Leadpile’s Blog

Most of us receive a large amount of emails each day that make it into our spam folders, however how many spam emails are you receiving each day that are actually making it to your inboxes? The answer is too many! 6 years ago, the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) implemented the Can-Spam Act which was supposed to help crack down on those that are illegally sending out spam emails. However, even with a potential $16,000 fine, spammers are not going away. Why?
Leadpile works with publishers that are doing email marketing, however violating any Can Spam laws is not something we would ever allow. So the question is, how are the spammers continuing to get away with sending out all these unnecessary emails and not getting caught? It seems that many use famous people that are in the news, being bait for some that will unknowingly click on their emails. Some use credible names as the sender thinking the consumer will trust the name where it came from. Then there are some that try and use inappropriate words/phrases thinking they will ignite the curiosity factor of the reader. You name, spammers are trying it.
The key is if you are getting emails from someone you don’t know and there is just a link on the site to click on, don’t click on it. The remaining of the month there will be an increase in the number of “holiday” scams attempting to reach your inboxes, so always be aware of who you are paying attention to in your inboxes.

How many times a day do you open up an email that contains some strange prescription drug or nudity content?  How many minutes or hours a day does it take out of your day to delete these emails?  If you are like everyone else, there is a large amount of time spent on dealing with spam emails.  On the flip side, did you ever think how much time and energy spammers spend on generating these waste of time emails?

An interesting article in DMConfidential pointed out some facts about spam and the waste of energy these emails cost the world. The article pointed out, “Spam-related energy use could have powered the homes of everyone who flew on an airplane on a day in 2008 (2.2 million), or the country of Jordan.” In a “eco-friendly” world that we have become, bringing to light some of the wasted energy causes is probably a good thing. I am not sure really it will make a “spammer” say I am not going to send out these emails, however maybe it will get some of us who don’t like the emails to seek out those doing it and stop them.
Lead generation and companies doing their own marketing often times involves some sort email marketing. Email marketing is a cost effective way to generate traffic. However, is this something Leadpile Lead Exchange and other companies will eventually eliminate because of it’s lack of effectiveness and the “bad” name (and huge carbon footprint) spammers have caused it to get? OR is this just another article trying to get more of the McAfee product sold?  You decide.

Our “normal” communication is blocked so many times when we send emails to each other, and the email has become a struggle for all of us. Not only that we need to watch for all the spam messages to see if there is anything we missed in there, but we need to watch out for what we say in the body of our email. For example, it appears that SPAM Assassin is looking inside your body for “Hey Bro”, and if they find it, you are most likely to end up in your friend’s SPAM folder. Now, how many times are we using that, or “Dear (something)”, and even “Oprah”? Gosh… this can get really crazy!

Leadpile is looking into these things and more, because we are doing everything in our power to fight SPAM and set standards inside the Lead Exchanges. We also learned to CALL every time and not rely on the email, as it can mean “loss of business”. 

If 85% to 95% of all emails being handled by the ISPs represent spam which mostly are unwanted messages abusively and indiscriminately sent by unscrupulous marketers or scam artists, and the costs associated with the necessary bandwidth and network maintenance are supported by the ISPs, which in turn get paid by everyone that’s using the internet one way or another, then spammers are really picking our pockets.

Someone has to pay for creating and supporting the infrastructure required by 100 BILLION SPAM emails PER DAY!!! And that’s not cheap: the estimated costs were about $100 BILLION in 2007. So with 1,412,489,652 internet users worldwide (http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm) and $100 billion in money spent/lost in connection with the spam, it comes to about $70.79 per person using the internet per year.

Incredibly, about 80% of all spam is sent by fewer than 200 spammers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_spam), which would mean that each spammer steals nearly $500 MILLION per year from everybody else. Now is that grand theft or what? If a bank had HALF A BILLION stolen by 200 different people in a year I would tend to believe these people would be caught pretty fast.

LeadGen companies and Publishers that specialize in internet marketing do need to have an ethical conduct and refrain from spamming. LeadPile has built its reputation as a lead marketplace / exchange that strictly prohibits the practice of spam or any other abusive or deceptive marketing methods. All marketplace participants have to abide by strict rules which ensure that consumers are protected, and the lead exchange continues to grow based on the benefits it brings to consumers, lead buyers (advertisers) and lead sellers (publishers). All accounts have a dedicated account manager who is in constant communication with lead sellers and our quality control division is closely monitoring the leads production. Confidence in using the LeadPile Lead Exchange is critical to its success and the marketplace proved to be incredibly successful at attracting both quality lead sellers and lead buyers (http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS215372+06-May-2008+MW20080506).

What is the quality assurance program that each lead generation company should follow?

Leadpile has built its reputation on both lead volume and quality. Started as one of the largest producers of finance leads, Leadpile kept its promise to deliver the top quality leads and never compromise when it comes to lead sources and advertising channels. 

Generating leads by incentivizing the consumer is probably one of the major problems in the leadgen space. Delivering incentivized leads can be a short term revenue and it has all the chances to hurt the entire business on the long run. 

If we would have to outline the quality assurance program, it would look something like this: 

• No Incentives
• No misleading information
• No adult content
• No old leads (Real time generated leads only) – major difference between Leadpile and SalesGenie for example
• No third party submissions – Consumer must submit the information online
• No gambling content
• No SPAM
• No Adware/spyware
• No fly by night companies – All websites are owned by legitimate, reachable owners, with valid contact/taxpayer identification

Lead production needs to be continuously monitored to ensure that every publisher meets stringent standards.