We will first introduce the concept of Insight YieldTM as applied to the “hand-raiser” event which we like to call the “golden moment” – the crucial moment when prospects first identify themselves to you.

Maximizing your Insight Yield means getting the largest quantity of useful and actionable information about the largest number hand-raisers. This does NOT mean asking them a lot of questions directly: even basic identity questions about who they are or where they live. The more you ask, the more likely they are to abandon the “conversation” whether form fill, phone call or online chat. Rather, what it does entail is blending data you already know about the person from anonymous observation of their website activities (via cookies or mobile device IDs) with real-time third-party insights.

Insight Yield is a measure that can be quantified and optimized.

Insight Yield has three primary components:

  1. Match Quantity – the highest possible number of records should be enhanced. This is defined by the equation: (% who fill out the form) x (the match rate to the actual person from data provided)
  2. Data Richness – all data you need to be able to properly characterize or prioritize the person
  3. Timing Utility – insights should ideally be available the instant that personally identifiable information is provided so you can start using it in your very next interaction (e.g., product recommendation or other forms of personalization)

Of course, data quality is also critical. Any data must come from reputable sources, must be accurate and have excellent “coverage” of the key data elements.

Let’s dive a little deeper into each primary component:

Match Quantity
Think of a two-dimensional space in which one dimension is the number of people who fill out your form and the other dimension is your ability to match the information provided to an individual. There is an interplay between these two dimensions. If you ask for full name and address, plus phone and email your match rate to most third-party data sources will be will over 90%. However, the share of people who would consider filling out the form who actually do will be quite low. In fact, it is well-established that requiring — or even displaying — the smallest number of fields will lead to the highest form fill rate. The only two single fields that can uniquely identify a person are phone and email address. (You could also ask for first name, last name, street, city, state and ZIP but that’s six fields!) Of these two, more people will provide their email address (easy to ignore) than phone (too many bothersome texts or calls!).

This is why so many high-traffic websites these days ask for just an email address and nothing else. With an email address you can mail coupons and continue to nurture with some degree of personalization (based on the person’s prior online interaction).

The problem with email address is that match rates to an individual have historically been low relative to phones. “Reverse Email Append (REA)” match rates are typically 30 to 50% while “Reverse Phone Append (RPA)” match rates are typically 50 to 80%). However new multi-source APIs from Inbound Insight are able to bring REA match rates on par with RPA match rates, so this should not be an issue going forward.

Data Richness
There are dozens of sources of consumer data (plus a growing number of B2B data sources).
Some focus on contact information such as email address or phone. Others have developed unique databases or models. Certainly no one (or two, or three) sources have it all. But limiting yourself to a single compiler will reduce the richness of data you can draw from. Best to have access to several best-of-breed data sources.

Timing Utility
First impressions are critical. So, learning as much as you can, as quickly as you can, will help you be as relevant as possible right from the start. The only way to do this is using an API / real-time data pipe. Any other process will take too long.
To learn more about how you can maximize your Insight Yield fill using Inbound Insight’s Insight API(TM) fill out the form below or email us at [email protected].