Why energy leads need their own rules
Energy and solar leads cover a wide range of products: solar panels and batteries, heat pumps, insulation, boiler replacements and energy supply. What they have in common is that the buyer usually has to do something physical or regulated with the lead, such as send a surveyor, book an installation or check whether a property qualifies for a scheme. That shapes how the leads should be distributed.
- Buyers are regional. An installer covers a set of postcode areas, and a lead outside them is worth nothing to it.
- Capacity is fixed. A survey team can only take so many appointments a week, so volume has to be held to what the buyer can work.
- Contact is by phone. A lead with a dead number is wasted, and a lead that arrives when nobody is there to call it goes cold.
- The property matters. Many buyers qualify a lead on the property as much as the person, so a clean address, and ideally a property reference, makes a lead easier to sell.
Below is how Hawfinch handles each of those needs.
Phone checks before the lead is sold
An HLR lookup asks the mobile network whether a number is live, and returns the network and line type. For energy buyers who work leads by phone, it is the simplest way to cut returns for wrong or dead numbers.
In Hawfinch, HLR checks are switched on per buyer, so you only check numbers for the buyers that care, and you only pay for those lookups. Lookups are charged per lookup on every plan. You can also choose, per buyer, whether to accept numbers that are switched off at the moment of the check. If a buyer requires a live phone and the check cannot run, the lead is not sent to that buyer. For older data, you can run HLR on every phone number as a CSV import loads.
Addresses and UPRNs
A UPRN, or Unique Property Reference Number, is the identifier given to an addressable property in Great Britain. It stays with the property even when the way its address is written changes, which makes it far more reliable than matching on address text.
Hawfinch has two address lookups you can call from your own landing pages and lead forms:
- UPRN matching. Send a postcode and the first line of the address, and Hawfinch returns the property's UPRN. The lookup uses address data from the domestic Energy Performance Certificate register for England and Wales. It returns a UPRN only when the match is unambiguous, so a property without a certificate, or an address line that fits more than one property, comes back without one rather than with a guess.
- UK address lookup. Turn a postcode into a list of addresses, each with its Royal Mail UDPRN, so the person picks their address instead of typing it.
Once leads carry a UPRN, you can use it in routing. Reference list matching lets you upload a list, such as the UPRNs a buyer has told you are eligible or the ones it has already worked, and allow or block leads that match it. Reference lists you upload for matching do not count towards your plan's lead allowance.
Postcode filters
Smart filters decide which leads each buyer sees. For energy, the most common is a postcode filter: a Leeds installer gets leads where the postcode starts with LS, a South Wales one gets CF and NP. Filters can match postcodes or any location field, use lists, and combine with AND / OR, for example "postcode in this list AND a weekday".
Filters sit on delivery groups and on individual buyers. A lead that does not match skips that group or buyer and carries on down the waterfall, and the reason is recorded against the lead, so you can show an installer exactly why it did not get a lead from outside its area. If a filter cannot be checked, the lead is not sent.
Caps, active days and hours
Every delivery group and every buyer can have daily, weekly and monthly caps. When an installer's cap is full it is skipped and the next buyer gets the lead. Caps reset at UK midnight: daily caps every night, weekly on Monday and monthly on the 1st. Push alerts tell you when a buyer is close to its cap and when it hits it, so you can ask for more volume before the leads start falling through.
Active days and hours make sure leads only reach a buyer when its team can call them. A buyer that works weekdays from 9 to 6 never gets a Saturday or late-evening lead; the lead goes to the next buyer that is open instead.
Dedup and suppression
Energy leads are often generated by several suppliers at once, so the same household can arrive more than once. Hawfinch dedupes on email address at three levels: when a lead arrives in a campaign, per buyer (across all your campaigns or just one) and per route, each with its own lookback in days (campaign and buyer dedup can also have no time limit). See lead deduplication.
Suppression lists keep people you must not sell out of a buyer's leads, for example a supplier's existing customers. Any campaign can be used as a suppression list, in plain text or MD5 / SHA-256 hashed, matched on email and phone. See suppression lists. TPS and CTPS screening is coming soon and is not available in Hawfinch yet.
Returns
When an installer returns a lead, mark it as returned with a reason and its revenue is reversed, so your reports show what you earned. If a lead can be fixed, for example a corrected phone number, you can edit it and send it back through routing, optionally skipping caps, filters, suppression or buyer dedup for that one send.
An example set-up
Here is how a solar campaign might look in Hawfinch. The buyer names and numbers are made up; the controls are real.
- Group 1, priority. Your best-paying installer, with a postcode filter for its areas, HLR switched on, a daily cap of 40, and active hours of 9 to 6 on weekdays.
- Group 2, weighted. Two regional installers splitting leads roughly 60 / 40 by weight, each with its own postcode filter and weekly cap, and a group filter so the group only sees leads that have not already sold.
- Group 3, round robin. National buyers taking turns on whatever the first two groups did not sell, again with an already-sold filter on the group.
Each buyer is set to direct post or ping post, with its own field mapping and timeout. Changes take effect straight away, and the audit log records who changed what. See campaigns for how delivery groups work, and lead management for intake and checks.
Every feature above is on every plan, from £249 a month, with a 3-month free trial and 24/7 UK-based support. Your data is stored only in London. See pricing or all features.
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.
- Buyer caps: Daily, weekly and monthly limits, and what happens when one is hit.
- 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.