Many of you spend a fair amount of your life online these days. You use email daily at work and with friends and family. You are probably doing a good bit of this year’s Christmas shopping online. And, you have probably, long ago, discontinued your local newspaper (that never ended up on the porch anyway) for your favorite Internet news, weather, and sports website.

So, why are most of us in the mortgage business so stubborn to believe that our future clients are online too? Why are we resistant to believe we can convert leads (referrals) from the Internet?

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Bill Rice of Kaleidico comes out of the wood work to call out potential scammers of the Lead MarketWatch Widget. He puts out a pretty stiff warning to anyone who is thinking of ways to game the widget.

Here is the warning: If you are willing to compromise your integrity in the marketplace we will not allow you to leverage the Lead Marketwatch in that scam. If you are a lead provider your data will be indefinitely suppressed in Lead Marketwatch with no appeal. If you are a lender you will be terminated from the lead management network as a violation of our terms of service.

I was wondering when someone would actually get caught gaming the widget. I have speculated in the past about lead providers possibly gaming the widget here and here. It turns out that a lead provider actually been caught doing so.

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It is complete, I will be joining the Zipsearch! team! To say the least, I am excited for a couple of reasons. First, to join such a solid team that has so much potential. The Zipsearch! team has been consistently generating quality leads for the last 12 years and under the radar too. At one point they were a secret source of mine for Life Insurance leads. Secondly, I am excited to be back in the industry full time! My passion for the industry never died and continued to live through this blog even after I was not directly involved. I feel like I am an evangelist for the lead buyer and quality companies within the industry and that of course will never change. I am extremely excited to make a direct difference in the industry and continue to help lead buyers by delivering the highest quality leads possible. My position at Zipsearchwill be the online Media Manager which will manage all our lead-gen strategies and techniques. Thirdly, I am excited because my views of lead-gen are in-line with Zipsearch!. My goal is to generate quality, not quantity. What does this mean? Leads will not be generated with the goal of generating a click only, this means no crazy square dancing turtles or crazy teaser rates. These types of ads generate quantity, which is fine for most lead generators, but we will focus on quality.

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Patents are becoming crazy these days and the thought that some people will actually try to back them up with a law suit. AutoBytel of Irvine CA, recently file a patent suit against Insweb, LeadPoint Inc, Internet Brands Inc, and Auto Internet Marketing Inc seeking damages and permanent stop of the use of their U.S. Patent No. 6,282,517, entitled Real Time Communication of Purchase Requests.

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Adteractive, admitting to no wrongdoing, settles with the FTC over questionable incentive-based lead generation. According to MediaPost Publications the inquiry by the FTC focused on Adteractive’s use of “free” incentive language in their Internet lead generation campaigns:

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It was announced today that the rumors were true that DoublePositive was actively looking for funding. The company scored $4 million to boost their client acquisition and marketing efforts.

“We are very excited to be a part of the impressive growth story at DoublePositive. We believe DoublePositive will continue to be the leader in the live lead generation space, and we see tremendous opportunities for DoublePositive to diversify into new Internet lead-buying markets,” said Marc A. Cole, Partner at Hamilton Investment Partners. “We think DoublePositive is positioned very well to build on the great success they’ve had and capitalize on the tremendous opportunities that exist in industries such as Education, Insurance, and Consumer Debt/Credit.”

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There have been a few additions to the Quinstreet team that are worth mentioning. As I have stated in the past I think it is important for lead buyers to watch the movement of employees in the lead industry, especially the sales reps. The reps that have been in the industry for a while tend to choose lead providers that have promise and growth potential. With that said, John Challis formally of LeadPoint, Anolio Reyes and Steven Sears formally of LendingTree have joined the team at Quinstreet.

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I had the pleasure of having lunch with a lead provider today and it was interesting to chat about our two different points of view of the industry. We touched on a number subjects but I found it interesting that both the buyer and the seller have the same problem. Lead buyers and sellers have a wide range of quality levels. I understand that this is far from a revelation, however it is huge obstacle for both sides. Lead buyers find it extremely difficult to find quality providers and are forced to use the trial and error method. Lead sellers have to deal with risking their reputation by selling leads to companies or brokers that do not know what they are doing.

When people ask me who are the good lead providers, I try to make it a point to say ” these worked well for me, but everyone has different experiences”. One company may have a more refined sales process than another’s. Really there are number of different factors that may breed success for one and not another; How many leads does each LO receive in a day? What states do they buy in? What are their filters? I could go on and on.

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IAC falls short of analyst expectations due to LendingTree. IAC net income dropped by 24 cents a share, but excludinga few verticals (LendingTree) IAC actually beat estimates by 2 cents.

LendingTree revenue fell 41 percent to $63 million because of the deteriorating mortgage market and a decline in real- estate values, IAC said. The unit posted an operating loss of $5.6 million.

We can now have a little more insight to last months changes.

Commenting on results, IAC Chairman and CEO Barry Diller said, “With the exception of LendingTree, this was a satisfactory quarter for IAC. Trends at our businesses are good, and particularly so at HSN, where I believe that Mindy Grossman and her team have now become acclimated and are beginning to demonstrate the great retailing smarts that we knew they were capable of.”

This is from CNN Money:

TRANSACTIONS

Q3 2007      Q3 2006     Growth
Revenue  $ in millions
Ticketmaster                              $301.3       $265.5        13%
LendingTree                                 63.0        106.0       -41%
Real Estate                                    13.8         15.9       -13%
ServiceMagic                                24.6         18.5        33%
Intra-sector elimination              (0.1)         -           NM
$402.6       $405.9        -1%
Operating Income Before Amortization
Ticketmaster                            $61.9        $57.0         9%
LendingTree                              (3.2)        18.8         NM
Real Estate                              (3.9)        (6.3)       38%
ServiceMagic                              5.4          6.0       -10%
$60.3        $75.6       -20%
Operating Income (Loss)
Ticketmaster                            $54.0        $50.5         7%
LendingTree                              (5.6)        15.2         NM
Real Estate                              (4.8)        (8.0)       40%
ServiceMagic                              4.6          5.1        -9%
$48.2        $62.7       -23%

Hold on folks the ride is far from over.

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Bill Rice of Kaleidico recently posted his Lead MarketWatch widget and referenced the increase in quality (application rate) for LowerMyBill leads. He points out and he is right that there has been a large amount of LMB bashing and yes much has come from this blog, but is there really an increase in quality from LMB.

I sincerely hope that there as been an increase. Any time lead quality improves it is good for everyone, obviously. Now, I can’t tell you if quality has improved or not, but I can tell you that they are spending money on advertising. They currently are spending around $12.5 million a month on media, you can also see on this report that LendingTree is continually in the number one and two spot for ad spend. You can see past reports here.

So we know we have to take a few grains of salt with the Lead MarketWatch widget, because it doesn’t tell you the peramaters for each provider on the list. We do not know how many leads, what states and what type of lead is being used to measure the app rate, but I guess on some level you can derive some information from it. In reality, it is the only source for any transparency into the quality of lead providers, good or bad.

So with that said, I would like and I am sure others would appreciate LMB buyers to comment on the quality they are seeing. How is it? Are you seeing an increase in conversion or ROI with LMB leads.

Anybody want to comment?

(Little disclaimer for my new buyers and readers, please take the comments with a few grains of salt and research your lead providers on your own too.)

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Does anyone else find this ironic? (By no means scientific or authoritative, but ironic)

LowerMyBills’ Vendor Perspective:

LAS VEGAS, Sept. 21 /PRNewswire/ — TARGUSinfo honored LowerMyBills.com, an Experian company, yesterday with the Best in Lead Quality Award at the Online Lead Quality Summit here at the Palms Hotel and Casino. The Summit, sponsored by TARGUSinfo, is dedicated to helping companies drive profits through successful online lead generation and improved lead quality.

LowerMyBills’ Client Perspective:

Does anyone know how i can get out of my contract for lowermybills

It is in my 3rd week with them and probably over 75% have been d/c numbers, they say I have to be with them for 31 days before I can cancel and also after 31 days I have to send a letter of cancelation [sic] that takes another 31 days.

Hmmm…At the very least it demonstrates that long term, "lock-in" contracts are not trust or performance-based. And I am sure, what I am guessing to be a small account, is not threatening to impact LowerMyBills’ strategic media buy forward contracts.

I have written a number of post regarding the movement of sales reps within the lead industry. Why you ask? I find it interesting to watch and make note of these changes because where they end up says something. Do you think that the more experienced reps are going to choose a company that isn’t going anywhere or that don’t have a solid product? Of course not, they are going to choose companies that have up side potential and that sell a quality product.

The same goes for people who choose to leave. Are they leaving simply for a change or have they lost faith in the company or product?

With that said LowerMyBills “very first hire”, from what I was told, has chosen to move on. Scott Shanker, whom LowerMyBills hired from GetSmart and who brought many of the large accounts that LMB still has. Accounts such as Quicken, Home Loan Center and Ameriquest were all created by Shanker.

My team generates the majority of company revenues; also responsible for the planning and deployment of all initiatives associated with the national client base. -Shanker

Shanker has chosen to to team up with Los Angeles based LeadPoint. For LeadPoint, which practically made up of all ex-LMB employees, this is a big catch. What’s in it for Shanker and why did he go to LeadPoint. Well, I don’t know for a fact, but I would speculate that they brought him on board to whip the sales team in shape and generate sales prior to the speculated liquidation.

There seems to be an ongoing exit of sales reps and key members of the LMB team. Moral is said to be lower than normal and I was even told from a lead provider that they had interviewed everyone at LMB except the CEO. Now this was probably an over statement but apparently the resumes are out.

This is clearly a transition period for many of us and LMB is clearly included in this bunch.

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