What are Aged Leads?

Aged Leads can be Sales Gold

Aged Internet leads are generated just the same as real-time Internet leads. The only difference is time and that passing of time significantly reduces your leads cost. Aged leads can give your business some unique opportunities and flexibility.

If you are in the business of debt settlement; health, life, or auto insurance; mortgage lending; or provide other financial services chances are you haven’t done much Internet marketing. These are all businesses that have traditionally been personal, private, across the kitchen table types of businesses. Neighbors referred neighbors, friends referred friends and your goal was to command all the business in your local area.

Have you been noticing a change? That model doesn’t work as well as it used to because studies show us that 60-70 percent of these customers are now going to the Internet first. They’re bypassing your referral network.

What does this have to do with aged Internet leads? The fact of the matter is that you need to learn to sell to customers and leads captured during these online searches. Unfortunately, that learning curve can be very expensive with the typical real-time Internet leads you can buy from the likes of LendingTree, LowerMyBills, ProspectZone, Best Rate Referrals, or All Web Leads. Just do the math, at $15-25 a lead and a poor rookie conversion rate of 1 percent or less you are burning a ton of money before you get to reasonable rates of 3-6 percent–conversion rates where you start to make easy money.

The gap is training and experience–learning to use Web sales techniques and lead management technology to increase that conversion. That’s where aged leads come in. For a tiny fraction of the cost you can have the same professionally generated Internet lead, it’s just a few hours or days older.

Let’s take a look at a few of the different aged lead types you might want to consider.

Aged Debt Leads

Aged debt leads are very popular because consumers that are in trouble with debt are typically very slow to get help. Often this is why they got into trouble with debt in the first place. As a result, many debt lead buyers prefer aged debt leads. Their thinking is that volume is more important than immediacy with their prospective customers.

The other thing that makes aged debt lead particularly attractive is how this business does sales. If you’re doing any sort of significant debt business chances are you are using power dialers and email autoresponder campaigns to nurture you leads–this again is a volume game and aged leads make it affordable.

Aged Insurance Leads

Insurance businesses also find aged leads to be a great way to supplement their marketing. Like the debt business, volume can be important to insurance sales. Many consumers already have insurance policies. Many types of insurance are even required by law or lenders. That means a lot of calls to find someone with a gap in their insurance or willing to replace their current coverage. You have to do this business with volume and rarely is there a strong sense of urgency in the customer.

That considered email marketing and autoresponders are a preferred way to survey insurance leads for interest. Aged insurance leads make a perfect complement to that marketing and sales strategy. Aged leads can be a cheap way to quickly build that email list with consumers that have already showed interest in consider new insurance coverage or policy provider.

Aged Mortgage Leads

Mortgage has long been the grand daddy of online lead generation. It has been the largest and most competitive market for capturing online consumer demand for mortgage information. The complexity of a mortgage drives millions of new home buyers and refinancing homeowners to the Web looking for help.

Although, several studies have shown mortgage customers to be very responsive to the first person to respond to their online inquiry (mortgage lead) there are many that are overwhelmed by the whole online process.

That’s the opportunity with aged mortgage leads. A large percentage of mortgage shoppers that venture into the online mortgage process are intimidated by all the calls and hard sales–then, they shutdown. These customers have not met their mortgage need, but they need some cool down time and a less people calling them. Aged mortgage leads provide both of these needs. The extra days or even months of age will give these customers the time they need and gets rid of all your competition.

Aged Internet Lead Sales Strategies

Once you have all these aged leads you need a good sales strategy to help you convert as many of them as possible. We’ve already mentioned a few of them in talking about specific aged lead markets, but here is a more complete list of popular aged lead sales strategies.

1. Autoresponder Email Campaigns – Unlike real-time leads, sometimes an immediate call is not the best strategy for aged leads. Many buyers of aged leads have found it advantageous to create email campaigns that build trust and relationship over time–softening the first call or providing a valuable newsletter.
2. Filling Power Dialers – Dialers can be a very efficient way to quickly find buyers with intent. However, it is very much a volume game. Conversion is low and you need a lot of names and numbers to make it work. Aged leads can make this an affordable strategy and keep you out of trouble by using customers that have asked to be called.
3. Training New Sales People – Training rookie sales people can be very expensive–they burn through a lot of leads as they learn. Training these folks can also be a Catch-22. They need leads to learn, but purchased leads are expensive and they don’t have the experience to generate their own. Aged leads can be the cheap way to get them all the leads they need at a very low cost. Saving the expensive ones for your best sales people.
4. Learning to Convert Internet Customers – This might be the biggest advantage of aged leads. Everyone knows that most customers are going to the Internet first. Studies also show that many of these interested customers ask for help here first, but more than 60 percent never get a response. That is a lot of sales opportunity. So you need to learn to sell the Web channel and it is different from selling your local neighborhood referral. Aged leads give you an affordable way to figure this very lucrative marketing channel.

Think about giving Aged Internet leads a try. There is a really good chance you might get hooked on this secret source of cheap sales leads.