Posted by Kevin Lofgren.

We've been driving prospects to personalized websites - our Lead Machines - since 2001. Others were doing pieces of the process prior to our existence, but we were the first to put it all together.

Since we started, we've spawned our share of imitators. But the pack is still following far behind. We've been pioneering Web 2.0 for the last seven years. We're working on what's next now. We won't tell you what it is, but we're working on it. We know that sounds bold, but trust us. That's how we lay claim to "highly effective." It's relative, but it's also quantitative.

But how did the Lead Machine come about? And what, exactly, is it? Well, keep reading and you'll find out.

Just after September 11, 2001, I was talking with my friend Kevin Dahlstrom about how we could apply user-centered thinking to direct marketing. In Kevin's experience at Gator (now Claria), he had seen a very successful direct marketing campaign run, manually, by the marketing team. They basically personalized every piece the sent out just enough to make it seem, well, personal. It worked well, but was highly labor intensive - too intensive for a large-scale mailing. Kevin D's idea was to inject some automation into that manual process and combine it with our usability, creative and technological skills to create what we dubbed the "Lead Machine." We formed a general Texas partnership called K2 Partners in 2002, which eventually became Farstar.

"Great! Good for you guys!" I hear you saying. "But what the heck is it?"

Basically, without giving too many secrets away, the Lead Machine is a combination of direct and web marketing that gives each user a customized experience. Now, we do more than just mail-merge a potential customer's name into the site. We actually use their behavior on the site to change their experience on the fly. How? Where should we fax the NDA?

Of course, all this customization is pointless if it doesn't serve a point. The point of the Lead Machine, it's raison d'etre if you'll pardon my French, is to find qualified potential customers who currently don't know they even need your product or service. We call them "the disinterested." You can read all about them in another blog posting here.

So, we find qualified leads that you would otherwise miss. And a lot of them. Whereas a typical direct mail campaign might score you a whopping 1% response rate if you're lucky (bust out the Dom!), a Lead Machine campaign will net you anywhere from five to ten times that.

Did I just hear a "yowza" out there?

Today, the Lead Machine is still a huge part of what Farstar does. In fact, we try to inject a little - and often a lot - of Lead Machine technology into everything we do. Which means a "standard" website becomes more than just a repository for cool flash animations or boilerplate copy. It becomes a lead and revenue generator.

Which, I suppose, you could just call a different type of Lead Machine.

kl

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