On-Demand Verification

Application Examples

Lender Improves Business Relations, Profitability from Bought Online Leads

A lender bought many of its leads from online sources but found that the tactic sometimes brought unnecessary costs of doing business.

The lender used many different lead generators and most of those companies had been burned by previous customers. The lead generators had sometimes caught customers using fake excuses to return leads that were actually good but they couldn't close.

As a result, every time the lender tried to return leads that truly had faulty contact information, it created new disputes that strained relationships with its lead generators.

The lender started using TARGUSinfo On-Demand Lead Verification^® as an objective evaluator of lead quality. Now the lender gives each lead generator concrete, verified reasons for every lead that it returns. The disputes with lead generators have vanished.

What's more, the lender tracks the lead quality it receives from each lead generator. Armed with this information, the lender gives more of its business to the companies that consistently provide the best leads.

In addition to improving business relations, verifying leads has increased the lender's productivity and profitability.

The lender discovered that the better the correlation between a lead's name, phone and address information, the more likely the lead was to convert. So the lender started sending its highest-quality leads to its best agents. Those agents have made leaps in their time spent talking with actual prospects and their total conversions.

Direct-to-Consumer Medical Supply Company Lowers Cost per Acquisition

A rapidly growing medical supply company was losing opportunities from its leads database.

More and more leads that it had bought or generated online were unreachable. Their phone numbers were out of date or inaccurate, wasting the company's call-center resources.

The company enlisted TARGUSinfo to enhance those leads with verified phone numbers. TARGUSinfo added thousands of previously unreachable prospects to the company's outbound calling list.

Calls to these consumers resulted in a sales conversion rate of 2.3% — enabling the company to lower its cost per acquisition (CPA) by 87%.

Its CPA, typically $115, was just $15.53 for the leads it converted from the group recovered by TARGUSinfo.

The solution also had a positive impact on the environment in the company's call center.

In the past, leads bought from some providers drew a tepid response from the company's agents. They felt those leads were not helping them reach their weekly bonus, which was awarded for collecting additional information from 100 or more leads.

The leads verified by TARGUSinfo quickly won the agents' trust.

"TARGUSinfo has earned a reputation in our call center," said the company's online marketing coordinator. "The people who actually pick up the phone and dial these numbers are saying, 'We want those TARGUSinfo leads. Can you give us any more of those TARGUSinfo leads?' "

Online Car Buying Service Cuts Costs, Raises Service Quality

An online automotive service sells contact information for consumers seeking new and used cars. The company also buys leads, so their quality is central to its business model.

In the past, the company used a simple lead validation process to block inaccurate leads. While this caught some invalid leads, the company realized its limitations.

The company was often buying and selling leads with disconnected phone numbers and inaccurate address information. In too many cases, the submitted phone number and address did not match.

The company started using TARGUSinfo On-Demand Lead Verification to classify incoming leads. Using requirements set by the online automotive service, TARGUSinfo divides its leads into three categories — "accept," "reject" and "review."

Now, with On-Demand Lead Verification, the company verifies leads instantly, before they are sold to a dealer network. The company also avoids purchasing leads with disconnected phone numbers.

What's more, it has dramatically increased the number of quality leads that are bought and sold through its network.

Online Home Services Marketplace Reduces Complaints with Flexible Solution

A leading online home services marketplace was having difficulty with the quality of leads it sold to contractors.

The company was receiving complaints that many of the home phone numbers had been disconnected and that address information was often incomplete. The faulty data was causing contractors to get lost during initial visits.

As a result, contractors were demanding refunds on the cost of the leads and for their subscription to the home services marketplace.

The company attempted to solve these issues by manually reviewing all of the inbound leads from consumers before they were sold. This was effective for a short period of time, but it quickly became evident that a more efficient solution was needed.

The company turned to TARGUSinfo to create an automated solution, which allowed it to immediately classify incoming leads into three categories.

Leads flagged as "accept" would be sent to a contractor. Leads for "review" would be sent to the internal customer support team for follow-up screening. And leads tagged as "reject" would be discarded due to invalid information.

TARGUSinfo customized the category requirements to meet business rules that the home services marketplace determined.

With On-Demand Lead Verification, the company was able to automate an "accept" or "reject" decision for nearly 80% of its leads. This greatly reduced its manual verification costs and refund requests while driving up satisfaction rates.

Online Media and Performance-Based Marketing Company Raises Lead Quality

A leading online media company matches advertisers with potential customers while helping publishers generate pay-for-performance revenue opportunities. The company's process involves generating leads from online advertising inventory such as banners and popups. For those, it captures a name, address and phone number for each new lead.

Despite tremendous business growth, the company used to receive complaints from customers about its lead quality.

The simple validation methods it was using were not effective. The process fell short because it merely checked whether consumer contact information fit standardized formats for area code/exchanges and US Postal Service deliverability.

TARGUSinfo customized its On-Demand Lead Verification solution to instantly verify the contact information.

Using requirements set by the online media company, TARGUSinfo divides the company's leads into three categories — "accept," "reject" and "review."

Now the company reports a dramatic increase in lead quality and customer satisfaction.

Co-Registration Network Slashes Lead Return Rate

One of the largest online direct marketing companies has excelled at driving traffic to its co-registration Web sites. But the network found that too many of those visitors weren't submitting accurate contact information.

The faulty data was leading many customers to return leads at a high rate, eating into the network's profits.

The network generated far too many leads to review manually. It needed to automate as much of its review process as possible, so it used TARGUSinfo On-Demand Lead Verification to instantly confirm its consumer contact information. This cut its lead return rate and scaled down the need for manual review.

On-Demand Lead Verification classifies the network's incoming leads into three categories. Using requirements set by the network, TARGUSinfo classifies leads as "accept," "reject" or "review."

With its lead quality assured, the network addressed another problem. In the past, it had tried to collect demographic information to add to its lead value, but the extra questions led many consumers to abandon its online forms.

Now TARGUSinfo not only verifies the network's leads, but also enhances them by adding instant geodemographic profile scores. The network has multiplied its enhanced leads, which have proven to be even more profitable than its other leads.

Financial Institution Justifies Online Ad Spending and Increases Revenue

A large financial institution invests millions of dollars each year in online advertising. At first, the company's goal was to create brand awareness, but soon found that branding was not enough. The company needed to implement a lead generation program that generated revenue in order to justify the cost.

However, soon after the financial institution launched the program, it discovered a big problem. While it was producing a high number of leads, the quality of the contact information submitted was spotty and tough to verify. What's more, manually reviewing the data was inefficient and not effective.

To solve these issues, the company began using a lead verification solution that relied on publicly available data.

However, its sales team and call centers quickly discovered that many of the leads accepted by the solution did in fact have bad contact information. In addition, the solution often dismissed good leads, which resulted in a loss of potential revenue.

The company realized that publicly available data, such as White Pages or Directory Assistance information, is often incomplete or out of date by 30 days or more. So the financial institution turned to TARGUSinfo On-Demand Lead Verification to improve its results.

Unlike other solutions, TARGUSinfo provides access to telco-verified business, nonpublic and mobile phone data — greatly increasing the number of leads the company is able to verify. In addition, TARGUSinfo is able to verify that the name, address and phone number are not only correct but also relate to that person.

By providing an automated solution with complete coverage and accurate information, TARGUSinfo has increased the amount of leads the company converts by 21% — significantly impacting the revenue generated and justifying the budget spent on online advertising.