What a lead cap is
A lead cap, or buyer cap, is the maximum number of leads a buyer will take in a period. It is usually agreed when the buyer signs up: "up to 50 a day", or "500 a month, no more than 150 in any week".
Buyers set caps because their capacity is fixed. A call centre has a set number of agents, an installer has a set number of surveyors, and a broker has a budget. Leads beyond that capacity either go unworked or get returned, and either way the buyer is unhappy.
For the agency, caps are the other side of the same agreement. They tell you how much volume each buyer can absorb, so you know how much you can sell before you need another buyer. Lead cap management is the work of setting those limits, enforcing them in real time, and sending the overflow somewhere useful.
Daily, weekly and monthly caps
Most buyers think in one period, but the useful set-ups often combine two or three.
- Daily caps match what a team can work in a day. They stop a buyer being flooded on a busy Monday.
- Weekly caps suit buyers who plan in weeks, such as survey teams booking appointments a few days out.
- Monthly caps usually reflect budget. A buyer with £5,000 a month to spend at £10 a lead has a monthly cap of 500.
Combining them is common. A monthly cap of 500 with a daily cap of 30 stops the buyer's whole month being used up in the first week. When several caps are set, the buyer is full as soon as any one of them is reached.
Buyer caps and group caps
Caps can sit at two levels. A buyer cap limits one buyer. A group cap limits a whole tier of buyers in your routing, which is useful when you want to hold back volume for a later tier, or when a client buys through several endpoints but has one overall limit.
The same buyer can also sit in more than one tier of a campaign, or in several campaigns, with a different agreement in each. Being able to set caps for each placement, not just once per buyer, keeps those agreements separate.
What happens when a cap is hit
When a buyer is full, it is skipped and the lead goes to the next buyer in your routing, the same as if that buyer had rejected it. In a waterfall it falls to the buyer below. In a round robin it goes to the next buyer in the rotation.
If every buyer that could take the lead is full, the lead goes unsold. It tells you that demand has run out for that kind of lead today, and that you need more buyers or larger caps. The lead should still be kept, with a record of which buyers were skipped and why, so you can resend it once caps reset or a new buyer is live.
Skipped buyers should be recorded against the lead as capped, not as rejected. Otherwise a buyer that never saw a lead looks as if it turned it down.
When caps reset
A daily cap needs a clear definition of "a day". For UK buyers that means UK midnight, including during British Summer Time. A system that resets at UTC midnight will reset an hour late all summer, at 1am UK time, which can leave a buyer capped at the start of the day.
Weekly caps need an agreed first day of the week, most often Monday, and monthly caps normally reset on the 1st. Whatever the rules, both sides should know them, because a buyer checking its own count against yours needs to start counting at the same moment.
Active days and hours
Caps control how many leads a buyer gets. Active days and hours control when. A buyer whose phones are staffed 9 to 6 on weekdays should not receive a lead at 10pm on a Saturday, even if its cap has room.
Used together, they handle most capacity agreements. "Up to 40 a day, weekdays, 8am to 8pm" is a daily cap, five active days and a twelve-hour window. Leads that arrive outside the window go to a buyer who is open, rather than sitting in a closed buyer's system until morning.
Common mistakes
- Counting attempts instead of sales. If a lead the buyer rejected still counts towards its cap, the buyer fills up on leads it never took.
- Overshooting under load. Two leads arriving at the same moment can both see one slot left and both be sent. The cap check and the count need to happen together.
- Forgetting the overflow. If every buyer has a cap and there is no buyer below them, a busy day ends with unsold leads. Know where leads go when everyone is full.
- Finding out too late. If you only learn a buyer is capped when a supplier asks why leads stopped selling, you have lost the morning. Alerts as a buyer approaches its cap give you time to ask for more.
How caps work in Hawfinch
In Hawfinch, every delivery group and every buyer can have daily, weekly and monthly caps, in any combination. A buyer's caps can be set once as a default and overridden for that buyer in a particular delivery group, and each placement keeps its own count. The campaigns page shows the set-up.
When a buyer is full it is skipped, the attempt is recorded against the lead as capped, and the next buyer gets the lead. When a group is full, the whole group is skipped and the lead moves on to the next group.
Caps count leads the buyer accepted. A slot is reserved just before a lead is sent and given back if the buyer rejects it, errors or times out, so rejections never use up a cap. The check and the reservation happen in one step, so two leads arriving together cannot push a buyer past its cap. If a group sells each lead to more than one buyer, the number of sales is held to the room left under the group's cap.
Caps reset at UK midnight: daily caps every night, weekly caps on Monday and monthly caps on the 1st, including across the switch to and from BST. You can also reset a cap by hand at any time.
Active days follow the UK calendar, and active hours are set per buyer in each group, in whichever time zone you choose for that buyer. Overnight windows such as 10pm to 6am work too.
Push alerts on your phone and in the app tell you when a buyer is close to its cap and when it hits it. If a lead went unsold because everyone was full, you can redistribute it from the leads screen once there is room, or for that one send choose to skip caps.
Caps, alerts and active hours are on every plan, from £249 a month with a 3-month free trial. See all features or pricing.
Related guides
- What is lead distribution? Intake, validation, routing, caps and returns: the whole job from supplier to buyer.
- What is ping post? Ask the buyer first, then send the full lead only after a yes.
- What is waterfall routing? Offer each lead to buyers in order until one of them takes it.
- What is an HLR lookup? Check a mobile number is live before you sell the lead.
- Round robin lead distribution: Rotate leads between buyers, or split them by weight.
- Energy and solar lead distribution: HLR, UPRN lookups, postcode filters and caps for energy leads.
- Lead deduplication: Stop selling the same person to the same buyer twice.
- Lead suppression lists: Keep people you must not sell out of every delivery.
- Selling leads to multiple buyers: Multi-sell: when one lead goes to more than one buyer.
- Lead validation: The checks a lead should pass before a buyer sees it.