2008 Lead Company Update

[djs]

4, maybe 8, maybe 12, but yes, that is the concept. The lead is shared among several agents.

Affiliates are companies that sell the leads to the lead company (beyond those that the lead company develops on their own). I would venture a guess that most problem leads are caused by affiliates. For some reason, the lead companies allow affiliates to load leads that don't meet the normal standards. I'll give the benefit of the doubt and say most affiliates are decent companies, but it only takes a few rogue companies to cause problems.

Why would an affiliate sell leads through a lead company? They will frequently develop leads in markets they don't have a way to sell directly to agents, or they don't have enough agents, or they develop more leads in an area than they can sell.

Dan

 

[somarco]

lead companies allow affiliates to load leads that don't meet the normal standards

Affiliates are a cheap source of leads. When the leads are bogus, the affiliate does not get paid.

They don't have that luxury when all their cost is hard money such as PPC, DTC advertising, etc.

 

[djs]

Affiliates are a cheap source of leads. When the leads are bogus, the affiliate does not get paid.

They don't have that luxury when all their cost is hard money such as PPC, DTC advertising, etc.

In general, I agree with the fact that if a lead is bogus, everyone loses. The agent gets pissed, turns it in for credit, which costs the lead company money, who in turn charges back to the affiliate, which costs them money.

At the same time, most of the leads I get with missing information came from affiliates. It's almost like when the affiliates computer talks to the lead companies computer, and transfers the data, some of the fields don't line up, causing data to go missing, or to be in the wrong fields on the lead. This happens frequently on my P&C leads where there are cars or drivers missing from a lead, and these are the bulk of the leads I was getting.

The problem for me is that filters don't work correctly when the data is missing. I know my rates compared to my competitors rates inside out, I filter for deals that I'll write all day long. If the data is wrong, the filters can trigger incorrectly, causing me to buy leads I don't want, and rejecting leads I do want.

With health leads, you'll frequently see medical conditions / prescriptions not come through on affiliate leads. This can be a little harder to tell if the prospect left it off, or if it got lost along the way.

Mickey Mouse type leads (total bogus contact info) are very hard to completely screen out and come from everywhere. Okay, if your name really was Mickey Mouse, you wouldn't be able to get a quote because everyone screens out that name, but it's impossible to screen out made up names, phone numbers, etc. I don't hold this problem against a lead company. They do what they can, but there is no way to completely fix it. I know some go so far as to verify that the phone number is a working phone number, but there is no way (within reason) to verify it is the right phone number.

Dan

 

[somarco]

It's almost like when the affiliates computer talks to the lead companies computer, and transfers the data, some of the fields don't line up, causing data to go missing, or to be in the wrong fields on the lead

This is not uncommon.

Most databases are not cross-compatible.

With health leads, you'll frequently see medical conditions / prescriptions not come through on affiliate leads.

I think much of the time it is because the prospect intentionally left it off. They choose not to share (in some cases wisely) PHI with some unknown entity on a website.

The leads that are uninsurable can be credited. I have not had a problem getting credit for such leads, even when that data is missing.

Lead generation is imperfect. If you want a perfect system, you have to physically do it yourself by prospecting face to face.

I don't know anyone that has the time or desire to generate all their leads that way.

OK, scratch that. There are a few. These are mostly folks who are constantly on the speaking circuit or out cultivating prospects from COI's.

Bob #2 does a lot of this.

That is his model.

Mine is handled over the phone & email. I do find leads from public forums, e-newsletters and of course buying filtered, shared leads.

It works for me. Not perfectly, but still gives me a nice ROI.

Can't recall the exact figures, but I did post them a few weeks back. Something like $80 in acquisition costs vs $650 or so in commission.

As I said, my business model works for me, even with the crap that comes along with shared leads.

 

[CHUMPS FROM OXFORD]

ROI is the bottom line. If I knew in advance that out of every 10 shared leads, 8 would be bogus and 2 would buy...I would get as many as I could...like all of you.

But I would still bitch a little bit about the 8 bogus leads. It's fun.

 

[Expat]

ROI is the bottom line. If I knew in advance that out of every 10 shared leads, 8 would be bogus and 2 would buy...I would get as many as I could...like all of you.

But I would still bitch a little bit about the 8 bogus leads. It's fun.

Me too!

 

[somarco]

If I knew in advance that out of every 10 shared leads, 8 would be bogus and 2 would buy...I would get as many as I could..

Of course the real key is in knowing WHICH 2 will buy . . .

 

[CHUMPS FROM OXFORD]

By the way...forgot to mention this about "Hometown Quotes."

A mock health lead ( not by me) was submitted to them within the last 10 days. Hometown sent a confirmation email within a few moments indicating the names of the agents that would be calling (along with an EHEALTH Instant quote offer). WITHIN 5 MINUTES...An email was sent from BOTH Netquote and Insureme listing their agents that would be calling. Clearly, Hometown wasted no time in selling that lead.

 

[djs]

By the way...forgot to mention this about "Hometown Quotes."

A mock health lead was submitted to them within the last 10 days. Hometown sent a confirmation email within a few moments indicating the names of the agents that would be calling (along with an EHEALTH Instant quote offer). WITHIN 5 MINUTES...An email was sent from BOTH Netquote and Insureme listing their agents that would be calling. Clearly, Hometown wasted no time in selling that lead.

Any idea how many agents total were listed? I don't think that any of these lead vendors have a hard limit on the number of times they will sell the lead, but they advertise that they average 2.

Dan

 

[CHUMPS FROM OXFORD]

Hometown sold it to three. NQ and Insureme each had two.