Online lead generation is a fascinating business. Lead generation companies learn the best way to attract individuals considering an expensive financial transaction – refinancing their home, getting a loan, going back to school, etc. They then sell the individuals’ contact information to providers of that service – mortgage brokers, payroll loan providers, online universities, you name it. A terrific business, but it’s all too easy for lead generators to modify the information provided by the leads to make them more valuable, to sell the leads more times than they claim, or to resell an old lead to make a few extra bucks. Which is why Atul Patel’s soon-to-launch LeadIDentity service, described over at LeadCritic, is so intriguing. Leads are assigned IDs as they come in, which stay with the lead, so the leads can be checked for authenticity later – without transmitting any of the actual data in the lead to LeadIDentity.
Interesting, but I want to know how this actually works. Without sending the lead data (name, address, contact information), the only things LeadIDentity really has to work with are referrer and timestamp. That’s enough to let them identify the origin and time of the lead, which could get stored server-side and referred to by LeadIDentity’s lead ID. A company dumb enough to claim an old lead’s fresh would be caught out, if they sent along the original lead ID. But this approach doesn’t prevent a) editing of information within the lead, b) stripping off the lead ID and sending it without one, or c) resubmitting the information and getting a brand new lead ID for it. So the initial product sounds a bit ineffective, unless there’s something I’m missing.
For a product like this to truly work, it’s got to receive the lead data and store it server-side for verification – tricky business, since you’re dealing with personally identifiable information. Perhaps the data could be encrypted, with the lead ID functioning as the key that decrypts it. The system could be made foolproof, if everyone was participating – LeadIDentity would receive the form data, encrypt it, and return only the lead ID and the variables that affect pricing, not the personal contact information, and that lead ID would be traded instead of the contact information. But this requires a whole lot more trust than I think the lead generation industry’s going to give any one party right now, unless some major buyers decide to force the issue. Still, this is a great idea that’s long overdue – Atul, looking forward to seeing how the product develops.
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Hi Greg, Your thoughts on LeadIDentity are spot on. In fact, I agree with you regarding the problems of the initial phase.
a) editing of information within the lead – Yes, you can edit this information. But when you resell the same LeadID many times with different information, you’re diluting the LeadID. I think this will be less a problem because it is the dumbest way to try to work the system.
b) with some very large banks interested by this, the inevitable goal is reachable — no lead will be accepted without a LeadID
c) this is the biggest yet simplist issue with the first phase of LeadIDentity.
What you see in LeadIDentity is just the beginning, and there is certainly more to follow. I think you touch up on great points that are in the works, but far from implementation.
The lead generation space is highly sensitive because nothing has been introduced to make sure we self-regulate ourselves for the sake of growth. So some of the bigger concepts have been reserved for later.
Greg – I have to admit, it’s fun to see what ads show up in Google Adsense when you write about lead generation. “These borrowers 1003′d yesterday Get FICO’s, Loan Size, LTV’s -24Hr” — wow, kind of interesting, I wonder to what extent the comments that people write to a blog article then affect the ads – talk about a moving (commercial) conversation. Love it.