For about 3 years now I have been setting stores up nationwide for daily fulfillment of trigger leads.   I want to share some of my experience from working with over four hundred stores and clear up some of the misconceptions some people may have around this product.

Trigger leads are not leads; they are data records of customers based on certain pre- determined credit criteria.   They have had an inquiry from a dealership on their credit the day prior based on the client code on the credit file. This data is pretty much useless unless you use it correctly.   Therefore, if you have purchased trigger leads with 100% phones, I would be willing to say with 99.95% accuracy you have failed miserably.  These phone numbers are good to have and work, but with the expectation that you might only sell one or two cars for every one hundred phone numbers.  So you are probably thinking……how do you make these work? The concept seems sound; contact only buyers that are proven to be in the market.  It begins with the dealer.  Typically this is the strongest sub-prime dealers in a market.   These leads only work for the non-prime clients with a credit score of 690 or below.  Our dealers/clients typically stay between 550 and 689.   The finance department, manager, inventory, and salesman all need to be geared toward non-prime.  To sum it up, the program does best in the top 2 or 3 sub-prime dealers in a market that have a strong list of sub-prime lenders including, but not limited to; Capitol One, Americredit, First Investors, Tidewater, Peak, Nationwide, National, and local credit unions. 

                Finally, there is the use of the data.  How do you convert this seemingly useless list of data into sold units?  I believe in presenting a personalized offer to the client from a lender to direct the customer to a “Preferred Network Dealer”.   Of course, that is the dealer that is paying for the program in the area.  Next is the timeliness of the offer.  After four days, this data is useless again, so that kills centralized mailing companies.  (Sorry Promax) Local fulfillment done by the dealer has proven to be most effective with response rates up to 9%.  Professional personalized letter, mailed locally and daily will in most cases be in homes THE NEXT DAY! Then the variable data, phone number, or pin code for web applications drives applicants directly to the professionals who care most about getting this customer in the door….YOU.

If a dealer wants to invest in mailing 100 letters a day on average (about 30 minutes for two people in the morning) there could be an incremental lift of 20 to 40 units a month in sight of 90 days. For less than eight thousand dollars a month in advertising and a little elbow grease, there will be big returns. 

Eric Watson

President QDR LLC dba B to B Innovations

Office: 615-823-7295