In Case You Missed It – LeadsCon (Almost Live) Part 2

As mentioned in Part 1, also in this week’s edition, almost 2000 industry leaders made their way to New York City last week for the fourth installment of LeadsCon East. Given the biased nature of this author, we tried not spend too much time on the amazing buyers and brands who attended or the fantastic amount of deals that got closed and relationships that grew as a result of being there. We also tried not to discuss the unique energy, enthusiasm, and experience of being surrounding by decision makers. Instead, we tried to share with you some of the amazing learning that came out of the two and a half day conference sessions. Part 1 was dedicated to the opening keynote conversation with Tom Evans, CEO and President of the largest company in the “customer conversion” space, Bankrate. Part 2 takes a look at some of the major action on stage.
If anyone ever doubted the sophistication of the buy side (not saying any seller would), you only have to listen to Joeri Weyenberg from Kaplan to come to a radically different conclusion. Then again, it’s hard not to like a guy who says, “After being in this space for a while, it can make you crazy.” And, it certainly can when you think, as he does seemingly all the time, about how a perfectly qualified and interested lead can turn into a very poor one.
We have to give Joeri credit for articulating something that we didn’t think much about. So much of the conversation tends to focus on the data – is it valid, qualified, and ideally not just interested but a match? It’s easy to think that the hard part is finding that person and the rest is really easy, but there is an enormous middle layer where things can, and certainly do, go awry. Take Joeri’s not so hypothetical case of a Jane who looks “green” to him after the ad and landing page. Then things get interesting. The buyer sends the lead to three aggregators (with her consent) but spaces out when they send it based on price (not telling the buyer). Then, the lead gets called back a day later being upsold to three more schools. To increase monetization further, Jane’s data is passed to an aggregator who focuses on remnant and a different mix of schools. All of a sudden, she is fielding three more, and that’s not going to count any other aggregators that will see the data. As Joeri says, it isn’t who the lead is but what happens to it.
What happens to a lead has historically not been available, but ambitious, well financed, and heavily supported already by significant players on the buy and sell side. Its founder, Ross Shanken, who was among the earliest employees at TARGUSinfo wants not transparency but trust for the ecosystem. With his startup, LeadiD, they look to become the CarFax for leads, whereby buyers will finally have insight into what happens to the lead post submit. As Ross believes, “If transparency was possible, it would have happened.” He understands that people, buyers included will often do what is best for them and for anyone to expect honesty all the time is simply not reasonable. That is why he chose to focus not on transparency but giving buyers confidence in what they buy. If they choose to buy crap, fine. But at least, crap can’t be sold as something higher quality.
Many other executives echoed the statements of Tom Evans, including one of the sharpest minds we’ve encountered, Steve Krenzer, the CEO of YBrandt Interactive Marketing, formerly Experian Interactive Media. The company is known throughout the performance space for their LowerMyBills and ClassesUSA brand. He is an unabashed direct response marketer, but he too is not in the lead gen business but the client outcome business, which for them is enrolled students, funded loans, and underwritten policies. Unlike almost anyone else, and arguably no one that does their presumed nine figure annual revenue, they generate 95% of their own traffic. As was the case with Joeri, it’s hard not to like and respect someone who both can run an organization monetizing 10bn to 15bn impressions per month of their own ads and who can run a serious enterprise but have a sense of humor about the space. Most importantly, it’s great hearing the leading firms speak about volume and scale as necessary but not sufficient for sustained success. It is also about investing heavily and often in the systems, technology, and analytics to make oneself a client outcome business not a traffic business.
Finally, at least as far as this recap is concerned, comes one of the most unexpected talks. It was given by Lois Greisman, Associate Director, Division of Marketing Practices, Federal Trade Commission. You wouldn’t think a talk by someone at the FTC would be unexpected. Scary, threatening, out of touch are terms often used by marketers, but Ms. Greisman, whose career includes some impressive decisions against firms we know, does not come across in any way anti-business. She comes across as pragmatic, fair, and dare we say, open-minded. This is not a vigilante organization out to make marketing impossible. It’s rules and enforcement agency out to enable consumers to feel safe, and part of being a consumer is marketing messages and transactions. It’s not some isolated, word of mouth, boring world.
Some words of wisdom shared include being honest with yourself. If what you are doing is a marketing tactic, e.g., calling something an independent review when it isn’t, don’t do it. Make things accurate and truthful. Material information must be clear and conspicuous – cost info can’t be in end user license agreement that a reasonable person won’t read. You can’t have someone enter their phone number for a survey and then sell their data to be pitched on things that have nothing to do with the reason they gave their information. For them, even with a decent sized staff they are not omnipresent, nor can they offer the check messages before being used like the FDA. Instead, they must focus on rules to help companies be in the whiter side of gray and catch those who have fallen off the ledge. The enforcement side focuses on finding and in our words punishing those who cause the greatest and often most novel types of injury. They look for the pain and who makes money from causing pain. Not to poke fun of Google, but in this case, if it’s not evil, it’s a pretty good start. Just remember liability runs upstream and downstream; the “ostrich defense” doesn’t work.
Outcome oriented. Stay in the whiter shades of gray. Don’t be stupid. And, focus on the overall user experience. You’re good to go.