What is
lead distribution?

What lead distribution is

Lead distribution is the work of taking leads in from the people who generate them and passing each one to a buyer who wants it. For a lead generation agency it sits between suppliers, such as your own landing pages, publishers and affiliates, and buyers, such as installers, brokers, call centres and other agencies.

With one supplier and one buyer you can get by with a spreadsheet and an inbox. That stops working quickly, because every buyer has its own rules: which postcodes it covers, how many leads it wants a day, when its phones are staffed, what format its system accepts and what it refuses to pay for.

Lead distribution software, also called a lead distribution system, applies those rules automatically. A lead arrives, is checked, and is offered to buyers in an order you set until one accepts it. The job breaks down into five parts: intake, validation, routing, limits, and what happens after the sale.

Intake

Leads come in two ways. Real-time leads are posted by a supplier's form or system to an API endpoint, one at a time, as people submit them. Batch leads arrive as files, usually CSVs, from data partners or older campaigns.

Good intake does three things. It identifies the sender, normally with an API key, so you know which supplier every lead came from. It answers the supplier straight away, so they know whether the lead was accepted, turned away as a duplicate or suppressed. And it keeps the raw request, so when a supplier and a buyer disagree about what was sent, you can look at exactly what arrived.

Validation

Validation decides whether a lead is worth sending at all. The common checks are:

• Deduplication. Has this person already come in recently? Duplicates are one of the most common reasons buyers return leads. See lead deduplication.
• Suppression. Is the person on a list you must not sell, such as a buyer's existing customers? See suppression lists.
• Phone checks. An HLR lookup asks the mobile network whether a number is live.
• Format checks. Is the email address well formed, and are the required fields filled in?

Where each check runs matters. Checks that apply to everyone, such as rejecting a duplicate, belong at intake so the supplier hears about it immediately. Checks that only some buyers care about, such as a live phone, belong at buyer level, so a lead one buyer would refuse can still be sold to another. More on this in our lead validation guide.

Routing methods

Routing decides which buyer gets the lead and how it is sent. Most set-ups combine a few building blocks.

Direct post

The full lead goes to the buyer's endpoint in one request, and the buyer's reply says whether it was accepted. It is the simplest method and almost every buyer system supports it.

Ping post

A ping goes to the buyer first, and the full lead is posted only if the buyer says yes. Some platforms also run an auction in the ping step. Our ping post guide covers the details.

Waterfall, or priority

Buyers are ranked and the lead goes to the first one. If that buyer is full, filtered out, rejects it or does not answer in time, it falls through to the second, and so on. This is how you put your best-paying buyer first. See waterfall routing.

Round robin

Each new lead starts with the next buyer in the rotation, so volume is spread evenly between buyers who pay the same. See round robin lead distribution.

Weighted

Each buyer gets a share of the volume. A buyer with a weight of 60 is offered roughly three times as many leads as a buyer with a weight of 20. It suits buyers who have agreed different volumes.

These methods combine. A typical campaign is a waterfall of tiers: a top tier of your best buyers in priority order, a second tier where several buyers share leads by round robin or weight, and a catch-all buyer at the bottom. Some verticals also sell one lead to more than one buyer, covered in selling leads to multiple buyers.

Caps, hours and filters

A buyer that wants a type of lead still does not want an unlimited number of them at any hour. Three controls handle this.

• Caps limit how many leads a buyer takes per day, week or month. When a buyer hits its cap it is skipped and the next buyer gets the lead. See buyer caps.
• Active days and hours stop leads going to a buyer whose team is not there to call them. A lead sent to a call centre at 11pm is a cold lead by the morning.
• Filters decide which leads a buyer sees at all, by postcode area, property type, age band or any other field.

Whenever a lead skips a buyer for one of these reasons, the reason should be recorded against the lead. Otherwise the first question from a buyer, "why didn't we get that lead?", takes an afternoon to answer.

Returns

Some leads come back. Buyers return leads that turn out to have dead numbers, people who say they never asked to be contacted, or leads outside the agreed criteria. The return terms are agreed between you and each buyer, not by the software.

What the software should do is record the return and its reason against the lead, and take the revenue off so your reports show what you earned. Returns grouped by supplier also tell you which sources to talk to, or stop buying from.

What to look for in lead distribution software

• Live changes. You will edit routing, caps and filters every week. Changes should take effect straight away without pausing the campaign.
• A record of every attempt. For each lead, every buyer it was offered to, what was sent, what came back and how long it took.
• Checks that fail closed. If a phone check or suppression lookup cannot run, the lead should be held back rather than sent unchecked.
• Any buyer system. Field mapping, custom headers and body templates, so you are not waiting on a buyer's developers to start sending.
• Clear pricing. Know what you pay per lead, and which features cost extra.

How it works in Hawfinch

Hawfinch is lead distribution software for UK lead generation agencies. Each campaign has its own endpoint, protected by an API key, and suppliers get an immediate reply telling them whether a lead was accepted or a duplicate. You can also import CSVs of up to 500,000 rows, which go through the same routing and checks. The lead management page covers intake in detail.

Routing is built from delivery groups on each campaign. Groups run in priority order, and inside each group buyers are tried by priority, in turn (round robin) or by weight. Each buyer is set to direct post or ping post. A ping post buyer is asked one at a time in delivery-group order: a 2xx reply counts as a yes and the full lead is posted. Hawfinch does not run auctions or read bids. You can set how many buyers in a group receive each lead. Later groups are still tried after a sale unless you add a group filter such as already sold, so you choose whether a lead is exclusive or sold more than once.

Every group and every buyer can have daily, weekly and monthly caps, which reset at UK midnight, plus active days and hours. Smart filters on groups and buyers match on any field, postcode, day of the week, buyer history or a reference list you upload. The campaigns page shows how these fit together.

Dedup matches on email address, at intake and per buyer or route, with a lookback in days (campaign and buyer dedup can also have no time limit). Suppression lists are matched on email and phone. HLR checks are switched on per buyer. Dedup and suppression checks fail closed. Each lead keeps a record of every delivery attempt, buyers' returns reverse the lead's revenue, and you can edit a lead and send it back through routing.

Every feature is on every plan, from £249 a month, with a 3-month free trial. See all features or pricing.

Related guides

• 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.
• 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.