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Special Reports
Lead Generation
Consumer Opt-in Site Launched
The user has to look for Low.com
By Brad Finkelstein
Oversee.net here has launched a new consumer financial portal, Low.com, with the
aim of providing high-quality mortgage leads.
The name, explained Fred Hsu, president of Low.com and managing director of Oversee.net,
relates to its marketing tagline "simply low rates."
He also drew similarities to another site, Lowermybills.com, but Low.com differs
in terms of its business practices and its technology.
The quality of the leads is good, Mr. Hsu said, because Low.com does more search-based
advertising. The consumer is actively soliciting more information about a mortgage provider.
This is unlike a billboard where traffic is driven to click through by a sexy
ad. The consumer has to look for Low.com, he noted, and thus responds differently.
Lead Express is Low.com's platform. It delivers high-quality, real-time leads
to its mortgage banking partners, with a wide selection of custom filters, as well as additional filters such as
per-area-code, per-state and per-day lead capping. Leads are sold either exclusively or nonexclusively to originators,
depending on their preference. Leads are acquired using an online ad network as well as its own Internet consumer
properties.
A lot of companies that compete in the lead generation market are focused on quantity,
not quality, he continued. The challenge for Low.com is to maintain its level of quality and provide the call centers
of the firms that purchase its lists with leads that meet their parameters. "We have an elite view as far
as online leads are concerned," Mr. Hsu said. "Working in concert with mortgage banking partners, we've
built our technology from the ground up. Based on feedback provided by these partners, we know that our leads provide
a significant proportion of closed loans."
Low.com does scrub its submissions against the federal do-not-call list, but because
it is an opt-in service, it gets fewer hits, he noted.
Among the things the company is working on is a Spanish-language website. It is
targeting both the consumers as well as the financial institutions that deal with that market.
The aim of this is "to bring accountability back to the lead generation business,"
Mr. Hsu declared. Some firms have "a hit and run approach" to lead generation. His company is in this
business for the long term.
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