To really do well with Internet leads you have to do a number of things right. You need to have the right personal, the right lead management process, the right leads, proper tracking and analytics, the right re-marketing campaigns, and slew of other things. With this is mind do you really need to know exactly where the leads are coming from?

As a lead buyer I wanted to know how the leads were being generated, where they were being generated and how many times they were being sold. Today, lead buyers are expressing the same concerns within their conversations about transparency. This is the same discussion that I mentioned last week and it has been going on for years and years. After I wrote last weeks post I sent a quick note to friend Bill Rice:

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There are a few simple things in life that we must do to have a good life. Things like treating others as you would have them treat you or not committing murder, etc. lol The same applies with marketing. Yes, don’t commit murder, but even more obvious is to always implement some form of tracking on your marketing campaigns.

I recently heard a story of a VP of Marketing who insisted that a tracking phone number or a unique URL not be used in his direct mail pieces. He simply tried to track the lift of relevant results across the company. There are clearly a number of issues with this method of “tracking”, but the biggest problem is that you are not able to correctly identify what is working and what is not. Many companies during the mortgage boom wasted thousands of dollars on campaigns that they thought worked but were simply benefiting from excellent market conditions. Once those market conditions began to deteriorate it became even more important to invest in the correct marketing campaigns. By the time these companies implemented the correct tracking it was too late.

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It’s the same old story no matter what vertical you work in. The biggest reason for failed attempts at integrating internet leads is NOT the quality of the leads.It is the lack of proper lead management.

This is obviously not something new for most readers of this blog and could possibly be considered the biggest topic on this blog. The issue continues to arise in posts because I continually come across companies that fail, waste thousands of dollars and then eventually go out of business. The issue with lead management is that it is composed of a number of different pieces and without all the pieces in place you are losing money.

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Former Omniture executive brings extensive online marketing experience to Lead Performance Management firm

October 15, 2009 – Toronto, ON – Sparkroom, an innovative provider of Lead Performance Management™ software solutions for direct marketers, today announced the appointment of Dave Datars as the Vice President of Sales. With his extensive experience selling SaaS-based solutions to senior executives and marketers, Dave will lead the continued growth of Sparkroom’s sales activities in the higher education sector, while helping the company to expand and penetrate additional verticals.

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I had the pleasure of having lunch with Ed Powell of Sparkroom today and again left impressed with what they have to offer. You know from reading this blog that analytics is one of the most important factors for succeeding with leads and most of us fail at it. In fact most of us don’t even give it a shot or the slightest bit of effort. Its true! I talk to a lead buyers every day that do not understand what is happening with their lead buys and never truly know what is working or not.

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I am finally to the last piece of my series on what I consider to be the three components of ROI. I know, I don’t want it to end either, but it is time, (yes, that would be sarcasm). So far we have discussed:

1. Costs:
   1. Costs Per Lead
   2. Cost Per Funded Loan (CPFL)
2. Conversion Ratios

The final component to ROI is the oft-forgotten: Income.

Income appears to be almost always overlooked as a component in evaluating a lead provider’s ROI. All lead providers are not equal, so if you are not measuring the income of each lead provider, then you suck. OK, that might be a little harsh, but you are almost certainly not optimizing your ROI.

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(Full disclosure…I am employed by Zipsearch! although did not participate in the writing or conception of the related press release, but because of my position was able to receive the news first. )

LeadCritic Exclusive:

Kaleidico takes action on the requests of a number of lead providers at the LeadsCon convention. This request can actually be traced back almost a year and probably further. One of the biggest requests from lead generators and publishers is the request for feedback and it again was a big topic on the LMS panel at LeadsCon this last week.

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LeadCon is now over and what a great event it was. I want to recap the Lead Management session that I moderated on Friday. It turned out to be just what I expected and that was a highly energized discussion of features, analytics and transparency. The members of the panel included Raj Parekh of LeadROI, Jeff Solomon of Leads360, Rick Doyle of Lead Mailbox and Bill Rice of Kaliedico. It was bound to be exciting with these four highly competitive companies. They are all nice to each other in person, but behind closed doors its another story.

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When times get tough many companies are forced to focus in more on performance measurement. So it’s no surprise that the words that seem to be on everyone’s lips in the leads space these days are data, measurement, metrics and ROI. Every day a new company seems to pop up with a new way of guaranteeing lead “quality”, lead integrity or sales performance. But, despite the talk, many of these companies are still waiting in the wings for the metrics revolution to take place.

Why is this? We all know that it’s the bottom line that matters. And at the end of the day we know that profitability is dictated by the ability to purchase leads that turn into sales at some definable ratio. What we are really bad at though is properly defining what the key metrics are that help us behave in a way that creates an attractive profit per lead.

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A little background:
“Lead Management is still a new field that is far from maturity. Because of this there is a lack of understanding of the key functions and approaches to Lead Management. Lead buyers have become increasingly sophisticated in regards to evaluating leads, but are often less prepared to evaluate an LMS. This series is intended to clear up common misconceptions and stimulate debate among other experts about best practices and the state of the industry.”

Lead Management Software Solution Part 2

Why Reports Matter
A business cannot function efficiently without the proper means of measuring performance.  Metrics reporting allows business managers insight into what strategies are and are not working within an organization.

For the purposes of this post, I will focus on reports and metrics for LMS users who are buying or generating internet leads. I think the landscape will hold true for almost any kind of lead or industry that you could insert into this discussion.

The key to creating valuable reports is ensuring that the appropriate data points are being measured and reacted to.  Functional reports will measure only the data you want to see and only in the way that you want that data displayed.  Too little data leads to bad decisions. Too much data can hinder efficient decision-making.  Sales and marketing managers should not spend time analyzing data; they should have the important data available easily and instantly, in order to quickly make correct strategic decisions.

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By Murthy Nukala
Founder and CEO – Adchemy

Just a few weeks ago, as Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates testified on Capitol Hill about the state of technology and the need to relax visa standards for foreign technologists, I started to think about the state of technology in our industry.  With Internet advertising evolving every day, I’ve begun to develop this ongoing theory that the technology behind lead generation, particularly when it comes to mortgage leads, is on the verge of something really big.  I’m very curious to know if others agree.

From my perspective, and to borrow a very popular phrase, we’re ready for Lead Generation 2.0. Version 1.0, which served up a mix of bad creative and spotty measurement, is over.  We all learned that lead generation companies can’t just provide leads in volume and then pray they convert.  Particularly today, as the universe of mortgage companies continues to shrink and those that still have online advertising budgets spend less than they once did, all of us are being called upon to explain and ensure the quality of the leads we provide.

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It has been long over due that a company supply a proper analytics tools for lead buyers. Sure LMS’s have always had some level of reporting, but it has never been quite enough to rely on solely for your decision making reports. In fact, I think that most companies simply use those reports for the data and export the information into their own developed reports. A new web based platform has finally come to forefront for our analytics needs in.

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Conversion Ratios Part 2

Contrarian Example
In the CPFL analysis in one of my previous post I shared a business case that demonstrated the leverage of conversion ratios. Conversion ratios do indeed provide the greatest amount of leverage for your ROI. In the example that I shared how a mere 1% increase in conversion ratios would have netted my client a 245% increase in their ROI. But I also want to share a contrarian example of why conversion ratios can’t be your sole focus either.

This is a real example. It did take place back in the height of the refi boom and it also deals with the home equity product, so numbers in this example are not indicative of what is typical in the more popular refinance product, but it is a compelling story nonetheless.

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Conversion Ratios Part 1

We have arrived at Part 4 now, and hopefully this has proven to be helpful to some of you. If you haven’t noticed, one of the key things that I am trying to accomplish is shatter the myth that costs equal ROI. Costs are a component of ROI but if that is all you are tracking then your efforts are extremely short-sighted. My focus for this piece will be the coveted conversion ratio, the second component of my three key pieces to ROI: Costs, Conversion Ratios and Income.

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I have already gotten quite a few inquiries about the spreadsheets that I mentioned in my most recent post. I thought that because of this, I would follow up with some screen shots using the business case I described in the post. After all, the picture is worth a 1000 words.

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Cost Per Funded Loan

We are now on part 3 of my conversation about evaluating ROI. I have introduced what I feel are the key components and subcomponents of ROI (see below).

1. Costs

1. 1. Cost per Lead

1. 1. Cost per funded loan (CPFL)

2. Conversion Ratios

3. Income

Firstly we discussed Costs, specifically the Cost per lead. This post will be about the Cost per Funded Loan (CPFL).

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It’s definitely that time of year again. The NFL is drawing close to an end and my baseball stats sheets and forecasters are arriving in the mail–that’s right Fantasy Baseball is in the air!

This time of year gets me all excited about stats and predicative indicators. So, this weeks best practices post and whitepaper is in tribute to Michael Lewis’ ode to Fantasy Baseball–”Moneyball.” I am about to show you what ROI, %contact, %app, AttAR, AttCR, and many more quintessential key metrics and indicators can do to optimize your loan production. Continue Reading

Are you feeling the market constricting around your neck? Is it harder and harder to find borrowers you can actually help? Have you shaken down every real estate agent in the tri-county area and found their pockets empty too?

Welcome to the crowd, but don’t panic.

The first step is to admit you have a problem. Stop saying, “I get all my business from referrals” and believing it. Take control of your success. Build a marketing plan to get fresh referrals, Internet referrals, and create a business that is bigger than you!

That’s right we are building a bigger vision here.

STOP! Before you run out and slap down a couple grand on a random lead provider, a recipe for 0% conversion and some pissed off loan officers or worse owner/manager, get a plan.

Here is the 10 step plan I used back in my lead buying days.

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There are many mysteries in life for which we may never really see an answer. What came first, the chicken or the egg? Is their life on other planets or solar systems? Why is Dr. Phil even on TV? I won’t claim to know the answers but one pervasive mystery that eludes most people in this industry is the concept of “Return On Investment,” or ROI.

What I actually find more often is that companies think that they know their ROI, but actually aren’t looking at the whole picture. I do feel like I have the answer to this and will be writing a three part series on the three key components to ROI. I won’t tell you how to measure it, I’ll let the great lead management programs on the market provide that solution for you. But I will demonstrate the importance of looking at all three components and some of the pitfalls incurred if you don’t look at the whole picture.

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Over the weekend it was announced that Matt Coffin former LowerMyBills founder and President, and David Dowhan former VP of Marketing for Adveractive have joined the eBureau team.

Matt Coffin who has been an active member in the investing arena backing the likes of search engine Mahalo, document  sharing platform DocStock, and now joining the board of directors at eBureau. This is from the Adotas article:

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