The lead generation space has been through a number of ups and downs in the last 10 years. Each vertical seems to have gone through or is going through some level of scrutiny and lead generation methods have evolved because of it. Lead buyers have evolved too and their lead management processes have improved tremendously over the last 5-6 years. Much of this improvement is due to the development of  lead management systems like Leads360 and others. For this call I had the pleasure of speaking with Nick Hedges of Leads360. We discussed the comparisons between the mortgage vertical and the EDU vertical, techniques that buyers from each vertical can learn from one another and a host of lead management tips that buyers from any vertical will find beneficial.

Take a listen below.

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Has you know I have mentioned BillShrink a number of times here on this blog and consider myself a fan of the company and how they have introduced a new way to generate leads.

With that in mind I wanted to get Peter Pham, the CEO of BillShrink, on the phone to discuss the company and their marketing strategy. As you also know the name “Carpool Confessions of a Lead Gen Pro” comes from the fact that I have these calls to and from work. They are casual calls that replicate a typical call I may have with my industry peers. This call was literally took place while both Peter and I were driving from work and unfortunately the sound quality on this recording is pretty bad. I couldn’t do much about it, but nevertheless I wanted to go ahead and post it. I think there is still some very interesting information about how BillShrink acquires their data, what their future plans are for entering new verticals and how they acquire their traffic.

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There has been a ton of talk about call service technologies over the last year and additionally the importance of speed-to-contact. With that in mind I wanted to get an old friend on the phone on my way home from work and talk about what he has got going on.

For this Carpool Confessions episode I get the chance to speak with Beau Bratton, founder of Consumer Transfer about their product that undoubtedly increase your speed-to-contact with out implementing a 3rd party call center. Very cool stuff and is definitely worth a listen

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Sometimes I feel the true players in our space could all fit in my small living room. If you have been on the advertisers side of the table and either bought leads or tried to run an affiliate offer you quickly find out that the leads are either brokered or the traffic ends up coming from the same sources. The ever growing quest for volume in some verticals as lead us to this point in the road.

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Carpool Confessions are conversations that take place with Lead Generation professionals on the way to and from work. Casual interviews with industry friends.

A little over 6 months ago Jay Weintraub founder of LeadsCon and Dave Wengel former GM at TARGUSinfo formed an alliance with the creation of Shouk Media. Even more recently they formed the LeadsCouncil.

In a quick call with Jay, I had the pleasure of discussing the LeadsCouncil and the up coming LeadsCon East event. On that note, don’t forget to register for LeadsCon East today. The early bird discount expires today. Register here

Take a listen:

Carpool Confessions are conversations that take place with Lead Generation professionals on the way to and from work.

This morning I had the pleasure of speaking with Jeff Liebl, CMO at eBureau and got the low down on Lead Scoring.

Lead scoring has been a really popular topic over the past few years and has been covered at most industry conferences, but I have never felt like there has been a really good discussion on the topic. So within 20 minutes I tried my hand at it with Jeff and tried to get to the bottom of lead scoring.

Take a listen:

Carpool Confessions are conversations that take place with Lead Generation professionals on the way to and from work.

Last Friday I had the pleasure of speaking with Paul McLenaghan, VP of Interactive Markets at TargusInfo, regarding their new product AdAdvisor. I covered AdAdvisor when it first was publicized earlier this year and was amazed, so I again wanted to learn more and figured a phone conversation would be best.

On the call we discussed what AdAdvisor was all about. How it works. How it outperforms traditional behavioral targeting. And how you can take advantage of the amazing product.

Take a listen and tell me what you think about AdAdvisor.

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Carpool Confessions are conversations that take place with Lead Generation professionals on the way to and from work.
This morning on the way to work I had the pleasure of catching up with Kaleidico’s founder Bill Rice. We covered a number of topics from his acquisition of Lenderama, building online communities, managing leads today compared to 4 years ago in the mortgage lead buying prime, referral programs and finally the fate of the loan modification industry and low mortgage rates.

Take a listen and let me know what you think.

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Carpool Confessions are conversations that take place with Lead Generation professionals on the way to and from work.

I don’t know how many times lead buyers need to see this information, frankly not enough and why I say that because it finally clicked for me too. Maybe it clicks every time I see these types of studies. In fact, I recommend that every Lead Buyer or manager print this white paper up and pin it to your office wall. You should base your companies mantra or mission of this report. Speed is key!

LeadQual put together an excellent white paper that reiterates an older MIT study. It again proves how important it is to call leads within 5 minutes. Stop for a moment, open the white paper here and look at the chart. Notice how your chances of success decrease DRAMATICALLY after the first 5 minutes. People, 5 minutes goes by very fast! Calling leads within 10 minutes will not cut it! Do you even know the average speed to contact is at your company? If not, it should be priority number one to figure out how you are going to find this data and then benchmark it and improve it. I am certain that it is not as fast as you think.

I really liked the chart that showed the success rates by day! It backs up all the times have I had told people to buy leads on the weekend. Weekend leads perform better, period, enough said.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Glenn Houck, Co-Founder of LeadQual on the way to work yesterday and we discussed the white paper and more. If you have buyers struggling with leads, that you don’t think are getting the point, as much as you have told them, have them listen to this call.

Take a listen

Friday I had the pleasure of speaking with Gabriel Buck of ClickPoint Software. It a very valuable conversation to listen to if you are thinking about getting into the lead generation business or are looking to optimize your current back end distribution engine. ClickPoint Software is an all inclusive platform full of tools that are a must for all lead gen companies and Gabe and I discuss what the top lead gen companies are doing to stay on top, what it takes to start a lead gen company and much more.

Take a listen!

Carpool Confessions are conversations that take place with Lead Generation professionals on the way to and from work.

On the ride home last Firday I had a great conversation with Trace Richardson of iPagio and LeadPress.

Topics we discussed:

REBarCamp
Social Media
Real Estate Websites
Blogs
Targeting your local community.

Take a Listen!

Thanks Trace!

Carpool Confessions are conversations that take place with Lead Generation professionals on the way to and from work.

Take 2 with Jay Weintraub, founder of LeadsCon covered Fake Blogs, Spam marketing and the idea that there is a limit to how many “quality” leads can be generated by a campaign.

Again, it was a great conversation. Take a listen…

I had the pleasure of speaking with Jay Weintraub today on the way home from work. We unfortunately encountered a number technical difficulties so there will be a take 2 of this conversation. Aside from the technical difficulties Jay is simply a good conversation and I had a number of additional topics I wanted to cover with him.

Nonetheless, this was a great conversation that gave us a little insight into the making of LeadsCon, the announcement of LeadsCon East in August and also Jays thoughts about the overlooked lead generation industry.

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This conversation took place last Friday on the way to work and the sound quality on my phone is still a little weak, so I apologize. The next call I will definitely try something a little different.

Nonetheless, it was a great call with Joey Liner of DoublePositive. We discussed a number of different topics from the Debt vertical to what it takes to make Hot Transfers work. Towards the end Joey gives a little insight to what vertical has the best and worst contact ratio.

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Thanks Joey!

I had a great conversation with George Favvas of SmartHippo on the way to work yesterday. We discussed LeadsCon, Lead Gen 2.0 and the possible death of the 3 part form lead gen model.

Take a listen and let me know your thoughts.

The first Carpool Confessions took place last Friday and the conversation was great!

Just a reminder what Carpool Confessions is; Its a brief 20 minute conversation that takes place on my ride home to or from work. These conversations duplicate the typical conversations I already have to lead industry peers. Obviously, for Carpool Confession the calls recorded and therein lies problem with the first conversation. It did not record!

Which is okay, but nonetheless a little frustrating, because it was a great conversation with Joey Liner of DoublePositve. We covered a number of different topics from LeadsCon to why many companies fail to work leads properly. The good news is that we will reschedule the call sometime this week and give it another shot and this time insure that it is recording.

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Back from the dead, Owen Raun of RMC Vanguard posted his first podcast in 3 months. According to the site he will be teaming up with Bill Rice to interview “Leaders in the Lead Generation Industry”. The first podcast in the series was an interview with LeadPoint CEO, Marc Diana and was quite interesting.The first few minutes involved getting to know Marc’s career history and once that was over with they actually got into some very good conversations about the health of the industry, competing exchanges, the death of Root Exchange, what it takes to be successful in this market and when we would begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

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I had the pleasure of being interview by Owen Raun from the MortgageOnlineblog. We briefly discussed LeadCritic the blog and how it all came about, lead buying and selling and the future of lead generation.

You can listen to the podcast HERE.

Thanks Owen for the opportunity!!

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I enjoyed a brief discussion with the co-founder of SmartHippo this morning and wanted to share it with you.

I thought it was very enlightening and I think you all will enjoy it.

Let me know what you think.

In this Podcast we briefly speak with Atul Patel former co-founder of LeadROI about where lead-gen is going. Although he is departing from the lead generation space, we reviewed the session. We also discuss the ideas that were gathered during the session. The group discussed the idea that the consumer could own their own information and therefore sells their information to the bank or broker. I believe that this is the future of lead generation.

What do you think?

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