How to Block Duplicate Leads in Real Time

Duplicate leads eat into budgets and sap time better spent closing new deals or trying new ideas. Marketers don’t want to pay for a lead they already have and they shouldn’t have to, but it can be hard to block dupes until after they’re in the system. To add some complexity, the definition of “duplicate” can vary from one vendor contract to another, making it harder to comply with established agreements. While there is no “one size fits all” answer to this challenge, the ActiveProspect platform makes it easy to craft the perfect setup for your business.

Automatically Removing Items from a List

SuppressionList makes it easy to build, maintain and check massive lists lightning fast. Even better, it makes it easy to keep those lists clean and accurate. Each list can be configured to automatically remove items after a predefined period of time. This makes it easy to comply with a vendor agreement.

For example, a contract may state that duplicate leads can be rejected, but only if that lead was received in the last 30 days from that same vendor. To meet this criteria you can set up a vendor-specific list that will auto-delete items older than 30 days. This way, the list is always up to date and you know that you’re sticking to the agreement.

Time-Based Lead Decisions

Don’t like the idea of permanently deleting items from a list? No problem, there’s another path you can take. When SuppressionList finds a match it will include the day and time that the entry was added or updated in its response. With that information and a flexible product like LeadConduit, you can make decisions on the lead in real time without deleting data from the list. There are many ways that you can put this flexibility to work for you. Here are two ideas:

Rejecting Duplicate Leads

Instead of setting a 30 day expiry on the list itself, you may choose to not set an expiry in the first place. Instead, you can use the date returned from SuppressionList to filter out duplicate leads that were added in the last 30 days. This allows you to maintain a single list to compare against, while making it simple to compare different time windows per vendor.

Prioritize Leads

Even better, you could use the date returned to recognize a particularly motivated prospect. For example, if someone has expressed interest in your product by filling out your form twice in the same week, you have a strong indicator that she’s a motivated buyer. To capitalize on this information, you could flag any lead that has come through twice in the last seven days and route it appropriately. If you’re concerned about someone accidentally re-submitting a form, you could add a little more logic to look for duplicates that were received in the last seven days, but not in the last hour.

Preventing Dupes in the First Place

In a future post, we’ll explain how you can configure SuppressionList to make it easy for your vendors to check whether a lead is a duplicate before they even show your offer to a consumer, saving everyone time and money.