Glossary
- Online Lead Generation
- Internet Leads
- Cost Per Lead
- Buying Traffic vs. Internet Leads
- Life Style Survey
- Hosted Lead Generation
- Question Sponsorship
- Co-Registration
- Co-Registration Path
- Mini Surveys
- Marketing Leads
- Named Network
- Sales Leads
- Internet Lead Delivery
- Optimisation
- Lead Scoring
- Lead Nurturing
- Pricing
- Industry resources
What is Online Lead Generation?
Online lead generation is one of the fastest growing segments of the online advertising industry and iCumulus are experts in the field.
Although it is a broadly used term, Online Lead Generation refers to the practice of turning Internet traffic into an Internet Lead (where a consumer submits a form requesting contact. Three common ways in which online advertising is purchased is CPM (Cost per Thousand impressions), CPC (Cost Per Click), and CPL (Cost Per Lead).
Common Methods of Lead Generation are known as:
- Question Sponsorship
- Mini survey
- Co-registration
- Publishers Host and Post
What is an Internet Lead?
A “lead” in short is a prospective consumer or client. An Internet lead is generated by a consumer who proactively submits information via a web form, granting their permission and requesting to be contacted in relation to their profile or a specific interest. This could be someone signing up for a newsletter, registering as a member, or more commonly completing an online Lifestyle Survey. Advertisers (also referred to as Marketers or Lead Buyers) have been granted permission to contact an Internet lead via email, telephone, direct mail, or a combination of these methods as determined by the consumer. Leads are obtained instantly and can be automatically uploaded via Internet Lead Delivery into a Lead Management platform, which connects directly to clients CRM (or delivered manually at a specified delivery schedule).
What is Cost Per Lead Advertising?
Cost Per Lead Advertising (CPL) is a form of performance-based advertising and is common in performance media campaigns otherwise known as affiliate marketing. In this payment method, the Advertiser only pays the Publisher (also referred to as an Affiliate or Lead Seller) for the leads generated by the advertising creative. In Lead Generation CPL is based on the consumer completing a form (such as subscribing to an email newsletter). CPL has a lower financial risk for the Advertiser, compared with CPM (Cost per Thousand impressions) and CPC (Cost Per Click) where the Advertiser still pays even though there may be no tangible results from their advertising dollars.
Buying CPL traffic vs. Internet Leads
There are two forms of Cost Per Lead (CPL) for Advertisers: buying traffic (eyeballs) on a CPL basis or buying Internet Leads on a CPL basis. The difference is subtle, but very important.
When buying traffic on a CPL basis, the Advertiser hosts a form where the lead data will be collected. Publisher’s direct web traffic to the Advertisers form, and if the form is completed, the Advertiser will pay the vendor on a per lead basis.
Traffic (eyeballs) is directed to a hosted web form via display banners, text links, newsletters, and dedicated member emails. Traffic maybe visitors to a website or members of the website
When buying Internet Leads on a CPL basis, the vendor hosts the web form and the Advertiser purchases the Internet Leads of consumers that complete the form. The leads must be delivered to the Advertiser via some means of Internet Lead Delivery. This practice is referred to as Hosted Lead Generation.
We often hear Advertisers say they buy leads from search engines; however, they are actually buying web traffic on a Cost Per Click (CPC) basis. This traffic hopefully converts to an Internet Lead.
What is Hosted (Host and Post) Lead Generation?
Hosted Lead Generation is the practice where an Advertiser collects Internet Leads by allowing Affiliates to host the Advertisers web form. The lead data collected is then transmitted to the Advertiser via some method of Internet Lead Delivery.
A common type of Hosted Lead Generation is co-registration, whereby consumers may opt-in for multiple offers while registering for one primary offer.
Another example of Hosted Lead Generation is purchasing leads from lead aggregators (websites that collect and distribute leads for a particular product or service to buyers based on specific criteria). A common example of a lead aggregator is a mortgage quote site. A consumer will submit information on a form requesting to be matched with up to four mortgage brokers for quotes. The site matches the lead with buyers based on the criteria of the lead.
Lead Vendors (Affiliates) prefer Hosted Lead Generation because it allows greater control over the lead generation process. It also allows the Affiliate to keep the consumer on their site, allowing them to potentially generate more advertising revenue.
What is a lifestyle Survey?
A Lifestyle Survey is a method used to collect specific information from a sample of individuals. Surveys ask consumer to complete up to 200 questions in relation to their lifestyle. Profiles can then be created on members, providing key marketing opportunities based on demographics, purchasing behaviour and intentions
2 main types of Lifestyle surveys are:
- Traditional (paper) Lifestyle surveys – these are printed material delivered to over 2 million homes. These resulting databases are strong for traditional data marketing such as mail and tele
- Online Lifestyle Surveys – use online data capture methods collecting data as it is completed. The more sophisticated surveys have a dynamic or predictive methodology for presenting questions, where questions presented are based on previous answers
What is Question Sponsorship?
Question sponsorship is a unique branded question within a Lifestyle Survey. Typically the question has the client name within and the client can have influence of the question copy. Permission has been captured directly from the consumer within the context of the question. Data collected from this question within the survey is exclusive for the use by the Sponsor for the lifetime of the lead. Leads derived are often referred to as Marketing Leads
What is a Co-Registration?
Co-Registration is a common type of Hosted Lead Generation. Co-registration is the practice of allowing a consumer to opt-in for multiple offers while registering for one primary offer. For example, while signing up for a newsletter, a consumer might see a checkbox with a sign up for a related newsletter from another company. This checkbox is the opt-in for the co-registration.
By checking that box, the consumer data will be transferred to both Advertisers presented on the form. It is important that consumers opt-in for the co-registration placement to ensure that they truly want to be contacted by the advertiser
Leads from Co-registration are typically new members to the hosted database. Marketing a Sponsored question to existing members it facilitated via a mini survey
What is a Co-Registration Path?
A co-registration path is a series of advertiser offers in the form of a registration page. Each is presented to a user after they have registered for a web site or completed an action.
What is a Mini Survey?
A Mini Survey is a short form survey sent directly to existing members of a Lifestyle Survey database. Mini Surveys will contain a minimum number of questions to members including a Sponsored Question.
What are Marketing Leads?
Marketing leads are brand-specific leads generated for a unique advertiser’s offer. In contrast to sales leads, marketing leads can only be sold to the advertiser whose offer a customer responded to. Because transparency is a necessary prerequisite for generating marketing leads, marketing lead campaigns can be optimized by mapping leads to their sources.
What are Sales Leads?
Sales leads are generated on the basis of demographic criteria such as FICO score, income, age, HHI, etc. These leads are often resold to multiple advertisers. Sales leads are typically followed up through phone calls by a sales force. Sales leads are typically only used in the mortgage, insurance and finance industries.
What is Internet Lead Delivery?
In an online lead generation campaign, user data needs to be transmitted from a publisher to an advertiser.
Advertisers can choose to receive data from publishers in a variety of formats. Common industry formats include (ranging from least automated and least secure to most automated and most secure):
- Email: leads are sent in an email, the most insecure form of data transfer. With increasingly strict regulation concerning data security, email data transfer is being replaced by more secure methodologies.
- HTTP GET & HTTP POST: Server to server connection in real-time. The most common method of data transfer today.
- HTTPS: Similar to HTTP in that it is real-time, the primary difference being that in HTTPS the data is encrypted. Strongly recommended for data transfer in online lead generation campaigns whenever possible
Today majority of leads are delivered via email (CSV attachments) iCumulus have developed a Lead management Platform to address this issue around security and time effective delivery of leads. Most Advertisers are requesting to receive leads in real-time.
What is Lead Optimisation?
Optimisation is the process by which an advertiser makes adjustments to a campaign with the aim of improving the Return on Investment (ROI). During optimisation, advertisers reallocate spend towards better performing publishers while eliminating poorly performing publishers from the media plan. Criteria for optimisation can include number of leads generated by media venue or the percentage of leads that convert successfully. Transparency is the key to successful optimisation as it allows advertisers to know which publisher performed well and which didn’t.
What is Lead Scoring?
Processes or software designed to rank the value of leads on a relative basis. Lead scoring associates a score to each lead based upon a set of weighted criteria. Leads with a high score may be sent to an email list for immediate follow-up, while leads with a medium or low score might be added to a newsletter database for future development.
What is Lead Nurturing?
Lead nurturing refers to the activities that occur after a lead has been delivered to an advertiser, and is a key ingredient for the success of any online lead generation campaign. The key to successful lead nurturing is to have a clear objective for the leads collected and to create a discrete set of practices and plans to achieve that objective. A good starting point is to create an email newsletter and use the leads collected to seed the list for the newsletter. More advanced techniques could involve email append or direct outreach efforts by email or phone.
How is the Price of Leads Determined?
Pricing is determined by a number of factors and in principle set by the publishers who are driving their members to web forms. Clients purchasing the leads can also set maximum pricing they are prepared to pay. Key factors on pricing are:
- Recency of the lead
- Exclusivity of the category of the lead (set by the publisher)
- Vertical of the lead as determined by the advertiser/ lead buyer
- Unique leads – leads new to client
- Fields of data collected by the publishers