in mortgage, for-profit education, insurance, or even diabetic equipment.  We make their phone ring with live, qualified consumers who are interested in talking with a sales professional.  Everyone can win.

I have more to share about LeadsCon, so check back soon.  Meantime, drop me a note in the comments section below – what issues did you hear people dealing with?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

DoublePositive Wins Two LEADER Awards

HOT Lead Transfer Company Recognized for Excellence in the Field of Online Lead Generation

Baltimore, MD – January 20, 2011 – DoublePositive Marketing Group, the industry leader in LIVE Hot Transfers, announced today that it has been named winner of two important industry awards by LeadsCouncil (www.leadscouncil.com), the largest independent industry organization focused on online lead generation. The LEADER Awards is a new annual awards program designed to showcase the leading companies in online lead generation.

“We are thrilled to be a recipient of two LeadsCouncil LEADER awards,” said DoublePositive Co-Founder Joey Liner. “There is no higher honor than to be recognized by your clients and peers as the best.  It is humbling to be named Best Hot Transfer company in both the Lending and Technology categories.”

For lending companies, DoublePositive contacts, qualifies and transfers online consumers who have requested a quote or information about the company. Companies’ salespeople receive phone calls from live consumers who are qualified, interested and have the highest probability of converting into a sale.

For lead gen technology partners, DoublePositive’s work improving transfer rates increases overall demand for leads in the industry, and provides disposition data that allows lead aggregators to improve their sources.

“Receiving two LEADER Awards is the result of the outstanding effort and dedication of our team,” said DoublePositive CEO Sean Fenlon. “We look forward to working even harder on behalf of our clients and technology partners in the year ahead.”

About DoublePositive Marketing Group, Inc.

DoublePositive was founded in 2004 on the belief that the traditional method of buying "leads" as a marketing solution had become costly and inefficient.  DoublePositive’s LIVE Hot Transfers out-perform other lead generation solutions because every DoublePositive lead passing through a DOUBLEconfirmT process, which delivers LIVE, interested consumers who have the highest probability of converting into a sale. DoublePositive specializes in LIVE mortgage leads, debt settlement leads, education leads, insurance leads, automotive leads and real estate leads. DoublePositive is headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland. For more information, please visit www.doublepositive.com.

About LeadsCouncil

LeadsCouncil is the first independent industry organization dedicated strictly to advancing online lead generation. LeadsCouncil members include lead buyers, lead sellers, technology solutions providers, and investment professionals. The group focuses on best practices, research, education, and networking to provide a more transparent and effective marketplace for online lead generation.

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It was great to get a nod from Mike Ferree http://bit.ly/9RDG7s about the buzz DoublePositive has been generating lately. Lead buyers are discovering the value of using a live Internet lead transfer service like ours, not just to get insight into the quality of Internet leads in real time, but to share that information with their suppliers, which helps improve the quality of leads for everyone.

For example, take a look at leads generated for the online, for-profit education industry. A certain percentage of leads are not transferring. Why are they not transferring? Does the contact claim that they never filled out the form? Do they tell us that they are already enrolled in another program, or that they are still in high school? Is this happening more often than it should? What can we learn from these responses?

The following graph represents the top three dispositions of contacted non-transfers:

Graph provided by, Tim Watts, DoublePositive Director of Data Analytics

Supplier A and Supplier B are delivering pretty good results. But Test Supply is badly off the mark. The buyer can take this data and go back to Test Supplier and say, “Almost 10% of the leads we contacted told us that they never filled out the form. Can you provide us more information on how you are generating these leads? What is the message you are delivering to the consumer through search or display? Could it be because they are being offered some kind of incentive that makes them fill out the form, even if they aren’t interested in our program?”

Another disposition that occurs too frequently in the Test Supply is “No degree/GED,” because students who have not completed high school are not good prospects for online education. Some will fill out the form out of curiosity. Generally, 2% seems to be the industry average – but here we see Test Supply is generating almost 20%. Again, go back to your supplier. Ask, “What is the message and what can we do to change the message so we are not attracting people who are still in high school?”

One last point, and it’s important: Don’t assume that your supplier is trying to cheat you. We all work together here. The only way we can improve the product is if the buyers are willing to share more of the information with the sellers about what’s happening with the leads. After all, we want suppliers to generate more leads because that will drive up more transfers. It takes everyone working together.

That’s it, everybody. That’s the guts of contacted non-transfers. Next time, we’ll share some data on non-contacted non-transfers – or the leads we never make contact with. Until then, let us know about your experiences in the comments below.

Oh – by the way, our in these posts focus has been on EDU lately. I have not forgotten about my Mortgage and Insurance friends. I will share some findings with all of you soon. Please check back regularly.

We wrote about the top insurance industry lead suppliers recently in our white paper (link to: http://bit.ly/dyp3Sv). To recap briefly:

Here’s the DoublePositive Top Lead Supplier List, current as of this writing. Don’t blink – it may change.

1. Bankrate – when they acquired NetQuote in July of this year, Bankrate became the 600-pound insurance lead selling gorilla in the room. They had already acquired the #2 player in the space, InsureMe, back in February 2008, and today are the market leader by far.

2. All Web Leads – a relative newcomer out of Austin, TX, they’ve been on a serious growth trajectory growth over the past two years. Everybody’s got their eye on them.

3. InsWeb – despite the fact that they are the only publicly traded, top volume insurance lead producer, InsWeb has been flying under the radar. We think they may be set for a resurgence. In August of this year they acquired Potrero Media of San Francisco, CA, known to produce some of the highest quality leads available, which appear to be all Search generated.

4. HometownQuotes – out of Nashville, TN, HometownQuotes is another top volume producer, and seems a prime candidate to be acquired, or to make an acquisition of their own.

As the insurance leads landscape continues to shift, our hope is that the top volume producers will grow without sacrificing quality, thus raising the volume of high quality leads for everyone in the ecosystem.

So, given the industry consolidation, can the insurance lead buyer still get leverage?

Watch for the next post from DoublePositive, or read the white paper at http://bit.ly/dyp3Sv.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Web’s most popular insurance shopping service adds the Market Leading LIVE Hot Transfer service to its offerings.

Baltimore, MD – November 10, 2010 – DoublePositive Marketing Group, the industry leader in LIVE Hot Transfers, announced today that it has formed a private label partnership with Bankrate Insurance, a division of Bankrate, Inc.

Bankrate Insurance, thru its acquisition of Insureme and Netquote, is largest seller of Insurance leads, and the partnership with DoublePositive allows them to add Hot Transfers to their offerings so that their customers can not only purchase the markets best Internet Leads, but also the markets best Hot Transfer services as well.

“The requests for Hot Transfers have increased over the years as the average order sizes have increased. Hot Transfers allow some clients to effectively consume more leads per hour per sales professional, so it was critical that we find the best Hot Transfer solution available to offer to our clients. That search resulted in the selection of DoublePositive” said Bankrate Insurance President Paul Ford.

Bankrate’s customers will still purchase Bankrate leads as they do now, but can now also choose to have the Bankrate LIVE Hot Transfer service turn those data leads into qualified and interested In-bound phone calls to their sales team. This will allow the client’s sales team to do what they do best, sell.

Each customer will have their own private credentials to the proprietary Bankrate Hot Transfer Platform, and here they will be able to listen to recordings, view dispositions, and put their account on hold at any time.

“Bankrate is setting the standard for lead suppliers today,” said DoublePositive VP Brian Ocheltree. “We’re proud to have been selected by this Industry Giant, and our partnership should provide massive growth and ROI improvements across the entire Insurance Lead Ecosystem from which we all will benefit.

About DoublePositive Marketing Group, Inc.

DoublePositive was founded in 2004 on is the market leader for LIVE Hot Transfers.  DoublePositive’s LIVE Hot Transfers utilize a DOUBLEconfirmT process, which delivers LIVE, interested consumers who have the highest probability of converting into a sale. DoublePositive specializes in LIVE mortgage leads, education leads, insurance leads, automotive leads and real estate leads. DoublePositive is headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland. For more information, please visit www.doublepositive.com.

About Bankrate, Inc.

The Bankrate network of companies includes Bankrate.com, Interest.com, Mortgage-calc.com, Nationwide Card Services, Savingforcollege.com, Fee Disclosure, InsureMe CreditCardGuide.com, Bankaholic, CreditCards.com and NetQuote. Each of these businesses helps consumers to make informed decisions about their personal finance matters. The company’s flagship brand, Bankrate.com is a destination site of personal finance channels, including banking, investing, taxes, debt management and college finance. Bankrate.com is the leading aggregator of rates and other information on more than 300 financial products, including mortgages, credit cards, new and used auto loans, money market accounts and CDs, checking and ATM fees, home equity loans and online banking fees. Bankrate.com reviews more than 4,800 financial institutions in 575 markets in 50 states. Bankrate.com provides financial applications and information to a network of more than 75 partners, including Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO), America Online (NYSE: AOL), The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times (NYSE: NYT). Bankrate.com’s information is also distributed through more than 500 newspapers. Bankrate, Inc. was acquired by Apax Partners, one of the world’s leading private equity investment groups, in September 2009. Apax operates across the United States, Europe and Asia and has more than 30 years of investing experience. For more information on Apax, visit: www.Apax.com.

Press Inquiries

For inquiries related to Bankrate Insurance or either of our two companies- NetQuote or InsureMe – please contact:
Amy Graham
graham@netquote.com
303-382-8221

For inquiries related to Bankrate, Inc, please contact:
Kayleen Yates
Senior Director of Corporate Communications
kyates@bankrate.com
917-368-8677

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In our last post, we said using an Internet lead transfer service like DoublePositive gives you insight into the quality of Internet leads in real time, before you spend thousands (tip of the cap to Mike Ferree for starting this conversation http://bit.ly/dcSQk4).

Here’s a look at how DoublePositive does it.

Once an Internet lead is generated and posted to us, our call center contacts the lead within seconds. We attempt to transfer the live lead on the phone to you, and provide real-time information about what happened. For example, here’s the lead disposition graph again:

Let’s say Supplier A sends us 1000 Internet leads. In this example, we contact 680 and discover that 375 are interested in talking about the product. We would say, “This is a great source – let’s ramp up and get the leads out to our sales force.”

Or we might find, as in the Test Supply Source above, that very few of the 680 Internet leads are truly interested or qualified. In that case, we might say, “Pass. This source is not legitimate.”

But not always. Using Mike’s suggestions could give us insight that the source deserves another chance. In that case, we may recommend moving to performance-based payout, determined by whether the lead turns into a transfer or not.

Using the lead transfer approach helps lead buyers make quicker decisions on which way to go. It could save a lot of money and time as well as preserve the sales team’s emotional state.

Again, I tip my cap to Mike Ferree. His approach helps you vet the source of Internet leads, which is important and valuable. Our approach helps you vet the leads themselves.

It gets more granular than that, which we’ll hit in the next post, after Thanksgiving. I’ll be in Maui for few weeks with my wife, getting some much needed R&R. I know. I am lucky, for sure. I can’t wait.

Meantime, let’s keep the conversation going. How do you figure out what leads to buy? Let us know in the comments below.