While BankRate is well known player in the lead generation industry, NetQuote and CreditCards.com are equally popular in their own verticals. Note that BankRate owns InsureMe.com, another player in the insurance lead industry.

What does this mean to the lead buyers in the insurance and credit card verticals? Will it increase the lead prices in the long term? Does it lead to another mega company stifling innovation and flexibility? Only time can provide answers to these questions. Obvious positive benefit would be the addition of legitimacy to the online lead generation industry.

If you are already using some sort of lead management system and you still some of the problems described in the checklist, then it may be good time to reevaluate your software solution and match with your business requirements.

#1 Too much time spent in emailing leads: Are you spending too much time in emailing the leads received from your lead generation websites? When you started the business, probably it was good idea to focus on lead gen and business development. You could have emailed the few leads received to a handful of lead buyers. But, if you are following the same process, then you are not growing your business.

#2 Leads fall through the cracks: Are you missing the leads and the captured leads never reach the intended customers? Every lead missed is money wasted – in terms of lead generation efforts and cost. When you go on vacation, what happens to the leads? Either you need to subordinate to take care or your customers might slip away from you.

#3 Wasting time in re-formatting Emails to Customers: Even if you are dealing in a specific vertical such as Education Leads or Insurance Leads, each of your customer may be needing the lead data emailed to them in a specific format. If you sign-up more customers, more pronounced will be this problem. Your lead distribution and management system will support multiple email layouts and format to meet each customer’s requirement.

#4 Have to ignore potential buyers since they need automated Lead Delivery: I am sure that every has to avoid signing up one or two clients for some important reason. However, ignoring customers for want of an automated lead delivery management system will fatal to the business. Sophisticated / savvy / large customers will demand more automation features.

#5 Have more than a handful of websites or leads generated: If you have a more than a few websites, then managing the capture and distribution process is tedious. Also, measuring the performance of each website is essential to optimize your leadgen efforts. Even if you have one or two lead capture websites, if the volume of leads generated is high, then you will face the same issues.

#6 Using Google / Yahoo / Bing PPC for leadgen: Are you using PPC (pay per click) programs with Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing and Bing AdCenter to drive web traffic and generate leads? If so, you cannot live without a solid lead management system to manage and analyze the leads captured on your PPC landing pages. Don’t waste your inbound marketing efforts without fully monetizing.

#7 Don’t find enough time for Lead Generation: Are you spending too much time on your operations management? You must be focusing on traffic generation strategies and activities. Another important aspect needing most of your time is the business development and enrolling more customers. Deployment of a lead company operations management system can take care of capture, delivery and tracking.

#8 Lead Buyers complain about delay in lead delivery: Have you heard any complaints from your lead clients that leads are not reaching them on time? If you promise real time leads, the leads should be delivered in real time. It means that the data should be delivered within a few minutes, not after 30 minutes. Remember, the first responders have the advantage of converting the prospect to a customer.

#9 Losing Revenue: Are you leaving money on the table? If you don’t automate the distribution process, you may not route the prospects to all buyers. If you are promising multiple quotes for the prospects, you need to deliver the lead info to multiple customers. For example, if you are generating insurance or mortgage leads and the routing is based on geography (zip code or state), imaging how error prone the delivery routing process will be.

#10 Spending time on analyzing leads: Do you know where the leads are coming from and how these are distributed? What is your profitable lead source? Unless you know answers for these questions you cannot optimize your investment and generate revenue. If you are not using a good lead distribution database system which will provide instant answers on questions such as these, you will be wasting time in trying to get a grip of the business operations.

If you think that even one or two signs are visible, then it is time to take an in-depth look at your business operations / practices and analyze if an automatic lead distribution system can help you.

Even experienced professionals and established businesses have to play catch up at times. Online scams and poor oversight bring in a lot of bad publicity for online lead vendors. However, invention and popularity of devices such as iPhone and iPad are bringing in more tech savvy consumers into the internet as potential online prospects. The number of areas of lead generation possibilities is growing rapidly. This provides new opportunities for entrepreneurs and small businesses in online marketing world.

Traditionally, online lead generation is restricted to very few verticals with large market sizes but ultra competitive environment. Newcomers may not even go near these business segments, unless they have deep pockets and business background. However, things are changing overnight and enormous new opportunities are opening up.

This is a good time to take stock of the industry scenario and review lead verticals, both old and new. Let us look at each one of these verticals (and possibly more) in the upcoming posts. Here is the list of vertical segments (or niches, as some would like to call these), both traditional and recent ones.

• Financial Services
  • • Mortgage leads
    • Insurance leads
    • New Credit Card leads
    • Pay Day Loan leads
    • Business / Commercial Loan leads
    • Loan Modification leads
    • Debt Settlement leads
• Franchise Opportunity Leads
• Biz Op / MLM leads
• Real Estate leads
• Education leads
• Satellite TV leads
• Time Share leads
• Auto Warranty Leads
• Home Warranty Leads
• Home / Improvement Services
  • • Windows and Siding leads
    • Basement Finishing leads
    • Remodeling leads
    • Pools and Supplies lead
    • Lawn Care leads
    • Painting leads
    • Solar leads
    • Home Security leads
• Home Care leads
• Home Care Medical Device leads
• Accounting Services / CPA leads
• Onsite Catering leads
• Auto Loan leads
• Automotive / Vehicle leads
• Medical Spa Service leads
• Dentistry Service leads
• Legal Service leads

If you are already in the lead generation business, you may be looking for expansion and diversification opportunities. If you are new to the industry, you must do in-depth research in the niche market you are planning to enter. Keep in mind that as a lead generation and distribution company, you need to find your customers as well as the leads for your customers.

Our LeadPro 24|7 Lead Distribution and Management Software System customers leverage the technology, internet industry knowledge and domain intelligence to succeed in their lead gen businesses. I am sure that everyone can succeed in their venture by applying the knowledge and right skills as there is enough space for growth. The industry will grow furiously in the coming years, although some niches may see growth fluctuations.

P.S. If you are an expert in a niche or vertical segment (whether listed above or not) or in the leadgen industry, please share your ideas and thoughts here.

The blog will include the following categories of resources, among others:

• Insurance lead management best practices
• Lead tracking tools, software and services
• Tips and tricks
• Lead management Guides
• Resource links
• Insurance Lead generation practices and processes
• Leveraging social media for customer acquisition, retention and service
• Internet lead buying – concerns, issues and best practices
• Lead distribution and routing engines
• Lead quality
• Lead nurturing with drip emails and follow-up tracking
• Lead conversion issues
• Technology trends and impact on insurance agencies
• Industry happenings
• Tutorials, webinars, etc.

Insurance verticals

The site will not be restricted to any particular vertical or segment. It will cover all segments and insurance types including individual insurance and group  insurance practices. Whether you are a single agent practice or a multi-agent, multi-location insurance agency, the site will be a great service.

Health, Life, LTC, Automobile, Homeowners, Business / Commercial, Annuities, RV/Boat, and Renters Insurance related information will be included in the blog resource.

Lead Delivery Methods

The most widely used method for delivering lead information is the internet EMAIL. If your buyers are business savvy and more sophisticated, the web services based API or web form posting based interface and direct application access to your Lead Capture, Distribution and Management system are the fool-proof methods.

Real Time Lead Alerts

Even if you use direct interface with your buyers systems using the interface or provide login access to your lead database, the customer may still need real time alerts to get notified about the arrival of the new lead. This is where the real time email alerts get their star status. If the buyer contacts persons (such as insurance agents) are not fully office based but constantly on the move, email alerts are unavoidable. With the proliferation of Blackberrys and smartphones such as iPhones, email alerts have become very useful to reach the prospects within minutes of sign-up.

Email Delivery Issues

With the increasing spamming issues, delivery of internet email is becoming more problematic. In fact, none can gurantee the delivery of emails via internet, whatever their claim may be. Especially, many of the small lead buyers use the email addresses provided by the their ISPs. Encouraging them to use their corporate (private domain) emails will help improve the delivery rates.

Fax and SMS as additional Delivery Options

If your buyers have access to fax with an office based employee (even if the recipient is traveling), sending lead information via fax is a good add-on option. Many of the good lead distribution software solutions available in the market place will have fax delivery as an option. Please note that delivering lead information via fax involves per page cost. However the cost, around 15 cents per page, is not prohibitive considering the value addition.

Another option to deliver leads to your customer is using the Text Messaging option. Text messaging is also known as Short Messaging Service (SMS). However, you may not be able to  transmit the entire lead information, as the text message has to be less than 160 characters. Important information such prospect’s name, telephone and email address can be easily transmitted via SMS. Keep in mind that delivering lead details via SMS also involves additional cost to the buyer. And the buyer’s cell phone must be subscribed to and enabled to receive text messages. Generally, the lead management systems send the SMS messages as emails to the wireless carriers (ex. phonenumber@sprintpcs.com).

While these additional lead delivery options many not be for everyone, these may be certainly great tools for some of your deserving customers. As a lead seller, consult with your lead buyers, educate them the pros and cons of using Fax or SMS as lead delivery options, and let them decide if they want to leverage these tools.

1. Gather only the minimum information required on the landing page forms. Adding more (optional) fields will result in junk data and reduce the lead quality.
2. Validate required fields as well as optional fields for format and content. Email address and numeric data should be 100% validated. Even text fields should be validated for length and patterns.
3. Validate phone number and Area code (using a reference database). There is no meaning in validating these fields after getting the leads. The validation should be performed in the front end.
4. Validate geographic information such as country, state, county, and zip codes. Make sure that the validations are appropriate. If you are collecting Mortgage leads or Insurance leads, there is no meaning in providing a country drop down with 150 countries of the world! Provide a drop down with State names for US only. If you are collecting Business Opportunity (Biz Op) leads in US and Canada, let the state drop down display both US and Canadian states.
5. Validate the city against IP address of the user. Please note that this not a foolproof method and hence this could be used to score the quality of the lead.
6. Validate physical address, if collected in the sign-up form. Again, online validation is preferred.
7. Distribute leads based on suitable filters. If you are distributing leads to multiple lead buyers, multiple filter sets can be used to deliver required leads depending on the customer requirements.
8. Choose one or more suitable lead delivery methods. While email is the most widely used delivery method, there are other reliable methods for lead delivery and distribution. Email, API, Direct Application Access and Fax methods can be used in combination based on the client’s business.
9. Employ right lead generation methods. Avoiding methods such as forced pop-ups, providing incentives to the user, etc. can greatly improve the lead quality.
10. De-dupe leads after capture in the lead distribution system. Since users may be submitting the registration forms from more than one site on the internet, de-duping the leads will help improve the client satisfaction. If you are using affiliates and multiple sources, this is an important step prior to lead distribution.

Even if you are outsourcing lead generation and landing page design to third party service providers, make sure that these principles are adhered to. Employing simple, template based landing pages may not address these requirements.

If you are a GSA (General Sales Agency), the lead distribution is essentially a function of assigning the leads to your agents based on certain rules and policies.

Lead generation firms and lead sellers distribute the leads based on their sales lead distribution rules to meet the requirements of the lead buyers (independent or captive agents and / or insurance agency firms).

Distribution for Insurance Agency

Since over 75% of US population is using the internet and the internet is increasingly used to buy and research  products and services such as insurance policies by the consumers, internet based insurance leads have become a source of business for insurance agencies.

Whether you are generating your own leads on the internet or purchasing leads from internet lead vendors, quick and efficient distribution of leads to your agent is of prime importance.

Using an automated lead distribution and management system, the leads can be captured from your web sites as well as the lead vendors’ systems. Entire process of manual entry of prospect information into the lead management system can be avoided by picking a suitable lead distribution software system. Of course, the leads collected by traditional means such as networking meetings, seminars, personal visits and phone calls can also be entered into the system, so that the leads can be managed and tracked in a central database.

Once the prospects are in the system, these can be distributed to your agents in real time using preset rules. Some of the options for distribution are:

• Geography (such as County, Zip Code)
• Seniority of the Agent
• Type / Profile of Lead
• Round Robin method

Distribution Options for Lead vendors

Lead Vendors can use an effective Insurance Lead Distribution System to collect the leads in the database from their own lead generation sources and third party sources, distribute the leads to their clients in real time based on extensive filter criteria, process payments based on order conditions, track and process lead credit requests / returns, and obtain sales reports.

The following criteria could be used for real time insurance lead distribution:

• Geography (State, County, Zip codes)
• Lead Types
• Lead Profile parameters (such as preexisting conditions, current insurance situation, past incidents, etc.)
• Client Priority
• Exclusivity (ex. Exclusive, Non-exclusive, Semi-exclusive)
• Number of Times Lead Distributed
• Carrier Restriction
• Volume Pricing
• Price of a Lead
• Payment Status

The leads can be delivered in real time using instant email alert notifications to the agents or agencies. The lead information can also be provided as an attachment in CSV or XML form depending on the lead buyer requirement.

The lead buyers can also be provided access to the lead tracking system, so that the leads can be tracked online for increasing lead conversion rates. This could be a great value addition for the customers.

The insurance lead distribution and management systems such as LeadPro247 will generally support unlimited leads clients and online payment processing based on the payment terms agreed on. The clients can also make credit requests for invalid leads using the online system, which will lead to increased customer satisfaction.

Insurance Lead Types

Many insurance lead vendors and agencies deal with multiple insurance verticals. The insurance lead distribution and management software systems generally support the following lead types, unless it is a specific industry oriented system.

• Health Insurance Leads
• Life Insurance Leads
• Home Owner Insurance Leads
• Mortgage Protection Insurance Leads
• Auto Insurance Leads
• Renters Insurance Leads
• RV / Motorcycle / Boat Insurance Leads
• Annuities

However, the system must be capable of handling the specific lead profiles for each insurance type.

The system must also be configurable and flexible to suit your specific requirements. LeadPro247 Insurance Lead Distribution System is one such system tuned to the requirements of the insurance marketing vertical. Whether you are a muti-agent, national marketing insurance agency or a lead provider catering to the insurance lead buyers, the system will help you distribute, track and manage the leads. If you are an independent or captive agent, the system can be beneficialy used to track, nurture with drip email marketing (with built-in autoresponder service) and track the leads for better conversion.

Lead Assignment Vs Distribution

Distributing leads is a relatively small but critical process of the marketing cycle. Once the prospect information is obtained (in whatever fashion), it needs to be passed on to some individual within the organization to carry forward the sales process further. The person could be an inside sales rep, lead administrator, a field sales executive or even a channel team member (such as a dealer or distributor). As discussed in earlier posts, when the prospect information is distributed within the organization, it is generally referred as Lead Assignment.

However, this takes a different connotation if you are a lead generation company or lead provider. The acquired leads need to be sold to one or more external parties (or organization) using certain rules. This process is known as Lead Distribution as the leads are distributed to one or more external entities.

Lead Generation

We receive a quite a few inquiries through our product website on a daily basis inquiring about lead generation software and if our LeadPro tool can be used as a lead generation software. In fact, there is no such thing as a Lead Generation Software. A plethora of tools and web 2.0 strategies can be used for online Sales Lead Generation. For example, this blog is a tool for online lead generation. The following are the most commonly used tools for lead generation. Note that the traditional demand generation sources are fast losing relevance and online lead generation methods are gaining ground.

• Websites (with landing pages or sign-up forms)
• Blogs
• Forums
• Pay Per Click Advertising
• Cost Per Action (CPA) Advertising
• Email Marketing
• Social Marketing Media (such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
• Call Centers (traditional)
• Direct Mail (traditional)
• Print / TV / Radio Advertising

Lead Distribution Software

There are several software tools in the market place for distributing leads. Some include both internal lead assignment and external lead distribution and some include one or the other function.

Internal Lead Assignment (or routing) software will generally include the following features:

• Sales Organization Maintenance
• Sales Territory Definition
• Manual review / qualification
• Lead entry / import / interface
• Assignment Engine with criteria such as:
  • Geography (State, County, Zip / Postal code, Telephone Area Code, etc.)
  • Lead Source
  • Lead Profile parameters (such as Product / Service, Budget, Authority, Time frame, etc.)
  • Lead Score / Lead Rank / Class (based on Qualification process)
• Manual Assignment of Leads (individually or in batch)
• Reassignment of Leads (individually or in batch)
• Definition of Sales Followup Stages
• Lead Tracking Activities Logging
• Analysis Reports

External Lead Distribution software will have an entirely different set of features, though the above feature might also be included for internal management.

Typical features included in an online lead distribution sofware will be:

• Lead Capture from multiple sources
• Lead Capture forms (can be used with Landing Pages)
• Integration with leading Lead Vendors
• Custom Interfaces to various lead generation systems
• Lead Aggregation in a central database
• Lead Buyers / Clients setup and maintenance
• Support for multiple verticals and industry segments such as:
  • Insurance leads (health, life, LTC, auto, home, mortgage protection, annuities, etc.)
  • Mortgage leads (New purchase, refinance, home equity loan, line of credit)
  • Real Estate leads (home buyers, sellers)
  • Loan Modification leads
  • Debt Consolidation leads
  • Credit Card leads
  • Auto leads
  • Warranty leads
  • Higher Education leads
  • Student Loan leads
  • Satellite TV leads
  • Identity Protection leads
  • Other Consumer product leads
• Comprehensive Lead Distribution Engine
• Real Time Distribution of leads
• Aged Leads distribution in bulk / batches
• Lead management tool for buyers (as a value addition)
• Credit Request and Approval process (for invalid leads)
• Order processing (for real time and bulk leads)
• Online Credit Card Payment processing with multiple gateways
• Lead sales statistics
• Profitability Analysis and metrics

Thus lead marketers can look for and use a suitable lead distribution software solution to manage their distribution and delivery processes. However, there is no single piece of software or solution to generate leads. A combination of strategies including web sites, blogs, email marketing, PPC, and SEO can be used to generate internet leads. And there are several tools and solutions to execute these strategies.

This blog resource will serve as a resource focused on sales lead capture / acquisition, lead distribution, routing and assignment domains.

The phrase “lead distribution”  means different things to different industries / verticals / professionals. In this respect, I hope to discuss and cover as widely as possible. Though I will be referencing to LeadPro247 lead distribution platform in many examples, the underlying concepts, strategies and implementation processes can be used in other best of breed software or in your home grown solutions.

Also, as the internet matures and web 2.0 strategies take a stronghold in organizations, particularly in small / tiny businesses and medium sized organizations, the application of technology is bound to grow exponentially. This will result in new processes and innovation in technology. As we go forward, we will try to revisit the concepts discussed in older posts and update the new developments in the industry.