double POSITIVE Marketing Group, Inc.

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
Rich Dent

We were thrilled to be honored by the LeadsCouncil this month when they announced the first series of winners for their LEADER Awards. DoublePositive was voted Best Hot Transfers Company by lead sellers and Best Hot Transfers Company in the Lending Category by lead buyers.

In my opinion, there is no greater tribute than to be recognized by your clients and peers as the best. Especially now, at such an exciting time in the mortgage industry, where the challenge for lenders is not dealing with a lack of opportunities, but knowing how to capitalize on the abundant opportunities out there.

Why are there so many opportunities in mortgage right now? My colleague, DoublePositive partner Joey Liner, did a great job in his white paper (http://bit.ly/hjwf5W) spelling out the factors that are contributing to the win-win-win climate we are experiencing. To summarize Joey’s main points:

• Mortgage Lead prices are near all-time lows
• Low interest rate environments continue, creating higher lead volumes
• Simply buying more leads will not increase productivity
• Adding LIVE Hot Transfers and a Lead Management System (LMS) maximizes higher conversions and sells more units

Need proof? Check this out:

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

This graph shows that, just within the past year, DoublePositive has seen the demand for live transfers grow rapidly. Mortgage companies are coming back to us saying, “We need more transfers.” We tell them that the only way to do that is to buy more leads. This works because of how well industry giants Lending Tree, LowerMyBills and Adchemy, and others, have been doing in generating leads. We’ve been very impressed by their ability to increase the quantity of leads, without negatively affecting quality. As a result, mortgage companies will continue increasing their marketing budget and buying more leads.

That’s what I’d call a perfect storm. The lead aggregators are winning because they are able to sell more leads. DoublePositive is winning because we are able to call more leads. And the mortgage companies are winning because they are able to receive more inbound calls from consumers who are interesting in refinancing their homes.

There are many benefits to mortgage firms using hot transfers, which Joey talks about in his white paper. Probably the most significant is that the mortgage firms are able to grow at a strategic pace, using hot transfers. They don’t have to overwhelm their loan officers with calling every raw lead, or rush to hire more loan officers. Using hot transfers allows them to steadily turn up the quantity of leads without suffering from a loss of quality or straining resources.

There’s a whole lot more to share about taking advantage of this perfect storm. I will be out West next week, meeting with some great companies about how to win using hot transfers. When I get back, I’ll share with you guys some interesting data about the disposition of mortgage leads that don’t transfer, which will help you make decisions as a lead buyer or lead seller.

California, here we come!

Post By
Brian Ocheltree

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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Post By
Brian Tomasette

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Post By
Sean Fenlon

I once thought the event in the link below would go down as the biggest blunder in the Internet economy. 

http://blogs.doublepositive.com/2008/05/05/huh-yahoo-rejects-microsoft-bid-thats-ridiculous/

The Yahoo blunder has been bested…

This will CLEARLY go down as the the single biggest blunder in the history of blunders.

Groupon rejected Google’s (increased) offer.

Google pulled the deal.

Groupon wants to go public with their $2 Billion current run-rate in tow.

Readers please remember that this business was FOUNDED in 2008!

The play here is to go long on GOOG and short the Groupon stock right after the IPO.

<sigh>

But let me be crystal clear.

I STILL Love Groupon. :-)

SPF

Post By
Brian Ocheltree

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.

Post By
Brian Ocheltree

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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Post By
Rich Dent

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.

Post By
Rich Dent

Large Internet lead buyers bear most of the risk today. They constantly need new Internet lead suppliers who have quality leads. They can’t afford to spend money testing these new sources – and they can’t afford not to.

In his helpful blog post (http://bit.ly/dcSQk4), our friend Mike Ferree over at LeadCritic.com offers three suggestions for Internet lead buyers to vet companies before spending thousands of dollars testing them out.

In this post, we’ve got a 4^th option for keeping a firm grip on those thousands.

Mike’s options are great for determining whether companies are telling you the truth about how they generate leads. In sum, Mike says; 1) Request the domains of the sites they generate leads on; 2) Go to compete.com and find out the traffic history for each domain; 3) Go to SEMrush.com for more specific data around their organic rankings and paid search spend.

These methods will help you determine the intent of the Internet lead source. But they won’t tell you about the quality of the Internet leads themselves.

The 4^th option is to route test leads to a company like DoublePositive, which does live Internet lead transfers. We try to make contact and convert the folks we do contact, and we feed you real time data about what we are experiencing. For example:

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

The test supply had a decent contact rate, which is consistent with what we’d expect. But there is a problem. Very few of the test leads were interested or qualified to buy. A dismally low percentage of them converted compared to Suppliers A and B.

How to correct the problem is the supplier’s job. Your job is to know there is a problem – and to know it in real time, not thousands of dollars later.

And to our good friends who supply Internet leads – wouldn’t you rather know first?

Back to Mike’s point, everybody wants the new lead source to be successful. That’s what’s great about our industry – it can be a win-win-win. But I believe that winning is all of our responsibility.

In our next post, I’ll give you a look under the hood to show you how DoublePositive does its part.

Meantime let us hear from you in the comments below. Do you have an option #5?