Vampires And Ping Post Are Evil?
I have been told that a speaker at a recent conference implied that ping post is evil. There are two groups of people I have come across who think ping post is evil.
The first group just does not understand the details of what ping post is as a mechanism. They have convoluted bad practices by dishonest people as the embodiment of ping post.
The second group of ping post deniers are those that simply do not want to deal with the market setting pricing or demand and would prefer you just accept that a $20 lead is $20 because they say so.
Ping post has nothing to do with telling the consumer you are going to match them with three providers and instead match them with thirty.
Ping post has nothing to do with hiding from the consumer that you are going to resell their information every seven days for three months.
Ping post has nothing to do with taking a consumer interested in a new roof and selling that consumer’s information to a lender.
Ping post has nothing to do with a service provider endlessly sending calls, texts and emails to the consumer.
These are all bad practices that happen today, and big drum roll, also happened BEFORE ping post ever started.
So What Is Ping Post?
Ping - send partial lead information to a potential lead buyer, so they have enough information to decide whether to buy the lead. Optionally, with dynamic pricing, include a bid with the ping response. If the buyer already has enough leads for the day, they simply reply with unmatched and consumer information is never shared with them.
Post - send the remaining lead information, including the consumer’s contact information, to the lead buyer.
Prior to ping post, lead companies would send full lead information to their lead buyers in a one-step process, which we will call direct post. The assumption was always that the lead buyers would accept every lead that the seller sent. Sometimes this was true, but not always. Duplicates are a problem, so some buyers wanted to reject duplicate leads. Then services like TargusInfo started scoring leads, and buyers wanted to reject even more leads. Now the lead buyers have been given the full lead’s information and have basically responded, “I don’t want it.” It was not just duplicates; TargusInfo also blocked leads.
Lead buyers who didn't want any more leads for the day would just reject them. This direct post process puts consumer information in the hands of companies that should not be using it since they did not buy it. Ping post has reduced the frequency of this issue (but it still happens in ping post with post-rejected leads, so it is very important that lead companies monitor this and seed their data). Blaming ping post, which helps protect consumer information, instead of blaming the dishonest, seems wrong.
In 1995, the movie Vampire in Brooklyn did not win an Academy Award. Honestly, I feel like it was robbed. If you have Paramount+, I highly recommend you give it another shot. There is a scene in which Eddie Murphy, the vampire, takes over the body of a preacher and convinces a congregation that evil is necessary and, therefore, good. The remainder of his argument is more funny but not appropriate here. So, I will agree with the vampire and say that if ping post really is evil, then evil is good. As always, I will beg and encourage the following. Do right by the consumer. Do what you say. Say what you do. Build a lead business where you WOULD have your mother fill out your lead form.