double POSITIVE Marketing Group, Inc.

Post By
Sean Fenlon

I am a personal fan of LeadsCon and this entire blog is as well.  Just ask Google:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_q=leadscon&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&num=100&lr=&as_filetype=&ft=i&as_sitesearch=blogs.doublepositive.com

LeadsCon 2010 speakers were just announced this week:

http://www.leadscon.com/leadscon-las-vegas-2010/full-conference-program.html

Here’s a partial list of the Rock Star speakers on the list:

• Doug Lebda
• Dave Wengel
• Matt Coffin
• Marc Diana
• Steve Jillings
• Payam Zamani

Please join us for our Hot Transfers workshop @ 4pm on Tuesday the 23rd.

Our presentation will be highly-entertaining, and we also have some very important news to announce.

Look forward to seeing you all then.

SPF

Post By
Joey Liner

DoublePosiitve is exhibiting at the CCA (Career College Administration) Conference in Orlando,FL from Sunday June, 14th- Tuesday June 16th.

Booth #641

Sean, Casey and I will be there.

Hope to see you there.

Joey

Post By
Sean Fenlon

INTRO

===================

I guess this process of writing a blog post on the plane ride home from LeadsCon is becoming somewhat of habit for me.  The coverage of LeadsCon from last year’s plane ride is here.

Let’s start this year by expressing genuine respect and admiration for our friend and LeadsCon founder, Jay Weintraub.  Many of us have known Jay since his days at our neighbor Advertising.com – almost ten years ago. 

I was one of the fortunate few to learn about the inaugural LeadsCon (2008) from Jay via instant messaging back in 2007.  I LOVED the idea.  But that’s just the point, it was just an idea.  Now that LeadsCon 2009 is complete (with over 1,300 attendees), we can reflect and see that Jay has created a successful and valuable franchise from scratch.  As a fellow entrepreneur, I am always inspired to see people I know create SOMETHING out of NOTHING.  This is what Jay has done.  Acknowledging and honoring the creation of something out of nothing is the highest compliment I can pay a fellow entrepreneur.  The success of this franchise is evident in the announcement of a SECOND LeadsCon for 2009 in New York.  Count us in, Jay! :-)

LeadsCon filled a major void in the tradeshow landscape for those involve in online performance-based adverting/marketing, and he did what the best entrepreneurs do – he solved a problem.  The Ad:tech franchise has become too saturated/diluted (ask anyone who has attended a recent Ad:tech show and the word “ZOO” will invariably come up).  TARGUSinfo has been presenting a high-class summit now for three years running, but the spirit of their event is more limited in scope to just that of TARGUSinfo customers/partners. 

The evidence of the need for LeadsCon can be witnessed in the echelon of attendees.  Founders and CEO’s and senior managers (and even several board members) attend and even man the exhibits rather than the customary booth bunnies.  Another aspect that makes LeadsCon so special is the effervescent spirit of deal-making.  People came to have fun and to do deals.  There was certainly plenty of both taking place.

We witnessed these characteristics of LeadsCon in the first show in 2008 and I immediately “got it.”  I reached out to Jay soon after and predicted growth of the franchise by orders of magnitude in the years to come and I also wanted shore up our position as a significant sponsor, exhibitor, and promoter of the event.  DoublePositive stretched even further for LeadsCon 2009 (we were a sponsor in 2008 as well) by sponsoring two Workshops on Hot Transfers – one for lead buyers and one for lead sellers.

Please keep in mind that as usual, I played the role of a CEO with his tradeshow-biz-dev hat on bouncing from deal-making-conversation to deal-making-conversation out in the lobby, but I tried to attend at least a substantial portion of each of the general sessions.  But please don’t be upset by holes in the reporting.

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Wednesday, March 4, 2009

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KEYNOTE: TRANSFORMING CONSUMER INSIGHTS INTO MARKET OPPORTUNITIES

Presenter:  Dan Ariely, Behavioral Economist, author of bestselling book “Predictably Irrational”

The choice of Dan Ariely for the Keynote address to LeadsCon attendees is a testament to Jay’s mature wisdom in tradeshow architecture.  Last year’s keynote address was delivered by former Experian Interactive CEO, Ed Odjana – a great and “obvious” choice for the LeadsCon audience.  At first blush, however, the choice of Dan Ariely – a Behavioral Economist at Duke University – may not to appear as intuitive.  Oh, but it was!  Ariely is the author of best-selling business book, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions.

Firstly, let me say that if you have not already read this book, you should.  I read this book twice and I found it incredibly thought-provoking and wildly entertaining.  Ariely’s case studies on human behavior are outrageous and shocking.  It ended up shaping many of my own business decisions (we actually developed a $150 Hot Transfer mortgage product using his premise of “price anchoring” – all of a sudden, $89 doesn’t look so high! :-))

Jay very intuitively saw the correlation between lead generation and the many various aspects of Behavioral Economics, which made the choice of Ariely as the keynote brilliant.

The majority of items presented by Ariely were indeed topics covered in his book.  However, there was some information presented that was not, including a shocking study about how people feel about their significant others.  The question was presented:  if we setup two groups of people and asked the first group to list 3 things that they loved about their significant other and asked the second group to list 10 things that they loved about their significant other, which group would have stronger feelings about their significant other on the other side of the process.  The audience was roughly split with their collective guesses to the answer, but the real answer was the group that listed 3 things felt stronger feels about their significant other after the process.  It may seem counter-intuitive to some (such as me), but it turns out, the group that listed 10 things typically ran out of things to list around 6 or 7 and then began to think – “How can I possibly love this person if I cannot even list 10 things that I love about them!”  Hilarious.

As a side note, I was watching CNBC in my hotel room while getting ready the next morning and ironically, there was Dan Ariely appearing live as a guest commentator on “Squawk Box.”  The hosts were asking him to describe how consumer behavior might change in a down economy.  Ariely was his typical brilliant self, but the jackass host Mark Haines threw him under the bus by asking “Mr. Ariely, you have a degree in BEHAVIORAL Economics, I trust you also have a degree in ‘regular’ economics.”  Ariely replied, “No, actually my other degree is actually in Psychology,” to which Mark Haines quipped his jackass response, “Oh god, then we’re ALL in trouble.”  What personally I find fascinating about Behavioral Economics is that it can be tested
in a laboratory, something that cannot be done with “regular” Economics.

 

STATE OF THE INDUSTRY

• David Carlick – Director, ReachLocal, Inc. (Moderator)
  
• Ross Sandler – Senior Analyst Global Internet & Media Research, RBC Capital Markets
  
• Doug Valenti – Chairman  & CEO, QuinStreet
  
• Michael Zeisser – SVP, Liberty Media Corporation

This was a somber panel discussion, to say the least.  It appeared difficult for the discussion to stay industry-specific in nature and tended to drift more towards the general macro-economic climate.  Not surprising – after all the global economy is the elephant in the room.  There was a lot discussion, however, surrounding the evolution and transformation of the vestigial (advertising) agency model and their “cost-plus” style pricing models.  Apparently, the layers of agencies are actually growing (i.e. Ad Agency –> Interactive Agency –> Search Agency, etc.), which is a recipe for disaster.  I find it interesting that this appears to be an extremely industry-specific discussion within the lead generation world.  Those in the Mortgage and Insurance industries I don’t believe work much within this model, but those in the Education and Automotive industries are knee-deep in it.

I did key in on something I believe Ross Sandler said during the panel – something to the effect of “You know, it’s funny.  EVERY business I speak to these days amazingly describes themselves as a ‘counter-cyclical’ business.”  As a biased founder who has certainly colored many a pitch to align to the winds of the day, I laughed at the line as much as the other folks in the audience.  However, I actually DO think there might be something to that notion, at least with respect to the LeadsCon constituency.  With the exception of the Mortgage vertical, most players in the leads ecosystem seem to be doing remarkably well!  EDU is still white hot and still showing hyper-growth, Insurance is showing steady growth, new technologies such as analytics and lead managements systems appear to be getting traction, etc.  In general, I’m very encouraged – even in the face of a general economy that is still cratering and does not yet appear to have found bottom.

 

LEAD EXCHANGES: THE FUTURE OF LEAD GENERATION?

• James Cham – VP, Bessemer Venture Partners (moderator)
  
• Marc Diana – Founder & CEO, LeadPoint
  
• Anik Ganguly – Board Member, Detroit Trading
  
• Keith Moore – SVP, LendingTree.com & Tree.com

This discussion around “Lead Exchanges” has been going on for years without any clear winning positions – it’s a debate that just seems to bounce back and forth in between the 40-yard lines.  It was a topic at LeadsCon 2008 and receives significant attention on industry blogs such as LeadCritic.

There was a fair degree of contention amongst these four high-octane competitors, with many premises, practices, and models being challenged back and forth.  For example, Anik Ganguly of Detroit Trading felt as though transparency was a requirement for any exchange whereas Payam Zamani was quick to challenge transparency as a requirement so long as customers are comfortable without it.

In my humble opinion, the problem is that there is no standard or widely-accepted definition of an “Exchange.”  On one extreme, one could establish an archetype such as NYSE or eBay and reconcile any practice against theirs – i.e. if NYSE or eBay doesn’t do it and you do, you can’t call yourself an exchange.  On the other extreme one could simply/loosely define an “Exchange” as an “Organized Market” or as an “Interpreter of Supply and Demand.”  The problem there is that virtually EVERY lead seller (as well as every five and dime store for that matter) would then fit under that definition.

An over-arching theme to this entire discussion was that of scale.  It appeared as those most of the panelists felt that owning substantial market share was a requirement for success for any business calling themselves an exchange.  This winner-take-all philosophy probably explained some of the contention. ;-)
My completely unsolicited advice here guys is let’s back away from the word “Exchange.”  I know VC’s love it and it also may affect future exit multiples, but as of now, we don’t know it means and I don’t see any evidence that the buyers and sellers care, per se.  Let’s just describe the value proposition of each individual company to buyers and to sellers and let the rest work itself out without trying shoehorn these vastly different businesses into one category.

Of course, I’m biased, but I was thrilled when I heard my friend Keith Moore mention DoublePositive by name during the panel when he was describing an upcoming partnership announcement with Lending Tree.  Thanks, Keith! :-)

Marc Diana took advantage of the session to announce a new LeadPoint feature called LeadClass, which is a three-tier lead quality ranking that will allow LeadPoint clients to adjust their bid based upon the quality tier of the lead.

 

IN THE SPOTLIGHT – PRIVATE COMPANY SHOWCASE

The purpose of this session was to introduce “some of the most impressive companies you didn’t know about.”  Each company had about 10-minutes to present.

Apologies in advance on this one – since I don’t take notes and since these businesses were intended to be a surprise, there is no listing of them in the conference program that I’m using to write this post.  Thus, I may have some company names wrong here.

ClearLink – This business appeared to me to be an impressive hybrid of Internet marketing (lead generation) and call center sales management all under one roof.  Their focus appeared to be home services and it also appears that they get paid by their client for sales, not leads.  Thus, more of a customer acquisition play.  Other businesses I know that do things similar (often in other verticals as well) are Tranzact, Acceler, and Red Ventures (formerly Red F).

InsuranceLeads.com – This business was presented by their Head of Corporate Sales.  The poor guy had a ton of technical challenges that weren’t his fault.  When he finally got up the video commercial ~ 4-5 minutes, it was awesome.  Very well-produced.  Formerly QuotesAuction, this business sells insurance data leads and also sells insurance Hot Transfers (I believe using a call center out of Ukraine).  They claimed to be the only company doing Insurance Hot Transfers… Ummm… Oops! ;-).  It did look to me as though they did have some pretty slick client-side software though.

Hometown Quotes – Hometown Quotes also sells insurance leads and is a DoublePositive partner (insurance agents who want Hot Transfers of Hometown Quotes leads typically go through us to get that coordinated).  We are big fans of Hunter and his crew! :-)

Pangea Media – Interesting business premise that the best consumer engagement always comes from online surveys (which they refer to as “Quizzes” for consumers).  First company I’ve ever encountered focused exclusively on this area.

Dev Domains – This business finds relatively small/obscure websites with high-value traffic, tracks down the webmaster-owners and offers to buy the site.  They then add value to the site in an
attempt to increase its cash flow and profitability.  In a move I don’t think I’ve ever seen at a tradeshow, the presenter showed a slide of his company’s financials.  If memory serves, it was around $6MM in top line revenue but with $3MM or $4MM in EBITDA.  WOW!  Very impressive money-making model, guys.  Bravo.  Keep up the good work.

Sparkroom – Sparkroom is a business we’ve known for a long time, and we’re huge fans.  CEO Jamie McDonald presented a demo of their analytics software.  They started in the mortgage leads industry but currently gaining traction in the education leads space.

EXHIBIT HALL OPEN

After the general sessions described above, the Exhibit Hall was opened and lunch was served.  In another example of brilliant tradeshow architecture, attendees had to pass through the exhibits in order to get to the catered lunch area.  DoublePositive’s exhibit was right near the front doors – right behind Lending Tree and diagonal from TARGUSinfo.

After lunch, breakout sessions were presented.  Please note that I did not attend many breakout sessions – but I did try to catch all the General Sessions.
Running parallel to the breakout sessions were “Sponsored Workshops.”  Datamark presented a Sponsored Workshop on Predictive Modeling Across Marketing Channels and eBurea’s David Downhan gave a compelling session on “How Lead Scoring Can Work For You – A Hands On Guide.”  My favorite line from David’s session is when he summarized the value of lead scoring by saying “Hey, I just sell three digits.  It’s what you will do with these three digits that count.”  I agree, David! :-)

As I had mentioned above, after our incredible experience at LeadsCon 2008, we wanted to make a big splash at LeadsCon 2009 – hence a Hot Transfers workshop for Lead Buyers and another for Lead Sellers.

The first was presented at 4pm on Wednesday:

LIVE Hot Transfers for Lead Buyers – Evolve Your Lead Delivery Model to LIVE Leads and Supercharge Your Applications

When we looked at the ultimate scheduling, we noticed that our session would be the last session of the day and just before a Happy Hour.  Ugh.  We knew at that point, we probably wouldn’t be able to “teach” anything to anyone – everyone was probably close to “Death by PowerPoint” at that point in the day.  So we decided to take a different philosophical approach – rather than “teach,” let’s just entertain.

So we decided to “dramatize” a typical Internet lead buying process (where all the players are unhappy) and compare it to a LIVE Hot Transfers process (where – shocker – all the players were HAPPY!).  Rich Dent played the role of “The Consumer,” Syed Zaidi played the role of “The Sales Professional,” Brian Ocheltree played the role of “The Lead Seller,” and Casey Cook played the role of “The Lead Buyer.”  Joey Liner played the special role of “Mr. DoublePositive,” appropriate dressed in his super-hero suit.

All the role players provided some colorful insights into their world, their ethos, and their agendas/incentives prior to dramatizing the process.  After dramatizing the typical Internet Lead process, it was clear that all the role players were quite unhappy.  However, from the back of the room, Mr.  DoublePositive Joey Liner raced through the crowd (over the “Theme to Superman” music playing through the PA) to save the day.  A LIVE Hot Transfers process was dramatized and finally, all the role players were quite happy. Judging from the audience reactions, I think that everyone was highly-entertained.

 

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Thursday, March 5, 2009

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We repeated the session for Lead Sellers on Thursday at 11am, with only slight variations to calibrate it different from the Lead Buyers session.  Our CTO Syed Zaidi filmed the first session and it is available for your viewing pleasure on our YouTube channel at www.DoublePositive.TV

 

LEAD MANAGEMENT – “GENERATION” IS HALF THE BATTLE

• Mike Ferree – President of LeadTrade (moderator)
  
• Frank Ouimette – Co-founder and CTO of LinkTrust Systems
  
• Raj Parekh – GM of LeadsROI, a MediaWhiz Company
  
• Bill Rice – Founder & CEO of Kaleidico
  
• Jeff Solomon – Founder & SVP of Leads360

The Lead Management session was one of the more popular sessions at LeadsCon 2008.  While relatively cordial, the panelists were highly-spirited during the panel, to say the least.  This year, all the same players were back, but the CEO of LeadMailbox was replaced with Frank Ouimette of LinkTrust systems.

By contrast, this year’s panel felt more subdued.  Perhaps because it took place at 9am instead of the afternoon. ;-)  There was a lot of discussion around the importance of “Speed to Lead” and how the effective systems might facilitate this.  Industry veteran Noel Collins engaged from the audience in some early Q&A dialog with the panelists – probing them for magic numbers within their respective aggregated data sets.  After a good bit of back-and-forth, Jeff Solomon finally closed the thread by saying something to the effect of “Yes, we’ve got it.  But we’re not going to release it publicly – that’s part of our secret sauce that we’ll share with our clients privately.”

 

AD NETWORKS AND DISPLAY

• Rob Leathern – CEO, CPM Advisors (moderator)
  
• Rob Deichert – SVP Publisher Operations & Yield Management, Platform-A (AOL)
  
• Dilip DaSilva – CEO, Exponential (formerly Tribal Fusion)
  
• Dave Zinman – VP of Network Management, Yahoo!
  
• Murthy Nukala – CEO of Adchemy

This was a fabulous panel featuring two of my good friends, Rob Deichert and Murthy Nukala.  Before going into the discussion, let’s start with this premise – display advertising is HARD to make work.  REALLY hard.  Moreover, buying CPM and selling CPA is REALLY, REALLY, REALLY hard.  There have only been a few elite firms to crack that code and make this channel work for lead generation at scale.  Effective CPM rates (eCPM) rule the day, and they can vary wildly from vertical to vertical and offer to offer.  And publishers (supply side) are largely ambivalent as to which ad, offer, or vertical fills in the wireframe of their ad inventory.  It’s fiercely Darwinian from the advertising (demand) side.

The discussion began with the topic of Display Ad Exchanges and auction-style ad networks are how they are good things and they here and are here to stay.  Right Media (owned by Yahoo!) is perhaps an example of an exchange where the majority of its inventory is from Owned-and-Operated sites (i.
e. Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Mail, etc.).  Although Advertising.com’s AdLearn manages the Owned-and-Operated inventory of AOL, its real reach largely comes from the third-party network of Advertising.com.

Murthy Nukala summarized any ad network as being four things – Inventory, Data (i.e. Behavioral Targeting data or Demographic Data), Algorithms, and Sales.  He went on to concede that it is extremely difficult for any one network to be superior at more than one or two of those items.

Murthy also mentioned a product that Google (as a result of their acquisition of DoubleClick) will be releasing in the months to come – a game-changing paradigm shift.  What Murthy described sounded to me like a Ping-Post system (common in the leads world) but for display ads.  In other words, Google would send a message out to all potential advertisers that says something like this… “Hey, Mr. Advertiser – I have this (type) user, and he’s about to look at this size ad.  Do you want that ad to be YOUR ad?  If yes, you now have less than 100 milliseconds to let me know how much you are willing to pay for it and also provide me with the creative so that I can display it.”

Whoa!  That’s incredible.  Game changes seldom do all of their disruption over night, but I’ll be watching the effects of this closely.

There were some questions from the audience about things like Display Ad fraud – especially in situations where there are cascading ad networks involved.  I didn’t even know this type of fraud existed.  The answer from Dave Zinman was essentially, “Well, we’re working on ways to mitigate that, if not eliminate it, but at the end of the day, it’s just all baked into the performance metrics relative to the price.”  How about that – the same answer we (the broader industry) often give and/or get at the CPC and CPL levels as well.

 

THE FUTURE OF LEAD GENERATION: GETTING TO 2.0

• Sandy Kory – VP of New Media & Technology, Media Venture Partners (moderator)
  
• Matt Coffin – Investor at Coffin Capital (founder and former-CEO of LowerMyBills.com)
  
• G. Cotter Cunningham – CEO of SmallPonds, Inc.
  
• Saar Gur – Venture Capitalist at Charles River Ventures
  
• Jonathan Turner – Founding Partner, Qatalyst Partners

I found this session to be the most “forward-looking” of all the sessions.  Matt Coffin was his typical brilliant self and he continues to solidify himself as an A-list Tradeshow participant.  One of the things I enjoyed hearing him say was a silver-lining perspective of the current market conditions.  With advertising rates in a free-fall, Matt said something to the effect of he would “be a kid in a candy shop right now” in terms of innovative methods to take advantage of these rates for big profits.  Saar Gur conceded that Lead Generation in general is STILL not a space that is typically a good fit for venture funding since it is so difficult to find any truly sustainable competitive advantage.  And with barriers to entry being so low, there are a lot of people just slugging it out buying media CPM and CPC and turning around and selling CPA.  Tough business, indeed.

 

IF QUALITY IS KING, WHAT IS SCORING? THE ACE IN THE HOLE?

• Alex Baydin – Founder & CEO of PerformLine
  
• David Dowhan – SVP of Online Markets, eBureau
  
• David Sobie – VP of Product, LeadPoint
  
• Dave Wengel – GM of Interactive Markets, TARGUSinfo
  
• Matt Wise – President & CEO, Q Interactive

I found this session to be a bit paradoxical.  One the one hand – WOW! Look at that lineup!  That is a serious cast of industry veteran – sort of like the LeadsCon equivalent of the dream team.  On the other hand, I felt everyone struggled a bit to be able to bring genuinely new dimensions of discussion to the Lead Scoring topic that we haven’t been talking about for the past couple of years.  The issues discussed certainly had a lot of overlap with the Lead Scoring panel of last year.  David Sobie got to plug his new LeadClass – a simple way of product-izing lead scoring from the sell-side.  But in general, I think we’re gonna need to wait this one out for a few more years before critical mass.  The concept of dynamic pricing based on lead scores through all segments of the chain (the Lead Buyer’s BID, the Lead Seller’s ASK, the media costs, etc.) still feel a long way off.  Everybody I know agrees it’s a good idea when they see it on the white board, but I just thinks it’s going to be a relatively slow evolution in order to get all these constituencies to unbundle their economics from blended/batch thinking and into fluid dynamic scoring and pricing.  That said, we remain huge advocates of lead scoring and hope to help in the moving of the mountain efforts.

 

VIP Party at “Pure” (Caesar’s) – Hosted by All Web Leads and LendingTree

In a word, WOW!  I thought the LeadsCon party at LAX in 2008 was impressive, but I think there were more attendees at this party in 2009 then there were TOTAL CONFERENCE ATTENDEES in 2008.  The venue was exquisite – draped in white EVERYTHING (like the name suggests).  The venue was exclusively for LeadsCon and every section had a dedicated server.  And they were good.  The dance floor filled up pretty good by mid-party (after a few drinks made inhibitory synapses fire a bit slower :-)).  Jay even was able to have the party extended by half an hour or so since it was going on strong.  Look in the coming days for lots of pictures on Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Special thanks to our friends at LendingTree and our new friends at All Web Leads for Hosting and Sponsoring the high-octane affair.

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SUMMARY

My general takeaway from this event was more than encouraging.  On days that the stock market was tanking even further below the previous support levels, we were attending a vibrant tradeshow that had more than TRIPLED its attendance from the previous year.

The Advertising industry in general is tanking, but this crowd is somewhat insulated because what is remaining of the Advertising industry is speeding up its shift into performance-based delivery models.  Those in the leads world know how to do this better than any other.

Vertically speaking, EDU is clearly carrying the day.  Volume is good, margins are good, pricing paths keep all parties happy and everyone is still in hyper-growth mode.  But that’s what scares me a bit.  I remember feeling the same way about the Mortgage vertical in 2003.  Now, Mortgage was not even the second-most represented vertical at the show.  Wow.  LeadsCon 2009 was the coming out party for the Insurance vertical.  It was fabulous to see all the representation from both the Insurance lead buying and lead selling side, and Insurance
was also frequently a part in the panel topics.

Horizontally speaking, Lead Scoring is still a buzz, but not a tremendous amount of new ideas – rather it is still maturing in the adoption phase.  Display advertising is poised to become much more of a major force in the Lead Gen world that ever before as a result of plummeting CPM’s.  But the most significant horizontal buzz I gleaned from the show was Hot Transfers.  I know, I know – I’m biased.  But I was biased last year too, and I did NOT feel this way after that show.  It was coming up on panel discussions that had nothing to do with Hot Transfers, per se.  Verticals that had never ventured into Hot Transfers territory were discussing ways to make transfers a permanent part of their marketing/sales workflows.  And we had many, many, many people tell us that DoublePositive and Hot Transfers were the big buzz at the show. 

Yes, I’m biased, but there’s no way I’m 100% wrong on feeling this surge of momentum. My spidey-senses are tingling on this one! :-)

Hope to see you all at LeadsCon NYC!

p.s. Please use the comments to give a shout out to Jay Weintraub for another massive success.

Post By
Joey Liner

I look forward to attending the event hosted by Jay Weintraub and David Rodnitzky. As most of you know in the lead generation world, Jay was responsible for a “game changing” conference this year in LeadsCon so I am looking forward to the first followup event out in San Francisco. If you are attending please reply back to the post or email me joey@doublepositive.com so we can hook up. Below is a description to the event if you need to register:

Click Here for Invitation

Join us and 150 of your soon to be closest friends next Thursday, June 12 at the first-ever Lead Gen Mixer held at downtown San Francisco’s Thirsty Bear from 6pm to 8pm.

We’ll do our best to give preference to attendees of LeadsCon and members of the Online Lead Gen group, but now would be a good time to show not just how much fun you are but anti-procrastinating as well!

We are on track to sell out before next Thursday so don’t delay.

Given the limited space, we are charging an RSVP fee of $15 + $0.99 processing fee with Eventbrite so that those who RSVP attend. Come hungry and thirsty as you have two hours of all you can eat and drink. You’ll break even in the first fifteen minutes and drink your way to profitability in no time!

Many thanks to our terrific sponsors – Marin Software, Reply.com, eBureau, and Media Venture Partners who have allowed us to offer this great event at this price.

Lead Gen Mixer San Francisco

Hosted By Jay Weintraub and David Rodnitzky

When
Thursday, June 12, 2008 from 06:00 PM – 08:00 PM (PT)

Location
Thirsty Bear
661 Howard St.
San Francisco, CA 94105

Cheers,
Joey

Post By
Sean Fenlon

LeadsCon Blog Coverage Table of Contents:

• LeadsCon Highlights
• LeadsCon Highlights — Day 1 — Wednesday, April 2 (below)
• LeadsCon Highlights — Day 2 — Thursday, April 3
• LeadsCon Highlights — Day 3 — Friday, April 4
• Final Thoughts – LeadsCon 2008
• Other Blog Coverage of LeadsCon

__________________________________________________

Must Know Advances in Lead Quality

Moderator: Dave Wengel, GM, Interactive Markets, TARGUSinfo

Alex Baydin, CEO, PerformLine, Inc.
Dave Behn, Partner and Director of the Performance Marketing Group, Cole & Weber United
Matt Coffin, CEO, Coffin Capital and Board Member at eBureau and Mahalo.com (founder and former-CEO of LowerMyBills.com)

This panel was almost exclusively focused on lead scoring and lead segmenting, which was probably the single biggest buzz concept of the conference.  I’m torn on this one.  Let me start by saying that I’m a huge fan of lead scoring using regression analysis.  At DoublePositive, we have been using lead scoring for over three years to determine which leads to send to which call center and when, and it has yielded significant value for us.  I know there are top-tier lead buyers that do the same and make for great case studies for companies like eBureau and TARGUSinfo. 

On the other hand, however, I believe it is probably the most over-hyped concept as of April 2008 give the reality of the lead buying universe.  The VAST majority of lead buyers are just not there yet.  They’re not even close – they’re still working on 101-level practices such as using a Lead Management System and considering Hot Transfers instead of raw Internet data leads for their sale professionals.  Lead Scoring and segmenting is not rocket science, but it is high science.  But this reminds me of my recent post regarding the Art vs. Science of Leads and Lead Generation.

Here’s where I am bullish, however.  Many lead buyers will ask companies that provide lead scoring services, “OK, if I start scoring leads today, what do I with the information tomorrow.”  Business process re-engineering can be extremely valuable, but it’s typically slow and risky as well.  However, a company can glean IMMEDIATE value by putting leads into three scoring bands.  The top-tier scores should go directly to the sales professionals immediately – they will convert the best and allow sales professional to remain extremely productive.  The bottom-tier scores should go right into the trash can.  Their probability of converting into a sale is so low, that there’s no sense in anybody even touching them.  Perhaps the lead buyer would ask the lead seller for credit on those leads, but my instincts is that the credit policies of most lead sellers today is definitely not ready for those conversations yet.

The middle-tier scores (those that aren’t quite good enough to go directly to a sales professional, but better than a trip straight to the trash can) should go to DoublePositive in real time.  In real time, we will attempt to make contact with the consumer, ask them up to three qualifying questions, and then transfer the live, genuinely-interested, and qualified consumer to a sales professional.  We would charge the lead buyer on a per-transfer basis.  DoublePositive is able to “squeeze more juice” from these middle-tier leads through the use of technology, process, and much lower-cost labor than the valuable sales persons’ time.

DoublePositive has some terrific case studies of our customers using this exact approach to lead scoring and segmenting, including a unique relationship we have with Cole & Weber.
 

Short Presentation by David Wengel (GM of Interactive Markets at TARGUSinfo)

Dave Wengel provided a brief presentation on TARGUSinfo, mainly to announce their new lead scoring and lead segment platform offering, LeadAdvisor.  
 

In the Spotlight – Company Showcase

Moderator: Saar Gur, Partner at Charles River Ventures

This was a great idea by Jay to have fresh-idea startup companies submit their short pitches to judges.  I was in an out a bit and did not catch every company’s full presentation but the one that had me scratching my head the most was Glam Interactive.  Sorry ladies, maybe I’m missing something, but it looks to me like you setup a social network of females working in the interactive space using the Ning platform and it’s now up to 600 members.  I’m not sure that’s a business.  At least I’m not sure I heard what the business model is.

AdReady, on the other hand, blew me away (and many others as well).  They gave a fantastic live demo of how to setup a display advertising campaign with the same ease and elegance of setting up a Google Adwords campaign, with the ability to name your price (CPM) and your network (currently limited to RightMedia, Yahoo, and Google (presumably the Adsense publishers that have enabled display ads)).  I’m going to watch these guys very close.  What they’re doing is really slick and is an excellent complement to the slew of display ad exchanges and meta exchanges that are cropping up everywhere.

I tried not to pay much attention to technologies that connected two parties who are un-known to each other at the moment using just software.  While tempting for our DoublePositive business from a cost-containment standpoint, we’ve never quite figured out how to make 100% of consumers or hot transfer-buyers warm up to computers talking to them.  I hope that we do some day, but it’s probably not this decade.  Companies such as eStara, Voicestar, Who’s Calling, etc. would probably agree with me when compared to performance of live human contact.

Post By
Sean Fenlon

LeadsCon Blog Coverage Table of Contents:

• LeadsCon Highlights
• LeadsCon Highlights — Day 1 — Wednesday, April 2
• LeadsCon Highlights — Day 2 — Thursday, April 3 (below)
• LeadsCon Highlights — Day 3 — Friday, April 4
• Final Thoughts – LeadsCon 2008
• Other Blog Coverage of LeadsCon

__________________________________________________

Keynote Address: Lessons from the Leaders

Ed Ojdana, Former CEO, Experian Interactive
Jordan Rohan, Founder, Clearmeadow Partners (formerly Managing Director at RBC Capital Markets)

Thursday’s sessions began with a PowerPoint presentation from Jordan Rohan (who announced that he moved on from RBC just three weeks ago to start his own thing called Clearmeadow Partners).

It was a very detailed presentation that juxtaposed the market dynamics in the Lead Generation ecosystem in 2000-2001 to that of current day.

Jordan instantly became my hero when he addressed the misleading nature of the IAB’s reporting on Lead Generation in their breakdown of Online Advertising.  IAB claims that “Lead Generation” is just $1.3 Billion in 2007.  Although they call it the fastest-growing segment, I’ve seen with my onw eyes P&Ls from companies in this spaces that add up WAY beyond $1.3 Billion.  Jordan accurately explained that when LowerMyBills.com buys display advertising on Yahoo! for the purpose of generating leads, that money is credited to display advertising.  When Nextag buys clicks from Google with the intent of generating a lead, that money is credit to paid search marketing, and so on.  Thus, Lead Generation INFLUENCES well-beyond the $1.3 Billion that the IAB reports.  Thank you, Jordan.  That one drives me crazy every year.

After the presentation, Jordan sat down for a fireside chat with Ed Ojdana.  This format was very similar to the TARGUSinfo Summit, where Ian Smith presented and then sat down for a chat with Matt Coffin. Ed provided some wonderfully colorful insight in the timeline and strategic-insight of the acquisitions he made for Experian Interactive.  He also acknowledged that he was helped significantly with those acquisition evaluations and transactions by Steve Krenzer (he had Steve raise his hand in the audience to be acknowledged).  Ironically, Steve Krenzer evaluated my previous company TheLoanPage.com very closely, but ultimately decided we were too small for their scope and decided to buy LowerMyBills.com instead. 
 

Mergers and Acquisitions, Exits, and Investment Landscape

Moderator: Ken Sonenclar, Managing Director, DeSilva + Phillips, LLC 

Lou Doctor, Managing Director, Arbor Advisors, LLC
Bruce Eatroff, Partner, Halyard Capital
Chris Moore, Managing Director, Redpoint Ventures
Rick Wolfgram, Managing Director, Head of Media Investment Banking, Think Equity Partners

Having been through three rounds of venture financing with DoublePositive, including an excruciatingly painful process on our third round last year, I had asked Jay if I could sit on this panel as the voice of the entrepreneur, but Jay needed me on the Hot Transfers panel, so I grudgingly obliged.

It was painful for me to hear all the issues again as to why an investor or a buyer would NOT pull the trigger on any company in the Lead Gen ecosystem…

It’s just an arbitrage…

It doesn’t scale…

To much focus in one industry…

It’s just an execution play…

There’s no IP/it’s not defensible…

There’s too much margin compression…

I like businesses that do NOT have COGS…

And so on.

The panelists did an excellent job of pointing out that these are all valid concerns, yet they also pointed out that the biggest and the best players will overcome these objections and sell for handsome multiples.  Speaking of multiples, moderator Ken Sonenclar set expectations to the audience that he would not answer the oversimplification-question “What are the multiples in this space,” arguing it has much more to do with the individual company than it does for a standard in the space.

I agree.

We’ve seen plenty of lead gen companies get acquired in the 1-1.5X range, and other companies like LowerMyBills.com get acquired for over 3X their top line revenue, Lending Tree over 5X, and Nextag in the 6-10X range.

The panelists also emphasized scale (and profitability).  Companies buying clicks from Google and Yahoo! and arbitraging CPC to CPA with $1M-$5M in revenue and are in one particular vertical are not particularly attractive acquisition candidates, and if they are, probably at low multiples.

It was particularly interesting to hear the comments from Bruce Eatroff if Halyard Capital, since he has become the biggest buyer in the space, in order to create the powerhouse EDU rollup with the new name Education Dynamics.
 

Lead Buyers’ Perspective

Moderator: Rick Natsch President at Potrero Media

Todd Davison, President of Bulldog Solutions
Jordan Drew, Chief Revenue Officer, FindaLocalAgent.com
Adam Graff, Senior Media Director, Career Ed
Chris Meerschaert, Director of Client Services, Adchemy, Inc.

This was a helpful session in the conference, since lead buyers were in the minority overall.  I thought the most provocative moment occurred when a member of the audience asked Chris Meerschaert (who formerly was one of the biggest lead buyers in the mortgage industry when he was with QuickenLoans) what he knows now on the sellers’ side (with Adchemy) that he never knew from the buyers’ side.
 

Lessons from the Mortgage Market

Moderator: Sandy Kory, VP, Director of New Media & Technology, Media Venture Partners

Steve Horton, GM of LeadPoint
Paul Knag, Mortgage Marketer, MortgageLoan.com
David Schneider, Founder & CEO, ZipSearch

Between Paul and David, there was a lot of experience to reflect back upon during this panel.  That said, I don’t think the lessons learned were mortgage-specific.  We continue to see the exact evolutionary process play out in non-mortgage verticals.

First early adopters come in, establish economic baselines around mortgage leads (and they’re usually great).  Next, big players and big money become to pour into a space.  Next, the cost of leads and media begin to go up and the conversion rates and quality begins to go down.  Finally, the market goes into a frantic sequence of corrective measure.  We’ve certainly seen that same process play out in EDU, and Insurance could be next.

Short presentation by Payam Zamani (CEO of Reply.com)

Payam gave a nice short history of performance-based advertising from CPM to CPC to CPA.  I have a slide I should’ve given to Payam that I use all the time that would’ve fit beautifully into his deck.
 

Proper Role of Affiliate Marketing in Lead Generation

Moderator: Noel Collins of Leads360, LLC

Thomas Bruck, Vice President of Business Development, Find Your Customers, Inc.
Jeff Molander, CEO, Molander & Associates
Paul Moss, Affiliate Channel Manager at Insurance.com
Shai Pritz, CEO of Unique Leads

I’m going to oversimplify the summary here, but this was a good panel.  I think the spirit from everyone is that, yes, there are still plenty of bad affiliates, and yes, there are plenty of good affiliates.  What a lead generator gains by using affiliates (and thereby not having to take on CPC or CPM media buy risk) is not a free lunch.  Constant mentoring and vigilance is key.  Noel did a nice job of getting good audience involvement during this panel.

A good number lead generators in the audience do not sell leads per se, but rather sell traffic on a CPA or CPL basis.  This panel was particularly good for them.
 

Understanding Lead Exchanges

Moderator: Chris Moore

Marc Diana, Chief Executive Officer, LeadPoint
Anik Ganguly, Board Member, Detroit Trading Exchange
Jane Lindner, GM, Exchange Place
Payam Zamani, CEO of Reply.com

Unfortunately, I missed this entire panel.  I was meeting with Jamie McDonald of Sparkroom trying to put a deal together.

I don’t know if it was discussed or not, but I hope the panel settled on a definition of an exchange.  In my mind, the archetype of an online exchange is eBay.  However, I keep noticing a disturbing trend of blocking the buyers’ transparency to the sellers on the exchanges (presumably to prevent circumvention?).  When that occurs, is it really still an exchange?  All I know is that I would never buy anything on eBay if I did not know who the seller was.
 

Incentive-ized Marketing – Is it More Harm than Good?

Moderator: Scott Rewick, CEO or LSF Publishing 

Rob Deichert, SVP, Operations, Platform-A (AOL/TW)
Jere Doyle, CEO of Prospectiv
Ross Sandler, Co-Head Global Media Research at RBC Capital Markets
Matt Wise, CEO of Q Interactive

This was an excellent panel.  Matt Wise and Jere Doyle were particularly compelling speakers, describing in exact detail where incentive-ized marketing fits into the ecosystem (and, oh yes, it absolutely has a place).  Jere (in the past) and Matt (in the present) have worked hard with organizations like the IAB and OLGA to establish strong and literal industry standards in order to eliminate the slippery slope of shades of gray.

There was a healthy discussion amongst all the panelists regarding the nature of an incentive, and that not all incentives are created equal.  I forget the exact examples, so I’ll my own (but capture the same spirit).  An “incentive” for a 20% discount or a free trial of a specific product or service is a significantly different “incentive” when compared to potentially winning a plasma TV (which may be completely unrelated to the offer).

Matt Wise walked through a sample sales conversation he might have with a customer when he’s trying to determine their quality, quantity, and cost objectives.  The sample customer would ask Matt to not go on ANY promotional sites.  Matt would answer, OK, that’s fine, I can get you 10,000 leads at $10 per lead.  The sample customer would say, “but Matt, I need 100,000 leads at $1 per lead.”  Matt would say, “no problem, we can do that too,” and all of a sudden, the customer would be much more liberated to placing their offer on promotional sites. 

The one thing I felt was missing was a clearer sub-categorization of what a “lead” is.  During the panel, I heard at least three different categories being discussed, but they were all discussed under the umbrella of a “lead.”  In the case of advertisers such as Columbia House, Net-flix, or Book-of-the-Month club, they would only pay out if an online sale (with credit card) was transacted.  Guys, this is really not a “lead.”  This is a Cost-per-Sale deal.  Those advertisers are not going to complain about lead quality – they only pay if they made money, and that’s a beautiful thing.  Another category was what I call “marketing leads.”  Brands such as Pfizer, Budweiser, Nike, or Colgate may all buy marketing leads.  Marketing leads are not cost-per-sale, but at the same time, they are not putting the lead into the hand of a Budweiser sales professional and have them call the consumer and sell them Budweiser.  Rather, they function more like consumer registrations, and coupon offers are often congruent with these marketing leads.  Even though they are not cost-per-sale (you can’t buy Budweiser online anyway ;-)), the only risk is the price per lead.  There is no additional DIMENSION of risk to manage, which is absolutely the case with “Sales Leads.”  Sales leads are leads that do indeed come offline and are put into the hands of a live human sales professional.  Industries such as Mortgage, Debt, Insurance, Education, and Automotive buy Sales Leads.  With Sales Leads, risk management extends beyond the price paid per lead, because at even at extremely low price points (i.e. $1 per lead or even less) they can become such a waste of a salesperson’s time that any sale that is made is an unprofitable, once the time of the sales person is factored into the equation.  The sales persons’ time is the additional DIMENSION of risk managed.

Not surprisingly, the sales lead management industries I have mentioned have almost entirely eliminated incentive-ized lead supply channels for the exact reason I described above.  However, incentive-ized lead generation of Marketing Leads and Cost-per-Sale campaigns is healthy and growing like a weed.

A theme that kept recurring is that there is no such thing as “bad leads,” but rather there is only “mis-priced leads.”  By and large, I completely agree with that premise, with the exception of the Sales Leads I describe above where conceivably even $0 per lead could  still be unprofitable because of the time consumed.

My good friend Rob Deichert could played many roles in this panel, but decided to take the role of the publisher (AOL/TW).
 

Compliance and the Legal Landscape

Moderator: Sanj Goyle, Sr. Director, Business Development – Lead Generation at Yahoo! 

Steve Atlee, Partner, Winston & Strawn, LLP
Paul Cleveland, CEO, EDebitPay, LLC
Linda Goodman, Founder of The Goodman Law Firm
Mark Mecklar, General Counsel & COO of Unique Leads

I’m sorry guys, but as a sales- and hyper-growth-oriented CEO, I hated this panel discussion.  It’s not that I hate the spirit of compliance, quite the contrary.  What I hated was the lack of rules, guidelines, and hard lines.  What I heard was a lot of shades-of-gray, with lawyers tending to become extremely risk-averse based upon technicalities instead of common-sense realities. 

I also did not appreciate the smug attitude towards the relationship of tele-sales to Internet (data) lead generators.  One panelist who I will not mention glibly stated that “Telemarketing is a word that is NOT in our vocabulary.”  What this person was failing to acknowledge is that Internet sales leads have NO VALUE unto themselves.  Rather, they need to be called by the lead buyer in order to make a sale and it is THAT value that flows back downstream to Internet lead generators.  I certainly do not mind deal where lead aggregators wish to feel insulated from the practices of their lead buyers, but nobody should dismiss the need for it in the ecosystem.

There was also a lot of scary discussion about how when a company believes it is doing the right thing, it could be argued from a different perspective that what the company is doing is downright evil.

We’re coming off a period of time where industry stalwarts such as ValueClick and Adteractive have been hit with heavy fines from Federal agencies, but the answer is not to fearfully handcuff deal-making and innovation with over-burdensome legal fears.  Draw the lines, and tell us the rules.  We’ll play by them.  But don’t get upset if someone is “too close” to the hard line that has been drawn.

Post By
Sean Fenlon

LeadsCon Blog Coverage Table of Contents:

• LeadsCon Highlights
• LeadsCon Highlights — Day 1 — Wednesday, April 2
• LeadsCon Highlights — Day 2 — Thursday, April 3
• LeadsCon Highlights — Day 3 — Friday, April 4 (below)
• Final Thoughts – LeadsCon 2008
• Other Blog Coverage of LeadsCon

__________________________________________________

LeadsCon Learning from The Offline Marketers

Moderator: Jeff Liebl, VP, Marketing & Business Development, eBureau 

Rick Bentz, SVP Research & Analytics, Datamark, Inc.
Gary Cornick, CEO of Decision Tree Media, Inc.
David Dowhan, SVP Online Markets at eBureau 

This panel made me think more than once about my post long ago about quality, quantity, and cost.  Before the Internet, direct marketers relied heavily on direct mail and telemarketing.  Mailing to or calling the consumers with the highest probability of conversion into high-value sales was the primary driver, which meant modeling and scoring the list.  Companies such as Capital One and First Equity Card have generated unbelievable profits by modeling and scoring consumer data. 

In the early years of Internet leads, the quantity of leads was relatively low, the quality was relatively high, and the cost of an Internet lead ($10 – $100) was substantially greater than the cost of a cold consumer data list (which cost perhaps $0.01 – $0.50 per record).  Thus the need for and desire to model and score leads was virtually non-existent.  Fast-forward to 2008, and the quantity of Internet leads being generated is excruciatingly high, and the bands of performance of these leads has broadened tremendously. 

This panel was based upon the premise that all Internet leads that are being generated absolutely are not created equal, and that the methods for modeling and scoring consumer data from the offline world ports over very nicely to the Internet lead world.  In fact, these days, the function can yield even better results since 5 or 6 fields of consumer data (i.e. name, address, phone, email) can be appended with hundreds and hundreds of other pieces of data that can make the scoring algorithm much more robust.

During the end of the panel during Q&A, an audience member stood up to make some skeptical arguments about a “one size fits all” score, and that every lead buyer would need their own scoring algorithm.  While I’m certain eBureau would be more than happy to setup a unique scoring algorithm for each and every lead buyer in the world, I was impressed with how David Dowhan handled the answer.  He merely pointed out that some (if not most data) that gets appended to a lead, can have a profound impact on the predictive nature of a lead score, and is indeed empirical – meaning it does not vary from lead buyer to lead buyer.  He mentioned consumer credit or buying power.  It’s a great point, David.  Doesn’t matter WHO the lead buyer is or what source the consumer came from – if they can’t afford it, they ain’t gonna buy it.

As a side note, I was also very impressed with David in a conversation I had with him in the lobby of the conference.  I too have been preaching that “not all Internet leads are created equal,” which is the business thesis for having started DoublePositive back in 2004.  But David made an example that I had never fully thought through, that even though a consumer that goes through our Hot Transfers is 1. Live, 2. Genuinely-interested, and 3. double-qualified, that not all hot transfers are created equal either.  We agreed to collectively test some theories to see exactly how much predictive variance there is in LIVE Hot Transfers.
 

Uncovering Local Lead Generation

Moderator: David Carlick, Managing Director at VantagePoint Venture Partners 
Peter Adams, President of Matchpoint
Dick Larkin, Strategic Sales at Spot Runner
Paul Ryan, CEO of DoneRight!
Robert Wright, EVP Business Development at ReachLocal 

I did not expect to get much from this panel.  “Local” lead generation is such a different animal than lead generation in the mega-lead-buying verticals (mortgage, education, debt, insurance, automotive, etc.) that I’m so familiar with.  “Local” lead generation is directly going after the $10-$15 Billion per year spent by local advertisers in their local yellow pages.  Thus, “Local” lead generation can span across hundreds if not thousands of “verticals.” 

That I said I was pleasantly surprised as to how incredibly engaging I found this panel discussion.  Of course, all the panelist shared the same challenge of how to acquire customers (local locksmiths, plumbers, florists, etc.) without the 30,000+ “boots on the ground” that are represented by the yellow pages collective sales forces who will go to see the advertisers once or twice per year at their shop and sell them an ad.  Explaining the Internet, clicks, leads, calls, and the economics of it all to this market via telesales does indeed sound challenging.

I was particularly intrigued by Paul Ryan’s liberated view of lead generation to include offline and online channels.  His argument was that the vast majority of local leads were NOT originating on the Internet, and what small pieces of the pie that were are being over-bought by too many local lead gen firms and/or agencies.

I was also really impressed by some of the value-added features that Spot Runner has been adding, including call tracking, data appending, and hyper-demographic-targeting based upon TV media buys.

I was also impressed to learn of the consumer-advocacy angle offered by DoneRight, to function as a vetting mechanism in the fraud-filled area of home improvement and other home contracting services.

This market is big and it’s real.  That said, these early days of this paradigm shift from yellow pages advertising to other higher-tech alternatives must be painfully frustrating to these firms at times.  I know how frustrating it can be to work with a lead buyer spending $100K/mo, so I can only imagine the noise of working with a much less sophisticated customer spending $400 per month.  These guys were all very impressive and engaging speakers.

Other significant players in this space that were not on the panel include Yodle, Leads.com, and LeadStream.
 

Lead Management Systems – Lead Gen’s Killer App?

Moderator: Michael Ferree, Online Marketing Manager, ZipSearch! 

Rick Doyle, CEO of LeadMailbox
Raj Parekh, Founder of LeadROI
Bill Rice, CEO of Kaleidico
Jeff Solomon, CEO of Leads360, LLC 

I found this panel to be one of the more timely and relevant panels of the entire conference.  The panelists were the CEOs of the four most significant Lead Management System providers.  These entrepreneurs are filling a badly-needed void.

Many are familiar with Salesforce.com, a company that has helped to define “Software-as-a-Service” (SaaS), whereby users of the web-based system pay per user per month.  However, Salesforce.com is almost entirely designed for B2B selling environments and is extremely difficult to adapt to B2C selling environment – especially those driven from Internet lead generation.  Bill Rice offered a good analysis as towhy these Lead Management Systems (LMS) should not be tagged as CRM (which stands for Customer Relationship Management).  His argument is that the first two acronyms “Customer Relationship” are incongruent with the spirit of receiving an Internet lead.  An Internet lead is neither a customer (yet), nor does a relationship exist with that consumer (yet).  I found this to be a valid point.

Each of these firms integrate directly into most major Internet Lead Providers, so that leads can be delivered directly into the Lead Management Systems, and then subjected to logical workflow and assignment rules.

The moderator was “Lead Critic” Michael Ferree, who had spent many years on the (mortgage) lead buying side, and recently joined ZipSearch on the lead selling side.

The panel was very vibrant/lively with several smart CEO’s engaging in meaningful (and sometime a bit edgy) debate.  A topic that came up early and often was new features and new feature-sets.  The question was raised, is the more the better?  Is there ever enough?  Leads360 appears to be leading the new-feature-release race, while Rick Doyle described LeadsMailbox as being more of model of only releasing new features that the customers are specifically requesting as customizations.  Bill Rice used the features debate to broaden the argument into whether Lead Management Systems are “boxing in” the users, and thus encouraging less user adoption, not more, which is the goal.  He also took the opportunity to announce a new paradigm (my word, not his) in Lead Management – SalesTwit.  I have not yet visited this site (as I am writing this on my plane ride home), but I remember it being described as using the Twitter infrastructure to liberate the Lead Management user in such a way that they use whatever engagement channel is more ideal for them at the moment, such as IM, SMS, etc.  I’ll be curious to learn more about this idea. 

Bill Rice also stirred the pot a bit as he announced SalesTwit would be free (not sure yet if that means ad-supported or a freemium play or something else), but Rick Doyle was quick to request from all his fellow panelist to ensure that they are getting fairly paid for the great value they are all creating.

I consider these firms to be the heroes of our industry.  For lead sellers to command a higher yield for their efforts, they will need lead buyers to “squeeze more juice” out of their leads.  Moreover, lead buyers will need more detailed reporting on the true performance and ROI of their lead buying, and these systems facilitate both of those things.  Anecdotally, I would say the majority of lead buyers do little or no lead management or lead tracking – some merely print out leads on paper and then hand the paper to their sales professionals.

I made an offer during my panel (and challenged all the lead sellers in the audience to do the same) that DoublePositive will pay Lead Management System’s monthly bill on behalf of the lead buyer (or Hot Transfers buyer, as it were).
 

Hot Transfer and the Latest Advances in Voice

Moderator: Jason Stoffer, Senior Associate, Maveron LLC 

Andrew Coleman, Co-founder of LeadQual
Yours Truly – Sean Fenlon, CEO of DoublePositive
Sam Reed, President of Find Your Customers, Inc. 

So, this was the last panel of the event, and not surprisingly was the least attended.  That said, the remaining attendees were quickly to flow toward the front/center seats and appeared to be quite engaged.  The panel was originally scheduled for four panelists.  Per Petterson (Co-founder & CTO of LeadPoint) was to replace the original assignment of David Sobie (GM of the Education Vertical at LeadPoint), but we were all surprised that LeadPoint stood us up.  I’ll try not to take it personally, Per. ;-)

The panel began with an ounce of accidental comic relief as the moderator Jason Stoffer announced me as “Sean Fenlon, CEO of LeadPoint” to the crowd, to which I quickly asked him to take another look at the sheet.  In full disclosure, Jason and I have known each other for a few years now, but only by phone and email – this was the first time we had ever met in person.  It was a simple mistake – besides, I am nowhere near as good-looking as Marc Diana. ;-)

Jason let each of the panelists speak for a few minutes about their business and the evolution of data leads to live leads.  This gave me the opportunity to go through my well-rehearsed chronicling of how performance-based advertising has gone from CPM to CPC to CPA/CPL and now CPT (or Cost-per-Transfer).

Sam Reed had the luxury of describing many dynamics that are more specifically designed to work well on both the supply-side and the demand-side of his business since Find Your Customers has strategically focused entirely on the Debt Settlement industry.  Conversely Andrew Coleman and I had to describe business processes that could work equally well across all verticals.  We also discussed some of the more notable differences between the LeadQual business model and that of DoublePositive.  DoublePositive has two business model “offerings” – a full-service retail offering (our primary offer in both the mortgage and debt settlement industries), which we bundle in the lead buying in addition to the hot transfers services into one single cost-per-transfer.  The other DoublePositive “offering” is what we call Platform-as-a-Service, where we unbundle the lead buying from the hot transfers services (our primary offer in the Insurance and Education verticals).  Thus, the lead buyer has two cost-centers.  This unbundled platform approach is the sole approach that LeadQual offers, however our respective pricing models are slightly different – DoublePositive offers a price-per-transfer, while LeadQual price per lead managed.  Hypothetically, the overall cost could be example the same.  For example, if it takes four Internet leads to generate one transfer and LeadQual charges $3 per “managed” lead and DoublePositive charges $12 per transfer, the cost is exactly the same.  That said, there are some performance dynamics that could conceivably make one model more attractive to the lead/transfer-buyer than the other.

During questions from the audience at the end of the panel, a lady stood up and identified herself as a lead buyer in the education vertical who has tested Hot Transfers (the “bundled” variety as described above, not the “Platform” approach) from some un-named source.  She described horrible experiences where consumers were on the phone with a call center about something completely unrelated to education (I believe she gave an automotive example) and then the consumers was asked if they wished to speak with someone about furthering their career through education and ultimately transferring the consumer directly to the schools’ enrollment counselors.  All the panelists were quick to point out that that was not our respective business practices and/or business models.  What the questioner was describing was clearly some sort of cross-sell offer.  For veterans in the leads business this is the moral equivalent of the co-reg path.  As the co-reg and other forms of incentive-ized marketing taught us all back in 2002, not all leads are created equal.  And as it applies to cross-sell offers to live consumers, not all Hot Transfers are created equal either.  Hopefully we explained the differentiation to the audience member sufficiently that she will not close the door on Hot Transfers categorically, but will test out an industry leader instead where the results are more valuable by orders of magnitude.

I was thrilled to be on the panel with both Andrew and Sam.  I thought there was a genuine sense of collegiality amongst the three of us.  I also thought that Jason Stoffer did a remarkable job at moderating.  He was very modest in introducing himself as a Sr. Associate for Maveron (Venture Capital) – Jason was one the pioneers in the education space to engineer an internal hot transfers process during his days at Career Education Corp.

My only wish is that Hot Transfers panel gets more front-and-center placement in LeadsCon 2009.  No pressure, Jay. ;-)

Post By
Sean Fenlon

LeadsCon Blog Coverage Table of Contents:

• LeadsCon Highlights
• LeadsCon Highlights — Day 1 — Wednesday, April 2
• LeadsCon Highlights — Day 2 — Thursday, April 3
• LeadsCon Highlights — Day 3 — Friday, April 4
• Final Thoughts – LeadsCon 2008 (below)

• Other Blog Coverage of LeadsCon

__________________________________________________

We all owe Jay Weintraub a ton of gratitude for his vision and his hard work in making this conference a reality.  Everyone who attended extracted multiple dimensions of value.  However, when building a tradeshow franchise, seldom is the first year a home run for the founder.  We all need to thank Jay and offer encouragement for him to continue this conference for many years to come with the promise that the bigger it becomes, the more he will be rewarded.  Please feel free to use the comments below to offer Jay both thanks and encouragement.

Post By
Sean Fenlon

So, it’s been a while since our last blog post – I guess that is to be expected the first few weeks following an office move.  I have been having lunch individually with each member of the DoublePositive team  as well.  I have crowned the rest of the company as co-CEO during this time.

Internet lead buyers and lead sellers across many industries are buzzing with anticipation this week about LeadsCon.  LeadsCon is the first annual conference with the purpose of bringing together industry-leading companies of both lead buyers and lead sellers.

LeadsCon is the manifestation of a vision of its founder Jay Weintraub.  Jay is a former neighbor – he worked at Advertising.com in his early years, right next door to me during the years that I was growing my previous company, TheLoanPage.com.  Although, I didn’t really get to know Jay until years later – we had sold TheLoanPage.com to Battery Ventures and Jay had moved out west to work for Oversee.net.  Jay began blogging about Online marketing-related and Internet advertising-related issues and trends years ago, and quickly became well-respected for identifying macro-level concepts.  I became a regular reader of Jay’s blog and I sometimes found myself getting lost in my comments to his posts.

I wasn’t the only one who took an interest in Jay’s work.  In 2006, Jay was invited by TARGUSinfo to be the keynote speaker at their first annual Lead Quality Summit is San Diego.  The success of this summit (and the subsequent 2007 Lead Quality Summit in Las Vegas) clearly inspired Jay to extend the scope of this type of event into a full-force “industry tradeshow” (as opposed to a Summit mostly limited to TARGUSinfo customers/partners).  Of course, other larger tradeshows have established themselves for Internet marketers such as Ad:tech and the DMA Annual Conference, but none were filling this specific void.

Ad:tech has grown into a mutli-multi-million dollar event that annually visits 10+ cities worldwide.  Ad:tech has become the most popular of all Online Advertising tradeshows, but this has also become its most noticeable imperfection.  Every Ad:tech show features hundreds of exhibitors, thousands of attendees, and several keynote speakers.  Many professionals involved with the shows often find it over-crowded and diluted by whatever aspects of the industry they may NOT be concentrated in.  Indeed, to be all-things Internet-advertising-related and all-things Online-marketing-related is an extremely broad scope.  Attendees are likely to find infrastructure players alongside mobile players alongside ad networks alongside online publishers alongside direct marketers alongside brand advertisers, etc.  Ad:tech has become an icon, but has also become perhaps best described by Dr. Peter Venkman (Bill Murray’s character in Ghostbusters), “Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, MASS HYSTERIA!!!”

By contrast, the Direct Marketers Association (DMA) is an organization that has existed long before the Internet.  Over the past several years, the DMA has broadened the scope of their annual conference to include “Interactive” exhibitors and tracks.   Having attended the past few DMA Annual Conferences, the “Interactive” makeup of this event appears to be less than a third of that from more traditional and offline Direct Marketing.  By and large, the “Interactive” exhibitors tend to be a small subset of the Ad:tech advertisers.

In this tradeshow landscape, a specific segment of the market was being overlooked – specifically those companies involved exclusively in performance-based advertising and marketing (e.g. lead generation companies and Internet lead providers) along with the biggest buyers of performance-based advertising and marketing (e.g. lead buyers).  THIS is the fastest-growing segment of Internet Advertising and Online Marketing according to the IAB (I argue with some of their numbers, but I agree with this fact).

TARGUSinfo was the first to acknowledge this gap and filled it with their annual Lead Quality Summit.  However, Jay Weintraub was the first to create an industry event that was more focused on the lead generation ecosystem as whole that that of Ad:tech or DMA but extended the scope even beyond a customer/partner summit.  Hence, LeadsCon was born.

Anyone who knows Jay agrees that this is the perfect gig for him.  Not only has he become quite the industry luminary with his blog, but he is also one of the more well-connected players in the space.  As a result, the inaugural LeadsCon event was SOLD OUT weeks before the show and the panel/speaker roster reads like a who’s who in the industry.  Jay has even honored yours truly with a spot on the Hot Transfers panel, which closes out the show.  The panel will be moderated by my friend Jason Stoffer, who was one of the pioneers in building a Hot Transfers process in EDU with his former employer CareerEd.  Jason has since moved on to become a Senior Associate at Maveron and is one of the brightest minds evaluating the lead generation space for investment opportunities.

Not surprisingly, we are very bullish about this event.  I will be attending the show along with four others from DoublePositive – EVP Joey Liner, SVP Brian Ocheltree, CTO Syed Zaidi, and our Affiliate Manager, Rich Dent.  If you plan on attending, please come by our booth – we are in eager deal-making mode.

We had considered being a major sponsor of this event, but by the time we got our ducks in a row, our friends at LeadPoint had already scooped up the “Lead Sponsor” package that we had our eye on.  We did jump on the opportunity, however, to be the sponsored advertiser on the lanyards (neck bands) that hold the conference badges.  It will certainly be satisfying to see some of those who consider themselves competitive to DoublePositive wearing our colors and message around their necks.  :-)

A particularly unique panel is scheduled for Thursday and is titled “Meet the All-stars.”  The panel includes:

• Matt Coffin
• Mark DiPaola
• Matt Keiser
• Mike Kelly
• Brendon Kensel
• Chris Moore
• Murthy Nukala
• Ed Ojdana
• Jordan Rohan

LeadsCon officially kicks off on April 2nd at The Palms in Las Vegas.  I expect to remain quite busy and engaged during the show, but I will try to capture and blog some thoughts and reflections on the plane ride back home.

Stay tuned!

SPF