The volume of fraud in the lead generation industry has grown exponentially during the past few years and is causing significant problems for buyers and sellers, panelist said during a recent LeadGenBulletin.com webinar. Companies need to use technology and increased amounts of due diligence and human intervention to stop the growth of lead fraud and start to get the problem under control.
The problem is that there are fraudsters using bots and technology to create fake leads, and others are using what are known as human fraud farms in countries like India and Bangladesh to create fake leads that are sold as legitimate.
Lead buyers also need to be aware that there are different types of fraud and different levels of fraud, said Rich Kahn of Anura, one of the webinar’s panelists.
“There’s no silver bullet because I consider fraud to be a bot — malware — or a human fraud farm, doing the action of a real person,” Kahn said. “But there are other levels of fraud, like we were talking about before, where Tracy was saying how, you know, you offer a free iPad and you’re trying to sell mortgage. It’s deceptive marketing, which is a type of fraud.”
Kahn identified five different types of fraud that people should be aware of:
- That lead is never going to convert. They didn’t fill out the form, they’re not interested. And at the end of the day, you’re going to spend a lot of time and resources trying to get that person on the phone to find out, it’s not going to convert. So ROI suffers.
- If you’re a big brand, and you call enough of these bad leads, you can start developing a brand reputation issue
- It takes longer to reach somebody who’s not expecting your call. So in this day and age, if your phone started ringing right now, and you don’t recognize number, the average person is not answering the phone, because of robocalls, and because they’re just tired of getting calls from people that they don’t know. However, if you filled out a form online, hit submit, and a few seconds later your phone’s ringing, you’re going to answer because you kind of expect them to call.
- If you call somebody who didn’t give you express permission to call them you’re breaking TCPA compliance.
- If you have a call center, who’s basically calling on leads that are supposed to be the hand raisers that people called up and said I want more information. And they’re getting a good percentage of those leads of people yelling and screaming at them for calling, you reduce the morale of the call center, and then you reduce the production of that call center rep.
The ultimate goal is to try and attach a unique fingerprint to each lead that ensures the lead is legitimate and can be trusted by both the buyer and the seller, said Active Prospect’s Tracy Laney.
“I’m constantly surprised of the companies that don’t understand that fraud is fraud,” Laney said. “It’s like dealing with your teenagers, you know right is right and wrong is wrong. It’s really not the gray, and the tools that we have to help protect against that. Because the bad actors are going to keep trying, and we just keep have to keep getting better.”