This is a lead management system seen at the Loan Toolbox Business Plan 2008.
Besides the fact that the loan officer left their notes on client follow-up behind, do you think these clients are getting a second call? Do you think the loan officer will remember the commitments he or she made?
Do you think this will work in the current mortgage market?
By my conservative estimation, this loan officer left $20,000 to $50,000 in commissions on (literally) the table!
Keith Burwell and I will be in California most of next week and we would love the opportunity to get everyone (lenders, lead providers, etc.) together for dinner.
Any suggestions for good places to gather?
Here is the tentative schedule:
If you can make it and/or have an idea for a location leave a comment, call, or email me.
UPDATE: Feel free to invite anyone that you think will be interested. These are informal, fun, and full of networking opportunities!
Tags: lead management, lead generation, los angeles, san diego, california, mortgage, marketing
There has been a lot of discussion about Internet lead quality declining. Is it the marketing or the market? I believe it has a lot to do with consumers reacting to the media and the market.
LeadPoint announces the launch of education leads within it’s unique lead exchange model. Not particularly interesting in and of itself, but there does seem to be the hint of something different:
…service that it says allows online and campus-based educational institutions to purchase leads submitted by students that have the highest likelihood of matching each school’s target student profile.
LeadPoint says the offering gives schools the ability to bid on real time higher education leads based on both the subject and the profile of the prospective student. Schools are able to target based on the prospect’s profile and their educational interests, employing filters such as school type, campus location, and highest level of education completed.
I am drawn to the concept of matching or targeting a student’s profile. This is certainly unique in the education market where most leads are generated by prospective students selecting a college and then providing an inquiry.
I have long believed that this was destined to be a bit backward and certainly not focused on the student getting the most appropriate results from their inquiry.
Although this is certainly an interesting announcement from LeadPoint it is not unique or original. And, in my opinion, probably not the best executed in class. Whereas LeadPoint simply focuses on matching the student to “each school’s target student profile,” a more interesting approach is to match a school based on a full picture of the prospective student’s profile, interests, career, and professional propensity.
This is where I think CollegeRover excels in education lead generation, with an eHarmony type of student to college matching technology.
As the mortgage market tightens, lead generation companies begin to mount tactical offensive and defensive strategies to position for dwindling Internet originating mortgage companies.
A a recent article by Inman News, "Lead quality a two-sided coin" and commentary from LeadCritic about price increases and my review of the LendingTree Partner Summit seems to have tipped off a opportunistic feeding frenzy for LendingTree clients:
"We at ZipSearch would like to offer any lender shut out from their network to contact us about their unique situation and how we may be able to help them increase their closing ratio with a custom campaign."
Now, knowing the ZipSearch guys personally I am sure this was NOT the intent of the post, but I do think that we should all be concentrating on helping lenders get better at online lead originations and focusing on the consumer. As opposed to taking opportunities to snipe customers.
And to be fair, LendingTree is increasing and decreasing various fees:
Apparently, according to these clients there is also an actual decline in back-end CLO (closed loan offer) fees relative to increases in the match fees in prime and mid-prime leads and there are a significant price cuts in subprime leads.
Believe me no one is more competitive than I am, and I am more than happy to migrate a Leads360, LeadROI, or LeadMailbox client, but I am certainly not going to ever insinuate that my competitors are working against their clients.
I think we should all focus on building the market not cannibalizing it, IMHO. I would rather add 5000 loan officers to the market buying and understanding leads than trying to fight over Leads360’s 5000 users.
Tags: lendingtree, kaleidico, zipsearch, lead generation, lead management, bill rice
Where is the next lead generation frontier? I think it is becoming increasingly clear that getting local should be in your strategic plan if you are in the lead generation business. Mike Sachoff, of http://www.webpronews.com points out the glaring opportunity:
The dollar gap between U.S. local online spending and total local media ad spending is large with $97 billion going to offline media such as yellow pages and newspapers. Only 2.9 percent of all local ad spending will go online in 2007, or $2.9 billion.
The obvious drift (we all probably note in our daily routines) of eyeballs away from local newspapers, phone books, and radio–the media of that current $97 billion annual spend–will drive the shift of dollars to follow the eyes.
The question now becomes who will be the players in this emerging market. The big media brands, who are currently moving aggressively into the space, or some as yet unknown homegrown local media moguls?
Tags: lead generation, lead management, local advertising, advertising, marketing, bill rice
The debate continues, but increasingly the data seems to support a shift to online advertising; yielding an increase in overall online advertising spend.
“If marketing budgets shrink, and they are often the first to be cut in a downturn, digital will still continue to grow,” said Eric Bader, managing director of digital at MediaVest.
“The focus will be on advertising that can be measured for effectiveness, and online will gain share relative to television, newspapers or radio.” (Financial Times, 2007-09-23)
While there may be a decrease in total advertising expenditure, I think we may be seeing the realization that online advertising can be far more efficient, targeted, and measurable. All factors that are driving the shift.
Online is the fastest-growing advertising sector, and could reach over $20bn this year, just over 7 per cent of the total $285bn US advertising market. (Financial Times, 2007-09-23)
In the debate, we also forget the dramatic shift in methodologies for online advertsing that has taken place since the last economic downshift. The shift from CPM, display advertising, to more targeted search and more measurable lead generation (ROI).
In the last US downturn, online spending was slashed, resulting in the collapse of many new media companies and billions of dollars of writeoffs in investments which had counted on online ad revenues.
Since then, the growth of search, dominated by Google, as well as other forms of online advertising, and the growth of networks that allow advertisers to target certain types of audiences, have increased confidence in web spending. (Financial Times, 2007-09-23)
The ironic thing is that the recent dramatic downturn in the mortgage market may accelerate this shift.
Among US mortgage lenders, Countrywide has, for example, increased its share of online ad spending from 21 per cent to 55 per cent in the last 12 months, according to Sanford Bernstein. (Financial Times, 2007-09-23)
Tags: financial times, online advertising, lead generation, marketing
I have been ranting about content and community in lead generation for months now, but the message often gets me skepticism at best and a confused glazed look at worst.
However, I think I may have stumbled on an enlightening analysis for my point: Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion in his analysis of "Why Some Web 2.0 Sites Will Never Attract Big Ad Dollars." His bottom line is that traditional web site advertising opportunity metrics (i.e., reach and frequency) are flawed in assessing community (social web) opportunities. It is commercial intent.
In a recent conversation with a major publisher and lead generation platform executive I was advocating a trend in generating quantity and quality leads from the growing social fabric of the Internet. You guessed it. I got the skepticism response. What was the counter to my argument? People will share what they ate for breakfast and who their favorite baseball team is, but not the sacred details of their financial choices.
The first question becomes what is my desired result(s)?
I want to create a position or a place in the social networks of the Web where people go when they have commercial intent. And then I want them to be influenced by social content to:
Then, the second question is: Can I increase commercial intent on community or social platforms?
Absolutely, people are always looking for a good deal. That is the appeal of eBay and Amazon. And they love to buy the buzz (e.g., Cabbage Patch Dolls, Tickle Me Elmo, Toyota Prius, Apple iPhone).
So, how would I do that? Let’s stay focused, simple, and cheap–use/test Facebook.
Now, to really make it work you have to add in the buzz. Here are a few hints on consistent money makers (more info is call consulting revenue): ego, exclusivity, value I can pass to friends/network.
Tags: social network, social web, community, quicken loans, lendingtree, lowermybills, bankrate, bill rice
Adding to my argument for sustainable growth in the online lead generation market…
If you agree with my premise that advertisers are increasingly demanding a shift from CPM to ROI as the effective marketing metric. Then it seems that the Internet Advertising Bureau may have the most compelling statistics:
"The Interactive Advertising Bureau says Internet advertising is a $16.9B per year business; online lead generation is a $1.3B per year business, growing faster than any other type of online advertising."
As quoted from Direct Marketing News, a by line article by Marc Diana, CEO of LeadPoint an Online Lead Exchange.
Update: more support for the mortgage mess increases online advertisement opportunity argument.
Mortgage companies including Countrywide Financial Corp. and IAC/InterActiveCorp’s LendingTree Inc. haven’t cut spending much and are moving ads to the Web from print and TV, analyst Jeffrey Lindsay said in an interview. A 50 percent drop in ads for loans would cut Google and Yahoo’s profit by 1 percent to 3 percent.
"Under economic pressure, advertisers favor online because it’s a lot cheaper, it’s measurable and it gives a higher return on investment," Lindsay said. Almost all of Yahoo’s second- quarter growth in display advertising came from mortgage ads, he estimated. "The biggest beneficiary so far has been Yahoo."
Mortgage companies spent $755 million on Web ads in the year ended June 30, or about 3.4 percent of the U.S. online ad market, Bernstein said. The report doesn’t cover third-quarter spending.
Tags: online lead generation, online advertising, IAB, Interactive Advertising Bureau, leadpoint, marc diana, bill rice, mortgage, marketing, yahoo, google, countrywide, IACA, LendingTree
Time to jump into the fray. The last couple of weeks a discussion has been frothing over the effects of the mortgage market chaos on online advertising.
Jerry Neumann started me thinking about what might happen to lead generation in the changing mortgage market, why some arguments seem counterintuitive, and past data in other similar markets might suggest a positive, not a negative effect in spending.
Then entered Henry Blodget of the Silicon Alley Insider, pitching online ad recession and analysts’ online ad frets over mortgage crisis.
And finally with an apparent pint of Guinness, in saunters Niki Scevak of Bronte Media and Homethinking.com and makes an argument that a downturn is evident due to concentration risk for online advertisers heavily weighted toward mortgage and financial services.
So, here goes my argument:
Mortgage Market Picture
First, we are mixing a lot of apples and oranges. Let figure out what is really happening.
Laying off workers does not necessarily imply sales, loan officers, or other direct production staff. All of whom need leads. Examples:
IndyMac laid off 1000 workers as it moved to GSE loans (subscription required), yet hired 1000 plus ex-AHM retail loan officers.
During the current downturn, Perry said IndyMac has built a retail lending group of almost 1,500 employees, despite having "virtually no retail lending presence" a year ago.
IndyMac announced in August that it was hiring hundreds of former American Home Mortgage Investment Corp. employees as part of its expansion of its retail lending group.
A similar trend is occurring at Washington Mutual, offsetting 1000 layoffs with retail hires (subscription):
WaMu plans to hire up to 1,000 retail and banking loan consultants over the next several months, and increase its consumer direct sales force, said WaMu spokeswoman Sara Gaugl.
The Seattle-based company currently employs 1,000 banking loan consultants and 2,000 retail loan consultants, and operates more than 2,200 retail stores, Gaugl said.
"We … intend to grow our retail, consumer direct and wholesale businesses and are positioning the size of our sales and support organizations to ensure that we capture growth opportunities and address customer needs," Gaugl said.
I think that is well supported. Layoffs does not equal strategic intent to decrease revenue production.
Online Advertising Picture
Now on to another gobbleygook of mixed terms. Advertising, online advertising, and lead generation are not necessarily tightly correlated. You want proof? Take a look at TNS Media Intelligence Advertising Expenditures report. Advertising spending is down 0.3 % in the first half of 2007! Oops, but online advertising is up 17.70%; the dramatic outlier in the data set.
I interrupt this as a shift with a strong indicator that online advertising is far more targeted and efficient than the other losing categories.
But, even Om Malik of GigaOM, who cites the report seems to miss the point looking for doom with his headline, "Will the Ad Slowdown Reach the Web?" Even though he notes the anomaly:
But the effect is far from uniform. The slowdown is having its biggest impact on traditional media — especially print — while Internet advertising is rising. Online advertising (not including search and online video ads) was up 17.7 percent during the first half of 2007.
Now let’s kick it over to lead generation. If I have a tight marketing budget and need to maintain revenue levels I want leads, not "advertising." Consequently, I see a trend for the market demand to switch from CPM metrics to ROI, which requires clear delineation of a lead.
My Online Advertising Predictions
Having established an clearer picture of the market and the terms, what do I think is on the horizon?
Overall, I think predicting a mass contagion effect that dooms online advertising, Google, and Yahoo! is a bit dramatic. This is not the 90’s when there were massive concentrations of a couple of highly leveraged dotcoms accounting for all the online advertising revenue and only two major advertising networks AOL and Yahoo!.
Meanwhile, we are confusing a liquidity crisis and localized foreclosures with a dramatic decline in mortgage finance demand. The financial markets have created a liquidity crisis based on trends and emotional confidence reactions. Meanwhile, there is a viable, granted cyclical, ongoing market for places to live and need to refinance impending payment shock.
Jerry, I am in the Bullish camp!
Tags: mortgage market, mortgage implosion, online advertising, advertising market, online lead generation, lead generation, lead management, countrywide, indymac, washington mutual, wamu, Inman, Jerry Neumann, Henry Blodget, Niki Scevak, Om Malik, Bill Rice
