LONDON, September 22 /PRNewswire/ --

- Simon Wajcenberg, CEO of Customer Lead Generation Specialist, Clash-
Media Explains how Companies can Overcome the Attacks of Fraudsters in the 
Lead Generation Process and Ensure They buy Only Genuine Leads for Their 
Marketing Campaigns.

As we move further into 2009, the issue of fraud is a large and yet still
growing one in the Online Lead Generation industry. Incentivised campaigns
that see consumers rewarded for contributing their data, or websites
remunerated for the number of leads that they provide, can make these
campaigns highly susceptible to fraud.

With most marketing campaigns, you can reckon that around ten per cent of
the results from any data gathering or lead generation campaign will be bogus
- submitted by fraudsters. That on its own is a significant level. However,
some campaigns will be targeted specifically - whether because of ease of
access or the rewards on offer - and this can see the level of fraudulent
data rise to as high as 80 or 90 per cent. This is unacceptable.

How can marketers distinguish between genuine leads and lead generation
providers, and the bogus information coming from fraudsters?

The Impact of Fraud

If a client receives 10,000 leads, and 8,000 are false, there are
multiple implications for a business. First, if the client is unable to
return those leads, then that company will have wasted significant amounts of
their budget on a lead generation solution that they cannot use.

But secondly and more importantly, even if all fraudulent leads can be
returned and replaced with genuine ones, an employee at some level still has
had to discover that those 8,000 leads are bogus. The drain on resources that
this can have will make the efficiency of the campaign very low indeed,
timescales for achieving success may be almost doubled, and the leads will be
less fresh when eventually actioned.

Fraudulent leads have a direct impact on the success of any marketing
campaign, not just in terms of budgets but in terms of success. At a time
when budgets are being more heavily scrutinised than ever, clearly visible
success from a performance-driven lead generation service is essential. And
there are ways of tracking and eliminating fraudulent leads at source, before
the client receives the leads.

Stopping the Robots

A large portion of known fraud is committed through the use of robots,
which will fill out multiple forms in a short space of time. Setting up an
automated system that can submit, for example, 1000 leads per hour means that
fraudsters can produce high volumes of leads for very little effort. If each
lead is bought for, say, 20p, then a 'robot' can generate false leads worth
GBP200 every hour.

Quality monitoring systems, such as Clash-Media's have the ability to
stop the success of robots by running a thorough analysis of every lead as it
is submitted. Clash-Media's own automated system is able to verify the
validity of email addresses, personal addresses and spot any signs that a
robot has been attacking the campaign - for example by identifying a pattern
in email addresses such as johnsmith1@hotmail, johnsmith2@hotmail,
johnsmith3@hotmail all in quick succession.

Why don't more organisations do this?

The process of weeding out fraudulent data is one that, without the right
systems in place, can be very difficult and time consuming to execute and
manage. It is not a job that can be done manually without taking a lot of
time, which would obviously negate the freshness of the lead and lower the
chances of conversion. Organisations need to have sophisticated systems in
place to carry out this verification - especially if they're dealing in large
volumes of leads.

The systems that are in place to find bogus data are dual-purpose: they
not only verify the data as genuine, but they can also confirm that the lead
generated is relevant for the client and campaign that it has been gathered
for. Clash-Media gathers leads specifically for a client's needs - rather
than pulling them from a database - so each one if checked both to confirm it
is real and to verify its quality.

Many organisations will not go to these lengths to verify their leads
because they are providing a low cost data service to clients. However as we
have just seen, despite the low initial cost, fraudulent and even low-quality
leads can end up costing a company more in the long run.

Marketers must ensure that they use the best data providers that can
demonstrate security measures that assess the quality of every lead on an
individual basis and that can identify many of the hallmarks of fraud
attacks.

Organisations that have in place a strict quality module that processes
and verifies every lead submitted will be able to cut out a lot of the fraud
that happens. This will not stop fraudsters from submitting bogus data, but
it will stop this false information from being passed on to clients.

Distributed by PR Newswire on behalf of ad:tech

Contacts
    Louise Sambells (IBA - PR for Clash-Media)
    Tel: +44(0)1780-721-433
    Email: lsambells@iba-international.com

    Diana Herriott (Marketing Director, Clash-Media)
    Tel: +44(0)20-7096-1963
    Email: diana@clash-media.com