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> In the course of an hour on a Wednesday afternoon, 22 hopefuls fill out the digital form. Lets take this hour to be an average hour. Over 12 hours in a day t

> In the course of an hour on a Wednesday afternoon, 22 hopefuls fill out the digital form. Lets take this hour to be an average hour. Over 12 hours in a day that the mall is presumably open, that's 22*12 = 264 leads. > the mall isn’t behind these giveaways; they merely rent out the advertising space (for around $1.5k per day). This would imply that these leads need to be worth at least $1500/264 = $5.68 per lead. Does this look like too much to anyone else? I would have guessed that independently of what they're selling, the conversion rate has to be attrocious, as people signed-up not because of their interest for the thing being sold but because they wanted a free car. Maybe the reason why this works is that people who are stupid enough to give out their names on a mall promotion, are probably also easy to push shit on. EDIT: I forgot to add at least two other costs: they need to lease the car, and they need to pay employees to keep an eye on everything. So that figure is more of a lower bound.

sueders101 8y ago
Don't forget to consider the revenue side of the equation. I imagine these promotions wouldn't exist if they didn't make money, for at least a few, business entities in the chain. If they have: 0.3% conversion; $25,000 average price; 20% margins Which aren't unrealistic numbers for timeshares. They break even at $15 cost per lead when ignoring call center costs and other overhead. It's pretty easy to find people to work at an outbound call center for a campaign like this for $9-$12 an hour. (that's without looking offshore) There's also the possibility for additional revenue on customer financing and data resale. When I was a very very broke college student, I worked on cold calling campaigns trying to set appointments to sell security systems. Now I do analytics for a a business that is happy with doing outbound dials on $20 CPL for largely semi-qualified leads. It ain't the most fulfilling work. But it does pay well and the owners have never, and will never take outside investment.
- fwdpropaganda 8y ago
  > I imagine these promotions wouldn't exist if they didn't make money That was my point.
  - sueders101 8y ago
    Ah, I misunderstood. You mentioned a $6 CPL as seeming like 'too much' and in my experience it wouldn't be. I've seen targeted data request campaigns hit that with generic survey data gathered from completely unrelated businesses/industries.(Partially qualified warm transfers usually costing at least 4-5 times that) Especially when factoring in the ease of, and revenue gained from financing deals. After accounting for, what has to be, one of the lowest costs for re-possession out of any industry; I wouldn't be surprised if they made more money from loans that defaulted/sold to collections than anything else.
nkrisc 8y ago
It's not a lot of leads but they're self-selecting for guillibility. Anyone who thinks they can actually win that car is probably more likely, as you guessed, to buy whatever crap someone is going to try and sell them. Also that's just an hour on Wednesday afternoon. I'm sure the weekends get many more leads.
rconti 8y ago
They're not leasing the car, I'm sure. It's provided for free by the Acura dealer as advertising. The article refers to it as a "loaner" from Acura of Fremont. It's also not inconceivable that the dealer chips in some money for the floor space as well, though I find that less likely because it probably just over-complicates things from a logistics perspective, particularly over such a small amount of money.

sueders101 8y ago

Don't forget to consider the revenue side of the equation. I imagine these promotions wouldn't exist if they didn't make money, for at least a few, business entities in the chain. If they have: 0.3% conversion; $25,000 average price; 20% margins Which aren't unrealistic numbers for timeshares. They break even at $15 cost per lead when ignoring call center costs and other overhead. It's pretty easy to find people to work at an outbound call center for a campaign like this for $9-$12 an hour. (that's without looking offshore) There's also the possibility for additional revenue on customer financing and data resale. When I was a very very broke college student, I worked on cold calling campaigns trying to set appointments to sell security systems. Now I do analytics for a a business that is happy with doing outbound dials on $20 CPL for largely semi-qualified leads. It ain't the most fulfilling work. But it does pay well and the owners have never, and will never take outside investment.

fwdpropaganda 8y ago
> I imagine these promotions wouldn't exist if they didn't make money That was my point.
- sueders101 8y ago
  Ah, I misunderstood. You mentioned a $6 CPL as seeming like 'too much' and in my experience it wouldn't be. I've seen targeted data request campaigns hit that with generic survey data gathered from completely unrelated businesses/industries.(Partially qualified warm transfers usually costing at least 4-5 times that) Especially when factoring in the ease of, and revenue gained from financing deals. After accounting for, what has to be, one of the lowest costs for re-possession out of any industry; I wouldn't be surprised if they made more money from loans that defaulted/sold to collections than anything else.

nkrisc 8y ago

It's not a lot of leads but they're self-selecting for guillibility. Anyone who thinks they can actually win that car is probably more likely, as you guessed, to buy whatever crap someone is going to try and sell them. Also that's just an hour on Wednesday afternoon. I'm sure the weekends get many more leads.

rconti 8y ago

They're not leasing the car, I'm sure. It's provided for free by the Acura dealer as advertising. The article refers to it as a "loaner" from Acura of Fremont. It's also not inconceivable that the dealer chips in some money for the floor space as well, though I find that less likely because it probably just over-complicates things from a logistics perspective, particularly over such a small amount of money.