Has your business dealt with the common misfortune of finding out that the majority of leads you paid for are low-quality, bad leads? Whether you are just breaking into the world of lead purchasing or you are a grizzled veteran, this question is pertinent to all buyers.

After all, how can you be expected to surpass or even keep up with your competition if bad leads are pushing your starting line further and further behind? It’s hard to win a race when you start miles behind the field.

In order to better understand how to improve lead quality, let’s first define it and identify key steps for lead enrichment. Without understanding potential foundational issues, your entire strategy could crumble. We then will introduce you to a specific tool that can help you discern between good and bad leads, regain control, increase your purchasing power, and give you a head start on your competition: ActiveProspect’s LeadConduit.

What is lead quality?

Lead quality pertains to the likeliness of your prospects becoming paying customers based on specified parameters, such as purchase behavior, shopping activity, brand interactions, market intentions, and means to buy.

Simply put, if a prospect is more likely to become a customer, then they are a higher quality lead. Ideally, lead buyers want to ONLY purchase leads with the greatest potential to become customers.

How to measure lead quality?

Measuring lead quality is essential for optimizing your marketing ROI and ensuring your sales team focuses on leads that are most likely to convert. Here’s a clear framework for doing it effectively:

1. Define what a “quality lead” means for your business

Start by aligning sales and marketing teams on what constitutes a qualified lead. This typically includes:

• Demographics: Age, income, job title, location, etc.
• Firmographics: Industry, company size, or revenue (for B2B).
• Behavioral signals: Website visits, form completions, downloads, or email engagement.
• Intent signals: Requesting a quote, booking a demo, or viewing pricing pages.
  

Your definition of a quality lead should tie directly to your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).

2. Track conversion metrics

A simple way to measure lead quality is to monitor how leads progress through your funnel:

• Lead-to-Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) rate – How many raw leads meet your marketing criteria?
• MQL-to-Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) rate – How many leads are accepted by sales for follow-up?
• SQL-to-Customer conversion rate – How many turn into paying customers?
  

High conversion rates between stages indicate strong lead quality.

3. Measure lead engagement

Track how actively your leads engage with your brand:

• Email open and click rates
• Page views per session
• Time spent on key pages (pricing, testimonials, etc.)
• Response rate to sales outreach
  

More engaged leads tend to be higher quality and closer to making a decision.

4. Assess lead source performance

Not all lead sources deliver equal quality. Compare leads from:

• Organic search
• Paid ads
• Social media
• Third-party vendors
  

Evaluate not just quantity but cost per acquisition (CPA) and lifetime value (LTV) from each source. This helps you reallocate budget toward high-performing channels.

5. Use lead scoring models

Assign numeric values to actions and attributes. For example:

• +10 points for downloading an eBook
• +20 points for attending a demo
• +15 points for job title = “Director”
  

Leads with higher scores are more likely to convert.

6. Validate and verify lead data

Ensure the data you’re measuring is accurate and compliant:

• Use TrustedForm to verify consent and confirm that a real person submitted the form.
• Use LeadConduit to filter, enrich, and reject invalid or duplicate leads before they hit your CRM.
  

Clean, compliant data is the foundation of accurate quality measurement.

7. Analyze revenue attribution

Ultimately, the best indicator of lead quality is revenue. Track:

• Which leads close fastest
• Which sources produce the highest LTV
• Which lead types require the least sales effort

8. Collect feedback from Sales

Quantitative data only goes so far—ask your Sales team which leads actually convert well. They can identify patterns (e.g., certain industries or titles) that signal strong potential, helping refine your lead qualification criteria.

Beyond internal insights, collecting structured customer feedback can also reveal why certain leads convert while others stall. Understanding satisfaction levels at each stage of the buyer journey helps identify friction points and strengthen your qualification model.

How do I improve lead quality?

Low lead quality is a problem that any company acquiring third-party leads faces, and often the problem lies within. Use these three self-evaluation questions to help optimize and customize your company’s approach:

1. Have you evaluated your lead sources?

Always know your sources. If you are acquiring third-party leads, this can come down to the originating domain. Understanding and knowing the originating domain can help differentiate between a prospective lead who filled out forms in hopes of winning an iPad (low-quality lead), and one that came from reading an industry-specific blog from someone interested in a certain type of product (high-quality lead). By simply knowing where they originated, you can cut out hours of wasted time on bad leads.  Export leads from Sales Navigator and use the original domain as a factor to filter out low-quality leads and focus on high-quality ones.

2. Did your leads consent to be contacted?

One of the cornerstones of ActiveProspect is to ensure that the leads have consented to be contacted. If leads have not consented to be contacted, this is a glaring identifier that they are of low quality, and you are unnecessarily exposing yourself to potential litigation. 

For example, say your company has been given a new lead and decides to pursue the opportunity without verifying that the lead has consented to be contacted. Even with TCPA consent secured, it’s always a smart idea to verify their professional email addresses to ensure the information you have is current and reliable. Doing so prevents wasted effort reaching out to outdated contacts and keeps your conversations meaningful and targeted. If the lead has not consented, they do not have interest, your company has wasted time and resources pursuing a bad lead, and you have exposed yourself to potential compliance infractions. 

Always verify that your leads have consented to be contacted and start a conversation with a prospect that actually wants to speak with you; guarantee that they are high quality and that you are compliant.

Learn more about consent-based marketing by downloading our whitepaper here.

3. Do your leads have buying power? 

Does the prospective lead truly possess the ability to buy what you’re selling? Establishing income parameters or job titles can help differentiate between buyers and browsers. If you are selling a high-end product, it is important to include a data entry section that requires income or job title verification. By doing this, you can separate CEOs from interns and high-quality leads from low-quality ones. 

Maybe you never even thought about checking the originating domain or were even aware of the legal ramifications regarding consent. Maybe your prospective leads were only filling out their names and emails, and the thought of establishing buying power never occurred to you. 

These are common oversites within the industry, and ActiveProspect has the all-in-one solution on how to improve lead quality.

The LeadConduit one-stop shop

ActiveProspect’s LeadConduit is a real-time lead optimization platform that empowers you to take action on your leads by customizing lead flow, enhancing leads with additional data, filtering and rejecting leads, and delivering it all straight to your CRM.

LeadConduit leverages several add-on services (contact validation, demographic identification, financial verification, and high-risk protection) to help your business optimize its lead acquisition strategy and set rules that ensure you only accept leads that meet your criteria.

LeadConduit is your one-stop shop for lead management, lead optimization, and lead distribution. Take control and make the most out of every high quality lead in your system.

Final thoughts

Improving lead quality isn’t about luck—it’s about control. By clearly defining what a quality lead looks like, verifying consent, understanding the source, and confirming buying intent, you can dramatically increase the value of every lead you purchase.

Tools like LeadConduit empower you to take this process one step further, automatically filtering, enriching, and routing leads in real time to ensure only the best reach your sales team. 

When paired with TrustedForm for consent verification, you gain full visibility and confidence in your data. The result? Fewer wasted dollars, higher conversions, and a streamlined path to growth. Start optimizing your lead flow today—and turn every lead into a real opportunity.

The post How to increase lead quality for every lead you buy appeared first on ActiveProspect.

In our recent webinar “Shaping CRM success: The key to compliance and growth,” our Vertical Leader of Financial Services, Michael Peronto, and the Chief Growth Officer at Shape, Scott Payne, delved into the transformative potential of integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems.

They also addressed recent regulatory changes to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) that have struck the lead generation and performance marketing industries, and the upcoming FCC one-to-one consent updates.

Some key dates to keep in mind

February 2, 2024

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has mandated that AI-generated voice calls require prior express written consent, which has been in effect since February 2.

October 15, 2024

An update to the Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) regarding the storage and recording of call details went live on October 15.

January 27, 2025

The FCC’s one-on-one consent update is scheduled for January 27, 2025, so it’s time to start preparing and updating your systems.

April 11, 2025

A new update is set for April 11, 2025, introducing universal consent revocation. This means if a consumer opts out through one channel, they opt out through all channels, significantly impacting contact strategies and CRM technologies. We encourage you to stay informed about this upcoming April 2025 update.

Unlocking AI potential in CRM

When considering AI in CRM, Michael believes we’re only “scratching the surface.” Many companies are innovating with various AI tools, and he believes AI has immense potential for compliance. Imagine reviewing every text, email, and call, and then subsequently transcribing, scoring, and sending notifications to managers for compliance purposes. But it won’t stop at compliance; according to Michael, AI will evolve to enhance sales within CRM.

For instance, it could listen to a sales call, provide real-time insights, summarize conversations, or even schedule appointments and send reminders. The possibilities are endless. While AI has been a hot topic, we’re now seeing significant investment and effort directed towards CRM and contact center applications.

Another benefit, as Michael highlights, is the efficiency gained through AI, not only for tasks like project planning but especially in CRM and contact centers. Many processes that are currently manual can now be driven by AI. For instance, managers would manually select calls from reports, listen to each one – which could last up to an hour – and then subjectively score them for compliance. AI significantly reduces the time required to complete these tasks and performs them with greater accuracy.

Connecting leads to CRM: The role of middleware solutions

A middleware is a software that facilitates communication and data management between various applications, systems, or components within a network. Acting as a “bridge,” middleware supports integration, messaging, security, and interoperability among applications that might use different protocols or run on different platforms.

Using a middleware is especially useful in modern distributed architectures and cloud computing, allowing organizations to integrate new applications with legacy systems, manage data flows, and maintain flexibility across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

Your middleware plays a pivotal role in various contexts, as Scott has experienced with inbound calls. Much like a route planner that efficiently maps deliveries, the middleware determines where to route calls and which phone system handles them.

For instance, when a call comes in, the middleware determines where to route it and which phone system handles it. In a large customer retention operation, the middleware not only routes the call but can also check for existing records within your database and appends relevant data. 

When dealing with inbound leads from websites, direct mail, or purchased sources, the middleware checks and enhances data before it enters the system. This includes appending useful information for routing decisions or providing salespeople with comprehensive details, enhancing the customer experience.

Using a middleware is essential for tasks like Do-Not-Call (DNC) checks, litigator scrubs, data deduplication, and managing opt-outs. It ensures that leads are not duplicated, preventing multiple salespeople from contacting the same customer. Ultimately, as Scott explains, middleware is crucial for maintaining high lead conversion rates and overall business efficiency.

As Michael proceeds to explain, when considering a middleware solution, you might think about building it in-house, but that requires substantial technical resources to create a system capable of ingesting and processing data. Alternatively, you can opt to purchase a tool that seamlessly integrates with your existing platforms.

Append, enhance, filter, and reject leads with LeadConduit

LeadConduit, one of ActiveProspect’s products, is a versatile platform that sits between your lead sources, such as landing pages and social media, and your CRM system. It offers numerous capabilities, including direct integrations with specific lead sources, lead acquisition, real-time bidding, and suppression list management to prevent duplicate records.

In terms of compliance, LeadConduit provides a comprehensive suite of tools. It can perform known litigator checks to prevent potential legal issues, conduct general fraud checks, and retain TrustedForm certificates to document consent, which is a legal requirement under the TCPA. Additionally, it can verify one-to-one consent with TrustedForm Verify to comply with upcoming regulations.

Some organizations also integrate AI content detection and behavioral analysis tools to identify bot-generated submissions, AI-written spam, or suspicious lead activity before records enter the CRM.

Other features include deduplication, phone and email validation with rejection options, litigator scrubs, and lead scoring. In essence, LeadConduit acts as a robust filter for your lead data. It processes leads through various checks and enhancements before posting them to the appropriate place within your CRM platform.

How to overcome the compliance challenges of distributed retail models

Let’s move on to an emerging topic in the compliance arena: companies with a distributed retail model. As Michael explains, these organizations have a corporate headquarters and numerous branches, with some branches conducting their own marketing and even signing contracts with third-party providers. According to Michael’s experience, this model fosters entrepreneurship but also presents significant compliance challenges that are difficult to monitor.

In light of upcoming compliance changes, these companies must have critical discussions about the tools and practices they’ll permit their branches to use. The goal is to support the branches overall success while adhering to new compliance requirements. 

Not all companies currently have a CRM platform that has robust branch model compliance capabilities as Shape Software. To assist, we’ve compiled a list of strategies to help maintain compliance within a branching environment.

Regular communications

Ensure regular communication about compliance to your users and managers. Many programs falter by only addressing compliance during onboarding, without ongoing reminders.

Webinars

Michael suggests leveraging webinars to blend sales and compliance topics. Invite high-performing branch managers to share insights while integrating essential compliance information.

Continuous training

Implement continuous training.

Internal intranet

If tech resources allow it, create an internal portal with compliance-related videos and guides for easy reference.

Pre-approved list of compliance vendors

Provide branches with a pre-approved list of vendors, marketing companies, and tools to streamline their operations and ensure compliance.

Regular secret shops

Lastly, an intriguing suggestion from Michael is to “secret shop” your own company. Regularly test your platforms and landing pages to understand the user experience and ensure all communications align with your compliance standards. You might uncover surprising insights.

Scott’s strategy involves a 10-day tracking period where you observe all incoming calls and emails without responding. On the 10th day, call back the numbers that reached out to you, express initial interest, propose an enticing deal, then mention you need to reschedule for the next day at 2 PM. Monitor the follow-up over the next 10 days.

According to Scott’s experience, 85% of the time, there’s no follow-up call. Of the 15% that do call back, half are more than an hour late. Rarely do calls come on time or within a reasonable window.

This “secret shop” method can vary. You might start an application and stop at the social security number step, submit a lead over the weekend or late at night, and observe the responses. The key is to set clear expectations for your sales team’s follow-up protocol and work towards improving it based on your findings.

Takeaways

Here are some key takeaways from our recent webinar “Shaping CRM success: The key to compliance and growth:”

• The FCC one-to-one consent update will require businesses to obtain prior express written consent from consumers in a one-to-one manner before contacting them.
• Middleware is crucial in managing leads, ensuring compliance, and improving efficiency.
• AI can be used to enhance compliance, improve efficiency, and provide insights for better decision-making.
• CRM plays a crucial role in maintaining compliance at the branch level, especially in a distributed retail model.
• Regular secret shopping can help businesses uncover compliance issues and improve customer experience.

As always, ActiveProspect is here to help you navigate the compliance landscape with confidence. Watch the entire episode now and subscribe to InsideCBM to stay on top of the latest consent-based marketing insights, updates, and trends.

DISCLAIMER: This page and all related links are provided for general informational and educational purposes only and are not legal advice. ActiveProspect does not warrant or guarantee this information will provide you with legal protection or compliance. Please consult with your legal counsel for legal and compliance advice. You are responsible for using any ActiveProspect Services in a legally compliant manner pursuant to ActiveProspect’s Terms of Service. Any quotes contained herein belong to the person(s) quoted and do not necessarily represent the views and/or opinions of ActiveProspect.

The post Harnessing CRM & AI to navigate performance marketing appeared first on ActiveProspect.

In our webinar “Lead-Gen 2.0: A detailed compliance checklist for 1:1 consent management,” Benjamin Farrar, our Director of Privacy, Security, & Compliance, discussed significant changes sweeping across the lead generation industry with Brett and Scott Hettman, respectively Client Services Manager and Sales & Marketing Manager at boberdoo.

Centered on the latest FCC one-to-one consent rules and updates to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), the session placed a solid emphasis on how these critical changes are pivoting the way businesses operate, providing a detailed compliance checklist for one-to-one consent management.

The compliance countdown is on

As Benjamin says: “Today, October 9th, 2024 we are 111 days until the FCC TCPA one-to-one consent update is set to be enforced.” This means we’re rapidly nearing the key 90, 60, and 30-day milestones for a strong lead generation pipeline.

If you plan to contact leads on or after January 27th, 2025, the FCC TCPA enforcement deadline, you’ll need to present them with a one-to-one consent notice and maintain meticulous records. As Benjamin suggests, it’s time to spring into action, and ActiveProspect is here to assist you and the industry every step of the way.

Start verifying one-to-one consent with TrustedForm

As Scott explains, the testing process for one-to-one consent differs greatly from the traditional ping post method and is much more comprehensive. There are numerous scenarios that could arise or need to be tested in a one-to-one environment, requiring more detailed planning and execution.

For this reason, boberdoo and ActiveProspect have joined forces to help customers make this process smooth and easy.

Boberdoo supports the new TrustedForm Verify 1:1 Consent Check feature, aiming to make the setup as seamless as possible. This “plug and play” or “bring your own credentials” approach allows you to simply copy and paste your ActiveProspect key token value into the boberdoo system to get started.

TrustedForm Verify elevates compliance efforts, allowing users to assess the suitability of TCPA consent language used by various lead vendors and confirm key requirements necessary to qualify as prior express written consent. Its new Verify 1:1 Consent Check feature helps provide evidence and signals if consent was presented in a one-to-one manner and acknowledged by consumers.

The goal is to ensure that the consumer has selected the appropriate one-to-one consent option for advertiser(s), that the lead transaction includes the consent language that was expected, and evidence that one-to-one choice and options were presented to the consumer. 

Once your form is set up and your ActiveProspect credentials are plugged into the boberdoo system, you can enable this feature. As leads come in, these additional checks for one-to-one consent signals will be performed.

Navigating the new era of one-to-one consent: Exclusive vs. shared lead models

As Scott explains, a significant change is going to be the moving away from the practice of  linking to a long list of “marketing partners” or listing a number of potential companies in TCPA consent language that might receive consumer contact information. Now, prior express written consent must be presented individually for each company, which is accompanied by its own selectable checkbox.

As Scott continues to explain, the two main lead generation models, exclusive leads and shared leads, will have to be adjusted to account for the one-to-one update.

In the exclusive lead model, consumers respond to qualifying questions and are then presented with a single, dynamically matched company name. This company is integrated into the TCPA language, allowing consumers to choose or consent to sharing their contact information with that specific company. It’s crucial to align the landing page’s value proposition with this new process to avoid inconsistencies and conversion rate changes.

On the other hand, in the shared lead model, consumers answer qualifying questions and are presented with checkboxes for multiple matches, allowing them to choose or select one or more companies with which contact info can be shared for expected outreach. This scenario can potentially create more complex lead generation transactions and outcomes. For example the new one-to-one consent requirements can present new, unexpected or uncomfortable   post-reject transaction conversations between partners if not discussed ahead of time.

Lead generators must ensure their value proposition and source settings align with their chosen model, shared or exclusive. They can configure their websites for the exclusive or shared relationships and adapt to the best scenario.

Why it’s important to check your value proposition

To this regard, Scott mentions an intriguing test conducted by a client who typically used an exclusive lead model and wanted to experiment with a shared lead model for one-to-one consent.

In doing that, they didn’t modify their value proposition. Their landing page Call to Action (CTA) was “Get matched to the best contractor,” but their beta test displayed multiple selling companies. They were puzzled as to why consumers still selected only one option. It turned out their value proposition was singular, despite presenting multiple matches.

It wasn’t until they changed the CTA to “Compare multiple contractors” that they saw the impact of presenting multiple sellers to consumers in the new one-to-one environment. Sometimes, simple landing page adjustments can significantly affect what consumers view and select regarding matching companies.

Checklist for lead website sources

1. Determine if “owned & operated” or “brokered” sources

As Scott and Brett explain, previously, you might have created a single source – such as campaigns or tracking variables – and passed it along with your API specs for integration. However, with the introduction of exclusive and shared lead models, some website owners may prefer one model over the other.

This necessitates more detailed discussions. You’ll need to create separate sources for brokered websites versus owned and operated websites, as there may be differences in how exclusive and shared scenarios are handled.

2. Label sources sending one-to-one leads vs. standard leads

As a lead generator, your ecosystem might include standard leads, lead buyers who require one-to-one consent, and those who don’t. Similarly, you might have sources sending leads with and without one-to-one consent. To manage this, you’ll need to organize your entire lead ecosystem accordingly.

According to Scott, using clear labels can ensure that lead buyers requiring one-to-one consent receive only those leads, while others are processed responsibility for differing lead vertical or analytics uses. This labeling system should be integrated into your lead management platform to track sources and maintain consistency throughout your system.

3. Issue new credentials and testing

The key point here is that while many have tried using existing sources and API credentials to test the new one-to-one consent feature, Scott and Brett advise against this. They recommend creating separate sources to easily track, diagnose, and compare leads coming from different APIs and destined for different buyers.

Moreover, when it comes to testing, it’s no longer sufficient to submit a single test and expect success or an error. With one-to-one consent, there are multiple use cases and combinations to consider. For instance, what happens if a partner is returned but not selected by the consumer, or if multiple sellers are returned? Therefore, according to Scott, testing should now be a comprehensive process involving several scenarios, ensuring that a partner is set live only after extensive testing over time, not just based on a single successful test.

4. Check that TrustedForm Verify 1:1 Consent Check tags have been properly placed on the lead source sites

To implement the TrustedForm Verify 1:1 Consent Check feature, the lead-generating website must include “consent check tags” in its code. These tags highlight elements like the submit button, the offer, and the language, enabling ActiveProspect to compare this information.

Since these tags must be added to the lead source website, only the website owner can do this. Therefore, testing is no longer a one-time task. You’ll need to conduct multiple tests to ensure the consent checks work correctly in various scenarios.

For more details, you can watch our previous webinar where we introduced the TrustedForm Verify 1:1 Consent Check feature.

5. Use the “boberdoo Form” feature, which is automatically integrated with TrustedForm Verify to receive 1:1 consent signals

Scott and Brett present another option to consider. In the past, if you tested one source for a publisher with a tag and it worked, but the tag wasn’t correctly applied to a brokered source, leads from that brokered source couldn’t be sold to partners. Only leads from the tested source would go through. This highlights the need for more detailed and nuanced testing due to the additional tags required in a one-to-one consent environment.

Implementing these tags is straightforward with boberdoo’s form builder. You can create a form in the boberdoo system and embed it on any website – either your own or a publisher’s. This ensures the TrustedForm tags are consistently placed, allowing you to generate TrustedForm Certificates. It’s a scalable way to implement the TrustedForm Verify 1:1 Consent Check feature without extensive development. Even if you don’t have a developer, you can simply copy and paste a code snippet to set up the form.

Checklist for lead generation buyers

1. Determine the company/legal entity name that needs to be presented to the consumer

Ben advises seeking compliance and legal counsel to ensure accurate interpretation about this. Legal input will help ensure the correct company name is presented on your web forms.

Scott underlines how this name might differ from internal references, especially for brokers. It’s essential to verify that internal names don’t inadvertently appear to consumers. Additionally, check integration responses to ensure the correct name is returned to publishers or landing pages, as this information is directly visible to consumers.

Since this process is code-driven, implement checks to guarantee the right data is displayed.

2. Determine partners that will require one-to-one consent

As Scott explains, your partners may or may not require consent, and this will determine which lead sources are suitable for each partner. You’ll likely have various types of incoming traffic, some with one-to-one consent and others without.

It’s crucial not to send leads from sources lacking one-to-one consent to partners that require it. Therefore, having the ability to label leads accurately is essential. This ensures you don’t mistakenly send a lead to a partner that requires consent when it hasn’t been obtained.

3. Determine partners that use an ATDS

Lead generators might have concerns about who you sell leads to, and some may have restrictions. Buyers using an Automatic Telephone Dialing System (ATDS) are directly in scope for TCPA and related legal risks and it’s reasonable to expect they should have higher compliance consent evidence standards.

According to Scott, it’s crucial to identify and label which partners use an ATDS and which don’t. This allows you to manage lead distribution appropriately.

4. Label partners as retail or broker

As Scott explains, a retail partner is a direct service provider, such as a contractor, agent, or insurance provider. They are the final service provider, or “matching seller” as termed by the FCC, that is presented to the consumer.

On the other hand, a broker is a reseller, also known as a lead generation company, aggregator, or resell generation company. These are the two primary classifications used to distinguish the types of partners.

One crucial thing to keep in mind is that, in order to comply with FCC one-to-one consent rules, the broker’s company name should never be shown to the consumer, considering the broker is not the final seller contacting them.

5. Obtain new credentials and test

When discussing testing and selling leads to brokers, especially in a shared environment, there are several aspects to consider due to the bidding process.

As a retail buyer, you might have new specifications, including different requirements for the company and legal entity name. It’s important to communicate these details with them. Additionally, discuss whether they’re open to participating in an exclusive or shared scenario.

For brokers, the conversation is similar regarding exclusive or shared scenarios. However, when it comes to shared scenarios, bidding becomes a factor. Brokers can bid in two ways:

1. Bid on the entire lead, returning multiple companies with a single bid. In this case, your system must handle the bid as a whole, presenting it to the consumer as an all-or-nothing option.
2. Provide an individual bid for each matching company. This allows for more flexibility, as these individual bids can be combined with bids from other matching companies, whether they are retail companies in your system or matches from other brokers.

Scott and Brett recommend the individual bid scenario, as it enables creating more matching scenarios and returning better matches to the consumer.

Takeaways

Here are the key takeaways we could gather from our webinar “Lead-Gen 2.0: A detailed compliance checklist for 1:1 consent management:” 

• The new one-to-one consent rules require a more detailed and nuanced approach to lead generation, with different considerations for exclusive and shared lead models.
• Testing for compliance is no longer a one-and-done process; it needs to be extensive and cover multiple scenarios.
• Using solutions like ActiveProspect’s TrustedForm Verify and boberdoo can help businesses navigate the new compliance landscape.
• Effective strategies and best practices to help lead buyers and sellers adapt to the new one-to-one consent environment.
• Compliance is not just about avoiding penalties, but also about building trust and optimizing the entire lead ecosystem.

Watch the full episode now and subscribe to InsideCBM to never miss out on the latest news and insights about the FCC, TCPA, consent-based marketing, and more.

DISCLAIMER: This page and all related links are provided for general informational and educational purposes only and are not legal advice. ActiveProspect does not warrant or guarantee this information will provide you with legal protection or compliance. Please consult with your legal counsel for legal and compliance advice. You are responsible for using any ActiveProspect Services in a legally compliant manner pursuant to ActiveProspect’s Terms of Service. Any quotes contained herein belong to the person(s) quoted and do not necessarily represent the views and/or opinions of ActiveProspect.

The post Compliance checklist for one-to-one consent management appeared first on ActiveProspect.

In today’s data-driven landscape, maximizing the quality and insights derived from your leads is essential for successful marketing strategies. ActiveProspect’s suite of tools empowers data scientists to optimize lead quality and insights by enhancing leads with new data, unlocking the full potential of lead profiles through detailed demographic and financial information, and utilizing smart filtering to manage and prioritize leads effectively. 

Business intelligence lead generation and data science lead generation efforts benefit immensely from these capabilities, as they allow for a deeper understanding of lead potential and the optimization of marketing strategies.

Our platform provides the means to discover deeper lead insights, gaining critical metadata that shapes acquisition strategies, bolsters business intelligence for lead generation, and guides investment decisions. Lead generation data analysis becomes more powerful with the ability to enrich lead profiles and prioritize leads based on sophisticated data points, thereby enhancing overall campaign performance.

Benefits of consent-based marketing platforms

As a data scientist, you need tools that provide clean, verified, and compliant data. ActiveProspect’s consent-based marketing platform allows you to trust the integrity and legality of every lead, giving you the peace of mind to focus on what you do best—analyzing and optimizing.

Our consent-based marketing platform empowers businesses to:

Optimize lead quality

• Enhance leads with new data: Unlock the full potential of your lead data by expanding lead profiles with detailed demographic and financial information. Utilize smart filtering to manage and prioritize leads based on their profile characteristics.
• Discover deeper lead insights: Gain critical metadata further upstream to help shape your acquisition strategies and guide your investment decisions.

Manage leads in real time

• Duplicate management: Instantly identify and manage duplicate entries to maximize your efforts.
• Intelligent routing: Direct valuable returning prospects, effectively enhancing conversion opportunities.
• Clean data gathering: Collect and unify clean and reliable data from various sources to create a holistic view of your leads and understand the leading indicators of conversion.

Streamline lead acquisition and distribution

• Data normalization: Enhance consistency across all data points and streamline your processes to match your strategic needs.
• Accurate data delivery: Bolster the integrity and accuracy of your data across multiple platforms, understand data origination, and maintain the highest standards of data quality.
• Customizable Data Workflows: Design and implement data workflows that align with your analytical goals, allowing you to manipulate and transform data as it moves between systems, enabling tailored data preparation for advanced analytics.

Bolster compliance and lead protection

• Document consent flawlessly: Secure verifiable consent with third-party-certified certificates, providing robust protection against compliance risks and equipping your legal team with tamper-proof documentation.
• Comprehensive lead protection: Identify and eliminate fraudulent leads through advanced verification processes and integrations. Avoid legal pitfalls by filtering out known litigators before they impact your business.

Track & report

• Detailed reporting tools: Granular reporting capabilities allow you to monitor every facet of your lead management process, including event tracking and partner collaboration for improved coordination and transparency.
• Audit and automation: Maintain impeccable records and streamline operations with millisecond precision and automated processes for handling discrepancies.
• Assess and improve data quality: Evaluate the accuracy, completeness, and consistency of your lead data to optimize decision-making and campaign performance. Conducting a data maturity assessment helps to identify gaps in the data processes and implement strategies for better data management.

Integrate seamlessly

• Ease of Use: Adopting a consent-based marketing model with ActiveProspect is streamlined and efficient. Our platform boasts robust integration capabilities with all major CRMs and marketing software, allowing you to seamlessly connect your existing tools without any disruptions.

The complete platform for data science lead generation

LeadConduit

Eliminate error-prone manual work to normalize, maintain, and sync data between different lead vendors and tech stacks with LeadConduit.

• Enhanced reporting: LeadConduit provides pre-built, customizable reports to measure vendor performance. You can easily share these reports with your lead vendors.
• Block unwanted leads: Increase speed-to-lead with real-time automated workflows. Only accept leads that match your requirements. Validate, filter, and reject unwanted leads.
• Faster vendor onboarding: Onboard, test, and evaluate new vendors quickly. Use customizable reports for monitoring vendor performance.

TrustedForm Insights

Allows you to make informed, data-driven decisions to optimize your lead-buying strategies and maximize your ROI.

• Identify highest-performing channels based on 7 data points: Lead Age, Originating Domain, GeoLocation, IP address, Time on Page, Form Input Method and Keyword Scanning.
• Easily recognize top-performing lead vendors by tracking leads back to the site that generated them.
• Improve conversions by using Insights on the ping (before purchase) by bidding more on high-value leads. Lower Cost-Per-Lead (CPL) when using Insights on the post by filtering out sources that never convert.

Final thoughts

Data is more than just numbers—it’s the backbone of successful lead generation data analysis. As a data and intelligence analyst, your ability to maximize lead quality, extract actionable insights, and bolster compliance can set your business apart. ActiveProspect’s suite of tools is designed with your needs in mind, offering powerful solutions that transform raw data into valuable, actionable intelligence.

From optimizing lead quality and enhancing data profiles to driving seamless integration and robust compliance, ActiveProspect provides the comprehensive platform you need to thrive. By leveraging our tools, you can streamline your processes, protect your leads, and, most importantly, make data-driven decisions with confidence.

As the demand for high-quality, compliant leads continues to grow, partnering with ActiveProspect ensures that your lead generation strategies are not only effective but also future-proof. Empower your business intelligence data strategies with ActiveProspect, and unlock the full potential of your lead generation efforts today.

The post Data & business intelligence lead generation guide appeared first on ActiveProspect.

In the fast-paced world of online lead generation, it’s crucial for marketers to have effective digital marketing strategies in place in order to drive business success and growth. Understanding the nuances of lead capture automation, lead flow management, lead management automation, and related processes can significantly enhance your marketing efforts.

This guide will explore the critical components of a robust lead generation strategy, focusing on automation and compliance, ensuring your marketing efforts are efficient, effective, and compliant with regulations.

Understanding lead generation

“Lead generation” is the process of attracting and converting users and prospects into someone who has indicated an interest in your company’s product or service. The goal is to develop a funnel of interested individuals who can be nurtured and converted into customers.

This involves several steps, from capturing initial interest to managing leads through the sales pipeline. Here’s an in-depth look at the key steps involved in effective lead generation. In today’s market landscape, leveraging cutting-edge technology enhances every stage of the sales process. A well-rounded strategy involves integrating various advanced platforms and even relying on specialized staff augmentation services to quickly scale teams. Marketers can benefit immensely by opting for B2B sales platforms by Trumpet, which cater specifically to personalization and engagement needs, streamlining processes within digital sales rooms.

1. Identify your target audience

Before you start generating leads, you need to know who you’re targeting. Understanding your ideal customer profile is crucial for creating tailored marketing strategies. This involves:

• Market research: Conduct thorough research to understand the demographics, interests, pain points, and behaviors of your target audience.
• Buyer personas: Develop detailed buyer personas representing different segments of your audience. These personas help guide your marketing strategy, enhance sales prospecting efforts, and ensure your content resonates with potential customers.

2. Create compelling content

Content is the backbone of lead generation. High-quality, valuable content attracts visitors and encourages them to engage with your brand. Types of content include:

• Blog posts: Regularly updated blog posts that address your audience’s pain points and provide solutions. Check out content writing samples to find inspiration for blog formats that drive engagement.
• eBooks and whitepapers: In-depth guides that require users to provide contact information in exchange for access.
• Webinars and videos: Interactive and visual content that engages users and collects their details for event registration. You can use images too for interactive content, and an AI photo editor can help you quickly enhance, resize, or customize them to match your branding and boost engagement.
• Case studies: In-depth analyses of how your business helped specific customers, typically used to provide insights, demonstrate effectiveness, and share best practices.
• Podcasts: Digital audio programs that are available for streaming, often supported by podcast editing services, that cover specific topics or themes and can be accessed on demand.
• Branded Merchandise: Useful and memorable items such as custom printed backpacks, notebooks, calendars, tote bags, or branded stress relief items like high-quality custom stress balls featuring your logo or campaign theme. These not only increase brand visibility but also create a sense of loyalty and engagement among recipients. Companies can easily create these print-on-demand materials through third-party service providers.

3. Optimize your website

Your website is the hub of your lead generation efforts. Start fast by creating a website with AI and optimize it to capture leads effectively:

• Landing pages: Create dedicated landing pages for specific campaigns with a clear call-to-action (CTA) and lead capture forms.
• Forms: Simplify your forms to collect essential information. The fewer fields, the higher the completion rate.
• CTAs: Place compelling CTAs throughout your website, guiding visitors towards taking action.

4. Use lead capture tools

Automate and streamline the process of collecting leads with various tools and technologies:

• Lead capture forms: Embed forms on your landing pages, blog posts, and other high-traffic areas of your website.
• Pop-ups and slide-ins: Use timed or behavior-triggered pop-ups to capture visitor information.
• Chatbots: Implement chatbots to engage with visitors in real time and collect their information through interactive conversations. Partnering with a chatbot development company can help you create more sophisticated and customized chatbot solutions tailored to your specific needs.

5. Drive traffic

Attracting visitors to your website is essential for generating leads. Use a mix of strategies to drive traffic:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Optimize your content and website for AI search engines to attract organic traffic.
• Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising: Use paid search and display ads to target specific keywords and demographics. Additionally, consider ad exchange platforms like Zeropark, which allows advertisers to bid on traffic through formats like pop, redirect, and domain traffic, offering a unique way to drive highly targeted visitors to your site.
• Social media marketing: Promote your content and engage with your audience on social media platforms.
• Email marketing: Send targeted emails to your existing contacts and high-value prospects to drive traffic back to your website.

6. Nurture leads

Once you’ve captured leads, nurturing them is crucial to move them through the sales funnel:

• Email campaigns: Send personalized and relevant emails to keep leads engaged and informed.
• Marketing automation: Use automation tools to send timely and targeted messages based on lead behavior and stage in the funnel.
• Content marketing: Continue to provide valuable content that addresses leads’ needs and interests.

7. Score and segment leads

Not all leads are equal. Lead scoring and segmentation help prioritize leads and tailor your approach:

• Lead scoring: Assign scores to leads based on their behavior, engagement, and demographics to determine their readiness to buy.
• Segmentation: Group leads based on shared characteristics or behaviors to deliver more personalized and relevant communication.

8. Hand off to Sales

When a lead reaches a certain score or shows strong buying signals, it’s time to pass them to the Sales team:

• Define criteria: Establish clear criteria for when a lead is ready to be handed off to sales.
• Communication: Ensure seamless communication between Marketing and Sales teams to provide context and insights about the lead.

9. Analyze and optimize

Continuously monitor and refine your lead generation efforts to improve performance:

• Analytics: Track key metrics such as conversion rates, cost per lead, and lead quality.
• A/B testing: Test different elements of your campaigns (e.g., CTAs, landing pages, email content) to determine what works best.
• Feedback: Collect feedback from your Sales team and leads to identify areas for improvement.

By following these steps and continuously refining your approach, you can attract high-quality leads, nurture them through the sales funnel, and ultimately drive business growth.

Lead capture

What is lead capture?

Lead capture is a fundamental component of the lead generation process, involving the collection of information from potential customers who have shown interest in a product or service.

This process typically utilizes various digital tools and techniques to gather relevant data, such as contact details and behavioral insights, which can then be used to nurture and convert leads into customers.

Importance of lead capture

Lead capture is crucial because it forms the initial step in building a relationship with potential customers. By collecting their information, businesses can engage with leads through personalized communication, increasing the likelihood of conversion.

Effective lead capture strategies ensure that no potential opportunity is missed, paving the way for a robust sales pipeline.

Methods of lead capture

1. Web forms: One of the most common methods, web forms are placed on landing pages, blog posts, or pop-up windows, asking visitors to fill in their details in exchange for valuable content, such as eBooks, whitepapers, or newsletters.
2. Landing pages: Dedicated pages designed specifically to capture leads, often offering something of value (like a free trial or a discount) in exchange for the visitor’s contact information.
3. Social media: Platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Instagram, where the visual appeal plays a significant role, offer lead-generation ads that allow businesses to capture leads directly within the social media interface without requiring the user to leave the platform. You can take your social media strategy a step further by automating tasks on LinkedIn like sending personalized connection requests and follow-ups, which not only saves time but also helps you stay consistent in reaching out to ideal leads without manual effort. For instance, getting Instagram followers can be a powerful way to enhance brand visibility and generate quality leads.
4. Chatbots: Automated chat systems on websites that interact with visitors in real time, asking questions and collecting information based on user responses. Platforms like DenserAI take this a step further by allowing businesses to build tailored conversation flows, integrate with internal tools, and respond based on real-time user behavior, making each interaction more relevant and useful.
5. Events and webinars: Collecting attendee information during registration for online and offline events or webinars, providing a platform to engage with interested prospects. For in-person interactions, QR codes can simplify check-ins, direct users to gated content, or collect feedback in real-time. That’s part of the reason QR codes for businesses keep showing up more often at trade shows, workshops, and other events where quick access matters. Tools like the QR Code generator allow marketers to quickly create dynamic QR codes for forms, event pages, or even contact-sharing ideal for networking-heavy scenarios like trade shows and workshops.

Best practices for lead capture

1. Optimized forms: Design forms that are easy to fill out, with clear instructions and as few fields as possible to reduce friction.
2. Compelling CTAs: Use strong and clear calls-to-actions (CTAs) that encourage visitors to provide their information in exchange for something valuable.
3. Mobile-friendly: Ensure that your lead capture forms and landing pages are mobile-responsive, catering to the increasing number of mobile users.
4. Privacy assurance: Clearly communicate how you will use the captured data and assure visitors that their information will be protected.
5. A/B testing: Continuously test different versions of your forms and landing pages to determine which performs best in capturing leads.

Lead capture is an essential part of the marketing funnel, serving as the gateway to converting interested prospects into loyal customers. By leveraging automation tools and following best practices, businesses can optimize their lead capture processes, ensuring a steady flow of high-quality leads into their sales pipeline.

Effective lead capture not only boosts your marketing efficiency but also enhances the overall customer experience, driving better engagement and higher conversion rates.

Lead capture automation

What is lead capture automation?

Lead capture automation involves using tools and technology to collect information from potential customers without manual intervention. This can include data from forms, landing pages, social media, and other digital touchpoints.

Benefits of lead capture automation

Lead capture automation leverages technology to streamline the process of collecting and managing leads. Here are some key benefits:

• Efficiency: Automating lead capture reduces the need for manual data entry, saving time and minimizing errors.
• Scalability: You can handle a higher volume of leads without additional manpower, making it easier to grow your lead database.
• Immediate engagement: Automated systems can send instant responses or follow-ups to captured leads, keeping them engaged while their interest is high.
• Enhanced data accuracy: Automation tools often include validation features that ensure the accuracy and completeness of the captured data.

Tools for lead capture automation

1. HubSpot: A comprehensive marketing platform that includes tools for creating forms, landing pages, and managing captured leads.
2. Marketo Engage: Offers robust lead capture functionalities, including form creation, landing page design, and integration with CRM systems.
3. Pardot: Salesforce’s B2B marketing automation solution that provides lead capture, nurturing, and scoring capabilities.
4. Unbounce: A landing page builder that integrates with various marketing tools to capture and manage leads efficiently.

Implementing lead capture automation

1. Choose the right tools: Platforms like HubSpot, Venturz, Marketo Engage, and Pardot offer robust lead capture features.
2. Create optimized forms: Ensure forms are user-friendly and strategically placed on high-traffic pages.
3. Integrate with CRM: Seamlessly integrate your lead capture tools with your CRM for efficient lead data flow.

Lead flow management

What is lead flow management?

Lead flow management refers to the process of directing leads through the various stages of the sales funnel. Effective lead flow management ensures that leads are nurtured and moved through the funnel efficiently, maximizing conversion rates.

Benefits of lead flow management

• Improved conversion rates: By managing leads effectively, you can increase the likelihood of converting leads into customers.
• Enhanced customer experience: Providing timely and relevant information improves the overall customer journey.
• Better Sales and Marketing alignment: Streamlined lead flow ensures that both Sales and Marketing teams are working together efficiently.

Implementing lead flow management

1. Define lead stages: Clearly define each stage of your sales funnel, from initial contact to final sale.
2. Automate lead scoring: Use lead scoring to prioritize leads based on their likelihood to convert.
3. Nurture leads: Develop targeted content and campaigns to nurture leads through each stage.

Lead management automation

What is lead management automation?

Lead management automation involves using software to streamline and automate the process of tracking, managing, and nurturing leads. This ensures that leads are handled efficiently and nothing falls through the cracks.

Benefits of lead management automation

• Efficiency: Automating repetitive tasks saves time and resources.
• Consistency: Ensures a consistent approach to lead management across the organization.
• Improved insights: Automation tools provide valuable data and insights into lead behavior and campaign performance.

Implementing lead management automation

1. Select the right platform: Choose a lead management automation or CRM software such as FluentCRM that integrates well with your existing systems.
2. Set up automated workflows: Create workflows to automate tasks such as follow-ups, lead scoring, and data updates. Tools like Sintra AI’s AI helpers can also support these workflows by handling repetitive operational tasks, helping teams stay on top of lead follow-ups, reporting, and day-to-day lead management more efficiently.
3. Monitor and optimize: Regularly review your automation processes and make adjustments as needed to improve performance.

Integrating marketing automation with lead management

Benefits of integration

• Holistic view: Gain a comprehensive view of your lead generation and marketing efforts.
• Enhanced personalization: Use data from your marketing automation platform to personalize lead nurturing campaigns.
• Streamlined processes: Integration eliminates silos and ensures that all teams have access to the same information.

LeadsBridge

LeadsBridge is an ActiveProspect product that automates your customer acquisition process by seamlessly integrating major ad platforms with your existing marketing technology.

With over 380 integrations available, you can drive new revenue and increase efficiency by syncing leads in real time, tracking online and offline conversions, and targeting custom audiences.

LeadsBridge partners with the top global advertising platforms, including Meta, Google, LinkedIn, and TikTok to provide unique benefits to users.

Unlike many integration platforms out there, LeadsBridge offers highly specific integrations to make your advertising and marketing experience seamless and headache-free. Our platform is designed specifically for marketing and advertising integrations, ready at the click of a button.

With LeadsBridge you can:

• Gain efficiency by ending slow and error-prone lead syncs
• Optimize return on ad spend (ROAS) by precisely targeting your ideal audience
• Enhance reporting by measuring the true sales impact of your online campaigns

Book a free demo now to see how LeadsBridge works.

Data appending and data enhancement

What is data appending?

Data appending involves adding missing information to your existing lead database. This can include contact details, demographic information, and behavioral data.

Benefits of data appending

• Improved targeting: More complete data allows for better segmentation and targeting.
• Enhanced personalization: Personalize your marketing efforts based on more comprehensive data.
• Increased efficiency: Reduce the need for manual data entry and improve overall data quality.

What is data enhancement?

Data enhancement involves improving the quality and accuracy of your existing data. This can include correcting errors, removing duplicates, and updating outdated information.

Benefits of data enhancement

• Better decision making: Accurate data leads to better business decisions.
• Increased ROI: High-quality data improves the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.
• Compliance: Ensures that your data practices are compliant with regulations.

Implementing data appending and data enhancement

1. Choose a reliable data provider: Partner with a reputable data provider for appending and enhancement services.
2. Regular data audits: Conduct regular audits to identify and address data issues.
3. Use automation tools: Implement tools that automate data appending and enhancement processes.

LeadConduit

LeadConduit is an ActiveProspect product that streamlines your cost-per-lead (CPL) acquisition process to efficiently acquire customers at scale. Custom lead flows automatically enhance and filter leads in real time to deliver the highest-quality prospects to your CRM or lead buyer.

With over 100 readily-available integrations and add-ons, LeadConduit helps you:

• Increase your ROI by filtering and rejecting unwanted leads, and only accepting leads that match your requirements.
• Reduce fraud by eliminating fraudulent leads and known litigators.
• Onboard, test, and evaluate new vendors quickly.

Book a free demo now to see how LeadConduit works.

Ensuring marketing compliance

Importance of TCPA compliance

Compliance with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) is crucial in order to run your marketing campaigns safely and effectively. Non-compliance can result in significant fines and damage to your reputation.

The TCPA allows individuals to sue for actual monetary loss or $500 per violation, whichever is greater. This amount can increase to $1,500 per violation if the court finds that the defendant knowingly or willfully violated the TCPA.

Moreover, TCPA violations can lead to class action lawsuits where a large number of plaintiffs band together. This can multiply the financial penalties significantly, leading to potentially millions of dollars in damages.

Best practices for compliance

The best and most effective way to guarantee compliance is to consult with your legal advisor. However, here are a few best practices that can help you get started on your compliance journey:

1. Obtain consent: Ensure that you have prior express written consent from individuals before collecting their data and contacting them.
2. Provide transparency: Clearly communicate how you will use and protect their data.
3. Store proof of consent: Protect yourself from potential TCPA litigation by storing documentation of consent.

TrustedForm

TrustedForm is the ultimate compliance solution for documenting TCPA consent on digital lead capture forms, offering a number of products:

• TrustedForm Certify generates documentation of consent, allowing you to see a session replay that documents exactly when and where prior express written consent was obtained throughout a lead capture event.
• TrustedForm Retain guarantees certificate availability for up to five years, so you can easily access proof of consent in case you need it to mitigate TCPA litigation.
• TrustedForm Verify optimizes the consent capture process by enabling users to identify and categorize TCPA consent language for different lead vendors.
• TrustedForm Insights allows you to make informed decisions to optimize lead-buying strategies and maximize your ROI.

Conclusion

Effective lead generation requires a combination of strategies and tools, from lead capture automation to ensuring marketing compliance. By implementing the practices outlined in this guide, marketers can enhance their lead generation efforts, improve efficiency, and ensure compliance with TCPA regulations.

Embrace the power of automation and data enhancement to take your lead generation to the next level.

The post Lead generation & lead management automation guide for marketers appeared first on ActiveProspect.

Welcome back to our Lead Generation 101 series! 

In the last installment, we talked about how the lead acquisition process looks for the lead buyer. Lead acquisition usually involves three separate parties: the consumer (otherwise known as the lead itself), the lead buyer, and the lead seller. 

Each party has different goals they’re trying to achieve and different processes they have to perform to achieve those goals. In this article, we are going to look at the lead acquisition process from the perspective of the Lead Seller. 

For the sake of this example scenario, the Lead Seller, also known as a lead publisher, network, or aggregator, sells leads in the financial services industry. Let’s call him Marco.

Marco works for a company that generates, aggregates, and sells leads to other companies. Demand generation is a fast-paced business with new leads streaming in from multiple sources and leads streaming out to (hopefully) interested buyers. That means that there is a lot of lead data moving in and out – and a lot of opportunities for Marco to connect the right leads to the right buyers. 

The opportunity that Marco is working on for the sake of this example is from a lead buyer (also known as an end buyer, advertiser, or brand) who has previously given him an Insertion Order (IO) detailing what data they will purchase, such as the geography of a lead, product details/requirements, and consumer contact information. 

In this particular request, Marco’s buyer wants leads who are interested in auto loans and live in a specific area grouped by zip codes. Marco knows he can move campaigns around to get the best leads for this request. In this instance, a campaign could cover multiple sites and sources, but is specific to a request, like consumers who are looking for auto loans. To improve engagement and capture more leads, Marco could utilize a QR code maker free tool to create scannable QR codes for offline campaigns. 

The first step for Marco is to gather leads from different sources. Some of the leads are owned and operated (O&O) leads because they come from a website that his company owns and runs called www.bestcarloans.com. This site shares auto loan information from different brands with the consumer if they complete a contact request form. He feels pretty good about these leads because they are high-intent, which means the consumers actively searched for auto loans themselves and completed the form on the website because they want to be contacted. In other words, it’s the digital version of a consumer walking into a brick-and-mortar store with intent to buy a specific product. They’re a much better lead than, say, someone who just passes the storefront while window shopping, because they have actual purchase intent.

Unfortunately, Marco doesn’t have enough volume of leads coming from www.bestcarloans.com to satisfy the buyer’s need. One thing he can do to increase the volume of leads would be to start an affiliate program with other sites. This means that those sites will agree to post links on their pages directing people to his site, thereby driving more traffic to www.bestcarloans.com. More people looking at his site means more leads!

If that’s still not enough leads, Marco’s company also buys leads from other sellers that they can then resell. This means they’re not just a lead seller that generates and sells their own leads; they’re also a lead aggregator or network, which is an entity that buys and resells leads.

Now that he has the volume of leads requested for the IO, Marco simply needs to share that data with the buyer. Depending on the lead buyer, there are multiple ways to do this. 

The smaller buyers may just use email delivery for negotiating with him and other lead sellers. More sophisticated buyers, however, will be very concerned with “speed to lead,” which is the ability to contact a consumer as quickly as possible after they have submitted a contact request. 

For this reason, many lead buyers have their own online systems with specific posting instructions that get the lead into their operations in real time. In that scenario, each lead seller will have an identifying access key that differentiates him from other lead sellers using the lead buyer’s system.

Marco posts and sells his leads and his buyer starts contacting interested consumers…which leads to more revenue for the both of them. It’s a win-win!

Curious about the other perspectives in this process? Read our full Leads 101 series here.

The post Leads 101: The Lead Seller’s Guide to Lead Acquisition appeared first on ActiveProspect.

Over the last year and a half, there’s been a major shift in consumer behavior within the home services industry. 

In early 2020, many consumers shifted to online shopping, a trend which has continued into 2021 — but what they are shopping for has also changed. 

Whether it’s because of social distancing or an increase in remote-friendly work openings, people are spending more time at home. That means an increased demand for home services — finally remodeling that bathroom, making over the spare bedroom into a home office, or installing that in-ground pool the kids have been begging for. 

That’s all great for business, but not necessarily your business. With consumers tending to shop around online more for the best deal, competition is getting steeper and so are the costs-per-lead (CPLs).

So, how do you make sure the leads you do get are worth the cost?  

By using third-party data to optimize and personalize your approach. 

We’ll cover three steps you can take to start increasing your form submission rates, boosting lead quality, and providing more value to more customers. 

Let’s jump into it. 

Step 1: Increase Form Submission with Fewer Form Fields

Lengthy forms, especially ones with multiple dropdown fields, are associated with decreased form submission rates. Why? Well, most consumers don’t want to spend five minutes filling out a form just to get a quote. 

Increasing concerns with online privacy also have a lot to do with it. Consumers are beginning to be more discerning with where and how they give out their data. Asking for too much information in your lead form can send up red flags.

So, ditch the long forms.

According to a study by Infutor, home services brands that reduced form fields saw a 214% increase in submitted forms. But how did they get useful lead data without all those fields?

By using third-party data to fill in the blanks. 

Which brings us to step two…

Step 2: Use a Tool Like LeadConduit to Enhance Lead Data

With fewer form fields, you won’t be able to ask your prospects as many qualifying questions. That doesn’t mean you have to settle for low-quality leads, though. 

This is where a tool like LeadConduit comes into play. 

LeadConduit is a real-time lead optimization platform that allows you to gain additional information on your leads using third-party data services. The powerful tools in our LeadConduit integration library were designed to help you find your best customers. 

Gather deeper information on everything from location, age, and gender to income and credit score.

All this new, valuable lead data can be used to make real-time decisions on your leads — set rules and filters for different types of consumer profiles, identify duplicate or unqualified leads, and reject low-quality leads in real time to keep your ROI high and your CPLs low.  

So, now that you have all this new information about your leads, what do you do with it? 

LeadConduit seamlessly integrates with your CRM of choice, so you can automatically send leads through to your sales team. No more manual lead transfer, uploading CSV files, or time delays.

Once it’s in your CRM, it’s time to put that third-party data to work. 

Step 3: Use Third-Party Data to Personalize Your Lead Outreach

In a saturated market of brand emails and scripted phone calls, customers are looking for a personalized experience. That’s why personalization performs 8x better than basic segmentation! 

Just adding the consumer’s name into your sales agents’ script isn’t going to cut it, although it certainly doesn’t hurt. What’s more important is the ability to craft the customer experience using specific information about their pain point, their circumstances, and other relevant demographic data.

With personalization built off of robust lead data, you can segment your leads more effectively and set your sales agents up for success with background information about the lead before they even dial out or send that first touch-base email. 

Our library of outbound LeadConduit integrations will help you optimize and automate your outreach, turning that third-party data into new customers. 

And that’s it! It really is as simple as one, two, three to start bringing in better quality home services leads. 

If you want to learn more about how to get started with LeadConduit, contact us today.

The post How to Get Better Home Services Leads with LeadConduit appeared first on ActiveProspect.

Welcome back to our Lead Generation 101 series! 

In the last installment, we talked about how the lead acquisition process usually involves three separate parties: the consumer (otherwise known as the lead itself), the lead buyer, and the lead seller. 

Each party has different goals they’re trying to achieve and different processes they have to perform to achieve those goals. In this article, we are going to look at the lead acquisition process from the perspective of the Lead Buyer. 

For the sake of this example scenario, the Lead Buyer works in financial services. Let’s call her Tracey.

Tracey’s goal is to get more customers for her company, Big Bank. Getting people to sign up for auto loans is a great way to build her customer base. Auto loans are often a gateway for consumers to the bank’s other offerings because people are more likely to get additional lines of credit, checking accounts, saving accounts, etc., with an institution that they already use.

Big Bank collects some of their own leads through their online banking site with existing customers and through their website via referrals and search traffic. These are called “owned and operated” leads (O&O), because they are generated by the business itself and not bought from a third party. 

As is the case for most businesses, O&O leads alone aren’t enough to meet Big Bank’s new customer goals.

Fortunately, Tracey has another lead source — a lead seller she’s worked with before named Marco. She can buy more leads from him to help reach quota.

Tracey already has an Insertion Order (IO) on file with Marco’s company detailing what Big Bank will buy from them. The IO includes things like the geography of a lead, product details and requirements, and consumer contact information. All she has to do now is ask Marco for more leads that meet those criteria, specifically ones interested in auto loans. 

Marco is then able to move campaigns around to get the best leads for this request. A campaign could cover multiple sites and sources but is specific to a request, like consumers who may want auto loans. These changes incur additional expenses, which Tracey approves so Marco can get started.

Industry-specific lead volume and the need for leads can change depending on the time of the year. For instance, car sales go up towards the end of the year, meaning lead buyers want more leads to meet the demand of more consumers looking to buy. That makes for a pretty competitive market.

Like other lead buyers, Big Bank is very concerned with “speed-to-lead,” which is the ability to contact a consumer as quickly as possible after they have submitted a contact request. Speed-to-lead relies on processes put in place for both the publisher/lead seller and the lead buyer. ON his end, Marco quickly gathers multiple leads and submits them in real time to Tracey via Big Bank’s online system using an identifying access key that differentiates him from other lead sellers.

Tracey then buys the leads that are the best fit for her needs. She is particularly looking for leads that are exclusive (only sold to one buyer) or are generated by a “long form” which provides full details about a specific product inquiry vs. a “short form” with a simple expression of interest and limited details. That’s a lot of data to process and clean, which is why Tracey uses an automated lead management system to help her out. 

Once the leads are in a usable format, Tracey sends them on to her Sales department for calling. Soon they have new auto loan customers who will hopefully become regular customers that also open checking accounts, savings accounts, mortgages, etc. 

That means that Big Bank is meeting their goal of increasing their customer base, while Tracey is hitting her individual quotas and making it look easy in the process.

Curious about the other perspectives in this process? Read the next post in our Leads 101 series.

The post Leads 101: The Lead Buyer’s Guide to Lead Acquisition appeared first on ActiveProspect.

From the continued rise of SMS to the global health crisis to the “Great Resignation,” there’s a lot of change happening in the contact industry right now – which means that doing the bare minimum and keeping the status quo isn’t going to cut it anymore. 

In a recent panel discussion about the state of the contact industry Aaron Evans, CEO at Drips, Matt Conlin, CEO at Fluent, and Puja Amin, Corporate Counsel at loanDepot, discussed what businesses should be doing to keep up with these changes if they don’t want to fall behind.

Here are our top three takeaways from that discussion:

1. Automate with purpose.

Everyone has been struggling to hire enough licensed agents to meet demand right now because of the massive national employee shortage. You may have heard it referred to as the “Great Resignation,” and with good reason: Over 50% of Americans in the workforce say that they will look for new employment within the next year. 

With that in mind, many businesses in the contact industry have been looking to automation and AI to bridge the gap. These are good tools when leveraged with purpose, but you don’t want to invest in AI and chatbots to the point where you have no human agents.

Consider your different demographics. For example, a well-trained AI could carry out a productive conversation with a Gen Z consumer over text. That same AI would be at a loss to field the chat requests from an older consumer who sends paragraphs of text at a time. 

Having a human on standby to take over is mandatory. 

How do you reconcile this need for live agents and the employee shortage? A strong employee retention and recruitment program is key. There is no shortage of available job openings, so how can you make your business stand out? What are you doing for your employees that they can’t get elsewhere? 

2. Prioritize quality over quantity. 

How can you make half as many calls or send half as many messages but get twice as many solid, convertible leads?

The answer is data optimization. 

When you understand more about your prospective consumer, you can zero in on the right ones before you ever send that SMS or make that call. That means less money spent on leads that won’t convert and less of your agents’ valuable time spent on calls that go nowhere.

And the benefits of data optimization extend beyond the lead filtering process, too. Use the insights from your lead data to script for different consumer cohorts. Your consumers aren’t all the same, so the conversations you’re having with them shouldn’t be, either. 

Finally, make sure you’re investing in the proper team and tools to make the most of your valuable lead data. Tools like LeadConduit can enhance, filter, and reject leads in real time to ensure you’re only contacting your best leads while a tool like Drips will help your agents say the right thing to those leads, every time. 

3. Get Ahead of New Legislation.

The world of Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) compliance is constantly evolving, as evidenced by the recent Florida “Mini TCPA” legislation. It is more likely than not that we will continue to see state-level legislation like the Florida law passed in other states in the coming years. 

The companies that are going to do well in this changing landscape are doing three things: 

1. Staying informed of legal changes through either in-house counsel or a trusted partner. 
2. Vetting new and existing lead sellers to make sure they’re actually TCPA compliant.
3. Practicing consent-based marketing rather than just doing the bare minimum for compliance.

At the end of the day, your main focus should be serving happy, informed consumers. If you’re doing the above, you should be able to lead with the value your solutions provide rather than worry about jumping through compliance hoops. 

The contact industry is going to continue changing as technologies and legislation evolve. As marketers, it’s our job to stay ahead of the curve. Implementing the above techniques within your consent-based marketing strategy will give you the best chance at successfully navigating this ever-changing industry. 

The post The 2021 State of the Contact Industry: Data Optimization, Automation, and TCPA Legislation appeared first on ActiveProspect.

As the first post in our Lead Generation 101 series, this post will give you an overview of the lead acquisition process and the roles involved. We dive into more detail about each role in the rest of the series.

In order to understand the lead acquisition process, we need to start with the definition of a lead. So, what is a lead?

A lead is a consumer who has expressed interest in buying a product or service. 

At a high level, this means that the lead acquisition process is the act of converting the consumer’s interest into lead data (name, address, email, etc.) which is then sold by a lead seller and bought by a lead buyer.

You may be asking yourself why companies need to buy leads. Don’t they already get customers through their own marketing and advertising?

Yes and no. 

While most companies do get leads from their own efforts, direct marketing can be expensive. By buying additional leads from other companies whose business it is to generate and sell leads, lead buyers can lower customer acquisition costs and increase their reach to more consumers, thereby increasing their own sales.

It’s hardly surprising that an entire industry has grown out of this need to acquire more leads. Known as lead acquisition, lead generation (lead gen), or lead buying and selling, this process is all about the lead data transactions between lead sellers, lead buyers, and consumers. 

While in real life there are multiple scenarios and multiple players, this article will simplify the process to better explain how the relationships between all of those parties work.

An Example Lead Acquisition Scenario

The three parties involved in a classic lead acquisition scenario are the lead buyer, the consumer, and the publisher and/or lead seller. 

Let’s introduce those three parties as our cast of characters for this particular lead acquisition story and identify their needs:

• Tracey needs to acquire more customers for her bank. She’s our Lead Buyer. 
• Carley needs an auto loan to buy a new car. She’s our Consumer. 
• Marco needs to sell leads he’s already generated. He’s our Publisher/Lead Seller.

Based on those individual needs, we can now see how the three roles interact to achieve their goals.

Tracey isn’t getting enough new customers for her bank through their own efforts, so she contacts Marco to buy more leads from him. She is especially interested in leads who indicate an intent in the near future to apply for an auto loan, which her bank provides as a service. Tracey knows that consumers who sign up for loan accounts are more likely later to sign up for additional services, like checking and savings accounts.

Carley needs a new car but doesn’t have enough money to buy one outright. That means she needs an auto loan to cover the purchase cost. She starts researching online for auto loans with the best interest rates, and she finds a site called www.bestcarloans.com that takes her contact information and forwards it to loan lenders.

Marco has recently published a website called www.bestcarloans.com that gathers consumers’ information. Carley’s information is included in the leads pulled from his site which means that when Marco sells these leads to Tracey, she receives Carley as a lead.

Tracey forwards the leads to her sales department, who call Carley to discuss the bank’s auto loans. Carley applies and is accepted, and soon she’s on her way to an auto dealership with her auto loan documents in hand. 

Marco made money by selling a lead to Tracey, Tracey got a lead that increased her customer base, and Carley bought a new car. 

Everyone wins!

Lead Acquisition with ActiveProspect

Now, let’s go back and replay that entire scenario, but with ActiveProspect inserted into the process.

Tracey needs more customers for her bank, so she contacts Marco to buy more leads from him. She is especially interested in leads who indicate an intent in the near future to apply for an auto loan AND who have consented to be contacted. Tracey knows that consumers who have given consent are more likely to become customers… and less likely to be upset when called. She tells Marco she only wants leads who have TrustedForm certificates proving consent.

Carley needs a new car and an auto loan to cover the purchase cost. She starts researching online for auto loans and finds a site called www.bestcarloans.com. While she’s willing to provide her information to be contacted by loan providers, she doesn’t want to be bombarded by scammers and hackers. Carley notices a TrustedForm seal on the site and is filled with a sense of relief, knowing that means this is a legitimate publisher.

Marco has recently published a website called www.bestcarloans.com that has the TrustedForm script installed to record a video replay of the consumer entering their information and giving consent to be contacted. Carley’s information is included in the leads pulled from his site, along with a TrustedForm certificate confirming she gave consent. Marco then submits his leads to Tracey’s LeadConduit system.

Using the flows and steps that Tracey has implemented, LeadConduit scans all of the leads and rejects those that have bad data (i.e., incorrect email or bad phone number), are on the national Do Not Call (DNC) list, do not have TrustedForm certificates, are known litigators, etc. Tracey also has SuppressionList to compare the submitted leads to the bank’s existing customer base, so that they don’t incorrectly contact a consumer who is already a customer. After this filtering and processing, LeadConduit has a list of leads that qualify based on Tracey’s criteria.

When Tracey buys these leads from Marco, she receives Carley as a lead and her corresponding TrustedForm certificate.

Tracey forwards the qualified leads to her sales department, and in no time Carley is trading loan paperwork for keys to her new car.

Marco made money by selling a certified lead to Tracey, Tracey obtained a qualified lead (and certificate!) that increased her customer base, and Carley avoided spammers and bought a new car. 

Everyone wins… especially with ActiveProspect!

The post Welcome to Lead Generation 101! appeared first on ActiveProspect.