Imagine a bucket with a small but constant leak. You pour water daily, yet the water level barely rises. Running lead campaigns with junk leads in your CRM is similar.
You’re investing resources, yet the actual value doesn’t grow. Junk leads, like leaks, waste resources, and hold back growth, leaving your team stretched and chasing unqualified prospects.
For a digital brand investing heavily, the pain point is clear: valuable marketing and call center resources are wasted on unproductive leads, reducing campaign efficiency and conversion rates. One of the sure-fire methods is lead punching used by fraudulent publishers to get money out of advertisers.
The only catch here is – Lead punching only helps these publishers get money, the advertisers are only left with false, or junk leads.
What is Lead Punching?
Lead punching is one of the fraudulent practices used by dishonest publishers or affiliates to deliberately submit false lead information, using real names, phone numbers and email ID of a person. This information is easily accessible across multiple sources at a minimal cost, which makes it easy for fraudsters to exploit. They use this data to fill out lead forms, ensuring the details appear legitimate.
However, in reality the real person is not aware of filling in the lead form or even having interest in the service. Therefore, when the sales team follows up, these supposed leads deny submitting any form or even knowing about the company.
This forms easily 30-40% of the total leads which a typical client receives. So not only is the advertiser losing media budget by paying for these junk leads, but they also end up burning call center costs in calling up these leads. Marketing teams also add these leads into a CRM and do Email / WhatsApp marketing on these. Now they waste further money in reaching people who have no interest in their products.
Many advertisers try to implement CAPTCHAs and OTP to prevent bot-driven leads. However, these techniques can also be bypassed. Using disposable phone numbers, OTPs can be bypassed. There are also Captcha solvers available at just one click. Therefore, implementing these checks cannot guarantee clean leads.
How does it impact CRM health?
- You waste marketing spend on irrelevant leads: When marketing budgets drive unqualified traffic, a significant chunk of that spend is essentially wasted. Over time, these costs add up, creating a heavy financial toll on lead generation campaigns that fall short of delivering qualified prospects.
- Your call center team spends time calling irresponsive and irrelevant leads: Junk leads consume precious time, especially for call center teams and sales representatives. Every call, follow-up, and email sent to an unqualified lead diverts resources from real prospects, reducing the efficiency and morale of your team.
- You miss the 5-minute rule: According to this rule, the chances to connect with a prospect increases 100 times when connected within 5 minutes instead of waiting for an hour. With resources tied up on low-quality leads, high-potential prospects might get lost due to delayed follow-ups or overlooked engagement. Junk leads indirectly lead to missed revenue opportunities by diverting the attention of your team.
- Your brand name loses credibility: Repeatedly reaching out to leads who lack interest can be a poor reflection on your brand. In some cases, it may even create negative associations if potential customers perceive your company as inattentive or misaligned with their needs.
Strategies to Eliminate Junk Leads and Focus on Quality
Taking control of your lead quality requires a well-structured approach, integrating technology and a clear strategy at each step of the funnel. Here’s a roadmap to clean up your lead pipeline and prioritize high-value prospects.
1. Clean Traffic and Fraud Prevention
Start by eliminating invalid traffic sources and preventing fraud with real-time validation tools. Filtering out traffic that doesn’t meet quality standards early on ensures that only leads with genuine potential enter the funnel. By removing these invalid visits at the start, you create a cleaner foundation, setting the stage for more effective lead nurturing and conversion efforts.
2. Intent-Based Visit Analysis
Once you’ve ensured traffic quality, dive deeper by analyzing the intent behind each lead’s visit. Look at the behavior of leads on your website—time spent, pages visited, and actions taken. This stage is crucial for gauging how interesting a lead truly is. Intent-based analysis lets you sort out window-shoppers from those genuinely interested in your product or service, allowing your team to prioritize leads that show clear signs of potential.
3. Lead Scoring and Validation with CRM Integration
For an optimized lead funnel, integrate your CRM with automated lead scoring tools that assess demographic data, engagement level, and previous behavior. Leveraging AI and ML-based technology, you can assign scores to leads based on these criteria, making it easy to prioritize high-potential leads. With a streamlined CRM, your sales team can focus their follow-ups on leads more likely to convert, saving time and increasing productivity.
4. Funnel Optimization and Junk Lead Filtering
With a system in place to identify quality leads, refine your funnel by regularly reviewing and tweaking the criteria that classify leads. By tightening filters and adjusting scoring parameters, you can progressively reduce the entry of junk leads, creating a cycle of continuous improvement in lead quality.
How mFilterIt validate leads on the CRM?
mFilterIt’s solution empowers advertisers with transparent, data-driven insights into CRM data. By collecting key metrics—such as website behavior, sales funnel, revenue, and attribution data—this mechanism uses advanced AI & ML algorithms to analyze each lead’s journey. The unique rule engine provides in-depth conversation and attribution analytics, categorizing users by intent (high, moderate, or low). This user-intent scoring, combined with visit analytics, gives advertisers clarity on lead quality and helps optimize campaign efforts. The solution enables brands to focus on high-intent leads, ensuring accurate reporting and maximizing ROI from their CRM data.
Clean Your CRM with Advanced Technology
For marketers, the focus shouldn’t just be on generating leads but on ensuring the quality of each one. By investing in an ad fraud detection solution with lead scoring optimization, you can build a lead funnel that delivers high-conversion prospects. The result? Cost savings, increased efficiency, and more meaningful engagement with potential customers.
