Quick Call Leads are tricky! We usually get some good contact information for the prospect, but usually very little information about what the lead is searching for. And to add to the fun and frivolity, its important to remember that Quick Call Leads are sold to two or three other agents, outside of our company. Because of all of this we call these leads right away and try to spark a conversation. If we get them on the phone first, and we engage them pleasantly we have the best chance of becoming their agent. And you also have a built-in topic of conversation–you need to try to learn more about what they are looking for so that you have enough information to take the next step in the best way possible!
After making the call we are going to have 3 possible outcomes.
1. Did not make contact: Check Email Place on 5 Day Ticker.
2. Lead answered the phone but was unreceptive: Mark as dead.
3. Lead answered and was receptive/able to confirm email : Start Quality Lead Process.
Use an online email checking website to test the email address. We recommend http://mailtester.com , but there are many more—just Google “email verification” if you’d like some other choices.
MailTester.com will give you an answer in just a couple of seconds, telling you if the domain is correct, and if the username is correct within that domain. (The domain is the part after the @ symbol…so in an email address like [email protected], “gmail.com” is the domain and “joesmith” is the username. Obviously, both have to be correct to have a valid email address. If the email is correct you can go on with the rest of the steps with confidence.
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If it’s an invalid email address, you can save yourself a lot of time and trouble by skipping the rest of the steps, and have the system refund your money for the lead. Just reply to the offer text with the command for Bad Email, which is “BE” followed by the Lead Offer number. Remember, for a lead to be refundable due to a Bad Email, you have to notify the system within a set amount of time after receiving the lead. Of course, you must be ready to process the lead when you receive it, so you should learn this info pretty quickly and be ready to claim the refund if needed.
However, before you decide that it’s a bad email address, take a second look and see if there is an obvious misspelling in the email address. For instance, if you have a lead named “David Letterman”, and the email address he gave you is [email protected], it’s a pretty good bet that poor old Dave just made a typo on the email address (single “t” instead of a double “t”). Look at the second half, the domain name, as well. We see people enter “.cm” instead of “.com”. Or “gmal.com” instead of “gmail.com” all the time. If there are doubled characters (or triples) try removing one of them. Recently we had a bad email from “maryymarcos” …we guessed that it was supposed to be “marymarcos” and we were right.
We find that about half of the bad emails are merely typos that can be figured out and verified through testing. So don’t forget to use the MailTester.com website to try out a couple of possibilities before you throw in the towel on the lead!
MailTester.com will work with most email addresses, however some email providers will not permit email validation. In those cases, the email will say it can’t be verified, but that’s not the same as not valid. For instance, if you try to verify any email address that is with yahoo.com, or with hotmail.com, you’ll get a notification that “the server doesn’t allow email verification”. No worries, that just means that in those cases we have to do it the old fashioned way—send the email and see if it bounces!
We’ve also noticed that domains hosted by GoDaddy (and there are tons of them, including this website!) can sometimes return the info you want, and other times you’ll get a notice that the system has made too many requests that day so it’s ignoring the request. If that happens, best to treat it like a non-verified email, and just send the email and see if it bounces. Of course, you might be able to try again the next day—we find it is more likely to respond to the request early in the day than late. Weird. But that’s GoDaddy. By the way, GoDaddy domains can be anything, but you’ll be able to recognize them because the mail servers are always on “secureserver.net”. For a sample try [email protected].
Where now ready to set them up on a 5 day tickler and portal system