How Good Are Your Leads?
Tried-and-true steps for validating the quality of your leads.
Tried-and-true steps for validating the quality of your leads.
Many of our recent brand-building campaigns also incorporate lead-development components to further connect with our target audience and create a deeper level of meaning for the communications effort.
These primarily include opt-ins for additional information, such as brochure fulfillment, email offer response, promotion enrollment, and dealer follow-up contact. And though we incorporate lead-gathering components within our rich media ad creative with good success, it seems there’s no substitute for cost-per-action (CPA) tactics, such as coregistration opportunities.
Sure, we diligently plan and target the sites and methods we use to gather these leads. We always hit, and usually exceed, our target goals. We copy-test creative to generate the best response rates. But the real question remains: How qualified are the leads we gather, and do we really get good value for the clicks we generate?
Validating Success
If you’ve built a sizable lead base and are ready for the next step in the customer contact process, think about conducting a few “lead quality assurance” tests before you blast away at those new-found hand-raisers. That way, you ensure you won’t waste bandwidth creating and sending materials, alienate people to a brand, and possibly disappoint your client.
Here are a few tried-and-true steps for validating lead quality:
Also, consider a secondary, slightly larger run of 1,000 to 2,000 for additional confirmation. This is especially helpful if you’ve got a pool of over 100,000 leads. No sense in hitting the whole list if testing indicates poor response.
Go the Extra Mile
Although these tactics bear a distinct resemblance to items in the direct marketing toolbox, implementing extra steps as a component of your brand-building effort will only help improve goals. We use so many tools to plan our efforts upfront. Why not affirm the results on the back end?
Let me know if you’ve tried any of the above or use other ways to confirm your results.
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