What is round robin
lead distribution?

What round robin is

Round robin lead distribution, sometimes called lead rotation, shares leads between buyers by taking turns. With three buyers, A, B and C, the first lead goes to A, the second to B, the third to C, and the fourth back to A.

In a real campaign a buyer will not always take its turn. It might be full for the day, outside its hours, filtered out by postcode, or it might reject the lead. A sensible system does not throw the lead away when that happens: it offers the lead to the next buyer in the rotation, and the rotation carries on from where it was.

Round robin is one of three common ways to decide the order in which buyers are offered a lead. The other two are priority and weighted.

Priority vs round robin vs weighted

Priority

Buyers are ranked and every lead is offered to the top buyer first. The second buyer only sees a lead when the first is full, filtered out or says no. This is the classic waterfall, and it is how you make sure your best-paying buyer gets everything it can take.

Round robin

No buyer is permanently first. The starting point moves on by one buyer for each lead, so over a day every buyer gets the first offer on roughly the same number of leads.

Weighted

Each buyer has a weight, and buyers with more weight are offered leads first more often. A buyer with a weight of 50 is first about half the time when the weights add up to 100. It is round robin with unequal shares.

What "even" means in practice

Round robin evens out first offers, not sales. If buyer A rejects a third of the leads it is offered, those leads fall to buyer B, and B ends the day with more sold leads than A. The same happens when one buyer is capped by lunchtime or only works mornings: the others pick up its share for the rest of the day.

That is usually what you want, because a lead that one buyer declines should still be sold. But it matters when a buyer complains about volume. Before changing the rotation, look at why that buyer's leads went elsewhere. If the reasons are rejections or a full cap, the rotation is working; the conversation is about the buyer's criteria or its cap.

Weighted lead distribution

Weighted distribution suits buyers who have agreed different volumes. If one buyer wants twice as many leads as another, give it twice the weight.

Weights are relative, so 2 and 1 give the same split as 200 and 100. Most systems pick the order for each lead at random in proportion to the weights rather than following a fixed pattern. That means the split is close to your weights over hundreds of leads, but can look lopsided over the first ten. As with round robin, the weights decide who is offered the lead first. Caps, filters and rejections then move leads around.

When to use each

• Use priority when one buyer pays clearly more than the others, or when you have agreed to give a buyer first refusal.
• Use round robin when buyers pay the same price and you want to treat them fairly, for example several installers in the same region, or a team of call centre agents.
• Use weighted when buyers pay a similar price but have agreed different volumes, or when you are testing a new buyer on a small share of traffic before giving it more.

Combining methods

You do not have to pick one method for a whole campaign. Put buyers into tiers and give each tier its own method. A common pattern is a priority tier for the one or two buyers who pay most, followed by a round robin tier of buyers on the same price, with a catch-all buyer at the bottom. A lead tries the first tier, then the second, and so on until it is sold.

If you sell leads more than once, the method also decides which buyers get a lead when it goes to several of them. See selling leads to multiple buyers.

How it works in Hawfinch

In Hawfinch, buyers sit in delivery groups on a campaign. Groups run in priority order, and each group has its own distribution method: priority, round-robin or weighted. You can change the method while the campaign is live, and the audit log records the change with before and after values. The campaigns page shows the set-up.

• Priority tries the group's buyers in the order of their priority setting.
• Round-robin keeps a counter for each group. Every lead that reaches the group starts one buyer further along than the last, and the counter is advanced atomically, so two leads arriving at the same moment do not both start with the same buyer.
• Weighted builds a fresh order for each lead, drawn at random in proportion to each buyer's weight, so higher-weighted buyers come first more often.

Whichever method a group uses, buyers are offered the lead one at a time. If a buyer is capped, outside its active days or hours, filtered out, rejects the lead or times out, the next buyer in the group's order gets it. If no one in the group takes it, the lead moves on to the next group. Later groups are also tried after a sale unless you give them a filter such as already sold, which is how you choose between exclusive and multi-sold leads. Every attempt is recorded against the lead with its outcome, so you can see why a buyer's share moved.

Set how many buyers in a group should receive each lead, and Hawfinch works down the group's order until that many have accepted it. Buyer weight and priority can be set per buyer, and overridden for a buyer in a particular group. Each buyer can be direct post or ping post; ping post buyers are asked one at a time in the same order, with no auction.

Every method is on every plan, from £249 a month with a 3-month free trial. See all features, lead management 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.
• Buyer caps: Daily, weekly and monthly limits, and what happens when one is hit.
• 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.