Data Verification Is a Necessity, Not a Luxury

If you are a company purchasing leads, whether B2C or B2B, you absolutely need to ensure that you are verifying this data to be confident it represents real people who can become real sales. If you fail to do this you are throwing money away. There are no ifs, ands or buts. We estimate - based on our experience of processing over one billion leads in Databowl - that 35% of all leads generated are either fraudulent, invalid or out of spec. This is a huge problem with a simple solution: Verification. 

We discuss what this means and what it is so important in this article.

Why is verification so vital for anyone buying leads? 

Verification serves the most fundamental component of lead generation: Is this a real person that I can contact?

It’s pretty clear why this is so important. Without being sure of this what is the point? Without verifying the leads you buy you are throwing money down the drain. With proper and effective verification you can have confidence in the fact every lead you buy is a real person who can become a real sale. 

It’s important to understand the nuances of verification, where it happens, where it’s needed, and how it changes depending upon the methods you are using to collect leads. 

Let’s begin with the problem. 

This can be broken down into two specific areas depending on where you are in the lead generation chain. 

You’re a company generating leads.

If we start from the beginning and look at companies generating leads -  firing leads via Facebook or Affiliates or PPC etc. - it is guaranteed there will be varying levels of bad leads within these channels that impact you. In this role you would traditionally put verification on the Front End (on the form). Typically you are using verification to ask the following questions:

• Is this person’s postal address right?
• Is this person’s email address contactable? 
• Is this person’s telephone number contactable?
• Is this a real person?

This prevents prospects entering incorrect details - intentionally or not - into the form and helps you ensure the details of the leads you are sending onto a buyer are correct and that of a real person. This is as much about verifying good leads aren’t missed as it is about verifying bad leads aren’t accidentally collected (at your expense).

You’re a company buying leads

Once that front end lead generation process has taken place and a lead has been collected and distributed to a buyer, the buyer should also verify the lead. They will never know if the lead is being verified correctly - if at all - on the front end and it is wise to run their own verification before accepting leads sent. 

Let’s look at some nuances.

Within the world of lead verification there are many nuances which it helps to understand.

For example, let’s imagine you are running verification on a form fill that uses a live look up to see if a telephone number is live or not. In this scenario, the number being submitted is out of signal or network at the moment the form is fulfilled. Let’s say they are working on a desktop but their phone is switched off. A basic live look up may reject the lead and prevent it going through. 

However, if you appreciate this nuance you can take a smarter approach. If someone entered their mobile number and it happens to be out of network you can still allow the lead to go through but re-try it three times over a certain number of hours to see whether it switches on, and only at that point would the lead get delivered. 

Note: Over a 16 hour period if the mobile signal does not switch back on during a live look up there is only a 7% chance it ever will and is in fact a correct number which can be contacted. 

Verification is a 2-way street

Sometimes there is perhaps a subtle misconception with regards to Verification. Traditionally it is viewed as a preventative measure, a firewall, a way to stop companies wasting money on bad leads and acquiring bloated marketing databases. 

This is 100% true.

But what is often overlooked is the fact Verification is also used to ensure that no good leads get missed or lost in the process. In this sense it is as much about making more sales at it is about preventing wastage. 

We recorded a podcast on this subject which you listen to on Apple, Spotify or watch on Databowl’s YouTube Channel NOW!