About the Author

LeadCritic, formally a lead manager for a large real estate, mortgage and financial service company has a passion for the mortgage lead business, from the buyers perspective. A few other interests include Internet Marketing, web analytics, lead management and consumer behavior.

New LeadIdentity Brings Transparency and Quality Into Control

The industry and all its players, no matter what team you are on, whether it be the lead buying team or the lead generating team have always dealt with fraud and the uncertainty of what happened or what will happen to a lead. As a buyer I was always concerned with how many times a lead was being sold, how it was produced and if it was sent to me in real time. Now that I am on the other side of the table I am still concerned with the same issues. Is there a buyer on my network reselling my leads? Is the data accurate and legitimate or is it fraudulent? The last questions I have answers/solutions for and have a number of different systems in place that decrease those risks. Until yesterday though there were no real solutions/answers that could insure a lead I generated was only being distributed to my customers and no other.

Atul Patel co-founder of the popular LMS LeadROI and former Vice President reached out to me the other day to give an exclusive interview on his new venture, LeadIdentity. Here is the release LeadIdentity put out shortly after the interview.

“The launch of LeadIDentity introduces a genuine opportunity for every stakeholder of the growing lead generation ecosystem,” said Atul Patel, Founder of LeadIDentity. “Rapid growth in our industry has led to declining quality, transparency, and efficiency. For the next cycle of growth and innovation in lead generation, we must collectively and systematically enhance the governance of this marketing channel.”

What is LeadIdentity? LeadIdentity is the first ever third party identification system that allows lead generators, aggregators and buyer’s to self govern their leads. As you can see in the image to the right every participating partner will allow LeadIdentity to attach a LeadID to each lead generated and therefore “tag ” the lead and its source without passing the sensitive consumer data.

LeadIDentity is a neutral third-party that does not participate in the buying and selling of leads. In addition, the service does not require actual lead data or personally identifiable information (PII). “Understanding the sensitivity of the problems LeadIDentity is addressing, we have developed a service that is the least path of resistance to adoption and acceptance,” said Atul Patel. “Many would agree that LeadIDentity will serve as a catalyst for further innovation in lead generation. We look forward to sharing our vision and collaborating with industry leaders as we extend and improve this service.

LeadIdentity will now give buyers a full history of the life of a lead and give a new level of transparency to the market and at the same time decreases fraud and the over selling of leads. It is my opinion that the creation of LeadIdentity is a positive step for the lead generation industry, however it does have one major obstacle to overcome and that is participation. I am guessing that this would not be successful if I was the only company participating. This needs the buyers and sellers to demand it from their partners and to be completely honest, why wouldn’t you? As a lead generator I want to attach an ID to all my leads and as a lead buyer I would want all my providers to attach ID’s to each lead I purchased. If forced each of my providers to attach a LeadID I would be able to instantly find out if a lead was a duplicate, how many times it was sold and what company originated the lead.

“I haven’t been as active in the industry as I used to, but it is that outside perspective that really got me thinking that there must be a simple, non-intrusive way to make the industry more welcoming to new concepts. But you know as well as I, that it will take some self-regulation to get us there. The FTC has taken years to catch on to ring tone advertising. And even when they start looking under the hood across all lead gen, they will see things from the eye of the consumer. LeadIDentity actually can help everyone in the space, except, of course, those that do not want to be, what I call, “sensitively transparent” – not transparency in pricing, lead data, etc., but just enough to self-police our industry.”

I would like to encourage buyers and sellers to support this idea and “Join The Movement” here.

So I think this is a great idea, but what do you think? Do you think lead providers would have the guts to give such transparency? If not, what would that say about the company? Do you think a project like this is beneficial to the industry?

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17 Comment(s)

Raj Parekh | Mar 25, 2008 | Reply

Let me be the first to congratulate Atul and wish him the best of luck in his new endeavor. He has always been a champion of improving lead quality and I look forward to working with him, participating lead providers, and lead exchanges to help improve the consumer and lead buyer experience.

Without a doubt I see lead management as a complimentary and subsequent process to this component of the lead life-cycle, which I believe consists of 3 major systems working together, i.e. Certification of how and when leads are generated, The implementation of best practices at the point of sale, and Understanding the final resting place of the lead.

There’s a lot of work yet to be done, but it seems like all the right minds have come to the table to take the bull by the horns.

Good luck my friend. Maybe you can hire McGruff the crime dog to take a bite out of lead fraud.
Noel Collins | Mar 25, 2008 | Reply

Atul,

congratulations on the new venture. Can you elaborate on the transparency aspect? Will buyers see the affiliate, site, form or just have a single company name i.e. LeadProviderABC shown to them?
Dave Helmreich | Mar 25, 2008 | Reply

Atul -

Nice work, and I think launching this as a dot org will better connect both buyers and sellers and strengthen the self-policing aspect of the solution.

A couple of questions - how will aggregators use the solution and still comply with the unique LeadID? Is there a mechanism to pass “ownership” from generator to aggregator?

Bill Rice asked a question on Twitter today as well - “Can a system like LeadIDentity prevent Internet lead fraud and the churn of consumer info by bad lead aggregators?” - how can buyers use this tool to protect themselves by using LeadID?

Looking forward to catching up at LeadsCon.
Atul Patel | Mar 25, 2008 | Reply

Thanks for the comments and questions.

Raj, I agree that this can become a critical part of the life-cycle. It will be very important to service/technology providers. At the end of the day, if service/technology providers can help the industry by not empowering questionable business practices, then it will help everyone.

Noel, Great question. We have an appreciation for the sensitivity of transparency in this space. You are right that we will be shielding the actual name and other meta-data through alias codes. As this system evolves we will introduce new variations of transparency that will be acceptable by its participants.

Dave, You raise a very important concern. Concepts of “ownership” and “custody” for the sell-side are areas that we have started to explore. It is commonplace for wholesalers of leads who run major campaigns to pass on ownership/custody to retailers. We don’t want appropriate business processes to be deemed fraudulent by the system. As far as buyers, you know as well as anybody from being at TARGUSinfo that this will empower buyers to begin to confirm that they are being sold good product.

Even further, the innovation that this will open up is very encouraging. For instance, what if a lender wants to sell their leads to their brokers and not be concerned that those leads are being sold to an aggregator as an affiliate lead? Now you can. And, a few lenders are already exploring using LeadIDentity for this purpose.

I look forward to seeing everyone at LeadsCon.
Lead Critic | Mar 25, 2008 | Reply

Atul,
I may not have explained LeadIdentity properly. I have received a few emails and IM’s regarding it and would like you briefly describe the benefits of LeadIdentity and what is the purpose of tagging a lead is.

Thanks
Bill Rice | Mar 25, 2008 | Reply

This makes me think CarFax for leads. This is very interesting!
Atul Patel | Mar 25, 2008 | Reply

LeadCritic, I’m glad you are getting those emails and IMs regarding LeadIDentity. The benefits and example scenarios are endless, but let me give one. When a lead is generated online, someone who purchased the lead from an aggregator can resell it 60 days later as a new lead. With a LeadIDentity tagged to the lead, the date and time the lead was generated is captured by a third-party system and it can protect the lead aggregators brand name from being diluted by a buyer who resells the lead.

Bill, CarFax is a great analogy. I also like to ask people, “When does it really matter if you have a driver’s license?” (1) To get into the club, (2) When you get pulled over. Enough said.
warren | Mar 25, 2008 | Reply

I don’t get how this works without revealing name and address and lead data to leadidentity??? Can you eloborate
Dan | Mar 25, 2008 | Reply

Nice idea… how about an estimated impact on CPL?… Also, what about the consumer that actually fills out more than one form? Finally, it seems this concept is mostly focused on times sold and halting fraud in the existing fill-out-a-simple-form-to-shop-hundreds-of-lenders leadgen environment… will this concept have a place when leadgen evolves to a more consumer oriented model???
Atul Patel | Mar 26, 2008 | Reply

Warren, You are right that it’s a bit odd that there is no lead data required to obtain a LeadIDentity. The LeadIDentity as it is introduced today is the first step in building a standard to identify a lead’s true origin, not its data. It is obvious that there can be some work-arounds if there is no lead data associated with it, but again, this is the first step to further enhancements that will introduce solutions to those problems.

Dan, Currently the LeadIDentity has no charge associated with it. In terms of the consumer who fills out more than one form (assuming the forms are operated by participants in LeadIDentity), each form would produce a new LeadID, therefore not causing any issues with the consumer filling out more than one form. The concept also tackles issue of the selling of excessively aged data. With regard to the consumer oriented model, which I have talked about before in interviews with LeadCritic (http://blog.leadcritic.com/leads2007/leads2007-day-2-session-recap), I believe that this will especially work well with those initiatives.

What LeadIDentity is today is merely an introduction to its sustainable, long-term value to the industry. There’s a lot more to follow!
warren | Mar 26, 2008 | Reply

Thx for clarification. A bad apple could still just remove the leadID and resell a LeadID lead, right? Or sell a lead 5 times, then obtain a leadID for it and sell it 4 times with a leadID - for a total of 9 times. But to the leadID buyer, they would only see this lead sold 4 times when it was actually sold 9 times - 5 times fraudulently.

Feels like this really won’t solve any purposefully unethical or fraudulent activity?
Atul Patel | Mar 26, 2008 | Reply

Warren, Our first step in this industry is to have lead sellers take ownership of a lead that is being circulated in the market. This is the first step to transparency. In the first release of LeadIDentity, we are not focusing on the times sold, but rather, ownership of the lead. In follow on releases, we will be introducing new ways that I’m sure will be acceptable by the industry leading lead generation firms as LeadIDentity proves to be the neutral third-party that it is.
warren | Mar 26, 2008 | Reply

Autl,

I wish you the best on this. I’m just confused I think
Brad Seiler | Mar 26, 2008 | Reply

Atul –

Will this be form side javascript kind of like LeadPoint’s SRLP?

Brad
Atul Patel | Mar 27, 2008 | Reply

Hi Brad, I’m not too familiar with the LeadPoint’s SRLP, but I imagine it is like other lead provider’s internal lead identifiers. Key difference is that LeadIDentity is a neutral, third-party.
Brad Seiler | Mar 27, 2008 | Reply

I just brought up LeadPoint because I am guessing their original intention with SRLP was to verify something. My guess is it is a IP/timestamp hash but I may be way off. I don’t think they enforce it any more.

I was just curious if this is 100% a javascript solution (to generate the id) or if there are other ways. For example, several of our clients generate leads through telemarketing. Does your solution make any sense for that?

Regardless, I am all for what you are trying to do here and I will gladly try and push it on our clients.
Atul Patel | Mar 28, 2008 | Reply

Brad, Thanks for the great discussion. In fact, our intent is to touch up on EVERY lead. To be frank, even those ring tone offers! Telemarketing leads that are generated usually involve software — such as your solution. That is why we feel that we would want to be partnered with solution providers such as yourself. Therefore we will be able to integrate on all levels, such as Javascript, SOAP, and APIs for programming languages.

It will be great to connect so we can bring it into your system as well! Thanks again.