LeadConduit provides a variety of methods for delivering lead data. Leads are delivered, one-by-one, as they arrive in LeadConduit. This section explains how to configure lead delivery for your campaigns. You cannot configure delivery for campaigns which are not owned by you. Certain campaigns use special "managed" delivery processes that are custom for that campaign. Lead delivery cannot be configured through the LeadConduit UI for campaigns with managed delivery processes.
Delivery Destinations
Each campaign can be configured with zero or more delivery destinations. If a campaign is not set up with at least one delivery destination, then leads must be delivered using a manual lead delivery. To automatically deliver a lead when it arrives in LeadConduit you must add at least one destination.
When a lead is delivered to a destination, there are three possible outcomes: success, failure, or error. A lead is considered delivered if it reaches a configurable number successful destinations.
There are several other delivery settings which determine behavior of lead delivery in a campaign with multiple destinations. These settings can be combined to meet advanced lead delivery requirements, including integration with email service providers for sending auto-responders, integration with data validation services like Targus Info, or optimally routing leads to one or more lead buyer based on that buyer's lead acceptance criteria. For more information on advanced lead delivery, see the "Advanced" section below.
Delivery Destination Types
Lead delivery types include: HTTP, email, Intuit QuickBase, DeliveryAdapter. Each delivery type can be configured by navigating to a campaign and clicking the "edit destinations" link at the bottom of the campaign details page. If you require a special type of lead delivery that isn't supported by one of our standard options, you may contact support to discuss a custom managed lead delivery setup.
No matter what kind of delivery you use, LeadConduit will stop attempting delivery of a lead after retrying for 7 straight days. After this time, you can force redelivery from the "Delivery" tab.
Delivery Trouble Monitoring
Lead delivery integrations are prone to failure due to human error. As a general rule once a delivery integration is up and running, failures occur only as a result of a change made in LeadConduit delivery configuration, or changes made to the delivery destination. LeadConduit provides a number of tools to help you keep your lead delivery integrations humming along.
Automated damage control
Usually, the smartest course of action when a delivery fails is to shut it down and to allow for an opportunity to correct the problem. If the delivery is allowed to run, the results can be unpredictable. For example, assume that the receiving server indicates that a lead was accepted, but you've accidentally misconfigured the LeadConduit response parsing, and LeadConduit interprets the "accept" as an "reject" instead. If this misconfiguration remains, there will be a wide disparity between the number of accepted leads shown in LeadConduit and the number of leads actually accepted by the recipient server. In this scenario, a number of consectively rejected leads indicates a problem, and the delivery should be shut down so that the problem can be corrected without inflicting any more "damage."
LeadConduit allows you to configure thresholds for the number of consecutively rejected leads and the number of consecutive lead delivery errors. When either threshold is met, all delivery destinations are disabled and an email notification is sent to the configured email address. These options are available in the "campaign delivery settings" screen.
Checking up on lead delivery health
The "Delivery" tab in LeadConduit provides a real-time view on the health of your campaigns with respect to lead delivery. Clicking on the tab will take you to the "Lead Delivery Status" page. This page is a view on the list of leads awaiting delivery. If there are no leads awaiting delivery in a campaign, then it will not be shown. Links to the unsent leads and leads with delivery errors will be shown for each campaign. If lead delivery in a campaign is automatically disabled due to the damage control thresholds you established, that fact will be shown.
The "Unsent Leads" page on the Delivery tab shows a list of leads across all campaigns that have not yet been attempted. Leads that were delivered with an error outcome are not shown in this list.
The "Delivery Errors" page shows all leads which were delivered with an error outcome, and have not yet been successfully delivered.
Advanced Delivery Configuration
If multiple lead delivery destinations are configured for a campaign, there are a number of advanced settings that can be set to alter lead delivery behavior. You can change delivery settings for three primary decisions:
- Given the outcome of a delivery to a destination, what action should LeadConduit take?
- How many destinations must be successful for a lead to be marked "accepted."
- How many times should a lead be successfully delivered?
- Continue to the next destination
- Continue to the next destination and retry this destination later
- Do not continue to the next destination
- Do not continue to the next destination and retry this destination later
As you can see, the available options allow you to conditionally continue to the next destination in the list of destinations for the campaign. You can also decide whether a delivery destination should be retried later. Leads which have destinations that must be retried will remain in the pending status until all destinations have been satisfied.
On the "Global Delivery Settings" page, you can alter the last two settings to fine tune when to mark a lead as accepted and how many successful lead deliveries should be performed.