5 Reasons Your Cost-Per-Lead Campaign Didn’t Work

It’s a common story for performance marketers: You arranged to purchase opt-in leads from a marketing partner on a cost-per-lead basis. You found and vetted the partner. You negotiated the contract and lead pricing. They integrated with your lead management system. Everything looks great, so you go live.

But instead of being the hero who drives tons of revenue for the company, the campaign fails to produce the desired results. What went wrong? 

Let’s start from the beginning with cost-per-lead purchasing and explore what cost-per-lead is, how you can assess your campaign strategies, and how ActiveProspect can help optimize your approach with LeadConduit.

Why Didn’t My Cost-Per-Lead Campaign Work?

Cost-per-lead campaigns sometimes have issues that can cause them to fail. We have detected the most problematic areas and would like to share helpful insightful tips to help decrease your cost-per-lead and cost-per-qualified-lead:

1. You had no idea what type of lead you were buying.

Did you investigate your leads? Ask yourself these quick questions every time you acquire leads:

• Did these leads really opt-in for your product or service?
• Was it an exclusive lead?

Often buyers don’t take the time to verify what they are buying. Remember: all leads are not created equally, and it is critical to identify the type of leads you are buying for your cost-per-lead campaign.

2. You bought all the leads that were sent to you  (in other words, incentives were misaligned)

Lead sellers still get paid whether the lead meets your criteria or not. If you’re buying leads from a third party, your incentives must be aligned with your provider’s; otherwise, you will purchase leads that do not meet your criteria, thus escalating your cost-per-qualified-lead. 

Ideally, you align incentives so that you only pay for the leads that meet your criteria. Many lead vendors allow for real-time rejects so that you don’t have to pay for unwanted (a.k.a. bad) leads.

Bad leads usually include the following:

• Fake or incorrect contact information
• Recent duplicates
• Leads submitted by bots
• Lack of compliance (Understand compliance further specifically as it pertains to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) here.)

You should be able to reject the leads that don’t meet your criteria in real-time, and you should have a lead return process for bad leads that make it through your real-time screening process. Align your incentives with your seller to only pay for the leads you want and pay nothing for the leads you don’t want. 

With ActiveProspect’s LeadConduit, you can manage your leads in real-time by rejecting the bad ones with enhanced data qualifications and directly send them to your CRM.

3. You didn’t track performance by source and optimize accordingly.

More than likely, you’re buying leads from multiple sources. Just as every lead is not created equally, the same goes for your third-party sources. Even if you are only working with one lead vendor, each vendor typically uses multiple lead sources.

You need to use consistent and reliable source identifiers (such as the site domain where the lead was generated) so you can track performance. The bottom line: know which sources are sending the best quality leads at any given time so you know which sources allow for purchase optimization.

4. You didn’t follow up immediately.

No matter where someone opts in for your offer, they should get a real-time confirmation email and, if applicable, a follow-up phone call or text. Don’t waste money on a cost-per-lead campaign by not having a plan to follow-up.

It may be necessary to work with sales and create a service level agreement (SLA) regarding how quickly sales should be following up with the leads from the campaigns you run. This way, both marketing and sales remain aligned throughout the process. Oftentimes lead buyers blame their vendors when the leads don’t convert when the real reason was a lack of timely follow-up by the buyer.

5. Your follow-up sales/marketing process to convert the leads was flawed.  

Perhaps your process wasn’t appropriate for the type of leads you were buying. For example, does your sales process match the offer you promised the consumer in the ad? It is imperative to make sure you coordinate your campaign plans with the sales team, especially with regulations concerning TCPA that dictate clear and concise language about what the consumer is agreeing to. You do not want to be in a situation where sales calls are made when there is no prior consent or agreement to receive a call from the consumer.

Furthermore, if you buy a lead that you cannot contact during this privacy centric time this will cause you unexpected lost revenue. Utilize ActivePropsect’s ROI calculator to understand the impact on your bottom line in the event of department miscommunication. 

By coordinating with the sales team, goals are aligned, compliance is further ensured, processes are streamlined, and leads are converted to customers. Always double check your steps with ActivePropsect’s TCPA Compliance Checklist.

Take Action on Your Leads

As a company that processes millions of leads per month for major buyers of internet leads across many industries, ActiveProspect possesses insight into what drives a successful campaign. 

Our LeadConduit product is a real-time lead optimization platform that empowers you to take action on your leads by customizing lead flow, enhancing leads with additional data, filtering and rejecting leads, and delivering it all straight to your CRM. LeadConduit supports over 100 pre-built unique integrations, including lead sources, data enhancements, and recipient systems, such as CRMs and autodialers. 

Additionally, LeadConduit has an Open API, so you can customize it as much as you’d like. LeadConduit helps guarantee that every lead is a qualified lead and keeps your cost-per-lead as low as possible.

By effectively lowering your cost-per-lead, you can boost the ROI of your marketing activities while continuing to acquire new, high-quality leads for your sales team to convert.

We’re ready to help! Read this resource to learn more about LeadConduit and how to decrease cost-per-lead and increase your marketing ROI.

Schedule a demo today!