Not that we’re at all biased, but we already knew our VP of Lead Generation, Ryan Wilson, knows what he’s talking about. But now Adotas does too… along with the rest of the world wide web! Check out his post and learn from the expert!
http://www.adotas.com/2009/10/like-a-glove-the-importance-of-fit-in-lead-generation/
Intela has moved to a new office in Argyll Street, just off Oxford Street in central London. It has leased the whole of the 3rd floor of the building. This will serve as the hub of its European activities.
Intela first opened a London office in 2008 with a single room in a business centre. It has moved several times over the last year within the business centre as it has expanded rapidly. It is now growing its business in France, Spain and other European markets.
Founder and CEO, Jim Mansfield, commented “Intela already has a strong position in the UK market. It is now recruiting a team to focus on lead generation in continental Europe. The new office gives us the room for this expansion and demonstrates our commitment to this growth”.
The address of Intela’s new office is 3rd Floor, 9 Argyll Street, London, W1F 7TG. It is close to Oxford Circus tube station and along the street from the London Palladium theatre.
Intela was founded in 2006 in Boulder, Colorado. It is now the global leader in international lead generation. It drives leads to brands including Citroen, TMobile, Accident Advice Helpline, William Hill, Fiat, MBNA, Capital One, LoveFilm, Virgin Money and Paddy Power.
Production is one of those departments in this company that wears several different hats. We’re pretty much the help desk for our network and all offers coming in to and going out of our system. We also insure the quality of the product we put into our system — down to every single detail possible. We insure creatives are coded correctly, links work properly, and pixels are tracking as they should be.
As a CAN-SPAM compliant company, there are a lot of rules and regulations that need to be met along with all the other little things that make an offer succeed. Sometimes these can be missed by one set of eyes so it’s always best to have several checking out every campaign we run. That’s where production comes into play.
Our advertiser reps bring in offers that they then send to production to load into the system. At that point, the advertiser rep has already gone through the assets to assure all components are present. Production then double checks the HTML and codes uniquely for our system. After everything is loaded and both parties have verified a pixel firing in each others’ system, the offer is sent for a final QC – Quality Check. At this point, the offer has gone through at least three if not four to five sets of eyes to insure the quality of the campaign and it’s ready to go live.
Although Production can be the workhorse of the business sometimes, it’s one of the most important components to having a clean, smooth running network that other networks strive to be. It’s a very productive job 
By: Colleen Flynn, Production Manager and QC Extraordinaire
In the realm of lead generation, the ongoing debate is quality versus quantity. When I say quality, I don’t mean non-exclusivity, non-opt in, or false/fraudulent leads. These unscrupulous tactics are good for no one. I am speaking specifically about varying levels of custom filtering and post lead generation validation. The final answer in this quality versus quantity debate, as you might already know is…it depends. Many lead buyers believe that the only answer is ‘yes please’, but the reality of the marketplace is that there is not a one size fits all approach that is effective in meeting the needs of all lead buyers. A lead buyer generally wants leads that meet their criteria in quantities that they can process effectively. The issue of course is that it is rare that multiple lead buyers have criteria that match each other’s exactly and different lead buyers are able to process varying quantities of leads effectively.
To figure out the solution it is necessary to evaluate the individual lead buyers value chain proposition and its place within the value system of that particular market segment (i.e. Finance, Travel, Health and Beauty, etc). If you are not familiar with the concept of the value chain, here is the quick breakdown. Michael Porter wrote a book in 1985 called Competitive Advantage. In that book, he introduced the concept of a value chain whereby products (leads) pass through multiple activities within an organization and each activity adds value to the product until the final end product (sale) is completed. Each value added activity has costs and the value added less the cost is the margin or profit that the company makes from their activities. The concept can be extrapolated into a system whereby multiple organizations have interconnected value chains and each one adds value to the product until the final end product (sale) is complete. The activities that each lead buyer participates in are broken into two categories: primary activities and support activities. Primary activities are those related to producing the leads and support activities are those related to running the business. Primary Activities include inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, marketing and sales, and service. Support activities include procurement, human resources, technology development, and infrastructure (finance, accounting, etc.).
The first step in conducting this analysis is to break down each of the key activities of the lead buyer according to the activities in the value chain framework. For our purposes and simplicity, lets assume that all companies in our value system are run similarly on the support side and evaluate them strictly on primary activities. Inbound logistics encompass the activities related to lead acquisition and storage within the company. You may ask these questions: How efficiently is a lead is processed? Do leads queue up and get processed on a weekly basis or are they processed in real time? Operations covers any enhancements made to the lead while it is with the company. For this activity ask if the lead buyer has systems in place to evaluate lead quality and duplication in real time. Does the lead buyer have systems that clean the data from the format that they acquired it to the necessary format? If so, can any of that information be shared to identify potential quality issues sooner? Outbound logistics are those activities related to lead delivery. This is not as relevant when you are working directly with the end lead buyer. If you are working with a broker, question how quickly the lead will get into the end buyers hands. Question how your leads will be aggregated with other lead providers and how will that information be relayed to the end buyer? Delays in outbound logistics and blending from multiple sources will change the perceived quality of the leads. Marketing and sales are the activities related to either closing leads or marketing the company itself. When you are working with a lead broker most of this is in corporate marketing, but when you are working with the end lead buyer the value is in them closing the leads to sales and this activity is crucial. Determine how competent the sales force of the lead buyer is? Are alternate distribution channels set up should the lead ultimately not meet the initial criteria? Determine if the lead buyer is familiar with their target cost per sale metrics and derive, based on your lead price, the target conversion ratio for your leads. Determine how transparent your lead buyer can be about their sales and if you can monitor those costs per sale closely.
Once you have answered these questions, you need to evaluate the potential for adding value into the existing system. This can be through cost advantage or differentiation, but your value has to match needs of the end lead buyer and the constraints of the system. For example, if you can generate leads at a lower cost than your competitors, but a broker or an agency turns around and sells your leads to the end buyer at full price then that value is stripped and the proposition doesn’t fit into the system. If you provide leads at a lower cost to an end buyer who can not add value on the inbound logistics and operations side, each lead may end up being more expensive to them in the long run as they must ramp up those other activities to effectively process your leads. On the other hand, if you provide those same leads to a lead buyer that is proficient in the inbound logistics, operations, and sales activities they ultimately will achieve a lower cost per sale and you have added value in the system. If you can differentiate the leads by adding value on the operations or sales side with added data verification and validation for a lead buyer that is not set up to do so then you may have added value to the system. If, however, you provide these same add-on services to a lead buyer that is already proficient at them, then you will introduce overhead into their value chain as you reduce the value of their like activities. Both lead providers and lead buyers need to be aware of the dynamics of these value systems if they are going to optimize the lead acquisition system.
In summary, the solution to the quality versus quantity debate lies in fit. A lead provider’s product must fit into the end lead buyer’s acquisition process and add value to their system. If the fit is not right, the quality and the quantity of the leads can be assumed irrelevant. If the fit is right, then delivering the correct quantity of an acceptable quality of leads to the right end buyer results in a long term and profitable partnership between lead provider and lead buyer.
Contact Intela’s Lead Generation Group for more information about tiered lead rates on value added services such as call center verification, second tier human verified leads, PAF validated addresses, ofcom allocation validation on phone numbers, and/or auto-responders for co-registration offers.
Ryan Wilson
VP Lead Generation, Intela
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Isn’t this basically what social media has boiled down to? When Facebook calls the main page the “News Feed” it is really saying “stuff your opted-in friends want you to see”? I, for example, shamelessly publish my blog stories to my news feed in a quest for more readers (and more ad revenue). I promote my puppy in the Cutest Dog Competition and try to convince friends to vote for her (for my own financial gains). I organized a college football tailgate event (resulting in a net yield of 68 beers more than I started with).
So really we’re all social media advertisers. We advertise our businesses and websites, our feelings and interests. We advertise ourselves in a newspaper classified-type way and through voyeuristic photo albums. I’m a single male, age 24 looking for friendship, networking, dating, and “whatever I can get”. Our friends are just the people who are willing to subscribe to our Ad feed. They like me, so they put up with reading my banter… suckers.
My opt-in network is smaller than that of an affiliate marketing company, but I don’t pay anything for my traffic. My revenue is 100% profit and I can work odd hours. But where do I cross the line from friendly updates to creepy Facebook pusher? If I linked an Acai diet offer to my feed, would anyone click on it? Would anyone purchase it? Would there be consumer backlash? My guess is no, no, and probably some quizzical comments on that post. But if the product is my own, my network of friends will click. If someone can figure out how to harness that aspect of social media with profitable offers, then they’re on to something!
Not that it’s any big surprise, but NYC is one of the best places to attend a show! Intela had a great time meeting new people and catching up with old industry friends. It was nice to mingle with the large amount of international attendees that were there too. The sponsored parties were particularly useful for networking and making connections. All in all, it was a successful, fun show to be a part of. We thank everyone that came by the booth to chit chat with the team. We look forward to working with all of you!
Do you remember the movie “A Beautiful Mind” where Russell Crowe plays Nobel Prize winning economist John Nash? In one particular scene Russell Crowe (playing Nash) has just been inspired to develop his concept for Game Theory and has to prove his theory in a mathematical equation. There is a lengthy montage of pictures of Crowe staring pensively contemplating, writing, erasing, and rewriting math equations, and finally culminates with the completion of Nash’s masterpiece “Equilibrium points in n-person games”, the foundation of Game Theory. For the last two weeks, our Lead Gen Team has been having its own inspired brainstorm session. The mission: to build the best possible UK phone validation filter possible. We are happy to report that we’ve done it. We have made a more robust phone filter that has improved our data quality nearly thirty percent.
Our original filter requirements worked on simple validation rules based on UK phone structures, 01/02 for landlines, 07 for mobile numbers, as well as several other requirements. This simple filter is commonly used by lead generation companies in the UK. This filter was not good enough for us or our advertisers. The filter was too easy to get past. We felt that we could do better. Our concept was to improve the phone validation process by cross-referencing Ofcom database for valid numbers as well as build a filter that ties UK landline numbers to geographic areas based on postcodes.
The initial results are very promising. From a list of 2000 UK numbers, we were able to catch 564 invalid numbers; an increase of 28% over the common phone filters used by other companies. We were able to achieve the same gains with mobile numbers as well.
Current validation on all of our lead generation products now feature this phone filter as well as a Royal Mail address lookup. We are committed to delivering quality leads for our advertisers and will continue to strive to achieve this goal.
Here is a snapshot of our brainstorm session.
International affiliate marketing expert and blogger, Murray Newlands, just released a review of the CrispAds Affiliate Network which left us glowing.
On being an Affiliate Marketing Merchant / Advertiser, Mr. Newlands said: “I have run a large number of campaigns over several years with CrispAds which have always been successful gaining momentum fast within their network. CrispAds has always provided quality traffic unsurpassed by others.”
On being an Affiliate, Mr. Newlands said: “The CrispAds team come from the affiliate world and they are large affiliates in their own right. This pedigree shines through in the company’s ethos of taking care of their affiliates and building long term value based relationships.”
“What would I say about Jim Mansfield? One word — Integrity,” Murray said.
Murray’s contribution to affiliate marketing and his affiliate marketing blog have become one of the industry’s touch points of news and it is great to be recognized by him in this manner.