Recently we argued over what a valid lead is and the numerous reasons why a lead could be returned, but based on a conversation that took place with lead generations own Maestro, Sean Fenlon of DoublePositive, I have decided to further define what a lead is. In fact, based on Sean’s opinion we should define each action point throughout the process that can determine a payout. This means regardless if specific filters and return reasons, what are the specific actions that can determine a specific compensation.

This may seem rudimentary however as Sean can attest that the term “lead” is being used very loosely. The industry is growing at a rapid rate and if these are not clearly defined somewhere we will continue to be lost in translation. With that said, I am going to give it a whirl and appreciate any feedback or corrections you all can provide.

Continue Reading

I am still alive!

I wanted to let you all know that I was blessed to take a little vacation last week, hence not making a single post, which is obviously not typical. I gotta say though it was an excellent break from the norm. I rented an RV from Cruise America (I am sure you have all seen them driving through your local towns) and “cruised” up the California coast to San Fransisco and back. All along the way stopping and camping out for the night. We stopped in San Simeon to check out Hurst Castle and also the great town of Monterey to take the kids to the famous aquarium.

Crazy Family Trip

I am native Californian and have made the trip up to San Fransisco more then a few times taking both the coast and the inland route and each time it reminds me of how amazingly beautiful the state of California is. From the amazing cities to the vast farm lands and vineyards the state has to offer, it was all amazing and relaxing to take in via an RV. Granted the occasional breakdown from the kids kept the blood flowing, it was a great trip.

I will be back in action this week with a few posts and of course will be covering the up and coming LeadsCon East. To those who have emailed me, I will be getting back to you soon!

.

.

.

The time I spend blogging consists of 5-8 hours a week between the times 8pm and 10pm and depending on whether there is a must see game on TV or extended after-hours work that needs to be done, blogging can be difficult at best. Over the last week I have been struggling with the NBA playoffs and work, but  while I haven’t been turning out a ton of blog posts I have been putting together some really cool future posts.

Continue Reading

Salesforce.com announced today that they have made cash offer of $142 million to purchase Jigsaw.

Saleforce.com, who recently raised cash through taking on $575 million in debt made it clear by bringing aboard a number of M&A specialists that they were going to  use much of the cash to acquire companies. Jigsaw, being the first major acquisition by SalesForce, I think, is a company that provides massive amounts of business contacts by encouraging people to keep their own information up-to-date. Similar to SalesGenie and Hoovers, Jigsaw can be described as a lead generation service for companies and people looking to build lists and contacts in the btob world.

Continue Reading

Lets get the record straight.

Not everyone can be successful generating leads. As a matter of factual data, most are not successful at generating their own leads at a reasonable cost. Sure anyone can generate leads at a cost. Normally, however, its at a cost that is not sustainable or that is significantly more expensive then simply buying the leads from a lead gen company. I want to be clear though, it IS completely possible to generate your own leads and even do it well.

Now, obviously different marketing channels result in different marketing costs. Email is typically less expensive, but in most cases requires the ability to handle a large amount of leads from large geo target. Paid Search is the easiest to get up and running, but can be very costly. Display is a channel that can very very costly and requires high level of expertise to make work, especially for lead generation. So, why is it that lead generation companies are able to make it work? Because they have the expertise, scale, coverage and possibly multiple sales. It is really that simply.

Continue Reading

There are some interesting things shaping up in the booming for-profit edu space. If you are a regular reader of this blog you will know this is not the first time I have said the EDU space is facing troubled times. Even though this may be the case it doesn’t necessarily mean it doesn’t make sense for lead gen companies to continue their pursuits of market share. It does mean you should be diversified in the space and probably should be looking at partnering with traditional schools as well as for-profit establishments. Okay, aside from my opinions, I came across a great article by Anne Ryman at AZCentral.com that did a great job of encapsulating a number of the issues that the EDU space faces. If you want a quick read on what is going on with the space regarding student loan default rates, possible new marketing regulations and the high costs, the article is a must read.

The traditional schools should be looking at the online space and quickly figuring out how they can take away market share from these schools. It is quite possible for state schools to offer online classes and service more students at lower cost. It won’t be long until enter the market and begin building downward pressure on the enrollment costs of the higher priced for-profit schools.

Here is the article

Defaults on student loans rising

.

.

.

The fellas at Sparkroom sponsored a benchmarking survey put together by forprofitedu.com, which I believe is run by the founder of CUNet, which just acquired Sparkroom. The report surveyed 102 marketing professionals in the for-profit EDU sector and asked a number general questions that reaffirmed the evident speculations most industry insiders have been making.

The survey found that almost 70% of the respondents plan on increasing their budgets. Not all too surprising being that EDU industry could easily be considered counter cyclical to the economy. People are looking to go about to school to increase their chances of earning more income in today job market. Once the economy begins to improve, not instantaneously, but soon after those same people will remove themselves from the continuing education market. It is also my speculation that many will begin to drop out or end their schooling prior to completing their degrees because of their secure job situations. They simply will not have the need and will find something better to do with their $1k+ per month. Regardless of this speculation, schools are doubling down on the current boom. No brainer there, but they should be cautious and have a close eye on key market indicators. On the same token, and I think I mentioned this before, but if Obama’s efforts continue on to completion and provide funding for citizens looking to go back to school through the state school system, which is making the same strides of bringing classes online, could bring a market turn quicker then expected. So it makes sense that schools are looking to spend more money on leads. They are currently raking in money hand over fist.

Continue Reading

I think its been a little over 6 months or just about 6 months since Google started indexing Twitter and Facebook pages. Actually I think it has been much longer for Facebook, regardless there has been a more concentrated effort by Google to index the real time information. Since then it has been left to speculation on how they were going to prioritize Tweets and insure that they are relevant. Obviously this is quite an undertaking when you can imagine that their are not just millions of web pages being created everyday, but additionally million and millions of tweets happening every day and compounding the difficulty is the fact that tweets are limited to 140 characters. So there is not a ton of context available for Google to evaluate a tweet.

Continue Reading

There are have been a number of announcements over the last two days by companies like Mortech, Leads360 and Kaleidico regarding their “partnership” with Google, more specifically Google’s Comparison Ads.  These companies are now “certified applications” for Comparison Ads and can provide some level of service for the lenders active on the comparison site.

So, coming across these announcements peaked my curiosity about what companies made the list of certified partners. Initially it was pretty tough finding this list, but I did come across a cached page that listed specific partners. I am not sure if this is a complete list, but it seemed like a recent list that now is no longer available.

Continue Reading

Are they really “branded leads”? Better yet; Are “branded leads” really exclusive?

The EDU space is different then any other vertical slightly different then other verticals in how leads are captured. I am tempted to cross out the whole sentence and say that it is no different then any other vertical, but I will give the vertical a little credit and say it has a few differences. The key difference is the attention that lead buyers give to “branded leads”. Even though directories have been around in other verticals of ages, like the mortgage vertical, the attention to buying branded leads has never been so strong.

Continue Reading

Obama may bot be telling Mom’s to go back to school anymore. No not literally, but there is a good chance we are not going to see as many “Obama Tells Moms to go back to school” ads from Classesusa.com.

Over a week ago DeVry reached out to its affiliates stating that these types of ads would no longer be tolerated and if a partner was caught using these types of ads the partnership would be terminated. My guess is that ClassesUSA got the notice first, for obvious reasons, and scrambled to take the ads down, because prior to the email going out I had noticed the ads were no longer popping up within Facebook and MSN. They seemed to be replaced by an even stranger ad.  Since seeing the ad multiple times I can no longer find it, go figure, but the ad, again by ClassesUSA the same creative source for the infamous LowerMyBills ads, included a random head shot of a Jesus look alike. Out of all the random photos Experian uses to attract the eyeballs of website visitors, this head shot is definitely the most obscure. So obscure I found myself not only be attracted to it, but staring at it. Did it do its job? In the world of banners and interruption based marketing, I guess you can say it did. Whether or not it is driving quality clicks and subsequently quality leads, I am not convinced and frankly wouldn’t know first hand anyway.

It would be fun to know what pulls more clicks Obama or Oprah. What do you think? I say Obama.

.

.

.

Big news out of Toronto today. CUnet picks up an excellent add on to their services, Sparkroom. Congratulations to the Sparkroom team and CUnet for seeing Sparkroom as an excellent addition to their company.

Comments about the acquisition, made by Jamie McDonald, can be found here on the Sparkroom blog

Press Release:

PARAMUS, N.J., and TORONTO, Jan. 11 /PRNewswire/ — CUnet, a subsidiary of Nelnet Inc. (NYSE: NNI), announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Sparkroom, a leading provider of enrollment marketing automation and lead performance management solutions. The parties anticipate closing the transaction on February 1, 2010.

Sparkroom provides business intelligence and lead delivery software that helps organizations immediately improve marketing efficiency and increase profitability by managing, measuring, and optimizing lead performance across all direct response marketing channels. Sparkroom’s Lead Performance Management product suite, which includes LeadDeliver, LeadIQ, and Lead Market Analytics, enables direct marketers in higher education to:

Continue Reading

LeadsCon is right around the corner. More specifically it is taking place next month! With that in mind it is now time to officially announce the 2nd Annual LeadCritic Poker Tournament @ LeadsCon.

Last years event was a big success and sold out right before the event. I suspect the event this year will sell out weeks prior to the event, so do not wait until the last minute. This year will have a bigger pot for the winners and 1st place may take home up to $3,200!! Along with the winnings there will be excellent opportunities to network and meet industry peers that you would have never before met. Couple that with poker and free beverages, you are bound to have a good time.

Here are the Details:

Continue Reading

Their are so many factors that affect lead quality. The list is long, so you are not going to find it included in this post, but there is one specific item that is on that list that I do want to discuss. Ask anyone that has been involved in the lead generation industry for longer the 5 years and they will tell you that the space has been growing at an amazing pace. Right or wrong I think I have seen articles stating that the industry produces tens of billions of dollars every year and is growing at a rate of 20%+ per year. The bottom line, the industry is growing at a healthy pace.

Continue Reading

Interesting post on Craigslist today:

Have $1,800 worth of LeadPoint leads left, will sell at big discount (Nationwide)

I have $1,800 worth of LeadPoint funds left, will sell at big discount because I am not doing any mortgage brokerage and they are not refunding me since it’s part of my initial deposit. If you are interested, I will create account for you so that you can purchase leads from there yourself. For those of you who are not familiar with LeadPoint, it’s a place where sellers and buyers of leads work together, you can choose what you are looking for (location, loan size, age of a lead, etc.), choose your price and buy leads.

Find the Posting HERE

Maybe worth picking up some extra leads at a discount.

.

.

.

Google’s Comparison Ads has been live in the U.S. for about a month and a half and many are curious to know how well it is working for the lenders involved. Well, for starters everyone should understand that all the lenders are currently bound by an NDA and all public comments by the lenders go through Google for approval. Lucky for us our friend and mortgage refinance was able to get his opinions approved by Google and subsequently we are able to publish them here. specialist  at RMC Vanguard Mortgage Corporation, Owen Raun.

So with out further ado An Insiders View of Google’s Comparison Ads:

By Owen Raun with RMC Vanguard Mortgage Corporation

RMC Vanguard has been a lender involved in the initial stages of Google’s venture into mortgage lead generation.  Google makes this on line shopping option available to a limited number of consumers in 15 states who are searching for mortgage.  We are only active in 5 of those states and focus only a smaller range of consumer profiles than most so I imagine we are in the bottom quarter of total leads received to date.  Assuming this blog will be read by lenders I have the following comments.

Continue Reading

There is nothing worse then being laid off, I know personally. I also know there is nothing worse then having to lay people off. What I don’t know first hand is having to go through either of these two scenarios right before Christmas.

Unfortunately, Tree.com employees, approximately 70 or so , were laid off today and know that there is nothing worse then being laid off right before Christmas. First, I hope the best for these people and hope that this turns into a blessing rather then a curse.

Continue Reading

2009 is quickly approaching to an end. It is amazing how fast the year has gone by and even more amazing how much change has occurred in just one year.

Here are some of the topics that were covered here on LeadCritic this year:

• The loan modification industry came and went in 2009. Granted, it remains a popular vertical for many companies, it also can be said that there was a rush into the vertical and a large exodus shortly after by companies finding out they could not make it work.
• Companies like Experian, QuinStreet and so many others were forced to lay employees off
• There were acquisitions by companies like Tree.com and QuinStreet. The opportunity to acquire web properties, technologies and other assets at relatively fair values were taken advantage of.
• Tree.com not only used 2009 to add to their family of web properties, but also gave LendingTree a bold new look and message.
• LendingTree files a suit against long time service partner MorTech for allegedly passing along proprietary data to Google and breaking their exclusivity agreement.
• A month later LT dropped the suit.
• TargusInfo officially  announced AdAdvisor and puts Behavioral Targeting and Consumer re-targeting on its head. The results from bridging offline and online data to power ad serving will be extremely exciting to see in 2010.
• Dave Wengel of TargusInfo, who brought lead verification as we know it, decides to move on to partner with Jay Weintraub, founder of LeadsCon.
• The FTC regulates claims made by bloggers, celebrity endorsements and tries to shut down Floggers.
• The case of LG Technologies VS Shin and others comes to the forefront as one of the largest and possibly the first publicly covered case allegedly involving theft and fraud by an employee.
• Then of course the big daddy of 2009, the release of Comparison Ads by Google. 2010 could possibly be a very big year for Comparison Ads. With any luck lead gen companies will step up to the plate and develop an answer to Comparison Ads that will be bigger and better for the consumer.
• Finally, QuinStreet files for their IPO and may help put Lead Generation model on the map again.

Continue Reading

One of the biggest lead generation scandals of the year is going to continue into 2010, but it is not going to leave 2009 without one more big break in the case.

A brief review of the case can be found here and here.

If you are familiar with the case you will remember that in Shin’s deceleration he claimed payment of $150,000, that mysteriously ended up in his bank account from LeadPoint, back to LG Technologies. According to new documents made public by the court, Shin is now being charged with Perjury and Contempt. According to bank statements provided by US Bank, the cashiers checks Shin claimed were made out to LG Technologies were actually made out to the Wynn Hotel. That is correct. Shin’s copy and paste skills were not enough to keep this lie out of the courts and could possibly destroy his whole defense.

This is a huge break for LG Technologies and clearly shows that Shin has lied at least once with details of is claims.

You can view the two court documents and the bad checks here and here.

.

.

.

After a taking a week off for the Thanksgiving, which I hope you all enjoyed, I was welcomed back with a very interesting announcement that should peak the curiosity of every person in the lead gen industry.

Today, TargusInfo announced that Dave Wengel, General Manager of their Interactive Markets division will be stepping down. Dave was not only the GM of the Interactive division but also co-founded the idea of real time data verification. This ground breaking service changed the industry forever and for that I consider Dave to be one of the most influential people in our industry.

Continue Reading