All users in our lead buy study signed up for the same offer and form, according to the lead supplier that hosted the form. Upon receipt of the lead, we sent email confirmation messages to each lead in real-time. Used who clicking on the confirmation link contained in the email message were considered to be confirmed. Those who did not were unconfirmed.
The following exhibit shows email confirmation rates by source id. In this case, the source is the specific website that originated the lead. We captured source id’s on each record and passed these values to the email campaign management system. We used two providers in the study, Lyris and Mailchimp. The source codes are added as custom fields into the email CRM database and are integrated with open and click data in email confirmation messages. This technique can be applied to any email application provided your ESP (email service provider) supports custom data fields.
Here are the confirmation rates when viewed by source.
Exhibit 1. Email confirmation rates of top suppliers by lead volume
As the data suggests, there is significant variance in level of user engagement by source. In fact, some of the sources generated 0% confirmations from users. In one case, we received approximately 300 leads from a particular source and not one registrant confirmed their registration. Keep in mind, email confirmation messages were sent from the same ip addresses, the same email service providers and contained exactly the same content. All registrants signed up for exactly the same offer. In the case of a 0% confirmation rate, we can only conclude these leads were fraudulent. To date, we haven’t been able to attribute any other reasonable explanation and neither have any suppliers who have generated a zero confirmation rate.
Even though only one supplier had a zero rate in the sample shown, there is a large variance across the other providers, ranging from 3% to 22%. We attribute this variance to be cause by two primary factors 1) degree of relevance between supplier’s audience and offer and 2) potential shortcuts taken by suppliers to increase revenue while sacrificing lead quality.
Based on proprietary techniques, we have developed the following rule of thumb as a guideline for measuring lead quality using an email confirmation process. These rules have been validated against a data set where we know noncompliant tactics were used.
Exhibit 2. Recommended Email Confirmation Rate Thresholds
Using these classifications, the 90 lead sources included in the study distributed across the three classes as follows.
Exhibit 3. Lead Distribution Of Lead Sources By Class
Of the lead sources purchased, almost half of the leads were Class C. Recall that Class C is the worst of the worst and indicates the lead was invalid. We suspect these leads were auto-posted by the supplier where the consumer did not opt-in to the specific offer in question. Amazing, only 21% of the lead sources qualified as a legitimate opt-in lead. In a sense, the cost of this program was 5X higher then the value of a good lead when accounting for the number of Class C leads.
In our opinion, if a consumer does not confirm their registration to the offer, it calls into question the accuracy of the entire record. In such instances, we believe it’s reasonable to question whether this person is in fact pregnant, if the expected date is accurate and if this person signed up at all. Failing any evidence to the contrary, the conservative assumption is that the entire lead is inaccurate or entirely invalid.
This simple email confirmation test can be used by any lead buyer. This technique is one of the many ways in which we measure lead quality to ensure our lead buyers have the best opportunity at at successful marketing campaign.
Life Phase Media 