DISCLAIMER: If you are selling leads to a larger reseller, this post may not apply. It's more for people selling leads to the end user of the information.
Not sure how many of you guys are selling leads, but for those of you who are, i thought i would share how we just started verifying leads...
First off, by verifying leads, i mean verifying that the phone is a good phone number. If you are selling leads direct chances are your most important piece of info you collect is the phone number. Bad phone numbers usually mean you need to refund the lead. So the better you filter your leads, the less refunds you need to issue, the less people you piss off, and the less admin time you spend.
There are a few options i know of that people use to verify information:
1. Eyeball it: Take a glance at the phone number, if it doesn't look fake (i.e. 555-555-5555 or 123-456-7890) then sell it.
Pros: Cheap/free (minus the time you spend matching them)
Cons: Not accurate. Not instant. Takes up your time.
2. Using 3rd party data to verify. You can use companies like targus.info to verify phone numbers match the name/address with their API. I think it typically costs around 1k a month for up to 10k leads a month or something like that (forget the exact numbers)
Pros: Basically instant with API
Cons: Costly for low volume sellers, not very good with cell phone data
3. Online service to call phone and enter PIN. Different telephony services call it a different thing, but basically you call the end user, give them a pin, and make them enter a pin on screen.
Pros: Instant, fairly priced (pay per verification
Cons: User must be by their phone (if people are at work, can't use their home phone).
4. Manually call leads in-house. You could hire a guy to call all the leads and prequalify them.
Pros: Talk to people to confirm interest (qualify)
Cons: Expensive, not instant (unless you have a 24/7 call center)
What we started doing.
We just launched a new verification method today that automates our lead confirmation and gets over most of the cons above.
We are using a telephony service called IfByPhone. They are the top in the industry (they compete with Twillio, slightly different business model).
Here's what we're doing:
1. A lead submits info on our site
2. We use an API to trigger an instant call.
3. If the phone answers or goes to voicemail, we play a confirmation message
4. We give people the option to opt-out by pressing 9 (in case someone else put in a fake number that was a working number belonging to someone else)
5. We use the API to get a post call report, we can determine if the call was connected, or not connected
6. If connected, automatically match/sell lead to appropriate people
7. if not connected, send a follow up email saying we need a valid number (to try and recoup lead). If they update, repeat process.
This all happens within 1-2 minutes. It allows us to confirm the numbers work instantly, without the person having to be near the phone number they want to be contacted at.
Only been live for 1 day, but so far it's a pretty solid solution.
Anyone doing anything like this with their leads? If not, how are you verifying?
Not sure how many of you guys are selling leads, but for those of you who are, i thought i would share how we just started verifying leads...
First off, by verifying leads, i mean verifying that the phone is a good phone number. If you are selling leads direct chances are your most important piece of info you collect is the phone number. Bad phone numbers usually mean you need to refund the lead. So the better you filter your leads, the less refunds you need to issue, the less people you piss off, and the less admin time you spend.
There are a few options i know of that people use to verify information:
1. Eyeball it: Take a glance at the phone number, if it doesn't look fake (i.e. 555-555-5555 or 123-456-7890) then sell it.
Pros: Cheap/free (minus the time you spend matching them)
Cons: Not accurate. Not instant. Takes up your time.
2. Using 3rd party data to verify. You can use companies like targus.info to verify phone numbers match the name/address with their API. I think it typically costs around 1k a month for up to 10k leads a month or something like that (forget the exact numbers)
Pros: Basically instant with API
Cons: Costly for low volume sellers, not very good with cell phone data
3. Online service to call phone and enter PIN. Different telephony services call it a different thing, but basically you call the end user, give them a pin, and make them enter a pin on screen.
Pros: Instant, fairly priced (pay per verification
Cons: User must be by their phone (if people are at work, can't use their home phone).
4. Manually call leads in-house. You could hire a guy to call all the leads and prequalify them.
Pros: Talk to people to confirm interest (qualify)
Cons: Expensive, not instant (unless you have a 24/7 call center)
What we started doing.
We just launched a new verification method today that automates our lead confirmation and gets over most of the cons above.
We are using a telephony service called IfByPhone. They are the top in the industry (they compete with Twillio, slightly different business model).
Here's what we're doing:
1. A lead submits info on our site
2. We use an API to trigger an instant call.
3. If the phone answers or goes to voicemail, we play a confirmation message
4. We give people the option to opt-out by pressing 9 (in case someone else put in a fake number that was a working number belonging to someone else)
5. We use the API to get a post call report, we can determine if the call was connected, or not connected
6. If connected, automatically match/sell lead to appropriate people
7. if not connected, send a follow up email saying we need a valid number (to try and recoup lead). If they update, repeat process.
This all happens within 1-2 minutes. It allows us to confirm the numbers work instantly, without the person having to be near the phone number they want to be contacted at.
Only been live for 1 day, but so far it's a pretty solid solution.
Anyone doing anything like this with their leads? If not, how are you verifying?
