If every consumer took the same path to purchase for their wants and needs, your Marketing would be effortless. But we know people are different and their behaviors are unique. This is especially true when it comes to making major life purchase (MLP) decisions—those big decisions that require a lot of time and research to make, such as buying a house or deciding on an insurance policy.

Consider the mortgage consumer journey, which often begins months before a credit score is even pulled. Or the life insurance journey where consumers research and visit numerous sites across multiple device types. These consumers are comparison shopping and submitting lead forms on a number of different sites. This means you don’t get a full view of your customer, which complicates sending the right message at the right time.

Creating wonderful, relevant consumer experiences is really hard, and especially so within the world of major life purchases. This is why leveraging real-time intelligence about the lead and consumer’s behavior is so critical. We find from our research it’s the secret sauce for relevant and wonderful consumer experiences.

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Behavior

Consumer behavior is one of the biggest drivers in ad tech. It’s also an essential differentiator in the lead space if you know how to harness the data collected around the comparison shopping event. The technology exists today to glean far more information from consumer behavior, from the moment a person raises their hand that they are in the market; all the way through to when they submit a lead form and through eventual conversion if the tracking technology is in place to capture this valuable data.

There are big dollars in the right data when you know how to mix your industry metrics. In fact, organizations that leverage customer behavioral insights outperform peers by 85% in Sales growth and more than 25% in gross margin. Performance marketers who think outside the static data box get the best and most actionable picture of the consumer and overall intent. That translates into better experiences and more sales.

Customer Intelligence

By the time a prospect arrives at an online lead form, they’ve already been exposed to online and offline impressions through search results, social marketing, display and mobile ads, affiliate efforts, and email messages. They’ve likely visited other content-rich sites and fill out other lead forms. True data currency comes only when you get a full picture through a data backbone that runs the length of that engagement.

Real-time data combinations create a far more intelligent and actionable marketplace for all players, empowering the marketer to make better decisions and drive performance.

Gaining a clear picture of your prospects through the use of third-party data will greatly improve your ability to personalize your Marketing and increase win rates. Marketers can create better strategies and market to consumers as if they know them by combining first-party data with third-party data from data-as-a-service (DaaS) providers. With that customer intelligence, each engagement attempt can be done in a thoughtful and meaningful way.

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Lead Generation

The lead generation industry is in a perfect position to dynamic datasets. In the past, lead data was confined to somewhat static snapshots, with lead verification and lead scoring standing as the best tools available to aggregators and advertisers. With literally hundreds of new data points available to the marketer, it’s now possible to add in behavioral, engagement, and intent metrics raising the bar to get the precise value of every lead.

Real-time lead gen data mashup examples include:

• Consumer Origin: Know the facts about the consumer’s path from inception to the present moment.
• Lead History: Know the lead’s path, and get information on the exact time elapsed, as the lead passed through the supply chain to you.
• Consumer Behavior: Understand the consumer’s intent and engagement level.
• Demographics: Match a consumer profile with age, gender, income level, and other data points.
• Fraud Risk: Gauge the likelihood that a lead is a real consumer.
• Compliance: Ensure brand and federal compliance at a lead by lead level.

MLP marketers who combine ad tech data and lead insights obtain a multidimensional and highly detailed real-time picture of consumer behavior. This clarity and accompanying actionability allows marketers to take smarter actions and make safer decisions when engaging prospects and customers.

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