Hot leads: What you need to know about responsive lead generation

Mountain explains the nitty-gritty of that balance the lowest possible marketing costs against the highest quality of lead as well as how to drive tangible returns from leveraging opt-in data and using lead-generation tools.

Explain the growing importance of analytics and big data for all business.

This is obviously a very broad topic, but from a marketing point of view, businesses like ours – where the business model is to take marketing risk upfront and get paid on results – need to ensure they balance the lowest possible marketing costs against the highest quality of lead. Strong analytics and quality data are critical to this. By understanding who the right client is, where they are, what products best suit their LSM, timing of marketing and providing them a great deal all play a big part in driving down marketing costs and increasing quality. As you scale this model, it becomes even more apparent that the primary value driver in lead generation is in fact the data.

Talk us through the current typical lead generation process.

The process is as follows:

• Pre-qualify/analyse data based on the specific marketing campaign.
• Build a marketing score card of clients to target.
• Distribute the marketing message through a number of direct marketing call-to-action channels like email, web and SMS.
• In real-time, manage the responses live into a call centre for the sale to be completed. Sales can also be completed online without the use of a call centre.
• Measure and report success to optimise your marketing score card and economics.

How can brands embrace responsive lead generation?

In practice, responsive lead generation or ‘hot leads’ drives a lower cost per acquisition than traditional outbound telemarketing. This means that for the same marketing spend, you can acquire more new clients. Responsive lead generation enables direct and digital marketers to turn their marketing efforts into a profit centre. Brands can either use third party marketing companies to execute campaigns on their behalf or they can do it themselves by leveraging their own data and lead generations processes.

Does mobile lead the digital pack when it comes to lead generation in Africa?

I can’t speak for the whole of Africa, but in SA SMS marketing is easily the biggest digital channel when it comes to reaching the mass market for financial services lead generation.

Interesting. Let’s end with the ethical considerations of lead generation.

Responsible lead generation is very important. Every data owner needs to be ready for PoPI, but until then it is important to abide by the ethical marketing principles of the Direct Marketing Association of SA and every marketing business should be removing those consumers who have added their names to the National Opt Out register.